As the saying goes, when God closes a door, He opens a window.
Sheng Xia, who had just thought she had finally escaped the dimensional rift by taking a turn, was horrified to discover that snow was actually falling from the sky.
It was June, the peak of summer.
June snowfall, was this some kind of joke on her?
Feeling the temperature outside the car plummet, Sheng Xia could only let out a bitter laugh in her heart. She had driven herself straight into a dimensional rift…
She really wanted to reverse and turn back, but when she checked the rearview mirror, the road she had come from was already gone, replaced entirely by a vast white expanse.
With no other choice, she could only continue forward. Under the glow of her headlights, she widened her eyes and carefully observed everything hidden in the darkness.
At the same time, she recalled the book’s description of an ice-and-snow dimensional rift.
Combining it with the location where the mammoth-like mutated beast had appeared, she guessed that it had likely come from here.
Her expression darkened slightly. The book only gave a few brief lines about this ice-and-snow rift.
Anyone who entered it would lose their sense of direction in the endless snowy plains.
Even magnetic fields were disrupted here, becoming chaotic and unusable for navigation.
Escaping this place was extremely difficult.
There was no light here. Apart from her car headlights, everything was swallowed by darkness.
Driving further in the dark was not safe.
Sheng Xia chose a spot near a mountain wall where the terrain formed a triangular shelter and parked her car.
Shivering, she took thick pants and a down jacket from her spatial storage and quickly put them on.
The car and mountain wall formed a small enclosed space. She took out a tent, quickly set it up, and tied a rope around the perimeter, hanging bells along it as a warning system.
After preparing her alert measures, she carried Jinbao and slipped inside.
She installed a light on top of the tent, then stuck several heat packs on her body before finally feeling slightly better.
With the light on, the tent became bright. Through the transparent window, she occasionally glanced outside while staying busy inside.
Jinbao stared with bright, sparkling eyes, watching Sheng Xia pull out item after item like magic tricks, finding it all fascinating.
When she took out a portable gas stove and cooked a steaming bowl of instant noodles, Jinbao could no longer contain its excitement.
After fleeing all night, it was already starving. Finally, Sheng Xia remembered to eat.
With the mindset of “since it has come, accept it,” Sheng Xia ate without any mental burden.
A large bowl of noodles with sausage and egg was finished completely, soup and all, shared between the two of them.
Even Jinbao, who was not a vegetarian, could not resist the temptation.
After eating and drinking their fill, Sheng Xia sat on a moisture-proof mat, wrapped in a thick blanket, quietly watching outside the tent.
She wondered how Su Mei was doing. She had just finished surgery; unable to reach her, she must be extremely worried.
And that handsome male lead, she wondered if she would ever get the chance to see him again.
Sheng Xia quite liked his looks. If she had the chance, admiring a handsome man again would not be bad.
Lost in her thoughts, she unknowingly fell asleep.
From the moment she fled until now, her nerves had been tightly strained. She had also exhausted a great deal of energy fighting the Blood Red Leopard Beast. She had already reached her limit.
What she did not know was that Gu Ziyan, who had come to pick her up by helicopter, had missed her entirely because she had left too early.
Night passed without incident.
Sheng Xia woke up in the morning light, only to realize she had actually spent the entire night safely inside a dimensional rift.
Feeling a bit lucky, she also noticed that Jinbao was gone, though she had no idea where it had run off to.
Outside the tent, thick snow had piled up.
After a quick cleanup, she stored the tent and other equipment back into her spatial storage.
Looking at the snow-covered car beside her, she hesitated, then cleared the snow and stored the vehicle as well. She was not willing to abandon such a useful means of transport.
Since her spatial storage still had plenty of room, she would replace it with something better later.
Checking inside her space, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the carrots on her black soil had fully matured.
The Blue Mist Flowers and Crimson Flame Flowers were still thriving, though no new Blue Mist Fruit had appeared.
Sheng Xia happily pulled out a carrot, washed it, and bit into it.
Crunch, crisp, sweet, and juicy. She had never tasted such delicious carrots before.
She grabbed another one and continued eating as she walked, following her memory of where the highway exit should be.
Unfortunately, everything around her was a vast white blur. Aside from snow-covered mountains and scattered trees, there was no way to distinguish direction.
After circling in place a few times, she gave up.
At that moment, Jinbao suddenly appeared again, bouncing in front of her. It grabbed her hand with one paw, pointed in a direction with the other, and chattered excitedly.
Sheng Xia did not understand, but could only carefully follow where it was leading her.
From last night until now, she had not encountered a single beast in this dimensional rift, which made her uneasy.
That meant either all beasts had already left, or something far more terrifying was here.
Her heart sank as she followed Jinbao forward. The further she went, the more desolate the surroundings became.
After only ten minutes, she saw a scene she would never forget.
About ten meters ahead stood a crystal-clear ice tree. It was roughly ten meters tall, with no leaves at all. Hanging on its branches were nine translucent, spherical fruits.
They shimmered with a silver glow, clearly not ordinary objects.
Within a ten-meter radius of the tree, no other plants grew. It stood on the edge of a natural chasm, dividing the land.
Sheng Xia was on the eastern side of the tree. On the western side, at a similar distance, rows of snowfield beasts stood in formation.
There were mammoth-like beasts she had seen before, saber-toothed tiger-like beasts, ice wolves, and small snow-white fur beasts over a meter long.
Now, seeing Sheng Xia and Jinbao appear on the opposite side, the beasts roared and bared their teeth in anger.
What puzzled Sheng Xia was that none of them dared to step forward.
It seemed they all wanted those fruits, but none dared approach.
Suspicion rose in her heart. She continued forward, but Jinbao suddenly grabbed her and stopped her.
It gestured for a long time before she finally understood.
They could not go any further.
Looking at the snowy ground ahead, which looked no different from where she stood except for a half-meter-wide crack, she could not understand why.
Then Jinbao dug out a stone from the snow and threw it across the gap.
The moment it landed, the snow surface on the other side twitched slightly, and the fist-sized stone vanished without a trace.
Sheng Xia stared at the scene in shock and finally understood why the beasts dared not advance.
She felt a wave of relief. If she had entered from the other side yesterday, she and Jinbao would have been devoured without even leaving bones behind.
The most fortunate thing was that there were no flying beasts here, otherwise even that chasm would not have been enough to stop them.
Neither the beasts nor she could cross that gap. A strange silence fell over the area.
This was something not even mentioned in the book. She had no idea what kind of fruit those were.