No sooner said than done — up the mountain they went. Ziqing and the others had conquered far taller peaks than this before, and this first mountain before them now wasn’t particularly tall to begin with. There were clearly no signs of human presence on this mountain at all, and Jun Beiyue led the way at the front, blazing the trail himself.

Though they had to clear their own path, the journey went smoothly enough — no wild beasts encountered, no traps sprung.

It was only when they finally caught sight of the summit from a distance that they all, one by one, came to a stop.

The mountain’s peak looked strangely bare — nothing there at all. They’d already climbed well past the halfway point, and by now they should have been able to make out the rocks, the trees, everything up top clearly enough!

And yet, viewed at this angle, there truly was nothing to see at all — the summit appeared perfectly flat, entirely featureless. Such a strange phenomenon could only mean one thing — danger surely awaited at the peak!

“Xinyun really does know how to point the way — sure enough, there’s a trap,” Baili Weisheng remarked teasingly. He was far too easygoing to let their earlier “small disagreement” stop him from cracking jokes.

“Why don’t we head back down the mountain instead,” Xinyun said quickly, her voice timid, thoroughly meek.

“A trap just proves you pointed us the right way!” Ziqing said with a smile, urging Jun Beiyue onward.

With Baili Weisheng and Ziqing tossing these two remarks back and forth, even the dullest person would have caught the implication by now. Xinyun’s eyes darkened; she understood full well that this group not only suspected her, but was actively on guard against her.

Still, so what if they were? She wasn’t the sort of person who could be provoked or goaded so easily.

Harboring their suspicions, everyone continued climbing toward the summit — but when they finally reached the top and saw what lay before them, they were genuinely startled!

What a surprise!

The entire summit was remarkably flat, entirely bare — nothing but a stretch of damp, muddy earth.

What was this all about?

The summit was quite broad — or rather, this muddy expanse was quite broad. Across from them lay a gentle slope, connecting to the midpoint of the second mountain. Ziqing had never seen such a strange terrain formation before in her life.

But the terrain itself wasn’t what concerned them — what concerned them was this patch of mud right beneath their feet.

How could there possibly be a patch of damp mud sitting atop a mountain summit like this? If Ziqing was told there was no hidden trick to this, she absolutely wouldn’t have believed it.

Jun Beiyue was gauging the distance, about to speak, when Baili Weisheng spoke first. “I think, with a bit of a running start, we could leap across from here — let me try it first.”

The distance from where they stood to the opposite side was roughly ten-odd paces — hardly a challenge for skilled martial artists like themselves.

Baili Weisheng, of course, knew full well things couldn’t possibly be that simple. The moment he moved, something unusual was bound to happen — he intended to use himself as bait, to draw out whatever danger lay in wait!

Just as he was about to leap, Jun Beiyue stopped him. “Let me.”

To everyone’s surprise, before Jun Beiyue could even finish speaking, Xuanyuan Lige, who had been standing there in silence, had already moved — only to find that he, too, couldn’t get airborne at all, unable to summon his lightness skill!

“Strange!” he cried out in shock, his usually unshakable tone finally betraying genuine surprise.

Seeing this, Jun Beiyue and Baili Weisheng both tried as well, and Ziqing followed suit — only then did they realize that everyone’s martial arts had been entirely stripped away!

“This is the real trap!” Jun Beiyue said, having come to his senses, speaking with absolute certainty.

Baili Weisheng, unconvinced, tried several more times, but still couldn’t summon any lightness skill at all. Ten-odd paces was no small distance — even though they were all tall, long-legged individuals, a single leap could carry them only two or three paces at most!

Without question, they were in trouble now…

Just then, Xinyun beside them suddenly cried out in alarm, “Look, quickly — the path back is gone!”

Everyone turned to look at once, and drew a sharp, collective breath — everything behind them had simply vanished entirely. Not just the far side of the mountain they now stood on, but even the basin they’d just crossed through, along with the mountain ranges in the other three directions, had all disappeared, replaced instead by nothing but an empty void!

To put it plainly, everything behind them was now a blank, white expanse — nothing there at all, only sky, no earth beneath it. They were now, effectively, standing on the edge of a cliff, with an unknown, unfathomable abyss behind them, and a stretch of damp, muddy ground before them.

Without question, their troubles had only grown worse…

With no way back, whatever happened, they had no choice but to press forward!

“Are we supposed to just walk across, step by step?” Baili Weisheng asked. Though it was muddy ground, it still seemed walkable — the real fear was that some trap might lie in wait beneath their feet as they went.

But Xuanyuan Lige crouched down, gently running his fingers through the mud at his feet, shaking his head repeatedly.

Beside him, Jun Beiyue was likewise staring intently at the mud, his expression complicated.

“What is it?” Ziqing asked, puzzled.

“This isn’t ordinary mud, strictly speaking. This should be a particular kind of marshland, native to the territories of East Qin and West Chu,” Xuanyuan Lige said seriously.

He knew the terrain and landscape of the Great Qin territories better than almost anyone — and though this particular stretch of marshland wasn’t large, the moment he’d touched the texture of the mud, he could say with absolute certainty what it was.

At these words, both Ziqing and Baili Weisheng’s expressions changed dramatically, suddenly remembering that East Qin and West Chu did indeed have this particular kind of muddy terrain.

It looked like ordinary mud, but in truth, it was a marsh.

Mud and marsh, after all, were vastly different things.

Ordinary muddy ground, when stepped on, would sink to some degree — the wetter, the more saturated the soil, the deeper one would sink, potentially deep enough that one might never climb back out, though sometimes the sinking wasn’t severe enough to prevent walking across, one careful step at a time.

But a marsh was an entirely different matter altogether. Once caught within it, without someone to pull you free, you would inevitably be swallowed completely, suffocating to death beneath the surface.

In the grasslands of East Qin and West Chu, this particular kind of treacherous marshland was notoriously deceptive, appearing exactly like ordinary mud — and anyone unfamiliar with it who recklessly ventured across would face only one possible outcome: death!

Now, with this single path before them, unable to leap across, forced to cross it one step at a time — what were Ziqing and the others supposed to do?

Jun Beiyue and Xuanyuan Lige scanned their surroundings — marshland lay to both the left and right, and behind them stretched nothing but empty void, with absolutely nothing to brace against, nothing to use as a stepping point of leverage.

What could they possibly do?

Everyone pondered the problem in silence, until finally, Ziqing spoke. “There’s only one way.”

She recalled, from her mercenary training, an exercise involving marshland much like this one — no tools, nothing to rely on, a group of five required to cross together, working as one, relying entirely on mutual support to make it across safely. Only, that time, she alone had survived.

Because the instructor’s requirement had only been that one person survive.

In training exercises requiring mutual cooperation, they’d been forced to turn on and kill one another instead — without question, that kind of training, in both process and outcome, had been unspeakably cruel.

Ziqing’s gaze flicked toward Xinyun as she explained, “Whether it’s a person or an object, the rate at which something sinks into a marsh is inversely proportional to its volume — meaning, the larger the surface area, the slower the sinking, and the more time that buys.”

At these words from Ziqing, Jun Beiyue immediately understood. “You mean to use our own bodies as stepping stones?”