Chapter 399: Hanging on to Life (2) (1/2)

Even with the thick fox fur cloak around her, the icy northern winds battered her body with snow and stole away whatever warmth she originally had. Her face and hands were already numb from the cold.

Chu Lian looked up at the darkening sky, face worn with worry. Although they were able to bear with the low temperatures during the day, if they didn’t find a place to rest for the night soon, they would surely freeze to death out here in the open.

She couldn’t determine any sense of direction in the middle of this white plain. Furthermore, she didn’t know if there were any pursuers on their tail.

Chu Lian panted for breath as she turned to Myeryen. “Myeryen, could you ask your Ah-ma if she can find a place to sleep for the night? If we continue like this, we’ll freeze to death.”

The teen nodded and turned to Urihan. Chu Lian listened as he spoke to her in the barbarian language.

Myeryen nodded at his mother before turning back to Chu Lian and reporting what he had found out with a frown. “Sister Chu, Ah-ma said that there’s no place suitable to rest nearby. We have to walk for another five kilometres before we can find a place to rest.”

Chu Lian sucked in a gasp of air upon getting such an answer.

Five kilometres!

In the army, when soldiers were forced to march at their fastest on a normal road surface, they would cover about five hundred kilometres or so in a day. For a normal person, they would be able to walk twenty five to thirty kilometres at the most.

Although they had horses right now, they were in the middle of the icy north in knee deep snow. Their horses could go fifteen or twenty kilometres in a day without food or water.

Now that the sky was already starting to turn dark, the closest place they could make camp at was still five kilometres away!

It was impossible to reach there before night fell and the temperatures dropped.

Chu Lian turned to look at the middle-aged Urihan and discovered that she had a similar expression of anxiety.

However, they had no other choice but to try their best to survive out on the grasslands.

They didn’t have any fire, and the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow. Any firewood they might be able to find was likely already damp and moldy. The white horizon spread out before them without an end. There wasn’t even an outcrop where they could take shelter, so the experienced Urihan was also helpless in the face of the cruel reality of nature.

Their whole group seemed to have understood the danger they were in. Death was like a silent shadow slowly creeping over them.

The atmosphere between the four of them turned dead and tense. Urihan was starting to regret bringing Chu Lian out.

She hadn’t expected the snow-covered grasslands to be this hard to traverse. A place they could normally reach in a day of travel now took twice as long. This was under the assumption that they didn’t lose their way.

Chu Lian’s wide eyes stared out into the falling snow around them. Her dry lips pressed together as a spark of resolution lit up in her eyes. She didn’t realise that this subtle action she took in the face of emergency was actually rather similar to He Changdi’s.

The sky darkened abruptly, and the limited warmth of the day went along with the light.