The Human Emperor c1-2382

by Huangfu Qi (皇甫奇)

  “So cold!”

  The two teams joined together. At the front, mounted on a white horse, was a muscular man with extremely energetic and bright eyes. As he looked toward the north, he let out a breath of cold air.

  Starting from a few days ago, the scenery had begun to change. The sparse and withered grass on the ground had begun to be covered in frost, and the entire world was layered over with a faint white. And as they went farther north, the air became colder and colder, and the snow thicker and thicker.

  A cold gust blew past, containing dense snowflakes that were visible with the naked eye.

  “Everyone, get ready! Take out your fur coats. In another thousand li, we’ll reach the end of our mission. Once we finish surveying the area, we’ll immediately report back to His Highness!” the squad leader sternly said.

  The elites who had reached this place were brimming with Stellar Energy and were extremely resistant to the cold. But as they traveled farther north and the cold air thickened, they began to feel a greater drain on their Stellar Energy, and it was getting harder and harder to go on.

  “Hyah!”

  The horsemen swiftly took out the prepared fur coats, and they formed into one long convoy that made its way northward.

  Whoosh!

  Another cold wind blew, this one bringing with it a snowstorm.

  It was difficult to imagine that while the Central Plains was calm and peaceful, the trees lush and green while cows and sheep happily chewed on their cud, in this place, snowstorms howled and lashed the land with freezing cold.

  The cold winds sliced across their bodies like sharp blades, and even the war horses were affected. The horsemen were forced to part off some of their Stellar Energy to help the war horses resist the cold.

  “Look there! It’s a forest!” someone suddenly shouted.

  The others became revitalized, and looked up ahead. Truly, ten li away, a large white forest rose up from the horizon.

  A forest meant a place where they could rest and shelter from the snowstorm.

  “Let’s go!”

  The horsemen picked up the pace and quickly entered the white forest.

  In the lands of the extreme north that were devoid of human habitation, the trees had been allowed to grow freely for several hundred to several thousand years. Each one was thirty to forty meters tall, and some of them had even reached an astonishing height of nearly one hundred meters.

  Such tall trees would be regarded as divine trees in the Central Plains.

  As they entered this primordial arctic forest, the power of the snowstorm waned as expected.

  As elites from the army, they had long ago developed a sense of cohesion and teamwork. With the snowstorm’s power blunted by the forest, one part of the group set up camp and rested while the other part stood on guard.

  Chapter 1961 - Surveying the Lands of the Extreme North!

  Chapter 1961: Surveying the Lands of the Extreme North!

  Translated by: Hypersheep325

  Edited by: Michyrr

  “Ah! Watch out!” a voice suddenly cried out. One of the horsemen guarding the perimeter had discovered something, a snow-white bear that had to weigh nearly two thousand jin and was a head higher than an adult man. This bear bared its teeth in a savage expression, ready to jump down from its tree to attack the party at any time.

  A polar bear!

  The horsemen were no stranger to these large white bears. They had run into some of these massive creatures that had gone south to forage for food. Their bodies were packed with strength, and they were capable of shattering stones with a single strike from their paws. Even a well-trained war horse would have their skull obliterated if struck by one of these polar bears.

  At any other time, they would not have cared, but rushing all this way had greatly taxed both their physical strength and Stellar Energy, and they were far from peak strength. Moreover, this frigid land was the home terrain of these bears. If they were not careful, they really might suffer some losses.

  “Be careful! Don’t provoke it! Slowly approach it!

  “Everyone, approach slowly! We’ll work together and kill it as soon as we can!

  “Take out a shield if you have one! Get to the first row and get ready to block!”

  The leader of the team was extremely experienced, and he swiftly issued orders. It wasn’t long before the ten-some elite horsemen had taken up formation, and they began to slowly surround the polar bear.

  Everyone walked on tiptoes, moving at an extremely slow pace.

  The air was fraught with tension.

  One hundred feet, fifty feet, twenty feet…

  “Wait! Captain! There’s something wrong with this polar bear!” A scout in the team quickly noticed that something wasn’t right, and soon, so did the others. The group had been advancing for some time, but that polar bear continued to maintain the same posture, its teeth bared in aggression.

  In all this time, the beast hadn’t even blinked. This was not the behavior of a living creature, at least not of such beasts they had encountered in the past.

  Fwoosh!

  An arrow flew and struck the polar bear’s body, but the bear remained motionless. Moreover, when the arrow struck, there was no meaty impact, but an abnormally crisp snap.

  Everyone soon gathered around the polar bear. One of the horsemen extended a hand and found the polar bear to be ice-cold. Its fur had frozen into hard needles.

  “Dead!” a horseman said, his body suffused with shock.

  “This polar bear has already been frozen into an ice statue!”

  As he spoke, the horseman circulated energy through his palm and slapped. Crack! Half of the polar bear’s neck instantly disappeared. The skin and its flesh had all turned into fine pieces of ice. And what was revealed behind the vanished neck was not normal flesh and blood, but large, blood-colored pieces of ice.

  Its blood, muscles, blood vessels, and even the bones had all been turned to ice.

  Upon seeing this bizarre sight, everyone speechlessly looked at each other.

  Polar bears had dense fur and thick layers of fat and meat, making them more resistant to extreme cold than humans, even more than many human martial artists.

  Moreover, this polar bear’s body was still large and stocky, so there was no way it could have died from starvation. It was truly difficult to imagine just what could have frozen it to death.

  “Captain! There’s something here! Come look!” someone shouted before the group could ponder what was going on.

  The captain’s eyes glinted with cold light as he quickly led his men over.

  “Captain, look, look! There are a lot of frozen wolves here!”

  Next to a large fir tree, an elite horseman pointed ahead.

  Everyone turned to look and saw ten-some wolves scattered around the forest in a large arc. They were in a variety of postures, some of them crouched down, others with their backs arched, and some of them curled into balls. These were wolves that had been ready to go out on a hunt.

  Clap!

  One of the horsemen pushed, upon which a wolf fell to the ground and broke into several pieces.

  The ice chunks scattered across the ground made their hair stand on end. What had frozen all these snow wolves to death right before they were about to go hunting?

  “Everyone, be careful. There’s something weird about this place!” the captain warily called out.

  As they advanced, they saw more and more animals frozen to death. A snow rabbit had curled up in a bush, its eyes frozen into blue beads of ice. Underneath a pine tree, an adult sika deer had been frozen to death, its body fused with the icy ground.

  Arctic foxes, squirrels, river deer, hedgehogs… more and more frozen animals became visible, all of them apparently instantly frozen to death.

  “Captain! Look! There’s a house here!”

  The party made a new discovery, a crude wooden building several dozen feet in radius. The entire building was crudely made from logs of fir an
d pine trees.

  “Be careful! Barbarians!”

  One of the horsemen immediately became vigilant.

  The group had long ago learned that the extreme north was home to large barbarians who lived in tribes.

  These people devoured their meat raw, and they wore simple clothes or beast hides around their bodies. Living in these terrible conditions and often fighting with beasts, in addition having so much meat as part of their diet, these barbarians, if they survived to adulthood, would mostly have stalwart bodies, divine strength, and extremely aggressive personalities. Not even the Turks were willing to provoke them.

  While the Turks were often regarded by the Tang as barbarians, derided as people who ate raw meat and who were not on the same level as the agricultural civilization of the Central Plains, for the Turks, these ‘wildmen’ who wandered the lands of the extreme north were the true barbarians.

  “There’s no need to worry. They’re already dead!” the captain said, and before the others could say anything, he pushed open the door and went inside.

  The barbarians were not completely oblivious. With so many people shuffling their way through the snow, if they were still alive, they would have charged out already, not been so quiet.

  “…Moreover, even a polar bear was frozen to death. Do you really think a human would have survived?” The captain’s voice came from inside.

  The others were startled, but then they understood and followed the captain inside.

  As expected, the wooden house had been turned into a freezer. Next to a wooden table, the group saw a family of three that had been turned into ice statues.

  They were wearing crude clothes made of hide, and dried meat had been placed on the table along with some simple utensils. But the three people were covered in thick layers of ice and frozen in place. The life had gone out of them long ago.

  “There’s a lot of meat on the table, and the jars contain wild fruits that they gathered and a lot of jerky. They weren’t lacking in food. This wasn’t a normal death!” an extremely experienced scout reported.

  The members of this mission were hand-picked elites, but even for them, these scenes were getting far too eerie.

  When a human encountered danger, they would rapidly react, not simply wait for death, let alone still go on eating. And those wolves in the forest had all been instantly slain. It all seemed like the work of ghosts and spirits, and they couldn’t help but feel very uneasy.

  These men were all hardy individuals who had been through the trials of the battlefield, who wouldn’t even blink if a sword swept across their brow. But what they had seen could no longer be explained through common sense.

  When they emerged from the wooden house, all of them were silent and abnormally dejected.

  A horseman broke the silence. “So… did His Highness predict all of this? Was this the real reason he sent us here??”

  This place was a land forbidden to life. Grass, animals, and the barbarians had all died in an eerie fashion. If they hadn’t come as a group, had come alone or with only one or two others, they probably would have fled for their lives already.

  Kaclack!

  At this moment, sharp cracking began to ring out. Everyone turned and saw a massive tree nearly one hundred meters tall begin to tremble, snow falling from its branches. The trunk of the tree seemed to lose its balance and crashed down.

  Boom! A snowy cloud rose into the air. Many more trees in the forest were pushed and squeezed, and began to fall down.

  There was another massive boom, and as that first tree slammed into the ground, it broke into two. Countless shards flew through the air, but inside was crystalline ice.

  “!!!”

  Time seemed to freeze. Everyone stared at the fallen tree and the ice crystals in the air in utter shock.

  They had noticed how the animals and barbarians in the forest had been frozen into ice sculptures, and that house had also been encased in thick ice, making it like a freezer. But none of them had noticed that many of the trees in the forest had also been turned to ice.

  This was a world of dead ice statues.

  Rumble!

  While they were still in shock, the ground began to shudder, flinging the shards of ice on the ground several inches high.

  Quickly, the captain furiously bellowed, “Go! Hurry! Everyone, leave this place at once!”

  Unlike before, the voice was tinged with panic and anxiety.

  Boom! Even though they didn’t know what was going on, the others chose to listen to their captain’s orders and rushed back toward where the horses were being kept.

  A few moments later, the booming crescendoed. The shuddering intensified, accompanied by the groaning and crashing of trees into the ground.

  A horseman, overcome by intense curiosity, turned his head to take a glance. This one glance made his pupils constrict like he had been jabbed a needle, his face going pale.

  Chapter 1962 - The Youzhou Coup!

  Chapter 1962: The Youzhou Coup!

  Translated by: Hypersheep325

  Edited by: Michyrr

  “B-… Blizzard!!!” the horseman cried out, his voice stammering from excessive fear.

  A hundred meters behind him, the world had turned white, ice and snow devouring the heavens and earth like a giant maw.

  In front of this heaven-encompassing blizzard, every human, no matter their cultivation, was about as significant as an ant.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! As the blizzard swept over the world, the temperature rapidly plunged. With astonishing speed, all the trees and grass were covered in a layer of ice. And while the men had thick fur coats with metal armor underneath, and inner clothes made of wool, it felt like none of this existed, providing not a single iota of warmth.

  They felt like they were running naked on the snow.

  The terrifying chill behind them was like icy needles pricking at their backs, making their blood run cold. Each one of them sensed that if they fell behind, the blizzard would catch up and immediately end their lives.

  “Run! Abandon your armor!” the leader shouted, the intense danger he felt causing his face to twist.

  Whoosh! He tore off a heavy piece of armor and threw it aside, and those behind quickly did the same.

  With their lessened burden, they were able to run a little faster.

  Time was life. Being a little slow at this time would mean certain death.

  All of them suddenly understood how that large polar bear with its thick fur and fat had suddenly died, and why those ten-some snow wolves had been slain at the same time right before they were about to hunt, and why that family of three barbarians had died right in front of their table…

  This terrifying cold and the rapidly plunging temperature didn’t even give them the chance to run.

  Neigh!

  Horses neighed as the men mounted and rode with all their strength. Rumble! The earth gave a deafening roar like the world was collapsing, a sound that would haunt their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  “Let’s go!”

  “Run!”

  Everyone yelled themselves hoarse as they rode as fast as they could.

  “Ah!”

  There were cries of alarm as several of the horsemen who had been too slow were caught by the blizzard. They only had time to scream before they and their horses were rapidly frozen in place, becoming ice statues of the primordial forest. And in front, the others could only mentally weep over the loss, but they did not dare to turn their heads or attempt a rescue.

  All of them were teetering on the edge between life and death, and the slightest mistake would forfeit their own lives, so rescuing someone was out of the question.

  The strength of humans was puny before that of nature!

  Large trees stood in their path, and the horsemen could only try to maneuver around them while picking up speed. But the blizzard was getting closer and closer, the stench of death filling their nostrils.

  Rumble! After running for some time, s
uddenly, they saw the world open up before them. And behind them, the sound of that blizzard that was doggedly pursuing them suddenly dwindled.

  Sensing the danger behind them fading, they finally stopped. They leaned on the backs of their horses, steam rolling off their bodies as they gasped for breath.

  They felt like they had escaped from the jaws of death, and all of them blessed their fortune.

  Neeeigh! They began to turn their horses around, and all they saw was a world of white snow. The primordial forest was gone, and for thousands of li, ice and snow had covered everything like a giant plate of snow placed atop the world.

  “Captain, what do we do now?” one of the scouts asked, grief in his voice.

  They had left with twenty-some people, but only seven or eight were standing here. The others would remain forever as ice statues in that land of snow. None of them had imagined this possibility when they had first set out.

  “Immediately report to His Highness!” the captain said, his voice much hoarser. “You saw what happened just now… this cold climate will periodically expand and shift, and even polar bears, snow wolves, and trees will be frozen to death. Just think what will happen if this extreme cold moves south, reaching the Central Plains and the Great Tang… Not a single person will survive!”

  The others fell silent, but as they understood, their expressions turned complicated.

  There was no doubt that their liege had predicted this scene. This was the true reason they had appeared here.

  “Our brothers died for the sake of the Great Tang, and they will not have died in vain… One day, everyone will remember their names!”

  Grief appeared in the captain’s eyes. He quickly took off his helmet and led the others in bowing toward the forest. Then, they turned around and began to head back toward the south.