Chapter 1170: Exemption

Hearing Sheyan’s question, Reyno’s reply sounded confused and a bit angry.

“You’ve successfully overcome the barrier between life and death; you surely had a great harvest! What is it that you’re still confused about? Greed is a firewood that can burn you to ashes!”

“Breaking through the barrier of life and death only improved my innate ability, but the path to the strongest MT remained in darkness,” answered Sheyan earnestly.

Reyno was silent for a moment.

“It seems that the Realms have evolved quite a bit; there are some differences with my previous experience. I have to think about it carefully. You should take the beads down and keep them safe. Don’t waste their power. Contact me again after you break through the status of a Growth Hunter.”

“… If I’m not mistaken, the breakthrough from a Growth Hunter to an Awakener is when you have to make a choice on what path you want to take. At that time, I’ll let you see the road ahead clearly and let you make the choice that suits you.”

After that, Reyno’s voice vanished; he had apparently cut off the connection in order to save power. Sheyan lips curled into a smile. Now that this fellow named Reyno believed that Sheyan had become his follower, he would certainly not stand idly by.

For Sheyan, the path ahead as an MT was indeed shrouded in fog and encased in darkness. If someone could guide him and show him the way, it would be a very precious opportunity for him, regardless of whether that road was suitable for him.

Next, Sheyan went back to retrieve the clothes that he had let dry on the rock. He put them back on and swam out of the cave. After going ashore, he wiped his body with the front of his coat and put it back onto his body.

At this time, the large amount of Euros that Sheyan had spent on his equipment showed its worth. He found a compass and a survival knife sandwiched in the heels of his climbing boots. Then, he untied the laces of his climbing boots and joined them together to form a strong rope more than 10 meters in length. The climbing shoes could still be fastened with zippers.

The inside of the climbing cap hid a thin layer of compressed biscuits, which tasted terrible but could soothe his hunger for ten days. He pulled out a windproof lighter after tearing open the right leg of his climbing trousers. Of course, more importantly, these clothes did not lose their ability to keep warm just because they were dried after soaking in water. The heat provided by the hot spring meant Sheyan did not suffer any frostbite.

Sheyan noticed that the hole he made when he fell down had frozen shut again. It seemed that the hot spring eventually flowed into an underground river. In the end, only about ten square meters of hot water remained near the spring eye. After daybreak, he surveyed the surrounding terrain and found that the valley was heavily surrounded by layers of snowy mountains. It was completely sealed with no way out. Even someone as strong as Sheyan could only stare at the smooth, hard ice walls and sigh.

However, Sheyan was not feeling anxious at all. Entering the Nightmare Realm without stairs was definitely possible, it just required an extra fee. After he meet up with Zi and the rest, all Zi needed to do was issue an order for him to be rescued.

But to stay in this ice-covered valley for forty-eight hours would be a torture even for a contestant. Sheyan thought back on what happened and based on the unrestrained laughter the guides let out after committing the crime, he was sure that they must be repeat offenders, which meant that more than one soul must have met his end on their hands.

Sheyan thought that if he was lucky, they might have committed the crime of pushing people down the deep abyss more than once in this spot, either by surprise or by killing the victim first before throwing the corpse down. In this place, the corpses would not decompose, and neither would the baggage. As long as Sheyan could find one ice axe, he could easily escape from this prison-like ice valley.

Sheyan’s search proved fruitful. He found a frozen corpse in the ice at a spot far away from the hot spring. He did not know whether the person was killed or had simply gotten lost, but it was not important. What was important was that he provided Sheyan with a pair of cuff-type ice axes, one short and one long. That was enough.

Sheyan’s strong arms and powerful physical strength enabled him to scale the ice wall without much suspense. Of course, don’t think that Sheyan would climb thousands of meters back to the Lotus Stone along the cliff he fell down from. He first climbed hundreds of meters along the western cliff, then climbed sideways at an altitude of nearly 2,000 meters.

Unlike other climbers who had to waste an hour or two whenever they encountered small ice crevices that were two to three meters wide because they had to be extra careful, Sheyan simply jumped over them. After climbing for about three hours, Sheyan finally left this god-forsaken ice valley and saw some vegetation.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, he met a group of herdsmen. Sheyan got himself a horse after paying some cash. He rode for two hours and entered a village. In the village, while having something to eat, he heard that the village head had a van, so he used his horse as payment to fetch a ride to Kathmandu. He arrived back in the city at nine o’clock in the evening.

Sheyan was a law-abiding citizen, so after returning to Kathmandu, the first thing he did was to report the crime. After hearing Sheyan’s statement and the name of the mountain climbing agency he wanted to sue, the officers became more polite, and everything became more protocol-oriented.

First of all, Sheyan was asked to show his passport and identity card. These things were in his luggage, so of course Sheyan was unable to provide them. Therefore, the police officers had reasons to ask him to have them reissued first in order to confirm his identity before making a report, because these were the sacred laws of Nepal….

Sheyan estimated that his identity card and passport would probably require at least two months to be reissued. During this period, he would have to pay for round-trip tickets, and even after that, it would only enter the stage where a case file was opened…. Fine, Sheyan had never been a patient man, so he left the police station and went straight to the mountain climbing agency.

The person in charge of the mountain climbing agency reacted like he had seen a ghost when he saw Sheyan. This prompted Sheyan to instantly determine that even if he was not a participant in the crime, he was someone in the know.

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“S…Sir! How did you get back here?”

“Why can’t I get back here?” asked Sheyan with a grin on his face.

The person in charge, Mr. Basley, wiped away sweat from his forehead.

“Hashemi said you fell down a cliff.”

Sheyan nodded. “Yeah, so that means you can take everything I left for yourself, right? And, Mr. Basley, if I’m missing, the first thing an organization with professional ethics should do is send a rescue team.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing!” The director, Basley, shouted in panic.

Sheyan grinned. “Very well, but you look more like you’re flipping through a magazine to me.”

Basley’s face suddenly became more relaxed, for from the door came in two strong men with huge arms and thick waists. These were the bodyguards he had summoned. He immediately gave Sheyan a vicious stare.

“Please send this gentleman to Sangjie Village.”

Sheyan sighed and said, “You were initially my only target. Such a shame…”

Three minutes later, when Sheyan walked out of the office, the necks of the two strong men were broken. Basley though, was only lying paralysed on the ground and was not dead yet. His mouth was stuffed with socks, while his paralysed limbs were hanging abnormally on the side. Sheyan did not kill him, but had instead broken his thigh bones and upper arm bones into more than a dozen pieces. He would probably be bedridden for the rest of his life.

Sheyan got the news of the people he was looking for from Basley’s mouth. Taba, Zenya, Guro and Hashemi were actually still on the way back. Sheyan’s time was mainly wasted on looking for ice axes, on which he spent more than ten hours. On the other hand, even if the other four were familiar with the route back, it would take them at least thirty hours to go down the mountain.

Sheyan randomly found a car and once again traveled through the route he took a few days ago. Finally, he ran into the group of four at a crossroad 30 kilometers from Kathmandu.

When they saw Sheyan, they also reacted like they had seen a ghost, but Taba was quick to react. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at Sheyan.

Then, the man opened fire.

Then, Sheyan gave them a good beating.

After that, Sheyan did something he deemed very fair. Since these people pushed Sheyan down a bottomless ice abyss, Sheyan found a building about 15 meters high nearby and pushed them down from the top one by one. Whether they would survive was up to fate.

***

Five days passed in the blink of an eye.

The Kathmandu police showed a lackadaisical attitude when Sheyan reported his incident, but they were extremely proactive in handling the brutal, mysterious serial murder cases that happened in both the urban and suburban areas. Sheyan could not even be bothered with their investigation. To tell the truth, the police were lucky that they could not find his identity. If they did, it might have led to a tragedy.

When Sheyan felt that the time was about right, he once again returned to the Nightmare Realm. As soon as he entered, he received some notifications.

[ Congratulations on your promotion to the rank of Colonel. ]

[ Congratulations on obtaining the Imperial Second-Class Iron Cross. ]

[ You have acquired the ‘Exemption’ ability granted by the Imperial Second-Class Iron Cross. ]

[ Ability: ‘Exemption’ – You can select a piece of equipment to be exempt from its equipping requirements, thus enabling you to use the equipment normally. However, ‘Exemption’ cannot be used on Blood Equipment or equipment with military-rank requirements. ]