The loud rumbling sound and the shaking of the snow-capped mountains beneath her feet made Miss Chloe, who was climbing higher, want to look back to check on Shad's condition, but she knew that Shad would not want her to delay the journey, so even though her worry and guilt reached its peak, she still bit her lip and continued to climb up.
The highest platform snow slope of the snow mountain could be seen in the distance, but the young witch with silver hair and red eyes felt that she could not hold on any longer.
In a trance, the thirteen companions she still remembered suddenly appeared beside her, pulling her clothes and urging her to stop and rest. In a trance, all the evil spirits she encountered in this lonely and strange snowy mountain appeared again, laughing and mocking her for overestimating her own abilities.
At this moment, it was the last journey, and the end was in sight, but Chloe's steps were getting slower and slower. The snowstorm seemed to want to blow her to the ground, and her mental confusion caused problems with her memory. For a moment, she even thought that she had entered the snowy mountain alone.
When she came to her senses, she realized that she was struggling to climb up on the snow. The urgency of breathing prompted her to open her scarf, turn her body upward, let herself lie on the snow, breathe deeply, and look at the colorful black sky with snowflakes scattered.
The colorful black was something Chloe had never seen before. She felt as if the sky was pressing down like a coffin lid, locking her forever in this deserted snowy mountain.
"Go on, keep going."
She turned over and tried to stand up, trying to continue walking upwards, but she stumbled for only two steps before falling again. However, this time she did not fall on the soft and cold snow, but on the ice. She could not understand why the ice beneath her was completely transparent, but she saw countless bodies imprisoned inside the snowy mountain, reaching out their hands to her in the frozen mountain, and their ferocious faces were welcoming the next lost person to join.
"No, I want to go to the top. I want to climb the last section."
The fear forced her to stand up again, but at this moment, thirteen companions, including Mrs. Marquez and the unknown man, appeared in front of her again. They seemed to have been dead for a long time, and their shrunken bodies surrounded Chloe in front of her, trying to stop her from moving forward. But Chloe pushed away their hands, pushed aside their bodies, and still walked up relentlessly:
"What is real? What is fiction?"
In her mental confusion, she asked herself:
"Do I really have a companion? Or, are there really two of my companions who can follow me here?"
The voices of her companions were behind her, trying to get her to stop, or even just look back.
Chloe didn't pay attention to the voices at first, but soon the memories of her journey through the snowy mountains with her companions came to her mind. Those memories, which seemed so strange and true, forced her to stop, but she changed her mind before turning around.
Because she could still smell the taste of alcohol and blood in her mouth, still remembered the extremely warm embrace of the man, and the very cute cat that was as warm as the sun.
"Even if everything is fake, even if this is a space constructed by my consciousness before I died, at least it is real."
Chloe said to herself, supporting her body with her hands on the snow, and stood up with difficulty and continued to move forward. The summit was right in front of her.
"But you don't even know his name yet!"
A mocking voice came from behind her. Chloe knew that her "companions" were still following her, but this time, the voice sounded like she had spoken it herself.
"name... ... "
"Poor Chloe, you don't think we're real! So he must be real?"
The voice seemed to be speaking directly to her ear, like "another me" speaking in her heart. Chloe hesitated again, but the temperature in her body reminded her that the man really existed.
"A man who can be touched by a witch and can enter and leave this mountain range at will, and who even has great power, is this really not an illusion of yours?"
The voice was like the devil in her heart, and it was still so clear even in the howling snowstorm. The young witch had bitten her lips countless times. The pain did not make her more awake, but the taste of blood made her sure:
"Yes, I believe he really exists."
Her expression became more resolute, and her steps forward became faster. Her own voice chuckled softly, as if she had achieved her goal. She did not continue to dwell on whether the "man" was real, but asked the question that the witch feared the most at the moment:
"So, he helped you so much, but you abandoned him and left alone
Perhaps, at this moment, he has been sleeping in the snow of the Silver Mountains, and his body and soul cannot leave for thousands of years. Perhaps the corpse is looking at the sky with its eyes open, not understanding why you really didn't look back, while your soul was torn and devoured by the evil spirits of the snowy mountains. He is really pitiful. "
Chloe stopped again. She tried hard to control her emotions, but the picture described by her words seemed to have become the real picture she saw, and kept urging her to turn around and go down the mountain in her mind.
The small figure in the wind and snow looks so helpless, while more than ten different voices behind him are laughing so happily.
But in the end, she still didn't look back:
"I'm Chloe the Witch."
She didn't tell herself this in her heart, but actually said this out loud:
"I believe in myself, and I believe in him."
She looked up and forward, this time no longer caring about the voices behind her, no longer caring about the forces that had once pulled her. Although her steps were slow, she continued to move upward steadily. After perhaps a few minutes, or perhaps a few hours of the final climb, her hands, which had been frozen and numb, finally reached the edge of the gentle slope of the snow platform at the top of the mountain.
She moved her body so that her entire body reached the highest point of the peak. She tried her best to stand up, and from the height, she opened her eyes wide and looked at the vast snow-capped mountains and the darkness in the distance:
"Is this the peak..."
I didn't feel happy at the moment, but instead felt an indescribable sense of emptiness. I heard a panting sound behind me, and when I turned around, I saw Mrs. Marquez and the timid man, who were carrying their luggage, supporting each other and catching up with me.
"What happened just now was all an illusion... I really climbed up. It's time to go home."
Although she had reached her destination, she felt as if a part of herself was forever lost in this snowy mountain. At this moment, she did not have the slightest sense of accomplishment. The boundless emptiness made her doubt whether she had really made it to the top, and whether this was just an illusion when she fainted on the last snow slope.
She unconsciously opened her arms to face the wind and snow, but this could not bring her the slightest comfort:
"I did all this for what?"
She began to doubt everything and the meaning of the journey. The feeling of soul being torn apart became stronger, and she really felt that this snowy mountain was imprisoning a part of her soul.
"Oh, I have to learn my lesson. If you roar like a dragon in a snowy mountain, there will be an avalanche!"
Suddenly, I heard a complaining voice in the wind, and then I saw Xia De, who looked very embarrassed, climbing up from below.
It wasn't that he consumed too much energy. The snow given by the gods contained enough spirit. He was almost swept away by an avalanche, and it took a lot of effort to climb back to the top. The snow mountain did not make it difficult for an outsider like him. As long as he was not infected by the whispering elements and spiritual pollution, climbing the mountain was not difficult for him.
Miss Chloe did not talk to Xia De. Instead, she reached out and helped Xia De up. They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at the snow-capped mountains on the top of the mountain.
The silvery white mountains were so strange yet so charming. Xia De knew that the girl beside him was probably very confused at this moment, but fortunately he had learned the truth:
“You haven’t reached the end yet.”
He reminded her, and when the witch looked at him in confusion, Shade pointed higher:
"There are thirteen more steps up."
Miss Chloe didn't understand, but suddenly inspiration surged in her heart, and she realized something:
"I... didn't come here just to climb the snowy mountains."
Although the temperature on the top of the mountain is still very low, the impact on the spirit is gradually decreasing, and she is trying to get her own memories back.
An extremely illusory golden staircase appeared in front of her. The eleven steps represented the identity of an eleventh-level witch.
"Mrs. Marquez."
Xia De called softly, and the middle-aged woman stood up from the snow embarrassedly and came in front of the two men.
Shad asked:
"Your wish is to leave the boots of your master who got lost in the snowy mountains on the snowy mountaintop. Now that we are here, can you give me the boots?"
"Yes, sir!"
Mrs. Marquez said immediately, her face flushed with inner excitement.
She took out the boot that she had hidden in her arms and handed it to Shad. When Shad first came to this point in time and saw the boot, he noticed that the boot was as small as Miss Chloe's foot (Chapter 1035), but he didn't know what this meant at that time.
He squatted down with the boot in his hand and motioned the young witch to lift her foot. The latter was slightly stunned, and it was obvious that she had thought of something. Then she immediately stopped Shade with a red face, put on the boot herself, and stepped on the snow with the boot.
Shade said to Mrs. Marquez:
"In this way, your wish will come true."
Then to Miss Chloe:
“You never have to worry about being abandoned by others and facing the journey of life alone. Chloe Marcus Marquez, don’t always rely on others, you have to be someone else’s support.”
"Yes, Chloe, you are not alone."
Mrs. Marquez said to Miss Chloe, and bowed slightly to Shade. Then her body became transparent and illusory, until it turned into a series of golden light spots, flew to the top of the witch's eleven steps, and turned into the twelfth golden step.