Chapter 284: Evolution: Body of Magic Endurance

The vast white snowfield is boundless, like a vast ocean, with cold winds howling across the land, occasionally whipping up layers of snow waves.

After four days of rushing, the five-thousand-strong army of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe had already traveled over two hundred kilometers.

This speed was even faster than Gao De had anticipated.

At this moment, they were less than 400 kilometers away from the Icefield Temple, where the headquarters of the Guardians of the Snowfield is located.

The closer they got to the Icefield Temple, the higher the spirits of the magic users in the army became.

A relatively primitive lifestyle has accustomed the people of the northern realm to the harsh natural environment, and they possess astonishing resilience and adaptability.

A kind of primitive wildness flows through their bodies.

This wildness is not just physical strength, but also an unyielding spirit.

The people of the northern realm have never feared combat; in fact, they crave it.

Because they have become accustomed to obtaining the food necessary for survival through combat.

Therefore, for this "expedition," apart from Su Su Su Nai Fa and the elders, who as rulers have to worry about logistics, resources, and other trivial matters, everyone else has only fiery fighting spirit in their hearts.

Gao De rode on the back of a sturdy snow wolf, his gaze sweeping over the army that wound like a long snake.

The snow wolf is Elder Grant's beast pet; he himself did not join the expedition, but let his beast pet set off with Gao De.

By this point, Gao De could fully confirm that the Enduring Zhenbing tribe indeed had enough respect and faith in him, an "outsider" who became the new King because of a prophecy.

Even if he is young and low in strength, even if his orders would make the Enduring Zhenbing tribe pay a not-insignificant price, his ideas could still get the firm obedience and implementation of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe from top to bottom.

Su Su Su Nai Fa said he could lead the Enduring Zhenbing to a glorious revival and unify the northern realm, supporting him as the ruler of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe.

This is a very heavy responsibility and a very arduous task. Gao De first needs to determine whether the Enduring Zhenbing tribe is worth him shouldering this responsibility, and whether he can actually control the Enduring Zhenbing tribe.

And this march on the Icefield Temple is both revenge and a test for him.

If the Enduring Zhenbing tribe and Su Su Su Nai Fa failed this test, then Gao De would treat the Enduring Zhenbing tribe as a tool.

After all, although the northern realm is relatively "poor," the Enduring Zhenbing tribe still has some foundation; at least for him, a First-Circle magic user, it is enough.

Clearly, by now, Gao De's heart has gradually begun to identify with the Enduring Zhenbing tribe.

The entire tribe, down to the most ordinary tribesmen and up to figures like Su Su Su Nai Fa, whose strength far exceeds his, unconditionally believe in him.

This kind of trust gave him a heavy sense of mission and belonging.

At this moment, the sun was about to set.

The army had already skillfully begun to find a campsite and prepare food for the night.

After setting up camp, Gao De was not idle, but began to patrol the temporary camp.

Everyone who saw Gao De approaching would temporarily stop what they were doing and salute by placing their hands on their chests.

The primitive way of survival and the primitive social structure also gave the people of the northern realm a kind of primitive simplicity.

Outside the northern realm, there is absolutely no place where people would be so respectful to a First-Circle magic user because of a seemingly ethereal prophecy like the people of the northern realm.

Everyone's food is uniform dried meat, and the method is to put it in a pot, boil it into soup with water, and then gulp it down.

It looks very simple, but in fact, the standard is already high enough.

To suddenly bring out rations for a five-thousand-strong army for nearly a month, there are really not many tribes in the northern realm that have this strength.

"The food problem still needs to be solved first." Gao De remained silent on the surface, but various thoughts flashed through his heart.

Without a stable food source, the so-called glorious revival and unification of the northern realm are just castles in the air and cannot be established at all.

This truth is certainly not something only Gao De understands.

The problem is that understanding the truth does not mean one can do it.

But Gao De has Fu Luo La, so for him, the food problem really has a trail to follow.

After walking around the camp, he returned to the tent set up for him by the Enduring Zhenbing tribe, where there was also a pot of meat soup already stewed.

Compared to the dried meat soup of others, this pot of meat soup for Gao De was stewed with fresh purple perilla snake meat.

This was killed by the army on the way.

The purple perilla snake is a Second-Circle earth-vein creature; if Gao De had encountered a purple perilla snake alone on the snowfield, he wouldn't have had time to run.

But facing the army of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe, it was dealt with by a Third-Circle ice-descendant magic user as soon as it poked its head out; Gao De didn't even react, otherwise he would definitely have let the other party hold back.

—This is another benefit of becoming the King of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe.

With this status, at least before the Fourth-Circle, he seems to have no need to worry about obtaining the source.

As long as Gao De needs it, someone will help him hunt earth-vein creatures.

The rich earth-vein creature resources of the northern realm can definitely satisfy most of his needs.

However, there is plenty of time, and the most important thing at the moment is to travel, so Gao De was not in a hurry to let the Enduring Zhenbing tribe help him obtain the source.

Gao De picked up the pot of purple perilla snake meat soup and was about to start eating when his peripheral vision caught Fu Luo La stretching her neck, her eyes drilling straight into the pot.

His hand paused immediately, and he smiled slightly, picking out a small piece of purple perilla snake meat from the pot.

It was said to be a small piece, but Gao De compared it to Fu Luo La's size and knew that for the little person, this was definitely a behemoth.

He thought for a moment, then carefully tore off an extremely small piece of snake meat before handing it to Fu Luo La.

Fu Luo La leaned in, sniffing with her nose, then looked up at him.

"What is this?"

"For Lady Fu Luo La."

"Oh~" Fu Luo La frowned; she clearly wanted to ask what kind of meat it was.

Detestable magic user! Fu Luo La's eyeballs rolled left and right, and she extended her hands, receiving the piece of snake meat with a cupping gesture, then carefully took a bite.

"Hiss!" The next moment, Fu Luo La exhaled loudly, anxiously saying: "My mouth is burning!"

Gao De laughed out loud.

The taste of purple perilla snake meat is a rare spicy flavor, and Fu Luo La has never liked this type of food; for example, the ginger tea brought by Chief Ximo was considered poisonous by Fu Luo La.

"It's spicy, but it dispels cold; it's good stuff." Gao De said solemnly.

"Lady Fu Luo La is not afraid of the cold!"

"Oh, I forgot~"

"Magic user, you are not smart!" Fu Luo La looked at the laughing Gao De indignantly, already preparing to start holding a grudge.

After finishing the whole pot of meat soup, Gao De picked up 【North Wind】.

A familiar extreme cold surged instantly, and a thin layer of ice condensed on his palm.

But that was all; the thin ice just condensed on his palm and did not spread further.

Through the continuous adaptation of 【Adaptive】, Gao De was infinitely close to completely immune to the cold of 【North Wind】:

Enduring the cold of enduring ice, your cold resistance increased by 268%.

Enduring the pain of extreme cold, your ability to endure pain increased by 99.9%.

Suffering from extreme cold injury, your body's injury recovery ability increased by 79.6%.

This is the adaptation progress of his 【Adaptive】 specialty under the stimulation of 【North Wind】. The increase in cold resistance grew by another 68% on the basis of the intermediate Ice-Blessed Body, showing the terror of the cold of 【North Wind】.

It was just that at this point, the increase in cold resistance had once again entered a stagnant state.

The stimulation of 【North Wind】 was no longer enough to drive the high-speed improvement of cold resistance.

Similarly, with the increase in cold resistance, 【North Wind】 was basically unable to cause extreme cold injury to his body anymore.

However, Gao De was still exceptionally excited.

The reason was also very simple.

The ability to endure pain had actually been stuck at 99.9% for two days, just like the signs before evolving into the primary Ice-Blessed Body.

Gao De had a premonition that he would break through this bottleneck today.

And if there were no accidents, after the breakthrough, 【Adaptive】 should also be able to evolve an effect similar to the "primary Ice-Blessed Body."

Thinking this way, Gao De exerted a little force in his palm, gripping the hilt of 【North Wind】 more firmly.

With his movement, the cold coming from North Wind intensified a bit more.

That cold was like a needle, causing Gao De's palm to ache, but he gritted his teeth and kept a firm grip.

This continued for about another half an hour.

Gao De's eyes lit up, and once again the room was filled with white, he saw the light of day, and a crisp sound came from within his body, as if some shackles had been broken at this moment.

"Enduring the pain of extreme cold, your ability to endure pain increased by 100%."

The bottleneck was finally crossed.

Some mysterious information had already emerged in Gao De's consciousness:

【Your body constantly experiences the pain of extreme cold, and your ability to endure pain improves accordingly; adaptation evolves into the Body of Magic Endurance】.

【After evolving into the Body of Magic Endurance, you will possess extremely strong concentration ability, and it will be difficult to be affected by external bitter methods such as hunger, thirst, cold, heat, and pain, affecting spellcasting, cultivation state, and craft production】.

【Long-term endurance of pain makes your mind exceptionally resilient, and you will possess stronger resistance to enchantment-type spells that directly attack and interfere with the mind】.

【The Body of Magic Endurance accompanies pain, giving you a small probability of foreseeing impending disaster and pain】.

After the 【Intermediate Ice-Blessed Body】, Gao De finally obtained a new ability through 【Adaptive】: 【Body of Magic Endurance】.

【Body of Magic Endurance】, like the 【Intermediate Ice-Blessed Body】, also possesses three buff effects.

The first two buff effects are easy to understand and don't need much explanation.

It is just the last one, 【small probability of foreseeing impending disaster and pain】, which is somewhat metaphysical; at least Gao De couldn't imagine how this premonition would work for the time being.

And this "small probability" also has a lot to say.

10% can be considered a small probability, but similarly, a small probability could also be 0.01%.

After pondering for a while, Gao De shook his head and stopped thinking about it.

This ability, in the final analysis, cannot be taken too seriously.

Facing disaster, being able to foresee it is naturally good, but the main thing is that one must have the ability to resist disaster, rather than relying on this.

Of course, if one can really foresee it, even if only once, this ability can be considered to have paid for itself.

The only pity is that 【Body of Magic Endurance】 does not have a prefix like "primary" like the Ice-Blessed Body.

This means that it is already in a complete state and cannot be further improved.

Before he had completely recovered from the joy of obtaining the new ability, a scene suddenly emerged in Gao De's mind: swarms of bone skeletons and dark mist as deep as ink were rushing toward him.

However, this scene vanished in a flash, as if it were just a hallucination.

But even such a momentary scene still made a layer of cold sweat break out on Gao De's back.

What is going on?

Gao De was stunned for a moment, and the next moment his whole body shook, realizing what was going on.

This is the ability of 【Body of Magic Endurance】 to "have a small probability of foreseeing impending disaster and pain"!

He had thought this ability would be like a small Easter egg, only to be revealed one day in the future, but he didn't expect that just a moment later, he would use it.

Is this a "first-charge reward"?

While Gao De was finding joy in suffering, he had already taken action.

He quickly left his tent and ran to another tent not far away.

That was Su Su Su Nai Fa's tent.

"It's me." Gao De said softly but urgently outside the tent.

Almost at the same time his voice fell, the tent curtain was violently lifted.

Su Su Su Nai Fa's cold and beautiful face appeared at the entrance.

Her eyes were deep blue and profound, revealing a sense of inquiry: "My King, is there something wrong?"

"There might be an attack tonight..."

Gao De's voice had just fallen when a strange creaking sound suddenly rang out in the temporary camp, making one's heart tighten.

The next instant, an even more hair-raising scene appeared.

On the originally calm and extremely thick snow, a series of explosions suddenly erupted, as if something was stirring underground, eager to break free from its shackles.

Immediately following, the thick snow layer was torn apart as if by an invisible giant hand, bursting open.

Accompanied by a deafening roar, one huge crack after another exploded open.

One bone skeleton after another stood up from the cracked snow seams, like evil spirits summoned from the abyss of death.

These skeletons were of different shapes, but without exception, they all exuded a heart-palpitating aura of death.

Their white bones shone with a pale light under the moonlight, and in their eye sockets, green phosphorus fire flickered.

The moment they revived, these skeletons cruelly pounced on the living people closest to them.

The arms of these skeletons waved in the air, their white bones ghastly, as if they intended to tear apart every obstacle standing in their path.

Their movements were stiff, but exceptionally fast.

Because everything appeared too suddenly, the ice-descendant magic users of the Enduring Zhenbing tribe couldn't react in time, and many were pounced to the ground on the spot.

Although they were magic users and possessed powerful magical power, being pounced to the ground at such close range by skeletons, they couldn't even cast spells in time.

And if there was no spell blessing, in the final analysis, they were just flesh and blood; how could they compete with skeletons that had no pain and were immensely strong?

So once pounced to the ground by a skeleton, there was almost no possibility of standing up again.

With a tearing sound, those skeletons directly used brute force to tear off the arms, thighs, and even heads of the ice-descendant magic users, blood splattering everywhere, staining the snow, and plunging the entire camp into chaos.

The screams of those injured ice-descendant magic users in despair were even more heart-wrenching.

And the tent Gao De had just been in happened to have a skeleton crawling out from it, directly tearing the tent open, revealing the mess inside.

It is conceivable that if Gao De hadn't had a premonition and left the tent in advance, he would have lost half a layer of skin even if he didn't die.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 285 =====