Chapter 1091

The deafening boom and the tremors of the snow mountain beneath her feet made Miss Chloe, who was climbing higher up, very much want to turn back and check on Xia De's condition. However, she knew Xia De would not want her to delay the journey, so even though the worry and guilt in her heart had reached their peak, she still bit her lip and continued to climb upward.

The snowy slope of the platform at the very top of the mountain could already be seen in the distance, but the young witch with silver hair and red eyes already felt she could not hold on any longer.

In a daze, those thirteen companions she still remembered all appeared by her side, pulling at her hem and urging her to stop and rest. In a daze, all the demons she had encountered in this lonely and eerie snow mountain appeared once again, laughing loudly and mocking her for overestimating her own strength.

At this moment, it was the final leg of the journey, and the destination was right before her eyes, but Chloe's footsteps had become slower and slower. The wind and snow seemed to want to blow her over onto the ground, and the mental confusion caused problems with her memory; for a moment, she even thought she had actually entered this snow mountain all by herself.

When she came to her senses, she realized she was crawling upward on the snow with great effort. Her labored breathing made her pull down her scarf, and she turned her body over to lie on the snow, gasping for air while looking at the mottled black sky where snowflakes were scattering.

The mottled black was something Chloe had never seen anywhere else. She felt that at this moment, the sky was pressing down like a coffin lid, wanting to lock her forever in this uninhabited snow mountain:

"Continue, keep walking."

She turned her body over and struggled to stand up, wanting to continue walking upward, but after stumbling for only two steps, she fell again. Only this time, after falling, she did not land on the soft, cold snow, but plunged headfirst onto a layer of ice. She could not understand why there was a completely transparent layer of ice beneath her, but she saw countless corpses imprisoned inside the snow mountain, reaching out their hands to her from within the frozen mountain body, their ferocious faces welcoming the addition of another lost soul.

"No, I want to go to the summit, I want to climb the final stretch of the road."

The feeling of fear forced her to stand up again, but this time, the thirteen companions, including Mrs. Marquez and the unknown man, appeared before her eyes once more. They looked as if they had been dead for a long time, their shriveled corpses surrounding Chloe in front, trying to block her progress. But Chloe brushed their hands aside, shoved their bodies away, and still stubbornly walked upward:

"What is real? What is illusory?"

Amidst the mental confusion, she asked herself:

"Do I really have companions? Or rather, can my companions really have two people following me here?"

The voices of her companions were right behind her; they were trying to make her stop, even if just to look back once.

At first, Chloe didn't care about those voices, but soon, the experiences of the entire journey walking through the snow mountain with her companions flooded her mind. Those memories, whose truth she didn't know and which looked incredibly strange, forced her to actually stop, but she forcibly twisted her intention just before the moment of turning her head.

Because she could still detect the taste of wine and blood in her mouth, and still remembered the incredibly warm embrace of the man, as well as that very cute cat that was as warm as the sun.

"Even if everything is fake, and even if this is a space constructed by my consciousness before death, at least, he is real."

Chloe said to herself, supporting her body on the snow with both hands, struggling to get up and continue walking forward; the summit was right before her eyes.

"But you don't even know his name!"

The mocking voice came from behind. Chloe knew her "companions" were still following her, but this time, the voice sounded as if it had been spoken by herself.

"Name..."

"Poor Chloe, you think we aren't real! Then is he definitely real?"

That voice sounded as if it were speaking directly against her ear, like "another me" speaking in her heart. Chloe hesitated again, but the temperature within her body reminded her that the man truly existed.

"A man who can be approached by a witch, can enter and leave this mountain range at will, and even possesses powerful strength—is this really not your hallucination?"

The voice was like a demon in her heart; even amidst the howling blizzard, it remained so clear. The young witch had bitten her lip countless times by now; the pain did not make her more clear-headed, but the taste of blood confirmed to her:

"Yes, I believe he truly exists."

Her expression became even more determined, and her footsteps, moving forward with uneven strides, became even faster. The voice belonging to herself in her ear chuckled, as if it had already achieved its goal. "She" did not continue to dwell on whether the "man" was real, but instead asked the question the witch feared most at this moment:

"So, he helped you so much, yet you abandoned him and left alone?

Perhaps, at this moment, he is already sleeping in the snow of the Silver Mountains, his body and soul unable to leave for ten thousand years. Perhaps that corpse is lying there with its eyes open, looking at the sky, not understanding why you really didn't look back, while his soul is being torn apart and devoured by the evil spirits of the snow mountain. He really is pitiful."

Chloe's footsteps stopped again. She tried hard to control her emotions, but the scene depicted by her own words seemed to have become a real scene she was seeing, constantly urging her in her mind to turn around and go down the mountain.

The small figure in the wind and snow was so helpless, while the dozen or so different voices behind her were laughing so happily.

But in the end, she still did not look back:

"I am the witch Chloe."

She was not telling herself this in her heart, but had actually spoken the words aloud:

"I believe in myself, and I also believe in him."

She looked up ahead. This time, she no longer cared about the voices behind her, no longer cared about those forces that had once pulled at her. Her pace, though slow, was still steadily moving upward. After a final climb that might have been a few minutes or perhaps several hours, those hands, already frozen to the point of numbness, finally reached the edge of the snowy platform at the mountain's summit.

She moved her body, letting her entire self reach the highest point of that summit. She struggled to support her body to stand up, and from that height, she tried hard to widen her eyes, gazing out at the vast snow mountain and the darkness in the distance:

"Is this... the very summit..."

At this moment, there was no joy; instead, there was an indescribable sense of emptiness. Panting sounds came from behind, and turning around, she saw Mrs. Marquez carrying the luggage and that timid man, also helping each other as they struggled to follow her up.

"The things just now were indeed hallucinations... I really climbed up, it's time to go home."

Although she had reached her destination, she felt that a part of herself seemed to have been lost in this snow mountain forever. At this moment, there was not the slightest sense of accomplishment; the boundless emptiness made her doubt whether she had truly succeeded in reaching the summit, and whether this was now a hallucination from when she had fainted on the final snowy slope.

Unconsciously, she opened her arms to face the wind and snow, but this could not give her the slightest bit of comfort:

"I did all of this, what was it for?"

She began to doubt everything, to doubt the meaning of the journey. The sense of her soul being torn apart became even more intense; she truly felt that this snow mountain was imprisoning a part of her soul.

"Oh, I must learn my lesson; making a dragon roar on a snow mountain will cause an avalanche!"

Suddenly, she heard a complaining voice coming from the wind, and then she saw a very disheveled Xia De climbing up from below.

It wasn't that he had consumed too much; the ball of snow given by the god had enough spirit. He had almost been swept away by the avalanche and had spent a great deal of effort to reach the summit again. The snow mountain did not make things difficult for him, an outsider; as long as he wasn't infected by the whisper elements and mental pollution, climbing the mountain wasn't strenuous for him.

Miss Chloe did not converse with Xia De, but instead reached out to help Xia De up, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, gazing at the rolling snow mountains from the peak.

The silver-white mountain range was so eerie yet so fascinating. Xia De knew the young lady beside him was probably very confused at this moment, but fortunately, he had already learned the truth:

"You have not yet reached the end."

He reminded her. As the witch looked at him in confusion, Xia De reached out and pointed higher up:

"There are thirteen more steps above."

Miss Chloe did not understand, but suddenly, inspiration surged in her heart, and she realized some things:

"I... did not come purely to climb the snow mountain."

Apart from the temperature still being very low at the summit, the influence on her spirit was gradually decreasing; she was taking back her own memories.

An abnormally illusory golden staircase appeared before her; the eleven steps represented the identity of an eleventh-tier witch.

"Mrs. Marquez."

Xia De called out softly. The middle-aged woman stood up from the snow in embarrassment and came before the two of them.

Xia De asked:

"Your wish is to have the boots of the master lost in the snow mountain imprinted on the snow layer at the summit. Now that we have arrived here, can you give the boots to me?"

"Yes, sir!"

Mrs. Marquez said immediately, her face flushed with inner excitement.

She took out the boot she had been hiding in her bosom and handed it to Xia De. When Xia De first saw this boot upon arriving at this point in time, he had noticed that this boot was as small as Miss Chloe's foot (Chapter 1035), only at that time, he didn't know what this represented.

He took the boot and squatted down, signaling the young witch to lift her foot. The latter was slightly stunned, evidently having thought of something. Then, her face immediately flushed red as she stopped Xia De, changed into the boot herself, and then stepped the boot onto the snow.

Xia De said to Mrs. Marquez:

"In this way, your wish has also been fulfilled."

Then he said to Miss Chloe:

"You never have to worry about being abandoned by others, or facing the journey of life all alone. Chloe Marcus Marquez, don't always be attached to others; you must become the reliance of others."

"Yes, Chloe, you are not alone."

Mrs. Marquez said to Miss Chloe, and bowed slightly toward Xia De again. Then, her body became transparent and illusory, until it turned into a series of golden light spots, flying toward the very top of the witch's eleven-tier staircase, turning into the twelfth golden step.