Just before finishing the battle against the group of nearly a dozen Frozen Yetis, while facing the last of the six yetis that he was fighting, Xie Feng managed to somehow sense a slight change in the temperature of the place; precisely speaking, there was a change in the gusts of wind blowing across the length and breadth of these lands of ice and snow. Although this change was so minuscule that it could easily have been overlooked during the fervor of battle coupled with the mental pressure of having seen nothing but white snow for half a day, Xie Feng managed to perceive it with total clarity as if it were rays of light in the middle of the night.

One of the rules and norms that Xie Feng had imposed on himself for a long time was to always be alert to his surroundings. Even when Xie Feng was being lazy in college his guard was never at its lowest ebb that he would trip over a rock in the middle of the street. Many times, due to inattention, people had a tendency to overlook many things and Xie Feng was not interested in being part of that group.

​​

"I think we will soon come to a change in our path." Xie Feng explained as he walked forward, always keeping one or two steps in front of the group. "Earlier, that merchant said that if we advance in a northerly direction without straying too far off track, we should run into a river or something, right?"

"Now that you mention it, that cloaked person said something similar." Xie Yao nodded with a slight frown. "After so many hours of walking and fighting, I was about to forget it."

"For me, it's impossible to forget." Xie Feng narrowed his eyes and said in a serious voice. "Because that information cost me 20 million!"

* * *

The group of six continued to move forward without stopping for another forty minutes and, to everyone's pleasant surprise, during those forty minutes they never again encountered any monsters blocking their path. This greatly eased the group's travel since they did not have to stop to fight, which would slowly but surely drain everyone's stamina; after all, mental energy was something that could not be replenished quickly like physical energy.

"How do you think the other groups are doing?" Gu Qianxue asked curiously.

"Hmm..." Xie Feng thought for a moment before slowly answering, "Although I can't be too sure since there's no way of knowing what kind of world or environment each team is facing, I think that even if some dungeons have an easier difficulty than others they should at least be suffering some difficulties."

Xie Yao nodded and chuckled softly as she pointed out, "Besides, even if the frozen dungeon we found ourselves in was more difficult than the others, I don't think everyone would have been as lucky as we were to meet a mysterious merchant and get information about the path they should follow."

The rest nodded, expressing that they also agreed with Xie Yao's remarks.

In fact, although they experienced some problems in the beginning, with the actual strength they had when they joined together, the battles they had fought so far had not been too hard; even the most difficult battle did not last more than five minutes. The only real problem in this dungeon was the weather, but fortunately Xie Feng had the money and was willing to invest it when purchasing the coats they were wearing or else forget about advancing for twelve hours, he was sure that none of them could have survived after advancing 2 hours in such an extreme environment.

"Hey! Look straight ahead!"

While the group was chatting and speculating about the other opposing teams, Hu Chen suddenly shouted out loud, drawing everyone's gaze automatically to the place he pointed at.

"My eyes don't deceive me... right?" Xiao Luo muttered under his breath while rubbing his eyes several times as if to confirm that he was not having optical illusions.

"Nope... You're definitely not hallucinating." Xie Feng shook his head and looked in wonder at the scene in front of him.

Up until now, although the temperature in the World of Snow and Rock was extremely low, everything had been relatively normal; acceptable to human knowledge. However, the sight before them was something none of them had ever seen before.

A river of water flowed slowly between the ice notches like a dragon traveling through the clouds. What was surprising was that the water in the river not only did not freeze but, on the contrary, Xie Feng and the rest could clearly see how small clouds of steam rose into the atmosphere only to mix with the frozen air on the surface.

The ice frozen at who knows how many temperatures below zero and the lake containing water warm enough to fight against that coldness had found an apparent balance between them, resulting in a small forest of trees and green grass!

""How beautiful...""

Gu Qianxue and Xie Yao whispered at the same time.

The sight of the treetops and the tops of the small flowers with small white snowflakes acting as decorations, as well as the small amount of dew falling from the sky due to the abrupt change in temperature was indeed an incredibly beautiful sight that probably very few places on planet Earth could compete with.

"Ah!"

Suddenly a shout sounded from deep within the small green forest and everyone's expression changed.

"Let's go!" Xie Feng said in a deep voice and rushed forward without hesitation.

Xie Yao, Gu Qianxue, and the rest nodded and quickly ran towards the source of the sound, trying to follow Xie Feng's footsteps as fast as possible.

"Could it be another human?" Xiao Luo asked while running.

"Unless the stones talk, it must definitely be a human being!" Yue Kai replied as he pulled back his bowstring and prepared to fight.

"Well, apparently the stones do talk here!" Xie Feng's voice rang out from the front, clearly surprised.

"What!?" Yue Kai shouted dumbfounded from behind.

However, Xie Feng did not respond. He looked forward with utter surprise in his eyes, even his footsteps had unconsciously stopped at what he was seeing.

A humanoid-looking figure was rushing forward on its two hind feet. The height of the humanoid silhouette was about 110-120 centimeters, however, the main thing that was most striking was that its entire body was gray in color.

After a more careful look, Xie Feng could immediately distinguish that the gray color was not skin, it was stones! The entire body of the strange life form was made of rock! However, as surprising as it may seem, the speed at which this stone person ran was similar to that of a player.

The rock person seemed to have noticed Xie Feng's group of six since its eyes, the only thing similar to that of humans, flashed as if it had seen the light at the end of the tunnel and began to run towards them.

"Hey! Honorable warriors, please help me! My father will surely reward you generously! Please!"

From the voice alone, Xie Feng was quickly able to discern the sex of the rock person. Although he wasn't sure if whatever race this rock person belonged to was separated by gender, just from the voice alone it was definitely of the female gender.

"What should we do?.... That... Girl? She seems to be in trouble." Hu Chen asked and everyone's gaze unconsciously turned towards Xie Feng.

Clearly to everyone he was the leader of the group.

"Of course, we are helping her." Xie Feng replied without hesitation and dashed forward.

Currently, a monster that Xie Feng had not seen until now was relentlessly pursuing the rock person, and at this rate, she would undoubtedly be caught up and killed.

It wasn't that Xie Feng was willing to help out of kindness without asking for anything in return, the main issue was that this kind of event was a clear trigger to shoot a unique quest! Unique quests could only be triggered once after fulfilling certain objectives and, once the player missed that opportunity, that quest would never be available again.

For example: if Xie Feng ignored this rock person's request for help, then the monster would undoubtedly end her life soon and the unique quest would be lost forever. After all, why would there be a quest in which the target to be saved had already been killed before?

[Thousand Branch Trickster Tree: BOSS -

Grade: KING

Level: 20

HP: 39.000

Description: A creature that likes to ambush its prey by pretending to be a normal tree.

Weakness: Fire Resistance -70%.

(Skill(s)):

Natural Regeneration (Passive): Automatically recovers 400 health per second whenever near green grass and pure water.

Endless Leaves: Shoots dozens of leaves per second. While the Thousand Branch Trickster Tree uses this skill it cannot move from its place. Effect: Shoots 100 leaves in a span of five seconds, each leaf inflicts 200 points of fixed damage.]

Indeed, it was a powerful monster. At the very least, this strange tree that measured approximately five meters was the most powerful and annoying monster that Xie Feng's group had encountered since they entered this world where all they had seen was snow, ice, and monsters that only lived in that kind of environment.

Even a normal party of twelve players would probably be easily obliterated by this strange creature. Not only did it possess an annoying skill that regenerated a considerable amount of health per second, but it also possessed a skill capable of damaging multiple enemies, inflicting a remarkable amount of damage.