The chill in the valley was so biting that it seemed to pierce Fang Senyan's very marrow, making him feel as if the endless abyss before him was the gaping maw of some monstrous beast, hurtling toward him with savage fury. A slight dizziness washed over his mind, yet his heart was seized by an indescribable coldness!

Even as Fang Senyan plummeted toward the abyss, he could distinctly hear the suppressed, triumphant chuckle from more than ten meters above. The sound was utterly familiar, and he clearly recalled the source: Taba, one of the Nepalese porters he had hired!

He had sensed the man approaching earlier, assuming he was coming over with good intentions, perhaps worried he might slip. Who knew the scoundrel intended to play the 'pushing game'!

In a flash of lightning, Fang Senyan instantly understood the motive behind the man's action. It wasn't complex; it boiled down to four simple words:

Robbery leading to murder.

Fang Senyan, a solitary foreigner rushing along, with no relatives nearby, and having displayed remarkable generosity with his spending throughout the journey, was nothing less than a fat goose ready for plucking.

Especially since Fang Senyan, confident in his status as a powerful Contractor, had chosen to skip the more secure official channels in Kathmandu to save time, opting instead to exchange vast sums of US dollars and gold on the black market. All this had been observed by Hashim and his crew, who naturally knew that his baggage still contained substantial amounts of cash and gold...

These men, long accustomed to guiding on the snowy peaks, were hardened by poverty and the high-risk nature of their work. Their characters were naturally filled with brutality and a taste for adventure. Furthermore, these locals understood that on these fierce, icy peaks, an accident resulting in a death was hardly noteworthy! Would the police really be so diligent as to risk their lives ascending several thousand meters to investigate the scene?

With all these factors stacked up—a clear motive, low risk after the deed, and high potential reward—what reason was there for them not to take the plunge?

What was even more surprising was that Taba was not greedy. He didn't choose to knock Fang Senyan out or tie him up to extort more wealth. Instead, he directly shoved Fang Senyan into the deep ice valley! While the first two methods would have been utterly useless against Fang Senyan, this push struck right at his critical weakness!

Although Fang Senyan's perception was sharp, it only provided warnings against direct, high-damage threats, like a sniper shot; it lacked inferential reasoning.

Strictly speaking, Taba's shove didn't even ruffle a single hair on Fang Senyan's head, and his perception couldn't deduce that being pushed would lead to a fall into a chasm, so no alarm was sounded. As for the deep valley itself, Perception had been constantly warning Fang Senyan that falling into it was dangerous... Thus, with all these elements intertwined, Fang Senyan truly capsized in the gutter, utterly miserable and beyond tears.

The wind howled, feeling as if a thousand hands were violently stuffing air dozens of degrees below zero into Fang Senyan's nostrils and ears. All he could see were ice shards and needles, formed from frost and blade, sharp and fierce, gleaming menacingly.

As his body plummeted rapidly, the sense of impending death grew stronger, enveloping his heart. There is a saying: between life and death lies great terror; Fang Senyan was now savoring this indescribable despair and horror, piece by agonizing piece. He had never felt such stifling frustration, such surging rage and refusal to accept his fate!

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!!"

During the descent, Fang Senyan instinctively hammered his fists against any adjacent ice wall he passed. However, in the real world, most of his equipment had been stripped away. His only reliance was now his fists, his body! He was trying to smash a path to survival on the stern, millennia-old ice accumulated on Annapurna Peak using nothing but his bare hands!

The hardness of the ice accumulated over eons on Annapurna Peak surpassed that of steel. Fang Senyan’s unprotected fists struck with full force, and within a few blows, his skin was ripped open, leaving his flesh mangled and bloody.

Yet, at this knife-edge moment between life and death, Fang Senyan entered a state of frenzied self-oblivion. Punch after punch he drove into the glacier during his fall. He felt the blood surging within him, a sensation that his very body was about to expand and ignite!

The specks of blood that splattered onto the cold ice initially froze rapidly into clots. But as time went on, the blood falling onto the glacier showed no sign of coagulation; instead, it seemed to smoke profusely like steaming acid, corroding deep into the ice structure!

Simultaneously, the red light emanating from the description of his talent, Aegis, shone even brighter, more intensely! The brilliance was so pronounced that it almost gave the illusion that it would explode in the next second.

Clearly, facing this profound, tangible threat to his physical being, all of Fang Senyan's strength and potential were surging forward madly. The pressure born of impending death acted like a colossal furnace, forcing every ounce of his power to its absolute limit, yet still pushing him to crash forward, refusing to yield!

Finally, Fang Senyan let out a great roar, blood jetting from his nose, mouth, and ears. The intense, swelling heat within him was completely vented in this single punch!! This blow plunged deep into the glacier, causing dense, spiderweb-like cracks to spread across the transparent, steel-hard ice wall, extending for dozens of meters! It even brought the large section of the cliff-hugging glacier to the brink of collapse.

However, this earth-shattering punch failed to halt his downward momentum, only managing to send him flying sideways over ten meters.

Moments later, Fang Senyan slammed heavily into the bottom of the Annapurna ice valley! This was an absolute human forbidden zone, a place virtually untouched for thousands of years, save for those who, like him, had fallen from above.

At this moment, Fang Senyan closed his eyes, bracing for the terrifying impact, the sensation of his body twisting, shattering, perhaps being torn limb from limb! Fang Senyan knew well that Contractors were not omnipotent; a fall spanning several kilometers with that terrifying kinetic force was absolutely beyond what flesh and blood could withstand!

But, while the anticipated searing pain shot up from his back, accompanied by the crisp snap of broken bone, Fang Senyan registered another clear and bizarre sensation: the ground beneath his back suddenly sank.

How was this possible?

He initially dismissed it as a hallucination—how could the earth sink? But soon, Fang Senyan realized this was a fact that brought ecstatic joy!

If viewed from directly above now, one could see that the instant Fang Senyan struck the valley floor, vast clouds of ice and snow erupted. Following this, a crisp kacha-kacha sound echoed, and then the entire valley floor, nearly a square kilometer in area, began to exhibit signs of rising snow-steam. Immediately after, dense, clearly defined cracks appeared across the surface, forming a pattern like a circular spiderweb, with the impact point of Fang Senyan at the center...

The next second, the entire area where Fang Senyan lay collapsed downward, triggering massive columns of water to shoot skyward! These water jets carried steaming hot mist, laced with a heavy scent of sulfur.

As the warm water flowed over Fang Senyan’s body, filling his mouth and nose, and stinging the wounds on his fists, he finally understood what had happened, and all confusion resolved itself with natural clarity.

The bottom of this ten-thousand-foot ice valley was actually a thermal lake! A thermal lake covered by a thin sheet of ice!

Though the warm spring water carried a peculiar odor, to the current Fang Senyan, it was an invaluable, gentle balm for healing. Moreover, Fang Senyan could feel an indescribable force coursing through his body. Even without looking, he knew that his talent, Aegis, had successfully broken through its critical threshold and advanced!

At this, he couldn't help cursing three words in his heart:

"Old Fox!"

These words were not directed at the porters who had attempted to murder him above, but were a spontaneous reaction to the mysterious voice.

This mysterious voice had been calculating to the extreme, grasping human psychology perfectly. The moment he arrived, he proposed the method of jumping the Lotus Stones, clearly intending to select only those who would unconditionally trust him! Moreover, even if this person had used high-tech means to scout the valley bottom beforehand and then jumped, it wouldn't count.

Because the "path" mentioned by the mysterious voice was the realization, the frenzy, and the breakthrough achieved in the split-second of confronting death! Without the pressure of imminent death, one's internal potential could not be forced out. If he had known beforehand that the bottom was a surface-iced hot spring, it would have been mere excitement, like bungee jumping, devoid of any lethal threat, and thus certainly not qualifying as a breakthrough.

And given Fang Senyan's original intentions and temperament, he would never have jumped willingly. Who would have known that the greedy porter Taba would unexpectedly intervene, pushing him into the fall by some twist of fate?

Having been raised near the sea, coupled with his surging constitution as a Contractor and the bonus from his 'Pirate Captain' title, Fang Senyan could easily hold his breath underwater for an hour without needing to breathe. As he lay in the warm spring, the impact on his back had been severe, causing wisps of blood essence to constantly seep from his orifices, making him look rather ferocious. Yet, this was the Contracter's incredibly powerful self-healing ability at work, rapidly repairing his internal body.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Fang Senyan summoned his original talent, Aegis, and discovered that its data had indeed been entirely replaced by a series of new metrics! (To be continued) RQ