Chapter 149: Is It Her?

How could she be here? A strange feeling flickered in Liu Pan’s eyes. As he extended his spiritual perception, the icy mountains ahead showed no abnormalities, yet a figure appeared within his awareness.

It was a delicate-faced woman, clad in thin garments, leaning against a protruding ice rock, seemingly lost in thought and motionless for a long while.

Liu Pan frowned, genuinely puzzled. For this woman was none other than the fair maiden he had encountered upon first arriving in the Northern Plains.

How was this possible?

After all he had experienced in the Northern Plains, Liu Pan had believed that the spiritual imprint he left on her back then would bring her misfortune, perhaps even death. Yet now, it seemed he had overthought the matter.

Hesitating briefly, Liu Pan stepped forward.

Though this fair woman was not the one from Earth, Liu Pan shared no particular feelings toward her. Still, because of her face, he understood there were many things he could not simply ignore.

After all, even though several years had passed since his transmigration to the Tianfeng Continent, and he had witnessed and endured countless events, his memories of Earth had never faded even slightly from his mind.

He still remembered his parents’ faces, the friends who had shared hardships with him, and that one woman...

“Why are you here?” Liu Pan spoke, a hint of strangeness in his eyes.

He sensed that the woman’s cultivation had increased significantly since their first meeting, even surpassing his own.

Yet her current state was off. Though he was nearly upon her, she remained oblivious, still lost in thought.

At the sound of his voice, she trembled, abruptly turned, and stared at Liu Pan in shock, stepping back two paces.

“Who are you?”

She spoke, but paused mid-sentence as if startled, her expression suddenly shifting. Without another word, she turned and dashed into the depths of the mountains.

Liu Pan was momentarily stunned; her reaction was entirely unexpected. Though they had only met once before, and he had been gaunt and frail shortly after his tribulation, for cultivators wielding divine sense or spiritual power, recognizing someone seen even once before was easy—unless the other concealed themselves deliberately.

Therefore, Liu Pan believed she should recognize him. Yet this scene before him...

Frowning, a flicker of doubt rose within Liu Pan’s heart. Then, suddenly, he froze and unleashed a sweeping wave of spiritual power across the icy peaks.

Soon, he confirmed the fact—the fair woman had vanished, disappeared without a trace.

Where his spiritual power reached, the icy mountains were desolate, devoid of any sign of life.

Was he seeing things? Had he been bewitched? Was this an illusion or a formation?

His mind churned wildly. Then his gaze and hand both fell upon the icy rock where the woman had leaned moments ago.

After a moment, Liu Pan exhaled in relief. It was no hallucination, no ghostly trick—she had truly been there.

But why... recalling her departure, Liu Pan was perplexed. And where could she have vanished to in such a short span?

An illusion, a formation? A spark of insight flickered in Liu Pan’s eyes.

He glanced upward at the howling gale above, then down at the thick ice beneath his feet, hesitating before decisively stepping deeper into the forested mountains.

Ten meters, a hundred meters...

As he advanced, Liu Pan’s spiritual power scanned frantically ahead, while one hand probed cautiously in front.

If anything could evade spiritual power, the only thing he could conceive was a formation—a marvelous array, like the one on the sea’s surface, harnessing natural forces to construct a superlative formation.

After three hundred meters, Liu Pan raised an eyebrow, astonishment flashing in his eyes. His spiritual power detected nothing unusual, yet his hand struck an invisible barrier.

“As expected,” Liu Pan muttered quietly. Human ingenuity was indeed extraordinary.

The fair woman was not purely of the ice element; her presence deep within this frigid land was hard to explain under normal circumstances. But if such a formation existed, everything fell into place.

Feeling along the barrier, Liu Pan frowned, preparing to study it closely to find a way in. Suddenly, he was shocked, swiftly retracting his hand and stepping back two paces. At the same time, a white tag of unknown material slipped from his grasp, falling to the ground.

His heart quickened. Moments before, his hand had unexpectedly passed through the invisible barrier.

The sudden situation was truly unsettling. As Liu Pan withdrew his hand, the white tag had been drawn out with it...

What was this?

A chill crept through Liu Pan’s heart, yet upon seeing the tag clearly, his emotions surprisingly calmed. Or rather, it was not the tag itself, but the red cord tied to it that steadied him.

Red? Liu Pan fell silent. The color held no special meaning to him, but to that person, it seemed to bear particular significance.

He also recalled that in his book, the heroine habitually dressed in a fiery red lotus gown.

Was it her? Without knowing why, Liu Pan was certain—the fair woman was indeed Lin Xin, the heroine described in his story! But why...

He remembered the confusion on the fair woman’s face when she heard the name “Lin Xin.”

Yet how likely was it for someone to be bewildered upon hearing their own name?

His thoughts spun for a moment before Liu Pan shook his head, exhaled softly, and bent down to pick up the mysterious tag. After a brief hesitation, he pressed it against the invisible barrier.

A faint ripple spread, unimpeded, and his hand passed through the barrier.

Raising an eyebrow, Liu Pan took two steps forward.

The turning of the cosmos must feel something like this. Upon crossing the invisible barrier, a faint gleam flickered before him, and the vast icy mountains vanished.

In their place lay a huge basin-like hollow.

Still covered in snow and ice, yet far warmer than outside the formation—here, Liu Pan could not sense even the slightest chill.

Swiftly withdrawing his divine sense, Liu Pan glanced toward an icy rock several hundred meters away but did not rush to investigate. Instead, his gaze swept across the immense basin stretching seemingly without end before him...