Chapter 79 Snow Blindness

The recovery time for snow blindness was one to three days. If I got this here, I wouldn’t only die earlier than Poker-Face, I’d also die miserably.

What was I looking for?

I closed my eyes, feeling extremely depressed. Fuck, the last time I came here, it was full of gloomy snow clouds so I didn’t have a chance to encounter this problem and didn’t prepare myself this time. But who would’ve thought this would happen? This time, I really fucking killed myself.

Snow blindness was a very strange disease, which was generally believed to be a symptom of temporary blindness caused by intense light stimulation of the retina. After a few days’ rest, the eyesight would recover by itself, but those who had experienced snow blindness before would suffer even worse if they didn’t pay attention. Repeated snow blindness would gradually weaken one’s eyesight, causing long-term eye diseases and even permanent blindness in severe cases.

When walking in snow, you usually wore goggles or sunglasses to relieve and prevent such a thing from occurring.

Another study by Americans, however, showed that snow blindness was actually caused by excessive tension in the eyes due to the fact that they couldn’t find a focused object in the snow (only pure white could be seen on snowy mountains most of the time). Snow blindness rarely occurred suddenly and violently, but once symptoms appeared, you couldn’t use your eyes again until they had time to rest.

In other words, according to my current situation, I estimated that it would take twelve hours before I could continue to use my eyes with confidence. During this period, I had to also be very careful when using my eyes intermittently. This meant that I was stuck here for a long time.

I felt extremely depressed when I thought about it. Why was it smooth sailing when I came here, but now it had become such a trial? If something had happened to me when I came, Poker-Face probably would’ve had to send me back.

I should’ve found a reason to cripple myself a few days ago.

I was just thinking of sulking when I suddenly felt a looseness under my butt and the whole snowy slope I was sitting on slipped down.

It was absolutely impossible to stop sliding down the slope; I couldn’t react at all. I only felt myself spinning and sliding all the way, my hands scrabbling around aimlessly. At this time, it was impossible to close my eyes. I inserted my hand deep into the snow several times, trying to stop myself by relying on resistance, but every time I tried, it only caused a bigger block of snow to slide down.

I screamed as I rolled all the way down the hillside. I knew it was a very steep cliff with a drop of at least thirty meters, so even if there was snow below, I would never be safe.

In the past, I might have accepted death, but now I couldn’t. Terrified, I scrabbled for purchase everywhere, but I slid off the cliff and fell into the air in an instant.

When I rolled off the cliff and fell down six or seven meters, I found that everything around me had turned to slow motion and I could see all the snow that followed after me. It was coming in all kinds of strange trajectories.

Then I landed on my back in the snow.

Falling into a swath of cotton-like snow from a height of thirty meters was a very enjoyable thing to think about. I didn’t even know how deep I fell into the snow, but I knew that there must be a pit shaped like a human body, and the figure must look very strange.

The snow here was especially soft, and after falling, countless pieces rolled off the edge and hit me in the face.

My head was completely covered to death, but fortunately, I didn’t feel like I hit something hard when I fell. If there were a stone or two in the snow, I definitely wouldn’t feel like this.

I wiped the snow off my face and climbed up, leaning my head out of the pit. I was about to swear when I suddenly sensed a shadow above me. Looking up, I saw right away that the snowy slope I had just fallen down had all slipped off the cliff.

That shadow was the snowy slope. Looking at the trajectory, I estimated that a ton of snow would directly hit me on the face and force me back into the pit.

The falling snow was like sand and immediately blocked everything around me, including my nose and mouth.

Struggling hard, I found that the snow on top was extremely thick like dirt and it was burying me. No matter how I pushed at it, I couldn’t find a place to get out.

I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and began to breathe, but every breath was a mouthful of ice. There were two big differences between snow and water: snow wasn’t solid, so there would be countless small spaces in the middle that were filled with air. I twisted my head to carve out a small, compressed space and immediately took a few breaths. Although I wasn’t that worried, I was dizzy and my chest still felt extremely stuffy.

But just when I was on the verge of despair, I suddenly heard something outside. Then, my restless hand was grabbed and I was pulled out of the snow pit. I gulped in a big mouthful of air and saw that it was Poker-Face who had grabbed the back of my collar and yanked me out of the snow.

My vision was still filled with a pink hue and everything was quite fuzzy. When I looked at him, I immediately felt angry and asked him, “Why did you come back?”

He looked at me, then at the cliff overhead, and said to me, “I heard your cry for help.”

It wasn’t surprising that he could hear my voice when I was in the air. Damn it, I thought to myself, at that time I was greeting your ancestors. I got up, squinted around, and was somewhat moved when I immediately realized that he must’ve jumped from a height of thirty meters.

He still came back. I suddenly wondered if he had been enlightened. Was this a chance given to me by the heavens to persuade him? His return showed that he was still attached to the world.

But he spoke before I could say anything.

“Come with me,” Poker-Face said. “This is a dead valley. More snow will fall down and go to the center.” He pointed around the area and it was only at this time that I found that this place was surrounded by cliffs more than thirty meters high. I couldn’t help but curse darkly.

I looked around and found that there was no way out. Then I saw Poker-Face clutching his hand.

He was expressionless, but his hand was squeezing his wrist tightly. “What’s the matter?” I hurriedly asked him. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s fine,” he said flatly. “I had the injury before I came here, but it didn’t get better.” I breathed a sigh of relief and moved to help him with his backpack but he blocked me with his hand. I immediately saw that it was bent at a particularly strange angle and I knew right away that it was broken.

I couldn’t help but frown, “Your hand—what? It seems to be broken?”

“I broke it before I came to see you,” Poker-Face said. “It had recovered a little, but when I jumped down just now, I moved it too much.”

I stared for a long time and couldn’t help but laugh.

It was beyond my expectation that things had suddenly developed to this point.

We were trapped now. I had the early symptoms of snow blindness, the weather was getting worse and worse, and Poker-Face broke his wrist to save me. I had few choices now.

If I couldn’t accompany him out, then I could only walk with him until he decided to knock me out. Otherwise, it really didn’t make sense.

A broken wrist was very painful, so I looked at my equipment and tried to find something useful to give Poker-Face first aid. Fortunately, nothing was broken and the backpack and food were in good condition. Some things had been thrown out while I was rolling around and couldn’t be found since they were buried in the snow, but the most important compressed food was still there. I found a snowy slope and broke off two icicles to act as braces so I could splint Poker-Face’s wrist. The wind wasn’t particularly strong here, but snowballs were blown down from time to time and hit us on the head, which hurt a lot. If there were any snowballs that were a little bigger or contained ice, they would probably injure us.

After I finished helping him, I said, “No matter what you’re going to do, you have to find a place to rest first. But in your current condition, you may die on the way. I think you’d better go back to recover first. We might as well go back together.”

He shook his head and said faintly, “This is a small matter. Please go.”

“You broke your hand to save me,” I argued. “If this causes your final plan to fail, I’ll feel bad. That’s why I have to go with you.”

“Then I’ll use the method I mentioned last night,” he said.

“That’s fine, do whatever you want,” I replied. “If you really knock me out, I have nothing to say, but I hope you know that if you need someone to accompany you to the end, I won’t refuse. I want to go with you. It’s my own decision, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

There was nothing more to say. Poker-Face had said so much to me that I didn’t think there was anything more he could do about it. We stayed silent for a moment longer before finally moving on. When walking to the center of the valley, Poker-Face said, “The first snowstorm will come in three days. If we can’t reach the hot spring from before, we’ll both die here. If you go back from here, you’ll soon be able to return to your world.”

Poker-Face was trying to tell me that even if I wanted to accompany him, things weren’t as easy as I thought they would be. But I had already made up my mind and would no longer listen to—or even think about—the rationality of his words.

“Then I’ll go too,” I said. “This was my own idea.”

I sorted all the equipment so that he could carry less weight, but he took over his own equipment and didn’t ask me to split it. Instead, he carried it on his shoulder. His equipment wasn’t much, but it was quite heavy and clearly weighed on him.

<Chapter 78> <Table of Contents><Chapter 80>

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Updated 11/19/2021