Strongest Scammer: Scamming The World, One Death At A Time-Chapter 717: Witnessing The Cold Silk Orchid

By the time midnight arrived, Han Yu's muscles ached and his robes were stiff with frost.

Then, finally, he felt it.

A subtle shift in the world around him, like a veil being lifted.

Han Yu stopped and closed his eyes.

His spirit sense expanded outward, unimpeded.

One hundred meters.

Five hundred.

Eight hundred.

A thousand meters.

The mountain unfolded before him in exquisite detail. Rock formations, frozen crevices, nests, scattered beast tracks, lingering Qi fluctuations, and faint elemental currents all revealed themselves to his perception.

He had reached the range.

Han Yu opened his eyes slowly, his gaze sharpening.

Now, he could finally assess what lay ahead.

Han Yu steadied his breathing and allowed his spirit sense to fully unfurl, carefully probing the area ahead with the precision of a blade rather than the force of a hammer. Almost immediately, something stood out so starkly that it was impossible to miss.

The Cold Silk Orchid.

Even before he consciously identified it, his senses recoiled instinctively. A piercing cold aura radiated outward from its location, dense and absolute, like a fragment of winter itself embedded into the mountain.

Han Yu felt as if his spirit sense had brushed against a wall of solid ice. He instinctively tried to push further, to examine it more closely, but the moment he did, a sharp, numbing sensation ran through his perception.

It was not pain exactly, but something far more alarming.

It felt as though his spirit sense itself was freezing.

Han Yu immediately withdrew it, his expression tightening.

"If I force it… I might actually damage my spirit sense," he muttered.

That alone told him just how terrifying the Cold Silk Orchid truly was. It was not merely cold in temperature, but saturated with a profound, concentrated Ice Qi that rejected intrusion on a fundamental level. Even his strengthened spirit sense, refined by the growth of his immense Soul Qi, could not approach within ten meters of it.

Suppressing his excitement, Han Yu shifted his focus outward instead. If he could not examine the orchid directly, then he would examine everything around it.

His first priority was the guardian beast.

He scanned the surrounding terrain carefully, searching for any signs of a living presence powerful enough to claim such a treasure. At first, he sensed nothing. No heavy Qi fluctuations, no oppressive aura, no heartbeat-like rhythm of a Nascent Soul realm beast resting nearby.

But he did not relax.

"I'm still at the edge of my range," Han Yu reminded himself. "That doesn't mean it isn't there."

With that thought in mind, he climbed higher.

He advanced roughly another hundred meters upward, moving cautiously yet efficiently, and then expanded his spirit sense again. This time, the scene around the orchid unfolded more clearly in his perception. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The area itself was surprisingly bare.

The Cold Silk Orchid grew from a rocky outcrop near the edge of a sheer cliff. Snow had accumulated around it in thick layers, yet the plant itself stood pristine and untouched, its pale petals shimmering faintly with a soft blue-white glow.

The cold around it was so intense that even the surrounding snow seemed sharper, more crystalline, as if each flake had been honed into a blade. On the opposite side of the outcrop, pressed against the mountain wall, was what could only be described as a nest.

It was not woven or piled like those of birds, but carved.

The rock itself had been dug into, gouged and scraped away by powerful claws. The marks were deep and jagged, radiating outward in rough arcs that spoke of immense strength. A thick, unnatural layer of ice coated the entire hollow, smooth and glasslike, far too even to have formed naturally.

Han Yu narrowed his eyes.

"That ice was deliberately formed," he thought. "Definitely a beast's doing."

Scattered near the nest were frozen bones, some massive, some small. Old remains of beasts that had clearly been dragged here, consumed, and discarded. Their marrow had long since frozen solid, their shapes preserved unnaturally well by the cold.

This was unquestionably the guardian's lair.

Yet the guardian itself was absent.

Han Yu scanned again, slower this time, sweeping every direction he could perceive. Still nothing.

A breath he did not realize he had been holding finally escaped him.

"Good," he whispered. "Looks like the beast went out to hunt food."

Relief washed through him, but it was cautious relief. A Nascent Soul realm beast leaving its territory did not mean safety. It only meant opportunity.

And opportunity was fleeting.

Han Yu wasted no time.

He began climbing faster now, abandoning some of his earlier caution in favor of speed. Every second mattered. If the guardian returned while he was still near the orchid, escape would become exponentially harder.

As he ascended, something else caught his attention.

Around five hundred meters from the Cold Silk Orchid, the mountain felt… empty.

There were no signs of other beasts. No nests, no tracks, no faint Qi signatures. Even the Bile Beak Frost Vultures, which nested almost everywhere and tolerated conditions most creatures avoided, were absent.

Han Yu frowned.

"Is this because of the orchid," he wondered, "or because of the guardian?"

It was likely both.

The Cold Silk Orchid's aura alone was enough to repel weaker creatures, while the presence of a powerful guardian would have driven away anything that might compete or interfere. The result was a dead zone, eerily quiet and devoid of life.

Han Yu pressed on, his focus sharpening further.

Soon, he reached within two hundred meters of the orchid. At this point, climbing alone would take too long. He rose into the air with a controlled burst of Qi, flying the remaining distance carefully and close to the mountain wall to minimize exposure.

He dispelled the thin flame membrane around his mouth and nose, wincing as the foul stench of old vulture nests assaulted his senses again. He endured it without complaint, knowing that even a faint glow could draw unwanted attention in a place like this.