Chapter 29: The Forgotten Land

　　Part 1: Guided by Celestial Light　　The Celestial Eye closed. Wind and thunder fell silent.　　Summoning my courage, I stood up. A long stretch of the Yanglang Zangbo’s riverbed was now exposed, the flow cut off. A few scattered beams of celestial light fell through the clouds, illuminating the ground in patches, forming a meandering path that led from where we stood straight to the sheer face of Glacier No. 1. In the distance, where the light ended, a deep, dark opening seemed to wait silently for us at the glacier’s edge.　　"Hey! Look at this miracle! Get up, you two!" The thunder had stopped, but my two teammates were still crouched with their hands over their heads, almost missing a world-class spectacle.　　Young Master Feng: "Holy shit!"　　Mr. Egg: "Whoa, holy shit!"　　"Wait, hold the 'holy shits.' Can we go back to Nam Lake instead? This path looks like a trap. Something's seriously off!"　　"Hmm, I agree… it feels too deliberate. How do we get back? The five-thousand-meter col?" Mr. Egg picked up his trekking poles, scanning our surroundings.　　"Probably not an option," Young Master Feng said. "We can't go back the way we came."　　I turned to look toward the col. The slope leading up to it had transformed into a hundred-meter sheer cliff. An eerie halo of light hovered above the precipice, reflecting off the smooth, steep rock face. In Mr. Egg’s words, the halo looked like a deliberate, highlighted circle—painfully obvious.　　"What now?" I stared at the distant opening under the strange light, my heart pounding.　　Mr. Egg glanced at me. "What choice do we have? The way back is gone, your tent is gone. We push on."　　"Alright…"　　Upstream water was already beginning to seep through the monstrous ice-and-earth dam. We had to move fast.　　The riverbed was a treacherous maze of slick, tumbled rocks. Where the celestial light didn't reach, I could even see sparks flying where my tungsten steel trekking pole tips struck stone. Just as we were about to reach the opposite bank, a plume of inexplicable, rising steam caught our attention.　　Mr. Egg pointed with his trekking pole, excl