Left On A Mountain To Die?

Jun Tian managed to finally crawl his way out of the snow bank when Ren Zuo Qing had started walking down the mountain. She was just laughing at Jun Tians plight.

"Hahahaha" happily giggled Ren Zuo Qing as she carefully made her way down the mountain side "you're so clumsy Brother Jun."

Jun Tian responded to this by throwing a snowball at Ren Zuo Qing and he hit her square in the back.

She turned around and the fire of competition lit up in her eyes as she bundled together a snowball and launched it back at Jun Tian.

They were enjoying the time in the snow so much that they forgot about the cold and all of their troubles. They even forgot, for that small moment, that they were supposed to learn about cultivation.

When they finally calmed down they were both completely out of breath but they had wide happy grins on their faces and their faces were bright red. They sat back and admired the mountain range for a while.

There were 12 mountains arranged in a relatively straight line. The tallest one sat right in the middle of the range and was half hidden by clouds. It was at least twice as tall as the rest and was so steep it seemed impossible to scale.

The next tallest was only a couple of miles away and this was were Jun Tian assumed the Heavenly Feathers sect was located. This thinking brought him back to reality and the fact that they were still stuck in the freezing cold.

"Let's go and find this cave now so that we are out of the freezing cold." Said Jun Tian.

"Alright let's go but you go first so if I fall i will land on you." Replied Ren Zuo Qing still energetic from their snowball fight.

The thick snow kept them from slipping as they moved down around the mountain looking for the cave. But after hours of searching they still hadn't found the entrance.

"Brrrr. I'm so cold Brother Jun." whimpered Ren Zuo Qing shivering violently.

"I know. Don't worry though we will find the entrance soon." Replied Jun Tian. "I just hope we find it before we both freeze to death." he thought.

Another hour spent searching didn't find anything and they were both giving up. They had walked up and down every side of the mountain and hadn't seen a single sign of a cave. They were both feeling very cold. Their hands had gone numb and they had absolutely no feeling in their feet. Their eyelashes had been frozen over so opening their eyes was painful. Despair was starting to set in and it looked like they might be stuck on this mountain forever.

"Stupid elder dropping us on this stupid volcano." Grumbled Ren Zuo Qing. "He is probably having a good laugh right about now about how he left us to die."

Upon hearing Ren Zuo Qing say that Jun Tians eyes lit up and he yelled out "Ren Zuo Qing you're a genius! This is a volcano, so the entrance must be somewhere at the top where the crater used to be instead of round the sides like we thought."

"That's stupid we got dropped on the top and we didn't see anything, how could it be there?" Replied Ren Zuo Qing.

"We didn't find anything because the snow was so deep. Remember how the snow was ridiculously deep so the cave must be down there." Said Jun Tian.

"Fine have it your way. Let's go look at the top again." Said Ren Zuo Qing.

They hurried to the top running as quickly as they could, desperately looking to find shelter from the cold. When they got to the top they frantically started digging in the snow. It was rather easy as the snow was still just a fine powder so the could just shovel it out with their bare hands. When they got to about 12 feet deep they found a large round wooden board that seemed to be covering the entrance to the cave.

"I can't believe it Brother Jun you we're right!" Yelled it Ren Zuo Qing in excitement, finally she would be able to get out of the freezing cold.

"You have to just help me lift this cover and then we can warm up." Said Jun Tian.

They shovelled away the rest of the snow around the cover and went to lift it. As they lifted it up they could feel and extremely hot heat and a very cold, cold. They ignored this and walked inside.

Ren Zuo Qing walked ahead while Jun Tian put the cover back in place. When the cover was firmly back in place Jun Tian could feel the energy inside the cave, it felt like he was going to boil alive but at the same time he thought that he might freeze at any second.

He followed the path that Ren Zuo Qing and as he came around the corner he saw Ren Zuo Qing standing about 15 meters in front of a spring of water unable to move forward anymore.

The spring of water was crystal clear and the room around it seemed to be covered in a clear crystal that reflected light in a very strange way. Jun Tian couldn't tell how far away the back wall was it seemed to go on forever.

Jun Tian then walked up to where Ren Zuo Qing was standing and felt immense pressure. He felt like every single one of his pores had opened and that some sort of energy was forcing its way inside of him.

"Ahhhhh" Yelled out Jun Tian in pain. He sat down cross legged and started to feel the energy circulate through him. He tried to understand what made the energy so hot and cold at the same time and how the two opposites could coexist.

Ren Zuo Qing followed suit but seemed to be making much more progress than Jun Tian was as she no longer looked like she was in pain.

A few moments later and the energy started to fuse with Ren Zuo Qing. She suddenly felt a surge of energy and felt much more powerful than before.

"Brother Jun I think I've become a real cultivator." Said Ren Zuo Qing "I think I'm at the first Chi layer."