He released his spiritual sense, sweeping the plains for the three colossal peaks Linden had described—spire-like mountains set in a perfect triangle.
Dragon’s power and chaotic energy seeped from his pores, warning any Northern Abyss scouts that a predator had entered their snow. The trio stood shoulder to shoulder at the frozen border, towering mountains behind, uncharted death ahead.
Wind tore at cloaks and hair but could not ruffle the certainty in their eyes. The road to the Blood-Soul Frostpool had only just begun, and the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan’s threat lay coiled a single step away.
***
Ten days passed in relentless flight.
At last, the world reduced to two colors: endless white below, bruised gray above, so tightly fused that horizon and sky became one.
Ancient glaciers crawled like sleeping leviathans. Blizzards lifted powdered snow into drifting curtains that blurred every outline.
The cold here could freeze common steel in a heartbeat; an average True Immortal would fade within hours without supreme defenses.
“We have crossed into the outer ring,” Clara called through the storm, encased in a shimmering sheath of sword-aura that kept the blizzard at bay. “A few thousand kilometers more and we’re near the central patrol routes of the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan. Every step from here demands more caution…”
Jared dipped lower, slowed his pace, and fanned his spiritual sense like a radar dish, each sweep finer than the last.
The ice was not dead. Far below, faint pulses of life—frost-beasts, crystalized herbs—clung to cracks in the permafrost.
Occasionally, he tasted lingering traces of old cultivation auras, ghost-echoes of those who had ventured here and never walked back.
***
Roughly two thousand kilometers deeper, the outer rim of his awareness snagged on several alien signatures—knife-cold, impeccably pure, carrying a haughty aloofness.
They slid over the ice rather than flew, merging with storm and snow as though born from the blizzard itself, and they were closing fast.
Suspended above the blinding snow, Jared let the beam of light beneath his boots fade.
“Someone’s coming,” he said, his tone as even as the falling flakes.
The Vermilion Demon Lord stiffened. Dull crimson essence rippled over his armor like slow-moving ember smoke. Beside him, Clara tightened her grip on the sword at her hip, her young face set and winter-pale.
Moments later, three silhouettes bled out of the gale ahead, as silent as phantoms sliding through torn curtains of snow.
They wore antique war-plate the color of glacial lakes, every curve etched with layered snowflakes and labyrinthine runes.
Tall and spare, their skin carried the bloodless sheen of things kept from daylight. Handsome features were marred only by eyes colder than locked ice.
A faint blue sigil, an ice-crystal brand, glimmered across each forehead.
The foremost warrior radiated the power of a Level Three Heavenly Immortal. He leveled a spear of transparent ice at the trio and spoke in a voice flat as permafrost. “You stand within the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan’s turf. Outsiders are forbidden. Turn back at once, and you may yet live.”
The words were not shouted, yet they sliced through the storm—an imperial decree meant for insects that had skittered too near a god’s altar.
Every syllable dripped with the aloof pride and xenophobic certainty of his race.
Jared took in the warriors’ haughty poses and allowed the faintest crease to touch his brow. He was no butcher by nature; this journey was for the pill to save Selene. He had no wish to harvest fresh enemies from barren snow.
He stepped half a pace forward, voice steady, respectful. “Friends, we mean no trespass. Urgent need drives us to the Blood-Frost Pool to gather a Thousand-Year Frostblood Lotus. That herb decides whether my companion lives or dies. Grant us passage, and we shall repay the favor—treasure of equal worth, if you desire.”
The Vermilion Demon Lord’s lips twitched, as though he wanted to speak, yet the moment passed. He merely watched the gods with taut shoulders.
Clara sheathed her blade and offered a small, formal bow to underline Jared’s plea.
The spear-wielding captain did not soften. If anything, an amused chill peeled at one corner of his mouth.
“Mere insects dare call my people ‘friends’?” he murmured, the derision sharper than winter wind. “The Blood-Soul Frostpool is a sacred cistern of the Northern Abyss Celestial Clan. Every petal, every drop belongs to us alone. Outsiders will not touch it.”
Another celestial warrior snickered. “Save a life? What is a mortal life to gods? Crawl off this ice or leave your bones here as ornaments. Captain, you’re too kind. Let us kill them now… An example to the next fool who hungers for our sanctuary.”
The three traded their threats as though swatting flies, never offering the smallest sliver of mercy.
That ingrained arrogance, that contempt for any life other than celestials, drew a frost of anger across Jared’s eyes.
The Vermilion Demon Lord’s crimson complexion faded to a sick gray; despair and rage wrestled in his stare.
Clara’s fingers tightened on her hilt again, knuckles bleaching white.
“So, end of discussion?” Jared’s tone remained level, yet the Vermilion Demon Lord could hear the storm gathering beneath it.
The captain echoed him, a single eyebrow lifting. “Discussion?”
The captain of the Celestials—tall, silver-haired, his ice-tipped spear humming in his grip—let out a laugh so harsh it rang like shattering glass across the frozen plateau.
“The will of our kind is the will of the heavens,” he sneered, tracing a razor-thin arc of frost through the air. “I allowed you insects to crawl away as a mercy. Refuse that mercy, and you will die.”
That final word struck the silence like a gavel. At once, his two lieutenants moved. The captain himself vanished, reappearing above Jared’s crown with a burst of snow-dust, spear descending in a straight line meant to nail the man’s soul to the ice.
To the right, the warrior with a bow drew and loosed. Three arrows, forged entirely from pure, murderous cold, fanned out in a perfect triangle.
One sought Jared’s chest, the others streaked for the Vermilion Demon Lord and Clara. Even space seemed to crack where those bolts passed. And at ground level, the last warrior’s hands blurred through sigils.
Within a hundred feet, the gentle snowfall exploded into a roaring cyclone of ice blades, each shard spinning in hungry spirals that closed every route of escape.
