"That frostborne poison is brutal." Jared''s voice slipped out in a hushed rasp, words fogging the frigid air.


    Hold your breath, draw it inward, cut the lungs from the wind. Jared mped down on his breathing, switching to an inner cycle that starved the toxin of entry.


    The small fire unicorn faltered, clearly ufortable; fire-aligned beasts were always throttled by such cold. Even so, the proud little creature lifted its head and pressed close to Jared''s nk, a corona of gold me roaring along its scales, pushing a clear pocket of warmth around them both.


    The basin was not vast—no more than a few hundred yards from rim to the frigid pool at its heart-yet each step felt like crossing an endless tundra.


    Jared advanced with painstaking care, spiritual sense fanned wide, every flicker of movement, every shift of air, passing through his mind like signals across taut wire.


    The nearer he drew, the clearer the Thousand-Year Frostblood Lotus appeared. Nine crystal leaves, red as faceted rubies, stretched around the stem, their veins pulsing as if true blood pulsed within. At the center, the bud had already cracked, a shy slit revealing petals the color of fresh wine. A heady perfume-sweet, metallic, strangely inviting-floated on the cold, making his spirit quiver with exhration even as instinct whispered of lurking danger.


    "It''s almost in bloom." Jared''s heart kicked with tight, bright urgency.


    He quickened his pace, boots tapping over thin ice that pinged under the strain.


    But when scarcely a hundred yards of killing ice remained between him and the pool


    "Roar!" The sound detonated through the basin, so vast it seemed to rip clouds from the sky.


    The bellow thundered from a cavern mouth halfway up the tallest ice peak—a savage birth-cry of some primordial behemoth waking after uncounted ages.


    Sound-waves hammered the basin; the ice under Jared''s feet spider-webbed with cracks that raced outward in frantic, splintering lines.


    Then came the pressure-cold as pr oceans, heavy as copsing stars-bursting from the cavern in a tidal flood that nketed the entire hollow.


    Under that weight, Jared felt like a paper boat hurled into a hurricane, every joint screaming that the next breath might tear him apart.


    He grunted, forced chaotic essence outward, and a hazy gray shield congealed around him, allowing him-only barely-to keep his footing.


    Uni dropped to a low crouch, legs trembling, golden ze raging higher in defiance of the crushing aura.


    "Heavenly Immortal Realm-Top Level Nine!" The words escaped Jared between clenched teeth, half awe, half warning to himself.


    Jared''s expression tightened despite himself. From the sheer weight of the unseen force pressing on his bones, he could already tell—the spirit beast lurking ahead possessed strength far beyond anything they had faced.


    Booming thunder rolled through the cavern like stone grinding on stone, a deafening prelude to the terror about to reveal itself.


    The curtain of frigid vapor guarding the cave entrance churned into a storm, as though some colossal heart were pushing against it from the dark within.


    Then a shape-vast, sinuous-slowly probed out of the fissure, its silhouette hinting at a dragon''s majesty.


    No... not a true dragon. Jared realized with a chill, but something born of the same ancient blood.


    Its head resembled a dragon''s yet bore only a single horn, the entire crown cast in translucent ice-blue crystal.


    Its body, thick as an anaconda, was masked in palm-sized sapphire scales that refracted a cruel, frosted light.


    No ws clung beneath its belly, yet from either nk sprouted wings as thin as cicada membranes, almost invisible against the snow-pale air.


    Stretching more than three hundred feet and thick as a manor wall, the creature coiled in midair like a cier-hewn mountain newly given life.


    Ice-blue pupils, each the size of antern, sliced downward, studying Jared and the small fire unicorn with a mixture of contempt, scrutiny, and vited rage.


    An ancient aberration-the Frostdrake.


    Not of pure dragon stock, yet carrying a sliver of that royal blood, it wielded the absolutew of ice-power that froze hope itself.


    "Human... and a little fire unicorn?" the Frostdrake rumbled, each word rasping like ciers grinding. "It has been tens of millennia since any mortal dared trespass upon my domain," the creature hissed, its voice the screech of ice upon ice. "Did that little girl fail to exin the rules?"


    The "little girl" could only be Lady Aurora-the pce mistress who had guided them this far.


    Given the beast''s tens-of-thousands-year lifespan, calling her a girl was, unfortunately, urate.


    эко


    Summoning every shred of will to stand beneath that crushing aura, Jared sped his fists in formal salute. "Senior, my name is Jared Chance. I intrude only out of desperation. A loved one''s life hangs in the Thousand Year Frostblood Lotus within your care. I beg your leniency and will trade treasures of equal worth."


    "Save someone?" the Frostdrake echoed, mirthless.


    "The life of an ant concerns me, how?" it sneered, azure pupils flickering with scorn.


    "That Lotus has grown beside me for ten thousand years—it is mine. Because the little girl permitted your entry, I grant you one mercy: leave now, and live."


    His arrogance mirrored that of the two celestial generals Jared had faced the day before-cold, condescending, absolute.


    "Senior, the Lotus is vital. I can offer artifacts in exchange—please reconsider." "Artifacts? Laughable. What could a lowly human possess? Leave, or I shall sample the flesh of a human cultivator and a unicorn alike."


    Its vast tongue slithered over dagger-like teeth, predatory light zing in its eyes.


    The small fire unicorn sensed the threat, reared, and loosed a roar; golden mes erupted from its coat, baring fangs at the Frostdrake.


    "It seems we have no more words to trade," Jared murmured.


    Steel whispered free as he drew the Dragonyer Sword, his gaze sharpening to a cutting edge.


    "Oh? You would draw steel against me?" The Frostdrake''s amusement rippled through the air.


    One lowly Heavenly Immortal Realm Level One and a level seven unicorn dare challenge me? Admirable courage-yet utter folly.


    A thunderous boom cut short its words as the creature''s massive tail whipped through the cavern, hurling razor winds toward them.


    A deafening st cracked through the frozen sky, the kind of violent boom that


    makes a man''s bones vibrate before his mind can register fear.


    vel


    From the heavens plunged a column of icy blue light, wider than any city gate and fashioned entirely from absolute cold. It looked like a sky-bone pir shattering on descent, a cosmce aimed straight at Jared and the small fire unicorn. Wherever that frozen torrent passed, the very air fractured into hair-thin ck fissures. Below theke''s surface sh froze into a new sheet several feet thick, as though winter itself had mmed a hammer onto the world. The force behind that strike pushed far beyond


    ordinary Heavenly Immortal power-this was the ferocity of a True Immortal made manifest.


    "Move!" Jared barked, voice raw with urgency.


    He skidded left while the small fire unicorn bounded right, their bodies blurring in opposite streaks just before the avnche of cold reached them.


    Another thunderous boom followed. The ice-bluet forrent struck theke, and the world lurched. Ice cracked mountains rumbled, and a crater fifty yards across yawned open, its depths lost to darkness. From that pit surged a murdero chill that turned everything within a hundred yards into glittering crystal wastnd.


    Jared escaped the center of the st, yet the shock wave still punched through his chaotic celestial essence and churned his blood. He coughed hard, tasting iron. Beside him, the unicorn staggered; frigid mist gnawed its golden mes until they dulled toward ember-red.