Su Xuanyue

Weiyu Cave-Heaven had five peaks, each the ultimate extreme of one of the Five Elements. By "extreme," it meant the utmost.

Water Feather Peak was the ultimate of water. From afar, its summit lay shrouded in mist and clouds, while snowflakes filled the sky within that haze.

After climbing the mountain, Liu Xiaolou spread out his palm and caught a snowflake drifting down from above. The flake was nearly half a foot long. If not for its chilling cold, one might truly have thought a bird feather had floated down.

After resting in his palm for several breaths, the snowflake melted into a puddle of snow water, dripping through his fingers onto the icy mud beneath his feet and merging into the murmuring snow stream nearby.

All around him were snowdrifts, snow pines, icicles, and ice cliffs. The entire mountain was an iceberg.

They climbed along the mountain path, passing through ice caves and glaciers. The higher they went, the fiercer the wind and snow became. Liu Xiaolou did not know how long they had climbed, but when he looked back again, the path they had come from had vanished, leaving nothing around them but a vast white wilderness of wind and snow.

Remembering the storm that had forever swirled around the summit when he had looked up from below, Liu Xiaolou thought, Have we reached the top already?

At some point, the wind and snow abruptly diminished. The howling gale also quieted considerably, and the falling snow became softer—still like bird feathers, but no longer the feathers from a bird's body. They were more like the down upon its head.

The world became very still, and everything around them grew much clearer. Ice sculptures over ten feet tall stood nearby: birds and beasts, strange flowers and exotic fruits, Mountain