With a crisp snap of his fingers ringing out through the desolate sky, time seemed to be abruptly seized by an invisible hand.
The snowflakes that had been drifting down in chaotic disarray instantly froze in midair, like countless tiny blue feathers gleaming with eerie, motionless cold light.
Everything within sight that had been encased in dark-blue Ice Crystal—jagged boulders, dead ice-spike trees, even the fine dust floating in the air—gave off a faint yet teeth-grating crack at the same instant.
In an instant, they turned into dark-blue crystalline powder that filled the sky, glittering with dreamlike specks of starlight before silently vanishing into nothingness, as though they had never existed.
Only the enormous White Flood Dragon remained imprisoned within a thin layer of blue mystical ice. Obscure runes flowed across the ice, freezing its terrified, twisted expression into a relief of despair.
"I... I am willing to hand over my soul blood!"
The White Flood Dragon's strained voice seemed to squeeze out from the deepest cracks in the ice, carrying a trembling note of terror from its soul as it shattered the deathly stillness.
A fist-sized bead of blood, crimson streaked with threads of gold, slowly seeped from between the White Flood Dragon's brows.
The blood bead seemed to possess an independent life. It contained vast yet chaotic demonic power, causing the surrounding space to tremble faintly from its presence.
It drifted unsteadily toward Zhang Tie, who stood with his hands behind his back more than ten zhang away.
Zhang Tie stood motionless. His black robe did not stir in the breeze, and his face showed not the slightest ripple. Only a faint curve at the corner of his mouth carried a trace of mocking indifference, as though he were watching a clumsy performance whose ending he had long