In the Northern Cold Immortal Domain, at the far northern frontier, Ten Thousand Year Profound Ice blanketed an expanse of ten thousand miles.
As far as the eye could see, heaven and earth contained nothing but an unsettling, pure white.
The cold here had condensed into mist, coiling and rising. Ordinary cultivators who came here would not merely be unable to fly through the air—even approaching slightly would cause their Body Protection Spiritual Light to melt away in an instant, their Nascent Souls to freeze, their bodies to shatter, and even their souls to be utterly annihilated by this extreme chill.
"Wooo—"
The piercing astral wind howled, sweeping up ice fragments that filled the sky like countless tiny blades. They sliced through the void with a shriek that set one's teeth on edge.
In the distance, three dim streaks of escape light fled forward in miserable disarray.
Their Body Protection Spiritual Light flickered under the erosion of the omnipresent cold, like dying candles in the wind. The composure of cultivators had long vanished from their faces, leaving only despair and terror that seeped into their bones.
Behind them, roughly a thousand zhang away, a black-robed figure strolled unhurriedly through the air.
He stood tall, his face hidden beneath the shadow of his hood. With every step he took, endless cold gathered beneath his feet, condensing from nothing into a crystalline Ice Crystal lotus platform with distinct petals and stamens, steadily supporting his body.
The lotus platform then silently shattered as though its task had been completed, turning into dense cold mist that noiselessly merged with the surrounding world.
His pace appeared leisurely, like a casual stroll through a garden, yet the distance between him and the three desperate figures ahead—who had pushed their escape speed to its limit—was shrinking at