Several Worlds, Number Eleven

The woman appeared amid the boundless wind and snow. Her figure was slender, and against the white world, her slightly dark skin looked darker still.

Her hair was coiled into a playful, cute bun, exposing her high forehead. She wore no jeweled hairpins or other ornaments.

The young woman, who did not seem very old, stopped roughly a dozen zhang away from the group of uncertain hunters. She took out a northern Aiai Continent geomantic map from Lion Peak's stores and examined it for a few moments. The nearest immortal family to the Ice Field was a mountain called Chuangfan Dojo, in the northern reaches of Aiai Continent. It was not a Sect-level immortal family and kept largely to itself. The city below was Touyi City of Lintan Prefecture, Yugong Kingdom. She put the map back into her sleeve, cupped her fists to the group, then asked in the pure Elegant Language of Aiai Continent, "May I ask how far this is from Touyi City?"

After an old cultivator rose tremblingly to his feet, he cautiously asked, "Might you be Grandmaster Liu?"

That was the best-case scenario. The worst was that she was actually a Great Demon in human form, deliberately toying with them—meat already nailed to the chopping board.

Across the vast Ice Field stood four Great Demons, each ruling one region. The southernmost called himself Xiliu. He occasionally rode a snow-white lion to patrol his territory, and rumor had it that he preferred to appear in the guise of a handsome man. More than ten years ago, he had fought a life-and-death battle with Grandmaster Liu, who would come here whenever she pleased to "earn a little rouge money and save up a dowry." Even Touyi City in distant Yugong Kingdom had felt the heaven-shaking, earth-rending phenomena of