Time drifted by, slow and unhurried.
Before he knew it, one hundred and twenty-seven years had passed. Jiang Ding was drawn further by the planet's gravity and fell onto the ice sheet covering its surface. A cold wind blew over him, coating him in a thin layer of frost.
Layer upon layer of frost.
Several years passed, and he was completely covered by frost, buried deep within an ancient glacier that would never melt.
Cold winds swept over this frigid planet, unchanged for ages. The ice sheet continued to thicken and thicken, and before he knew it, several more decades had passed.
That year, a volcano suddenly erupted. Its immense force shattered the ice sheet and brought things from deep underground to the surface.
Rivers of lava flowed across the ice, melting out gullies. Vast amounts of water vapor spread through the air, forming white mist, only to be frozen by the extreme cold dozens of degrees below zero into particles of ice crystal. They fell into the lava, vaporized again, and repeated the cycle without end.
Within this river of lava, a human-height block of obsidian rolled and drifted downstream. After traveling some distance, it came to rest upon the ice at the riverbank, lying there quietly.
Time flowed onward, and several more years passed.
The lava river froze and solidified once more, leaving behind only a pitch-black riverbed scar. Frost covered it again, including the human-height block of obsidian.
Crack!
That day, the obsidian split apart, revealing a Youth in Green Robes within. He opened his eyes, his gaze tranquil.
"Fellow Daoist, you couldn't hold on after only one hundred and fifty-seven years?"
"Trash."
Jiang Ding said flatly.
He examined his own divine soul with Internal View. In the deepest part of it, the butterfly shadow that he