Wind and snow lashed Chen Wuya's face. He raised a hand and wiped it away. He stood on the ice plain, the strips of cloth around his feet already frozen stiff, giving off faint cracking sounds whenever he stepped down. His left arm was still numb, as though fine needles were piercing back and forth inside it. He did not stop. He kept walking.
The sky grew darker and darker, and the snowflakes thickened, settling on his shoulders and head until a layer quickly piled up. The breath he exhaled froze into white frost the instant it left his mouth, hanging from his brows and lashes. His vision began to blur. Ahead lay nothing but a sheet of grayish white.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Cold air rushed down his throat, and his lungs felt as if they had been torn open. Yet he ignored it, forcibly drawing up the remnants of his true qi from his dantian and running it backward through his meridians. Misaligned force twisted through his body; his severed tendons and channels were slowly pulled taut and reconnected. This method was wrong. By all reason, true qi should be contained within, not released outward. But he had never been one to reason.
The system suddenly sounded:
[Extreme environment detected. Activating adaptation mode—Misaligned Force Fur Cloak!]
A surge of heat burst from his chest. Golden force qi flowed out through his limbs, forming a thin white aura around the surface of his body. The aura streamed endlessly, like a coat of invisible fur wrapping him from head to toe. The cold was kept outside, and his skin no longer stung.
Chen Wuya opened his eyes and looked down at himself. The aura was nearly transparent; only its faint ripples revealed that