In the wind and snow, the figure stood ten paces away. The snow beneath her feet had not sunk at all, and her posture was ramrod straight. Chen Wuya's hand was still pressed to his sword hilt, his knuckles stiff with cold, yet he did not let go. He stared at the pair of exposed eyes—deep blue and bottomless, like a frozen lake beneath the polar night.
The air began to grow heavy.
It was not that the wind had stopped, nor that the snow had ceased, but that something had pressed down upon him. It felt as if a massive boulder were slowly being shoved into his chest, making it hard to breathe. A tremor came up through the soles of his feet. It was not the ground shaking—it was his body. His knees buckled uncontrollably for a moment, before he forced them straight again.
His blood and qi churned, and sweetness rose in his throat.
The system sounded in his mind. "Detected pressure at the peak of the ninth rank. Retreat is advised."
The next second, the voice changed. "Warning! Abnormal force flow detected. Activate completion?"
He said nothing, merely gritted his teeth. The bead beneath his tongue was still trembling, so faintly that he could barely feel it. Only twenty percent of his true qi remained, and his meridians were like a frozen riverbed—every inch it traveled was sluggish and arduous. But he knew he could not retreat. The assassin's dying words still rang in his ears—this was a hunting ground, and she was waiting for him.
Waiting for him to kneel, waiting for him to beg for mercy, waiting for him to break.
But he refused.
Several lines from the incomplete volume of the Canglang Art flashed through his mind. He could not remember their original