Chen Wuya sat on the ice, his palm still pressed against that layer of frost. His breathing was so light it was nearly inaudible. The image of that stone house kept flashing through his mind—the crooked-necked tree, the four words "Chen's General Store" on the tattered cloth banner, so clear they did not seem like an illusion. He did not move, nor did he ask another question.
He knew he could not let himself be led by the nose any longer.
Misaligned Force flowed slowly through his body, not along his meridians, but crawling through those broken, clogged cracks. It had never been meant to take the proper road, and it never had. He closed his eyes and suppressed every thought, leaving only one sentence behind—My father never practiced martial arts, but he taught me never to live on my knees.
Those words were like a blade, cutting through the threads wound around his heart.
Misaligned Force suddenly shuddered, surging backward from his dantian, passing through his heart and driving straight toward his seven apertures. His ears rang, his nasal cavity burned, and a trace of blood seeped from the corners of his eyes. Yet this power did not scatter. Instead, it formed a reverse-spinning vortex within his skull, grinding Blood Without Trace's lingering voice into fragments.
The power of mystic ice emerged from every limb and bone, as though a skeleton had grown out of his marrow. It was icy and hard, yet not rigidly dead, trembling faintly to the rhythm of Misaligned Force. At the same time, a ball of fire rose from deep within his chest. It was karmic fire, the brand left behind when he had once mistakenly cultivated a fragmentary volume of the Blood Demon Art. This fire did not burn anything outside him; it