The instant the ice beast leaped out of the spacetime rift, Chen Wuya felt something wrench viciously at his chest from within, leaving it hollow. He crashed heavily into the snow, his back slamming against a rock frozen hard as iron. Sweetness surged into his throat, and he spat out another mouthful of blood.
Bai Zhi rolled down beside him, one hand still gripping the corner of his clothes in a death grip. Her face had gone pale. She propped herself up and had barely touched Chen Wuya's wrist when she felt his pulse hammering wildly, nearly bursting through his skin.
"You can't go on."
Before she could finish, a dim blue radiance suddenly lit up from Chen Wuya's chest. The Heart of Extreme Cold rose on its own, hovering an inch above his chest and trembling faintly, as though answering some kind of summons.
Mo Feng climbed up from the other side. His mechanism case had hit the ground, its screen cracked down the middle. He did not bother picking it up. The moment he looked up and saw that blue glow, his pupils constricted sharply.
"Why did it come out by itself?"
Chen Wuya said nothing. His eyes were shut tight, his teeth clenched. Every meridian in his body felt as though countless fine needles were stabbing back and forth through them. The misaligned force was rampaging inside him, and the once-familiar circulation paths had all changed, like a river cut off at the waist and forcibly diverted into a new course.
The system shook violently in the depths of his consciousness:
[Warning! Misaligned force pathways are being reconstructed. Risk of true qi backflow is extremely high.]
He tried to circulate his power and stabilize himself, but the instant he gathered his qi, it felt as