"Bang, bang, bang—"
"Crack—"
"Ah—ah—"
Violent impacts and uniquely human screams rang out from the cave at irregular intervals.
The screams grew sharper and more anguished, eventually turning into wails and beastly roars.
Crash, bang—
That was the sound of the iceberg shattering and the stone walls collapsing.
Inside the cave, the black figure charged left and right, rolling up and down, ramming his head and body against the unbreakable stone again and again.
His head was battered bloody, his bones snapped, his crashing fierce and shattering.
He looked like a madman, or perhaps more like a beast.
He wanted to ram himself to death.
Because living was truly worse than death for him now.
Black clouds churned across the sky before gradually dispersing. Black faded to light gray, and light gray turned to the pale white of a fish's belly.
The black shadow inside the cave gradually calmed, and the impacts stopped.
The black shadow collapsed onto the snow, silent and motionless, looking as if he were dead.
For a long, long time.
A violent cough shattered the cave's silence. The black shadow coughed desperately, harder and harder, until it seemed to tear his heart and lungs apart.
Pfft!
A mouthful of blood sprayed out wildly.
The droplets flew into the sky before falling back onto his face.
Only then did the figure feel somewhat better.
He slowly opened his eyes. His pitch-black irises, webbed with blood vessels, stared blankly at the cave ceiling.
He was Li Mu Yang.
The black-robed youth was Li Mu Yang.
Ever since he had escaped catastrophe in Wind City, he had vanished from the human world.
He had crossed deserts where sandstorms blotted out the sky, forded the roiling Darkwater Nether River, traversed the perilous Flower Language Plain, and broken into Beast Valley,