Bone-Chilling Cold

Cold.

Endless, unceasing cold.

Li Yuan curled up in the pile of straw, feeling like a stubborn stone tossed onto an icefield, frozen through from the inside out. The faint warmth brought by that chunk of raw meat had long since been swallowed clean by an even fiercer tide of cold. It was as if that tiny spark had not only failed to drive away the chill, but had instead enraged the ice-and-snow demon lurking within his body.

This was no ordinary cold, nothing the howling north wind outside the window could compare to. This was Bone-Chilling Cold—a curse bred from the depths of his meridians and the cracks between his marrow. Like a living creature, it flowed slowly through his body with venomous malice. Wherever it passed, his blood seemed ready to freeze solid, while his muscle fibers gave mournful cries beneath an unbearable burden.

The pain was fine and unrelenting, like countless icy steel needles repeatedly piercing and grinding along the ends of his nerves. His teeth chattered beyond his control, making soft clacking sounds that rang exceptionally clearly through the deathly silent room. A rusty ache and sharp pain surged from his joints; every slight movement tugged at his whole body and brought another round of torment.

"Urgh..."

A suppressed groan of pain spilled from deep in his throat, carrying the taste of blood. He bit down hard on his lower lip, trying to use sharper pain to divert his attention, but the effect was negligible. Cold sweat soaked his thin clothes, pressing them against his skin, only for them to quickly become even more piercingly cold than the air outside.

He knew what this was. This was the Yin Sha Curse. A set of shackles the family had personally planted within him when he was young, under the name of a "blessing." They claimed it was to "nurture" his special constitution, one capable of containing yin sha energy. In truth, they had turned him into a culture vessel—a living sacrifice meant to nourish that so-called Ancestral Spirit in the ancestral hall...

Fragments of memory became clear amid the utmost agony.

He remembered that when he was little, while his parents were still alive, he had not exactly been strong, but at least he had been warm. He could run and jump. His father had been a steward from a collateral branch of the Li Family, while his mother had been gentle and virtuous. Those days had not been the very best, but they had a roof to shelter them from wind and rain, and steaming-hot meals.

Everything changed when he was seven years old.

One of the family elders—the Third Elder, who now wielded overwhelming power—personally came to their home. The man looked him over as though inspecting a rare material. His withered fingers pressed against Li Yuan's wrist pulse, and a frigid aura probed into him, making him shudder on the spot.

"As expected, a rare Yin Sha Body. Though frail, he is an excellent vessel." The Third Elder's voice had the texture of metal scraping against metal. "This child shall devote himself to the family."

Not long afterward, an "accident" claimed his parents' lives. As for him, while unconscious, he had been implanted with the Yin Sha Curse. From then on, he was brought into the family's core territory. They called it "key cultivation," but in reality, he was simply being kept in captivity.

That so-called "cultivation" meant being periodically taken into the ancestral hall, brought near the pitch-black memorial tablet that enshrined the Ancestral Spirit, and made to endure the yin-cold energy seeping from it—energy that shared his origin but was a hundred times stronger—pouring into his body. Every time, it felt as if he had been thrown into ice caves, his soul frozen stiff. Through this repeated freezing and "thawing," his body steadily wasted away. His vital blood and qi were constantly drained by the curse's power and the Ancestral Spirit, leaving him as he was now: gaunt as a skeleton and too weak to withstand a breath of wind.

He had once refused to accept it. He had once tried to resist. He secretly picked up the most rudimentary copied manual of the Qi Gathering Art discarded by the family's younger members and, when no one was around, tried to imitate it and sense the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

That night, he sat cross-legged in a freezing corner, striving to empty his mind as he followed the art's instructions and attempted to draw in that ethereal spiritual energy.

At first, a faintly cool current of air seemed to approach.

But at the very instant that current was about to seep into his skin, the Yin Sha Curse within him stirred violently like a shark that had caught the scent of blood! That tiny wisp of spiritual energy was instantly torn apart and devoured by the curse's icy power. Not only did it fail to nourish his body, it was like a drop of cold water falling into a boiling cauldron of oil, instantly triggering an even fiercer backlash!

"Gah—!"

Li Yuan tore himself out of the memory, his body convulsing violently as he sucked in air with the wheezing rasp of a broken bellows. The horrific pain brought by that attempt at cultivation remained fresh in his mind to this day. It had felt as though countless ice cones had exploded inside him, tearing from his five viscera and six bowels all the way through his limbs and bones. He had passed out from the pain on the spot and needed three days in bed before he could barely get back on his feet.

From then on, he understood completely. The Yin Sha Curse was not merely devouring his life force—it was also a vicious set of shackles, locking away every possibility of saving himself. Like a lamb tethered to the edge of a cliff, he could only watch helplessly as he slipped step by step toward the abyss, awaiting the fate of being sacrificed in the end.

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Despair, like this bone-chilling cold, had long soaked into every corner of his life.

And yet...

Just as the boundless cold and darkness seemed about to freeze even his consciousness, a faint and nearly imperceptible sensation of something unusual surfaced once more from the deepest recesses of his mind.

It was not warmth. It was more like a... sense of "presence."

A deeply buried, scarlet spark, carrying a scorching texture...

It was far too weak, as though the surrounding cold could snuff it out at any moment. Yet it truly existed, and just now, when he had devoured that chunk of raw meat, it had flickered briefly.

Li Yuan painstakingly gathered his nearly scattered consciousness, trying to catch that faint glimmer.

Was it because he had eaten something?

Because of that raw meat streaked with blood, containing a tiny trace of vital blood energy?

He had stolen food before. Why had he never felt this way then?

That was it... The food he had eaten before had been nothing more than ordinary dry rations and vegetable leaves, perhaps with a little bland grease at most. But today's meat had been livestock food meant for sacrifice. Even as scraps, it contained far more "energy" than ordinary food. Had this unusual energy accidentally stirred something deeply hidden within him?

He could not be sure.

That "spark" remained weak, flickering in and out of sight. He could neither communicate with it of his own accord nor control it. The Bone-Chilling Cold within him still surged wildly, and the pain had not lessened in the slightest.

Yet this tiny "difference," this abrupt splash of "otherness" appearing amid absolute darkness and cold, was like an exceedingly thin yet incomparably tough thread, barely suspending his sinking consciousness from the shore of reality.

He was not dead yet.

He could still feel pain.

And it seemed that he had found the faintest sliver of a possibility—so faint it was nearly nonexistent—that might perhaps contend with this pain.

Li Yuan drew a deep breath of icy air. The stabbing pain in his lungs made him even more alert. He no longer tried to fight the omnipresent cold. Instead, he focused all his attention on that faint point of "scarlet" deep within his consciousness.

Like a traveler dying in a blizzard, using the last of his strength to stare at the one cold star on the distant horizon that had not yet been completely swallowed by dark clouds.

The night was still long.

And the pain was far from over.

But something, it seemed, had already changed.