Alien Friends

Bai Xiaowen looked up.

The sky above this Icebound Star was neither dark gray nor dark red, but an endless expanse of white, as though countless snowflakes and grains of salt filled the heavens.

Through the vast grayish-white sky, he could make out a faint, flickering palace.

"What is that palace...?"

Bai Xiaowen slowly circulated his Spiritual Power, rose into the air, and flew toward the palace.

Strangely enough, though the airborne palace looked extremely close, Bai Xiaowen could never approach it. Whenever he advanced, the palace seemed to retreat; the faster he flew, the faster it receded.

"It looks like an illusion, something similar to a mirage. But this place does not seem to possess the conditions needed to form one..." Bai Xiaowen frowned. This phantom palace was highly unusual.

Bai Xiaowen could not help recalling the "Star Chart" stored within the Titan Star Chart—the eye symbol positioned at the center of the nine planets.

Since the palace hung above the sky, visible yet unreachable, could it be related to that eye symbol?

Or perhaps that palace was precisely what the eye symbol represented.

Bai Xiaowen slowly descended and landed on the ice and snow.

Through the Ice Layer, Bai Xiaowen's Spirit Sense could detect an energy fluctuation buried beneath the spot where he had landed on Icebound Star. It was very similar to the fluctuation of a Planet Teleportation Gate.

It should be the long-distance Planet Teleportation Gate leading to Aqi Luo Star, merely sealed beneath the Ice Layer. Bai Xiaowen had traveled between the First and Second Layer Star Regions through these two gates.

"At the very least, I should dig this Teleportation Gate out first."

Boundary Steles were usually found near Teleportation Gates. Perhaps one of them recorded useful information.

A phantom image of a tiny flaming sword slowly extended from Bai Xiaowen's palm. It was the Kusanagi Sword Soul.

On the Awakened Plane, this had been one of the Three Sacred Treasures, powerful and mysterious.

But with Bai Xiaowen's current knowledge, as well as his accomplishments in the Immortal Technique branch of Artifact Refinement, the Kusanagi Sword Soul was merely a Rare Item no higher than Epic Grade.

It simply contained fiery martial techniques such as Orochi Nagi and possessed some of the properties of a Skill Book, much like the middle volume of The Essential Arts of Great Peace.

"If I get the chance, I can find some high-grade Fire Element materials and try refining the Kusanagi Sword Soul into a magic artifact." Bai Xiaowen pondered it briefly.

After True Yuan Power was infused into the Kusanagi Sword Soul, the flames burning across its surface became even fiercer, and the air temperature inexplicably rose by several degrees.

Whoosh! Bai Xiaowen swung his sword. Blazing flames several yards long erupted from the tip of the Kusanagi Sword Soul, carving across the ice-covered ground.

A huge section of ice was forcibly melted open. Bai Xiaowen curled the fingers of his left hand slightly, and an invisible giant hand of True Yuan Power firmly seized the Ice Layer and flipped it aside—this was what the Seven Fiends Great Handprint looked like after reaching mastery, allowing him to wield it as he pleased.

Just like that, Bai Xiaowen forcibly created an Ice Cellar.

Sure enough, below lay a faintly glowing Teleportation Gate and an ancient Boundary Stele.

Bai Xiaowen let out a breath. Using Fire Element skills in such an extremely cold environment nearly doubled the cost. Human strength had its limits; in the end, it could not contend with nature.

Moreover, once Bai Xiaowen put away the Kusanagi Sword Soul, the surrounding temperature swiftly dropped. Amid the wind and snow, the Ice Cellar was already beginning to freeze over again.

Before the Ice Cellar could seal shut, Bai Xiaowen jumped inside and carefully memorized the words on the Boundary Stele, "rubbing" them into his mind.

"On the far right of the stele inscription is a symbol identical to the one for Aqi Luo Star. It should mean 'planet.' Then the text on the right should be this planet's name as well. Profound Ice Star? Hmm, I'll call it that for now."

Bai Xiaowen silently compared the God's Script on this stele inscription with that on the previous Boundary Stele, searching for patterns and attempting to decipher it.

The process was much like a cryptography expert breaking a code.

The difference was that God's Script was far more complex than any code. Fortunately, Bai Xiaowen had the Black Book in his mind and understood some of the fundamentals of God's Script.

"I could barely decipher only two phrases. The first is 'Hall of Prophecy,' and the second is 'underground road leading to the sacred'..."

Bai Xiaowen fell into thought, then looked up once more at the faintly visible divine palace in the sky.

A rustling sound arose.

Bai Xiaowen immediately became alert and released several of his main Summoned Creatures to guard the surroundings.

Boom!

A massive white shadow shot into the sky, and endless fragments of hail rained down at them.

Butcher roared, his round body suddenly swelling as it blocked every hail fragment. After that brief expansion, its body shrank back to a little over two meters tall. It shook its fat, and the hail embedded in its flesh crackled as it fell to the ground.

"Master, it is an Ice Worm. It is not very strong; we can handle it," Sigdrifa said.

The white shadow was an enlarged white centipede. Its head was somewhat different, featuring a terrifying spiral maw lined with several layers of dense, tiny teeth.

Though its appearance was savage and hideous, Bai Xiaowen could tell that while this Ice Worm was stronger than the Scorpion Monsters of Aqi Luo Star, its strength was still limited. It was only a Lord Grade monster.

Before Sigdrifa, whose strength was close to King Rank, a Lord Grade monster naturally counted as "not very strong."

"It was probably drawn here by the disturbance from my excavation of the Boundary Stele. There is no need to waste time on it and attract even more monsters."

Bai Xiaowen raised a hand, sending a Yellow Talisman flying out. It stuck to the Ice Worm's forehead, instantly making its body stiffen.

At the same time, Bai Xiaowen flashed forward and appeared before the Ice Worm. He thrust out the Prairie Brothers Blade, and an invisible blade of light pierced the section of its body corresponding to its seventh pair of limbs. True Yuan Power erupted inside it.

The Ice Worm's body swayed before it crashed to the ground, its limbs twitching incessantly. Its central nervous system had already been utterly destroyed by Bai Xiaowen.

In truth, the Ice Worm had only suffered a wound the size of a fingertip. Compared to its massive body, it was insignificant. Yet that fingertip-sized wound had caused its death.

Sigdrifa gave Bai Xiaowen a look of admiration. She felt that Bai Xiaowen had grown stronger again, in a way that words could not describe.

The several Lord Grade Summoned Creatures quickly cut open the Ice Worm's corpse, extracted a Divinity Core, and handed it to Bai Xiaowen.

Bai Xiaowen also stripped away the Ice Worm's tiny teeth. The Eye of Evolution showed that they were a cold-attributed dark-gold Level 9 material called Ice Leech Tooth.

"Looks like it is not called an Ice Worm. It is called an Ice Leech."

Bai Xiaowen observed the flow of the earth veins. Though the Ice Layer covered everything, he could still roughly make out their direction.

He recalled Summoned Creatures such as the Four Heavenly Kings, leaving only the Frost Dragon as a mount. Bai Xiaowen stepped onto its back and slowly recovered his physical stamina.

The Frost Dragon seemed to enjoy this environment and became even more energetic. It spread its bony wings and flew along the direction of Bai Xiaowen's Guidance.

Along the way, Bai Xiaowen encountered another new monster from Profound Ice Star.

It resembled a snake swimming through the air, except its entire body was as crystalline and translucent as ice. Dense cold air enveloped it from head to tail.

The Eye of Evolution took a look. This creature was called an Ice Wraith Soldier, an ice-type Elemental Race monster formed from the Resentment Power of dead Living Beings under frigid conditions. It was likewise Lord Grade, and its intelligence was equally low, leaving it able to act only on instinct.

This was also standard. Monsters with higher intelligence would not casually provoke someone like Bai Xiaowen, who used a Lord Grade Frost Dragon as a mount.

Ice Wraith Soldiers were not difficult to deal with. They possessed only two moves: spitting ice spikes from afar as magical attacks similar to the Ice Spear Technique, or biting at close range.

However, the Frost Dragon had additional damage reduction against ice-attributed attacks, and its enormous body could completely block them.

Bai Xiaowen also conserved his True Yuan Power and shot arrows from afar. With the Insight of the Eye of Evolution and the predictions of the Super Brain, he could destroy an Ice Wraith Soldier with only a few arrows.

Ice Wraith Soldiers exploded into fragments after dying, but unfortunately, none dropped a Divinity Core.

Only then did Bai Xiaowen realize that not every Native Monster in the Land of Origin would drop a Divinity Core, the essential energy source for Teleportation Gates.

Fortunately, Bai Xiaowen could still gather a material called Essence of Ice Wraith Soldier. It was an Epic Grade ice-type material; otherwise, he would have suffered a complete loss.

After that small interruption, Bai Xiaowen continued flying aboard the Frost Dragon. As he flew, he observed the terrain and corrected his course.

It took a full eleven hours to reach the next location suspected of containing a Planet Teleportation Gate.

The Frost Dragon truly was an excellent mount, especially in this environment. After flying at high speed for eleven hours, it was still full of energy.

Fortunately, flight was a Frost Dragon's instinct. It only consumed a certain amount of vigor, similar to the physical stamina of a living creature, and in a freezing environment, that vigor recovered very quickly. In other words, so long as it did not expend Spiritual Power, a Frost Dragon could circle the planet several times without stopping.

"Hmm? Someone is here?"

Bai Xiaowen narrowed his eyes slightly. As he flew above the ice valley where the target point lay, he keenly detected two energy fluctuations.

These two energy fluctuations belonging to living creatures were extremely well concealed, so faint that they were nearly impossible to notice. If Bai Xiaowen had not possessed the Insight bonus from the Mind Cultivation Method and remained on alert, they truly might have escaped his notice.

There were also some unnatural, deliberately concealed signs of disorder in the ice valley. It was clear that these two beings had also been attempting to excavate this place and had arrived not long before Bai Xiaowen, almost at the same time as him. After Bai Xiaowen arrived, they had hastily covered their tracks and hidden themselves.

"Come out." Bai Xiaowen stood up on the Frost Dragon's back.

Two figures emerged from the white mist.

"These appearances!"

Bai Xiaowen's eyes suddenly narrowed. Though these two "people" had body types similar to Earthlings, they possessed physiological traits distinct from those of Earthlings.

One had fine scales growing across its head, eyebrows, beard, and every other area where hair should have grown.

The other had a slightly hunched back and a thick mane growing along the nape of its neck.

"Who are you? Showing up so ostentatiously—aren't you afraid of drawing this planet's monsters over?" the Bristlemane asked. Bai Xiaowen could not understand the unknown language it spoke, but the Thought Wave accompanying its speech still allowed him to understand.

Bai Xiaowen looked at the Frost Dragon beneath his feet. By ostentatious, it presumably meant arriving while riding a Frost Dragon?

"Oh, this is my summoned beast."

Bai Xiaowen swiftly disguised himself as a Summoner—though that sounded a little strange, since he could indeed be considered one.

Bai Xiaowen jumped down from the Frost Dragon and patted its neck. With a trace of pride, he said, "I did run into a few local monsters on the way here, but my dragon bit them all to death. It is very strong, haha."

The Bristlemane and Scalefolk exchanged a glance, both showing faintly dismissive expressions.

Having a Level 17 Lord Grade summoned beast was indeed decent combat power, but in the Land of Origin, it only placed one at the bottom rung.

"You had better be careful," the Scalefolk said unhappily. "Do not think you are impressive just because you killed a few low-level monsters. The monsters of the Labyrinth of the Gods are terrifying, especially once there is a major disturbance. They will appear in groups. If you ruin our plans, I will not spare you."

Bai Xiaowen appeared very good-tempered. "Understood, understood. What are you doing here? Digging for something? Can I join?"

The Bristlemane glanced at Bai Xiaowen and extended a brown hand. "Sure. Hand over ten Divinity Cores first."

The Scalefolk agreed. "That is right. We discovered this place first..."

Bai Xiaowen crossed his arms and looked at these Alien Friends with a chuckle. "Forget it. I will not join for now. We can talk after you dig something up."

Bai Xiaowen naturally knew that a Planet Teleportation Gate was buried beneath this ice valley. Perhaps because it had gone unused for a long time, combined with its geographical location, the gate was buried extremely deep and would not be easy to dig out.

Bai Xiaowen had offered to join because he did not want to reap without sowing, but unexpectedly, it became an excuse for these two aliens to extort him.

Sometimes, being a good person really did not pay. He might as well wait nearby while the two aliens did the work. In any case, they could not occupy the Teleportation Gate forever.

Once they were done using it, Bai Xiaowen could use it himself. Unlike a Teleportation Array, a Teleportation Gate was indestructible.

The two aliens' expressions visibly darkened.

The Bristlemane snorted. "If you do not join now, then once we dig up the treasure, do not expect it to be so easy to get a share."

The Scalefolk added, "We will not give you any share at all!"

"Ah, that is fine. I am a very law-abiding person. I definitely will not rely on my Frost Dragon to steal your treasure." Bai Xiaowen gave the two of them a reassuring thumbs-up and smiled.

"Hmph, merely a Lord Grade summoned beast..." the Bristlemane muttered, its disdain nearly spilling from its face. It did not waste any more words on Bai Xiaowen and began diligently digging through the Ice Layer together with the Scalefolk.