The cold wind carried fine ice crystals and beat them on the thick canvas awning, making an endless whimper. The huge motorcade was like a centipede made of steel, slowly crawling on the vast snowfield at the edge of Extreme North.
Inside the carriage were neatly stacked sealed cargo boxes covered with thick frost. One of the boxes contained frozen blocks classified as "third-level offal feed" shipped from a coastal town thousands of miles away. The small piece of Coral Douluo stone debris attached to the Jingtian wreckage was frozen deep inside one of the ice blocks, making it inconspicuous.
There is no light, no sound here, just the deathly silence below absolute zero.
Time has lost its meaning of flow here. Only the extremely low hum of the continuous operation of Soul Guidance Refrigeration Core and the never-ending sound of wind and snow outside the carriage remind us of the existence of the outside world.
For the wreckage that is the size of a grain of rice, is in absolute Ice Seal, and has sinking consciousness, everything in the outside world is irrelevant. Its time seems to be stretched, diluted, and almost stagnant the moment it enters this extremely cold realm.
However, beneath this absolute stillness on the outside, some deeper changes are taking place internally.
It is not an active and conscious change. It is a natural level, the most instinctive and subtle attraction and resonance.
"Cold".
This is the depth of the wreckage, the instinct that originates from Jingtian and is imprinted on the very bottom of its existence.
The extreme coldness of the outside world represents "freezing", "stagnation" and "reducing all activities to a minimum". It is stillness on the physical level and the slowness of molecular movement.
The two are not exactly the same, but at this moment, in this absolutely low temperature and almost time-stagnant environment, there is a subtle resonance at a certain frequency.
"Buzz..."
There was no sound. But at the core of the wreckage, at the boundary where the Ninth Tentacle foot wreckage blended with the almost dissipated gray-purple "mixture", an indescribable, cold "comfort" spread quietly, like the tiniest electric current.
Not warmth, but fit.
It was as if a drowning man who had been drifting in the Surging Waves waves for countless years suddenly sank into a cold but absolutely calm deep sea. The violence and tearing of the outside world disappeared, leaving only the boundless, all-inclusive, and quiet cold.
In this "quiet cold", the subtle, irreversible "sense of dissipation" that had always existed due to lack of energy and the imminent collapse of the structure, for the first time, truly and obviously... slowed down.
No, not just slow down.
The extreme cold of the outside world is like an invisible but tough "ice shell" that reinforces and protects the fragile structure of the wreckage from the Origin level. It "freezes" the last energy particles that are about to escape in place. It "solidifies" the final connection of the rules that are about to break in the moment that is about to be broken.
This is a passive, unconscious, but extremely effective "Ice Seal" and "maintenance".
It did not give the wreckage any new energy, but pressed the "pause button" on its existence, preventing it from quietly dissipating after the energy was completely exhausted.
At the same time, the Ninth Tentacle's devouring instinct of the remains also underwent extremely subtle changes in the resonance of the extreme silence and coldness.
It no longer (and cannot) actively absorb any energy from the outside world. Because the outside world only has pure and extreme physical low temperature, without the "toxins", "breath of death" or "Soul Power residue" it is accustomed to.
Its "devouring" instinct, stimulated by this extreme cold resonance, began to look inward... and "examine" itself.
Under the continuous resonance of the extreme cold environment and the protection of "Ice Seal", this originally broken, dim, and almost dissipated rule imprint has an extremely subtle and imperceptible... "condensation" and "clarity".
It is not a recovery, but under the "same frequency" stimulation of the external environment, its most essential "shape" is highlighted and reinforced.
Just like a sand sculpture that was about to be blown away by the wind, it was suddenly poured with a thin layer of transparent glue that solidified quickly. Although it was fragile and could not be restored to its original shape, at least the "shape" was fixed and would not continue to collapse.
And Ninth Tentacle's instinct to devour the remains of the foot, when "looking inwards" at the Origin that was reinforced by extreme cold, produced a primitive and instinctive "closeness" and "desire".
It begins to work in the slowest and most subtle way, no longer outward, but inward, trying to "Entanglement", "penetrate", and "understand" this thread of its own rules that resonate with the external environment.
This is not conscious learning or fusion, but more like two "substances" in the same desperate situation with slightly resonant attributes, instinctively and slowly looking for the most stable coexistence posture.
Time, in this Far North Ice Seal, has lost its meaning.
Maybe a few days have passed, maybe a few weeks.
When the transport convoy finally arrived at the huge Soul Guidance Freezing Base, which was like an ice crystal palace on the edge of Extreme North, when the cargo boxes were unloaded and sent into the giant icehouse deep into the mountain, where the temperature was even lower and even the soul would freeze...
The changes within the wreckage have also reached a subtle critical point.
The devouring instinct of the wreckage has established an extremely fragile, instinctive and preliminary "connection" with the Origin protected by the extreme cold.
This connection is not a fusion, but more like a seed. It establishes an extremely weak resonance channel about "cold" and "protection" in the frozen soil and the ice and snow covering it.
This channel is so weak that it can hardly transmit any energy, but it exists.
The extreme cold outside is like the most patient craftsman, using cold as a carving knife and time as a grindstone to carve an invisible layer of quiet "ice patterns" belonging to "Extreme North" on the fragile structure of the wreckage.
When this bag of "offal" is deep-frozen in the icehouse, a new label is attached, and it is ready to be sent to the Heaven Dou Empire places...
The wreckage itself is indescribably and essentially different from when it just left the coastal cesspool.
It is still small, still fragile, still unconscious, and still may be completely annihilated at any time.
But its "existence" was reinforced by the extreme cold.
Its "core" is imprinted with a cold, quiet, introverted "undertone".
It is no longer just a chaotic mess of energy that is about to dissipate.
It's more like a...
The "seed" of Ice Seal.