The frigid wind of the Extreme North seemed to freeze in an instant.
Tom Cat had already stuffed that frying pan—which defied not only physics but theology as well—back into his pocket. He was now sprawled over Grey Wolf's shoulder, boredly grooming his wind-tousled blue fur with his tongue.
Before them, the three rulers of the Extreme North—the Titan Snow Devil King, flattened into a two-dimensional plane; the trembling Ice Empress; and the conflicted Snow Empress—faced the greatest choice of their long lives.
The roar of machinery was gone, as were the flashing electronic alarms.
Qin Feng had reined in that manic urge for destruction. Instead, he stood quietly upon the ice field like a priest about to perform a sacred rite.
"Your so-called hundreds of thousands of years of cultivation are far too slow in the face of true evolution."
Orochimaru's hoarse voice broke the dead silence.
His golden snake eyes were fixed tightly on Snow Empress. The glass vial in his hand swayed gently, and the pale golden liquid within seemed alive, slowly writhing along the walls of the bottle and exuding a seductive aura that made every soul beast's soul tremble.
It was the power of a god, stripped of will and reduced to nothing but the purest essence of life.
For the first time, Snow Empress's eyes, as though they contained ten thousand years of ice and snow, wavered.
She stared at the vial. As a spirit born of heaven and earth's elemental energy, she yearned for that realm more than any other creature—to transcend her mortal body and touch the divine domain.
Yet she could also sense the sickeningly sweet, bloody stench behind that power: a domineering force that defied the laws of nature and forcibly twisted life.
"What do you want me to do?"