The young girl leaned beneath the tower, the cold wind stirring the hem of her dress.
Her Spirit Fiend circulated, threads of vitality spilling forth, so potent that fresh shoots even sprouted from the soil around the tower.
"You did something huge, hmm?"
Gu Yeqi looked at Bai Qinghan, nodded toward Shenjing, and revealed a faint smile. "Why the long face? This isn't the Qinghan I know. The Qinghan of the past would have smiled at this."
Across from the girl, another young woman lowered her eyes in silence. She did want to smile, but all she could do now was tug at the corners of her lips and shake her head weakly. "Killing these pests only makes me feel bored."
With a sigh, the white-haired girl lifted her head, took several steps forward, and came to stand beside her friend. She gazed at the wisps of cooking smoke rising from the refugee camp, her voice calm. "Revenge—the thing I had thought about day and night. Now that I've truly done it, all I feel is emptiness. Because I know perfectly well that these specific people are nothing more than vermin beneath the heavens."
"Yeqi, you know it. What I want to kill is something more fundamental... like winter's bitter cold..."
As she spoke, she raised a finger and pointed through the air at the soil beneath Gu Yeqi's feet.
In an instant, an invisible, formless chill of utmost yin seeped downward. Frost-white rays like swords darted through the earth, driving out countless tiny insects hidden in the soil to weather the winter. The moment they touched the air, they froze into glistening ice sculptures. Those deeply buried egg sacs cracked apart in the frost, and the spores that had yet to sprout were utterly pulverized.
"Bury every pestilence of