Hearing Ice Empress's sudden coquettish shout, Xue Bingchen immediately felt a headache coming on. He could only scratch the back of his head and let out a helpless bitter laugh.
Just then, an ethereal, cool, mature female voice—pleasant as the collision of ten-thousand-year mystic ice—strangely came from within Xue Bingchen's body!
"Ice, stop making trouble. How many times have I explained it to you? Staying inside Little Chen's body is a form of special cultivation.
"Moreover, this not only benefits me, but also greatly improves Little Chen's cultivation."
This voice belonged to none other than the true ruler of the Far North, the Seven-Hundred-Thousand-Year Fierce Beast Snow Sky Ice Woman—Snow Empress!
Snow Empress herself did not appear, yet her cool voice truly came from Xue Bingchen's chest. If outsiders had seen this scene, they would have been scared out of their wits.
However, Ice Empress did not buy Snow Empress's explanation at all.
With her hands on her hips, she glared indignantly at Xue Bingchen's chest and bluntly threw out a straight ball:
"So what? What does that change? I don't care whether you're cultivating or not. Anyway... I missed you! Come out already!"
Ice Empress's words were so utterly direct, even carrying a hint of coquettishness, that Xue Bingchen, caught between them, was so embarrassed his toes were practically digging out a three-bedroom apartment.
"Ah..."
A deeply helpless sigh came from within Xue Bingchen's body.
Clearly, even Snow Empress had no way of dealing with this willful best friend who harbored special feelings for her.
With that sigh, a soft white glow suddenly lit up over Xue Bingchen's chest.
Immediately afterward, a crystalline hexagonal snowflake radiating an aura of ultimate purity slowly drifted out from Xue Bingchen's body.
The snowflake spun once in midair, then expanded in the wind, instantly transforming into an incomparably exquisite and breathtakingly beautiful figure!
Her long snow-white hair cascaded behind her back. Her flawless face carried a hint of coolness and helplessness, while a white gown perfectly outlined her proud figure.
It was Snow Empress!
Seeing that Snow Empress had finally emerged, Ice Empress's face immediately blossomed into a radiant smile, and she was just about to rush over for some cuddling.
At that moment, Xue Bingchen, hoping to ease the awkward atmosphere from earlier, could not help but interject:
"Auntie Ice Empress, you've seen the wonders of my third soul skill so many times over the past few years. Why are you still jealous?"
"I guarantee that Mom wasn't slacking off inside me just now. She was helping me 'make little snowmen'! Yes, that's right—we were absolutely cultivating properly!"
The moment he said that,
the previously warm atmosphere instantly froze.
At the summit of the snow mountain, only the howling of the cold wind remained.
Snow Empress and Ice Empress turned their heads at the same time, and two pairs of gorgeous eyes landed squarely on Xue Bingchen.
"Making... making little snowmen?" Ice Empress's gaze became somewhat strange.
A faint blush rarely appeared on Snow Empress's cool, beautiful face. She fiercely shot Xue Bingchen a glare and scolded him irritably:
"Little Chen! What nonsense are you talking about?! What do you mean, making little snowmen? Why does that sound so weird?!"
Only then did Xue Bingchen realize belatedly that his metaphor from earlier seemed... to carry just a tiny bit of ambiguity in this context.
"Ahem, slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue! I meant Mom was helping me condense the power of ice and snow!"
Xue Bingchen's old face reddened. He hurriedly coughed twice and forcibly changed the subject.
Actually, Xue Bingchen could not really be blamed for speaking carelessly.
The root of it all lay in his third soul skill, which was practically heaven-defying and could even be said to break the common sense of the Douluo Continent!
Xue Bingchen's third soul skill was called—[Soul of the Snow Woman]!
It was an extremely rare, perhaps even unique soul skill that combined domain and support abilities!
The purpose of this soul skill was not attack or defense, but to create a self-contained "Ice and Snow Space" within Xue Bingchen's body!
As long as he activated this soul skill, Xue Bingchen could frantically absorb the ice and snow energy between heaven and earth, storing it within the Ice and Snow Space inside his body.
After being nurtured and filtered by the Ice and Snow Space, that violent absorbed energy would gradually transform into the purest, gentlest Ultimate Ice and snow power. It would then feed back into Xue Bingchen, comprehensively improving his physical qualities and greatly accelerating his Soul Power cultivation speed!
Simply put, this so-called "Ice and Snow Space" was like a super backup hidden energy reserve that Xue Bingchen carried with him!
As long as there was energy stored in this reserve, Xue Bingchen could consume it to replenish his Soul Power or use it to aid his Soul Power cultivation.
What was most unbelievable—so much so that even Snow Empress and Ice Empress found it inconceivable—was...
Snow Empress, a Heavenly Snow Woman nurtured by heaven and earth and formed from the purest ice and snow elements, could actually transform into a snowflake and enter the Ice and Snow Space within Xue Bingchen's body without any hindrance!
This also explained why Snow Empress's voice had come from within Xue Bingchen's body earlier.
Snow Empress had indeed been inside Xue Bingchen's Ice and Snow Space just now. Using her absolute control over ice and snow elements as a Seven-Hundred-Thousand-Year Fierce Beast, she had helped him accelerate the nurturing of that mixed energy, rapidly converting it into pure ice and snow power that could assist Xue Bingchen's cultivation.
That was why Xue Bingchen had joked about "making little snowmen." Snow Empress really was inside helping him shape and purify energy crystals, and when some of those crystals piled up, they really did look like little snowmen. He had not said anything wrong.
As for why Snow Empress was willing to stay inside?
In Snow Empress's own words, the Ice and Snow Space within Xue Bingchen's body was filled with the most primal, purest aura of Ultimate Ice.
Staying there gave her the familiar feeling of embracing the source core of the Far North.
Within that space, not only did she not need to expend power resisting the suppression of the outside world's laws, but cultivation also felt extremely comfortable and pleasant.
Since staying there was comfortable for her, and she could conveniently help her beloved little Bingchen cultivate faster, Snow Empress naturally saw no reason to refuse such a mutually beneficial arrangement.
On the Douluo Continent, an ironclad rule had always circulated, though it would not be systematically summarized until ten thousand years later.
That was—before level thirty, possessors of Ultimate Martial Souls cultivated far faster than ordinary people.
However, once they broke through level thirty, the attributes borne by their martial souls were simply too ultimate and too domineering, requiring their bodies to spend a great deal of time adapting and being tempered.
As a result, from level thirty to level seventy, their cultivation speed would become exceptionally slow, like a crawling turtle!
This was the so-called "Curse of the Ultimate Martial Soul"!
It was also why there were so few possessors of ultimate-attribute martial souls on the continent.
Yet this ironclad rule was completely shattered in Xue Bingchen's case!
PS: The next chapter will cover Soul Power Levels. Everyone, guess what his is—if you guess right, I'll send you a collectible cross-dressing photo [Past of Chengdu]
Before you continue