The moment his words fell, two immense auras erupted at once.
The wind and snow of the Extreme North seemed to be pinned down by an invisible giant hand at that instant.
The snow filling the sky froze in midair for a moment before violently sweeping back to either side, revealing the gray-white heavens.
The ice began cracking where the two auras met, fractures spreading in every direction like a spiderweb. Fine, dense cracking sounds rang out, as though countless icicles were breaking at once.
The Ice Empress moved.
Her scorpion tail lashed out like a dark green whip, carrying extreme cold as it carved a warped trail through the air and stabbed toward Gu Linyuan's dragon head.
The tip curled slightly upward, tracing an arc through the snowstorm. Even the wind froze wherever it passed, leaving behind a slender trail of ice crystals, as if it had torn a gash through the air.
Gu Linyuan tilted his dragon head aside.
The sharp scorpion tail grazed past his neck, scratching a long, thin mark across the skin covered in dark golden scales and leaving several marks of varying depth.
Using the momentum of his sidestep, he spun sharply. His long dragon tail swept out with a howl of wind, wrapped in the heavy Power of the Earth as it struck at the Ice Empress's side.
The Ice Empress swiftly dodged to the side. The dragon tail grazed one of her scorpion legs, producing a dull impact.
She felt a faint tremor run through her limb, leaving it slightly numb beneath its icy crystalline covering.
She could feel the nature of that power. Heavy, dense, and carrying a solid sense of crushing weight, as though the weight of the entire earth had been condensed into that single strike.
A hint of