The pillar of light faded.
She stood there.
She looked like a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen, and her head barely reached Mu Chen's chest.
Two long scorpion-tail braids hung down her back. Every strand was jade green, like emerald polished from the ice of the Far North.
Her skin was so fair it was nearly translucent, and her features were too exquisite to look real. Her jade-green pupils were vertical, like insects trapped in amber—cold and sharp, devoid of any human emotion.
She wore a short jade-green skirt and stood barefoot on ten-thousand-year-old ice. The instant her feet touched the ground, a layer of even harder ice formed beneath them.
Behind her appeared the phantom of a colossal ice scorpion, emerald green as jade. Its pincers spread wide, its tail arched overhead, and the venomous barb at its tip caught the dim light with a deadly, freezing glint.
The Ice Empress.
One of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North, the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion, with three hundred and ninety thousand years of cultivation.
Her aura engulfed the entire area without restraint. The ice within several hundred meters cracked into countless fine fissures beneath its pressure. An intensely cold might filled the air; with every breath came a faint taste of rust from deep in the throat—the blood seeping from capillaries burst by the cold.
But when she saw the Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow in Mu Chen's hand, her jade-green pupils contracted ever so slightly. The change was so subtle it was like a faint mark skimming across the ice, gone in an instant.
"Human." Her voice was lovely, as clear as a breaking icicle, but every syllable carried the chill of ten-thousand-year-old ice.
"Where did you get what you're holding?"
Mu Chen didn't answer her question. He held the ice marrow in his palm and met her jade-green, vertical pupils with a calm gaze. What he said had nothing to do with her question. "I have more than a dozen pieces of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow. Their quality is no worse than this one—in fact, some are better."
The Ice Empress fell silent.
More than a dozen pieces of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow were enough to unleash a bloody storm among the ice-attribute Soul Beasts of the entire Far North.
And she knew better than anyone how valuable the marrow was, because she had been living with an injury for many years.
Without treatment, that wound would leave her no chance of surviving her next tribulation.
Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow was one of the few things that could heal damage to her source. The problem was, one piece wasn't enough.
She needed at least ten.
"What do you want in exchange?" the Ice Empress asked bluntly.
"I'll give you two choices." Mu Chen raised two fingers. "First, I use the Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow to heal your injury, and you protect me for ten years. After that, you're free to leave or stay."
The corner of the Ice Empress's mouth twitched, as if she'd just heard a joke from someone who didn't know his place.
A three-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year-old Ice Jade Empress Scorpion, serving as a guardian for a human Soul Ancestor at level forty-nine? Even for only ten years, it was an insult to the title of one of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North.
"The second choice," Mu Chen continued, unbothered by her reaction, "is for you to offer yourself as a sacrifice to me. In return, I'll use the Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow to heal the Snow Empress's injuries and help her break through. Fifteen pieces will be enough to reform her source."
The Ice Empress's expression changed at those words.
If the first choice had struck her as ridiculous, the second had hit her right in her most vulnerable place. The Snow Empress, leader of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North, was a seventy-hundred-thousand-year-old Heavenly Snow Woman.
The Snow Empress's injuries were even worse than hers—so bad that maintaining her human form was becoming difficult.
For years, the Snow Empress had been cultivating deep in the Core Area of the Far North. On the surface, she was in seclusion to cultivate. In truth, she was using all her power to delay the worsening of her injuries. If she wasn't treated soon, it was only a matter of time before she perished.
This human knew about it.
"How do you know that?" The Ice Empress's voice suddenly dropped, low as the sound of currents flowing beneath the ice.
Mu Chen didn't answer.
The Ice Empress didn't need him to. She had lived for four hundred thousand years and seen more humans than most Soul Masters had seen Soul Beasts.
Humans had a strange quality: they always seemed to know things they shouldn't. Sometimes it was from the notes left behind by a fallen powerhouse, sometimes from an ancient prophecy, and sometimes from nothing more than an inexplicable hunch. She stopped probing the source of his information. It no longer mattered. What mattered was that this human held the Snow Empress's hope of survival in his hands.
But it was only hope.
"What you say is moving. But why should I believe you? What if you're lying about those fifteen pieces of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow?" The Ice Empress's voice turned cold again, and a dangerous glint appeared in her jade-green, vertical pupils.
She took a step forward.
With that single step, the ice within several hundred meters sank an inch all at once. Cracks spread out from beneath her feet, and countless tiny ice crystals formed in the air, hanging motionless. Each one had edges as sharp as blades.
The full pressure of a three-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year Soul Beast was not an oppression of Soul Power. It was a crushing disparity in the very level of life. In that instant, any barrier of spiritual power was useless. The pressure pierced Old Tang's golden protective barrier and struck straight into Mu Chen's soul.
Mu Chen didn't retreat.
The pressure fell on him like an iceberg weighing down his shoulders. He could feel his bones creaking faintly and his legs trembling, but he stood where he was, utterly still. At a mere thought, the space behind him began to twist.
A stretch of gray nothingness unfolded behind him, like an eye slowly opening.
Jagged gray rock walls, a dried-up black riverbed, and in the distance, a towering white bone pagoda shrouded in mist. The entrance to the Undead Half-Plane tore open a rift in the icefield of the Core Area.
The dead stillness surging from the rift collided in the air with the cold of the Far North, hissing as if two blades were scraping against each other.
Mu Chen took half a step back. Half his body slipped into the gray rift. The Ice Empress's pressure, strong enough to crush tempered steel, vanished like a stone dropped into the sea the instant it touched the Half-Plane's entrance, silently dissolved by the laws of another world.
Half of him was in the Far North, the other half in a different plane. He could attack or retreat at will, and at any moment, he could hide his entire body inside the Half-Plane and shut out every attack the Ice Empress could launch.
The Ice Empress stopped. Her jade-green pupils narrowed slightly as she studied the gray rift, her gaze sharp as a blade. She could sense the spatial properties on the other side. It wasn't a Soul Skill or a Soul Tool, but a real plane with laws of its own. The realization brought a subtle change to her expression.
"An independent space. You're no ordinary human." She spoke slowly, no longer regarding him with the condescension of before. Her voice now held the gravity of someone reassessing an opponent.
Mu Chen stepped out of the Half-Plane, and the gray rift behind him slowly closed. He stood before the Ice Empress once more, his blue hair whipping in the cold wind, his calm blue eyes still meeting her jade-green, vertical pupils.