After she finished speaking, she tossed a snow lotus formed from Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Ice into the air.
The snow lotus split in two midair, and the halves flew toward Xiao Bai and A-Tai, sinking into their brows. It was Snow Empress's token. Whoever held it possessed her authority.
Any Soul Beast in the Far North that sensed the snow lotus's aura would obey the holder's orders without question.
Xiao Bai touched her forehead with a paw, sensing the mark the snow lotus had left on her soul.
An earnest expression appeared on the bear's face. "Xiao Bai obeys. Don't worry, Mother. If anyone dares cause trouble while you're away, I'll slap him to death."
A-Tai silently knelt on one knee, pressing his right fist against the ice. The ice sheet gave a dull rumble the instant he knelt. That was his promise—a silent promise, backed by the weight of an entire glacier.
Snow Empress suddenly chuckled and reached out to pat Xiao Bai's furry forepaw. She couldn't reach Xiao Bai's head.
In that moment, she was no longer the foremost of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North, nor a seventy-hundred-thousand-year Ferocious Beast. She was simply the Snow Maiden who, long, long ago, had chased the aurora across the ice fields with a clumsy little white bear.
"Don't slap them to death. Leave them for me to deal with when I get back."
Xiao Bai grinned, showing a mouthful of sharp, icy teeth. Under the clouds that shrouded the Far North year-round, it was a somewhat comical smile, yet somehow warm.
Mu Chen stood to one side and brushed his hand over his Storage Soul Tool Bracelet. A gray rift into the Undead Half-Plane silently opened behind him. Its jagged gray rocks, parched black soil, and the eerie green flames atop a distant bone tower looked especially out of place in the frigid winds of the Far North.
"There's an area in the Undead Half-Plane that I prepared for you."
Snow Empress didn't hesitate. She stepped toward the rift. Her figure flickered slightly as she passed through the planar entrance—the laws of two different spaces exchanging places in an instant—then she stood firmly in the area covered in ice.
She surveyed her surroundings, her gaze sweeping over the jagged gray rocks and the orderly formations of Skeleton Soldiers in the distance before finally settling on the tower built of bones. A thoughtful glimmer passed through her icy blue eyes.
"This place..." She glanced back at Mu Chen. "You have quite a few secrets."
The gray rift slowly closed, completely concealing Snow Empress's aura. Mu Chen didn't linger in the Far North. He pulled his collar tighter, not because he was cold—the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion Left Arm Bone had made him more resistant to low temperatures than any human—but out of habit. Then he turned south and left this world of ice and snow behind.
As he left, the wind began to blow across the Far North again.
On the fourth day after Mu Chen left the Core Area of the Far North, another figure was struggling through the Ice-Sealed Forest on its outskirts, laboriously making his way toward the core.
He was a boy of no more than twelve or thirteen, dressed in Shrek Academy's dark green uniform, with an obviously ill-fitting, heavy fur coat wrapped over it.
Every step sank into the snow until it reached his knees. He struggled to pull himself free, then took another step. His lips were purple with cold, a thin layer of frost clung to his eyelashes, and each breath turned into a cloud of white mist that the wind tore apart and scattered.
Huo Yuhao.
Behind him was the phantom of a massive Ice Silkworm, its body translucent and milky white, with natural patterns of ice crystals covering its skin. The silkworm wriggled across the snow at a slow pace, each movement leaving a faint silvery-white trail on the surface. It was more than ten times Huo Yuhao's size, its round body like a small, moving snow mountain.
"Brother Sky Dream," Huo Yuhao said, rubbing his frozen fingers together. "Are you sure we're going the right way? We've been walking for four days."
Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's voice rang out in Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness, carrying the exasperation of an old hand dealing with a rookie. "We are. Keep going for two more days and we'll reach the Core Area of the Far North. Back then, I shed my skin in that area. It's where the Ice Jade Scorpion clan likes to gather most. Once we get there, I'll use my shed skin to simulate the aura I had at my peak. I'm sure I can lure Bingbing out."
Huo Yuhao fell silent for a while. The snow crunched beneath his feet.
"Brother Sky Dream," he said again. "Is the Ice Empress really your friend?"
Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's voice paused for a rare moment. "Not exactly a friend. She's my Bingbing, the Bingbing I'll never forget for as long as I live."
Huo Yuhao tried to picture an Ice Silkworm attempting to befriend an Ice Jade Empress Scorpion and found it hard to imagine. But he didn't say anything more, because his reason for coming to the Far North was clear: to obtain a Soul Ring.
After the Freshman Assessment, his progress in the Soul Guidance Department had been astonishingly fast. Fan Yu said he had an almost instinctive knack for making Soul Tools. Combined perfectly with his Spiritual Detection Sharing, that intuition let him work on Core Arrays with micrometer-level precision.
In just a few short months, he had already learned to make second-level Soul Tools on his own. At the same time, his Soul Power had risen from level fourteen to the level-twenty bottleneck. Reaching level twenty meant he needed to obtain his Second Soul Ring.
Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had suggested that he come to the Far North to find the Ice Empress. If he could earn the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion's recognition, it would be a qualitative leap for him.
Huo Yuhao knew the plan was extremely risky. The Ice Empress was one of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North, a forty-hundred-thousand-year Ice Jade Empress Scorpion. Even veteran instructors from Shrek Academy might not dare provoke her directly. But Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had sworn that he had a way to use his shed skin to lure her out.
"My aura at my peak is like a walking piece of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow to the Ice Empress," Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had said in Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness, his voice carrying a hint of smug certainty. "There's no way she can resist."
And so Huo Yuhao had come.
He had spent four days traveling by carriage from Shrek City to the edge of the Far North, then another four trudging through the Ice-Sealed Forest. Along the way, they had encountered several thousand-year ice-attribute Soul Beasts, all of which Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had driven off by releasing his aura. But Huo Yuhao knew perfectly well that the real danger lay in the core area. Old Tang existed only in Mu Chen's Sea of Consciousness and couldn't help conceal his aura. Once he reached the core, he would have to rely entirely on Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's protection.
If the Ice Empress didn't appear, and he disturbed some other Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, he might well lose his life there.
On the sixth day, Huo Yuhao finally stepped into the Core Area of the Far North.
The cold here was on a completely different level from the outskirts. It wasn't simply a matter of the temperature being lower. It was a more fundamental chill, the cold of "death."
He felt his very marrow freezing, and every heartbeat took more effort than usual.