Calls echoed from ahead.
Yet there was no path forward.
Shen Le raised his head and looked up. Grim icicles hung overhead like inverted wolf fangs. Before him, a pale-blue ice wall reflected his blurred face and cut off his path.
And that bronze mirror, which seemed to be asleep yet also seemed to hum softly in response within his heart, was clearly behind the ice wall...
Shen Le slowly reached out and pressed a hand against the ice wall. Even through his thick glove, he felt a bone-piercing chill travel from the wall to his fingertips, then rapidly spread upward:
In an instant, his entire arm had frozen numb, the cold even crossing his shoulder and striking straight at his heart.
Shen Le: "..."
He had been careless!
He should not have let his guard down just because it was an ice wall!
When touching an unknown object, he should have treated it like a flame or something that might be live with electricity—palm inward, arm outward, so he could naturally pull back the moment something felt wrong!
Now, he could only circulate his energy with all his might, driving the heat up to his shoulder and into his arm. The golden pearl in his dantian spun rapidly, stirring up waves of heat that crashed forward again and again. Soon, a cloud of icy mist rose from his arm:
The cold had already formed a layer of frost over his sleeve. As his internal energy melted it away, vapor even rose from it!
Sweat beaded on Shen Le's brow in his panic. Round after round, wave after wave, he had no idea how many cycles of internal energy he circulated before he finally forced the chill from his shoulder to his elbow, then from his elbow to his palm.