Snow Empress stood to one side. Before long, her tightly clenched hands relaxed. She suppressed the urge to act and turned her gaze toward Yan Hongchen, studying him carefully for a moment.
She could sense that the unfamiliar presence that had just taken control of Yan Hongchen's body was beneficial rather than harmful to him. Though that aura was unfathomably deep, it had not displayed much aggression.
Inside the cage, Na Ning's eyelids trembled slightly. She slowly opened her eyes, and only after a long while did her unfocused gaze gradually sharpen.
She saw the cold metal bars, the ice crystals glinting frostily across the snow, and the endless white ice plains stretching into the distance.
"Where is this?" Her voice was hoarse and weak, as though forced out from the depths of her throat. "Why am I in a cage? Where is my husband? Where is my daughter?"
Before her words had even faded, memories surged back like floodwaters bursting through a broken dam. She remembered those hands controlling her—pale, icy, like those of a corpse.
She remembered that evil soul master, those eyes hidden beneath a hood, and the malice that seeped into her bones.
She remembered raising her weapon with her own hands while unable to control herself, aiming it at her husband, at her young daughter.
Her face instantly turned white as paper, and immense fear and guilt flooded her eyes. "No... no..."
Her hand shot up, a mass of grayish-black Soul Power gathering in her palm as she viciously struck toward her own heart.
"Freeze her!" Yan Hongchen shouted sharply. His voice was not loud, yet it cut through the silence of the frigid night like a blade.
Snow Empress reacted with incredible speed. A streak of icy light shot from her fingertip and struck