Two Empresses Stunned, Soul Spirits Aggrieved!

The deeper they went into the lava cave, the purer and deeper the blue glow ahead became.

The ice beneath their feet had turned into completely transparent dark blue crystal. Standing on it, they could even see the crisscrossing cracks in the ice below.

The temperature here had already dropped to a level capable of freezing a soul master's meridians.

Fine beads of ice continuously formed across the surface of the golden barrier Mu En had raised, only to turn into white mist and disperse as the Radiant Holy Dragon's Soul Power circulated.

After passing the last massive screen of ice rock, the space before them suddenly opened up.

It was a vast, nearly circular inner cavern.

There were no hanging stalactites on the ceiling. It was flat and smooth.

Yet at the very center of the cavern stood forty-nine ice pillars in neat rows.

The pillars varied in thickness. The tallest were two or three meters high, while even the shortest stood over half a meter tall.

Their outer layers were transparent Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice, while a pale-blue, semi-solid gelatinous substance was sealed within.

The substance flowed slowly up and down at an incredibly sluggish pace. The pure ice-and-snow elemental energy it emitted even condensed into tangible blue snowflakes in midair, which drifted gently down.

Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow.

Forty-nine whole pillars.

Yun Yi stopped walking, his breath imperceptibly catching for half a second.

Before he could speak, a tremendous uproar had already erupted within his sea of consciousness.

One jade-green and one snow-white halo rapidly condensed beside Yun Yi.

Ice Empress, wearing a little dress of white and green, and Snow Empress, dressed in a pure white gown, appeared simultaneously within this frigid, bone-piercing space.

The two supreme rulers of the Extreme North had no attention to spare for Yun Yi or Mu En.

Their gazes were nailed to the forty-nine ice pillars. Their bodies had stiffened, and they had even forgotten to breathe.

Ice Empress's mouth hung open, her jade-green twin ponytails falling over her shoulders. Her yellow gemstone-like eyes were filled with disbelief.

She raised a fair little hand and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the sight before her had not changed in the slightest.

"Th-this... How is this possible?" Ice Empress's voice trembled as she staggered toward the nearest pillar of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow.

She reached out, wanting to touch the Profound Ice around it, but her fingertips stopped in midair. She was afraid that too much force would shatter the illusion before her.

Snow Empress had likewise lost her usual cold composure.

She took several steps to Ice Empress's side. The pale-blue gelatinous substance was reflected in her sky-blue eyes as her chest rose and fell sharply.

For hundreds of thousands of years, they had remained within the core region of the Extreme North for hundreds of thousands of years.

To ice-attributed soul beasts, Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow was a supreme treasure capable of defying fate itself.

Finding even a fist-sized piece would be enough to bring a qualitative leap in their cultivation, perhaps even increasing their chances of surviving a heavenly tribulation.

For such a rare treasure of heaven and earth, Ice Empress had searched countless glaciers back then, while Snow Empress had spent years using her spiritual power to scan the deep ley lines of the Extreme North.

Yet the total amount they had found over their combined hundreds of thousands of years was not even one-third of the shortest pillar before them.

And now, beneath a human city not far from the Extreme North, such an enormous cache of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow had been hidden away!

Snow Empress closed her eyes and felt the origin energy in the air, so rich it was almost suffocating. When she opened them again, her expression had become incomparably complicated.

Ice Empress turned to Snow Empress. Their gazes met in the air, and each understood what lay in the other's eyes.

Then the two Ice and Snow Empresses turned around in unison, their movements perfectly synchronized, and stared straight at Yun Yi standing behind them.

Yun Yi raised an eyebrow under the bizarre stares of these two great ferocious beasts.

Ice Empress swallowed and muttered softly, "Tell me honestly. Are you the biological son of this continent's plane will?"

Snow Empress said nothing, but her slight nod clearly showed that she agreed with this absurd guess.

The imprints of four deities entering his sea of consciousness was already a miracle unseen since ancient times.

Then, she and Bing'er, the two rulers of the Extreme North, had somehow signed contracts and become his exclusive soul spirits.

And now, all he had to do was jump down into the backyard of some second-rate sect, and he would stumble upon a peerless treasure they had been unable to find in their entire lives.

This luck could no longer be described as merely good. It was as if the heavens had spoon-fed him a meal and were about to wipe his mouth for him as well.

Noticing their fixed stares, Yun Yi coughed.

Naturally, he assumed that the two Ice and Snow Empresses had been thoroughly won over by his foresight and profound fortune, and were expressing their deepest respect for him.

Yun Yi placed one hand behind his back, raised his chin slightly, and turned his face to a forty-five-degree angle as he gazed deeply toward the blue dome above the cavern.

He attempted to assume the bearing of a mysterious master who had everything under control.

But in the current setting, the pose looked somewhat forced.

Mu En stood to the side, watching his junior brother put on this pretentious act. The corner of his mouth twitched twice despite himself.

He turned his head away, pressed a clenched fist to his lips, and cleared his throat forcefully, suppressing the laughter that was about to spill out.

Ice Empress and Snow Empress exchanged glances, utterly baffled.

Why had this man suddenly struck such a strange pose? Was his neck acting up?

Yun Yi maintained his pose for three seconds, only to find that the expected gasps of admiration and praise were nowhere to be heard.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the two empresses looking at him as if he were an idiot, and decisively dropped the embarrassing act.

Turning around, he pointed at the forty-nine pillars of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow and got straight to the point.

"Enough standing around. This stuff can't be taken away. The outside temperature would make its power dissipate rapidly. You two, go over there and absorb it with everything you've got."

Ice Empress's eyes lit up. Her earlier speechlessness was instantly thrown to the clouds as she cheered and prepared to pounce.

"Don't rush. I'm not finished." Yun Yi grabbed Ice Empress by the back of her collar and hauled the little girl back.

Looking at the two of them, he explained the next steps. "After absorbing it, don't refine it immediately. Compress and store all the Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow's energy. Keep part of it in your spirit bodies, and pour the rest into the soul bones in my right arm and right leg. Treat them as storage reservoirs."

Ice Empress broke free from Yun Yi's grip and stopped in midair, the excitement on her little face gradually freezing over.

"Store it? What about you?" Ice Empress asked, glaring at him.

"I'll slowly draw from you and absorb it during my daily cultivation later," Yun Yi answered righteously.

"My cultivation is only at Rank 50 right now. Directly absorbing a treasure of this level would waste too much of its medicinal power. Keeping it with you means I can draw on it whenever I need it. That's the only way to maximize the benefits."

Ice Empress's pretty face instantly fell, and the resentment in her eyes nearly overflowed.

Was that even something a person would do?

He was letting them feast on the treasure they had dreamed of, yet everything they swallowed was just being stored away, while they could not eat a single bite themselves!

How was that any different from carrying dishes at a restaurant while watching others feast on an imperial banquet?

Even Snow Empress, who had always been cool and holy, could barely keep herself together now.

She lowered her head slightly and rubbed her brow, trying to calm her somewhat chaotic emotions.

So, after signing the contract, the two great kings of the Extreme North were not only responsible for providing soul rings and soul skills. Now they also had to serve as portable power banks and storage cabinets.

Seeing their unwilling expressions, Yun Yi put on a stern face and displayed the authority of the one in charge.

"What, you feel wronged?" Yun Yi stepped forward and lectured them with righteous conviction.

"Get the situation straight. You are my soul spirits! You have no physical bodies. Who do you rely on for the Soul Power needed to maintain your forms every day, or to unleash those powerful skills in battle later on?"

Yun Yi pointed at himself.

"Me. The upper limit of my cultivation determines how much strength you can wield. My current meridian capacity and Soul Power reserves are nowhere near enough for you to squander energy freely. Only by slowly refining this Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow, strengthening my foundation, and raising my strength can you benefit alongside me. If I don't become stronger, you'll only be pretty accessories."

His argument was flawless and airtight.

Ice Empress opened her mouth, wanting to retort, but could not find a suitable response.

Snow Empress listened quietly. Though she knew Yun Yi's lengthy speech was entirely true, the sense of disparity from being used as a power bank still left an indescribable bitterness in her heart.

Living under another's roof was probably like this.

Snow Empress sighed, raised her head, and her gaze became calm once more.

She took the hand of Ice Empress, who was still sulking, and gently shook her head.

"He's right. We share both glory and loss now. Let's go."

Ice Empress puffed out her cheeks and glared at Yun Yi, but she also knew what mattered most.

The two exchanged a glance, then turned around resignedly and flew toward the forty-nine ice pillars at the center of the cavern.

Snow Empress hovered in midair, her long white hair stirring without wind.

She formed a seal before her chest with both hands, and deep light shone in her sky-blue eyes.

The origin power of the ruler of the Extreme North was fully unleashed. An incomparably powerful suction force erupted from her body, directly enveloping more than twenty pillars of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow.

Under Snow Empress's control, the hard ice surrounding the pillars silently melted away. The pale-blue gelatinous substance within turned into streams of dazzling blue light that continuously flowed into Snow Empress's spirit body.

Ice Empress refused to be outdone.

She directly manifested the phantom of the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion, its two enormous pincers clamping tightly around an ice pillar.

Jade-green light flashed, and the energy of the Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow was forcibly drawn out through the pincers and poured into her body.

As energy continued to flow into them, the spirit bodies of the two women became increasingly solid, and the cold aura they emitted grew ever more astonishing.

But they strictly obeyed Yun Yi's command and did not refine any of the energy for themselves.

After completing a cycle within their bodies, the pure ice-blue halos followed the connection of the soul contracts and rushed directly into Yun Yi's body.

Yun Yi stood where he was and immediately closed his eyes.

He guided this enormous, heart-palpitating ice-attributed elemental energy around his primary meridians and directed all of it into his right arm and right leg.

The four-hundred-thousand-year Ice Jade Empress Scorpion Right Arm Bone and the seven-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Snow Woman Right Leg Bone shone brilliantly at that moment.

These two top-tier soul bones of the present age displayed astonishing capacity, accepting every bit of the incoming Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow energy and gradually compressing it into the deepest structure of the bones.

Mu En stood nearby, watching this spectacular sight, and a trace of satisfaction flashed through his eyes.

"Using soul spirits as energy transfer stations and storage vessels not only perfectly avoids the risk of bursting from excessive energy, but also nourishes the soul bones." Mu En murmured, nodding repeatedly.

"My junior brother's mind really works fast."

Within the underground cavern, blue streams of light intertwined and danced.

The forty-nine pillars of Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow were shrinking at a visible rate.

The right side of Yun Yi's body was covered in a thick layer of ice armor, and after being tempered by this ultimate energy, his aura grew increasingly profound and restrained.