"You two in there, interested in loosening up a bit?" "May I ask why?"
Those two brief lines were the only words exchanged before the fight began. Almost as soon as Suanni finished speaking, Ice Empress and Ice Bear Xiao Bai attacked together. Their intentions were obvious—they were determined to fight him.
However, after battling from the mountain peak all the way down to its base, Ice Empress gradually realized something was wrong—Suanni seemed to be a soul beast.
At first, Suanni had maintained his human form. Thanks to the method Winged Dragon had imparted to them, he could completely conceal his soul beast aura. Since he now believed that Mo Lin had a way to defeat Snow Empress, Ice Empress and Ice Bear Xiao Bai were highly likely to become future "colleagues." Thus, Suanni held back whenever he could and naturally had no intention of fighting in his true form from the start.
But as the battle continued, things became increasingly strange. Ice Empress's command of the ice element had naturally reached the level of Ultimate Ice. Though she was not as supreme as Snow Empress, the power of that ultimate realm was already enough to grant her the ability to fight above her level. Facing Suanni in human form, she went all out.
Other than her strongest offensive and domain skills, she unleashed both Ice Empress' Pincer and Ice Empress' Armor, using the powerful "exoskeleton" of an arthropod to launch a frenzied close-range assault against Suanni. Her reasoning was simple: she believed Suanni was human, and humans could never surpass soul beasts in hand-to-hand combat. Even if Ice Empress herself was not someone who relied on brawling, beating up a "human" should still be easy enough. There was no problem with getting right in his face.
Originally, this