Ice and Snow Princess, Ling Luocheng

Two days later, in the afternoon, Huo Chen arrived at the inner courtyard as promised.

Ma Xiaotao had informed her in advance, saying that Ling Luocheng had no training assignment today and could wait for him in the Frost Cultivation Chamber of the inner courtyard.

Huo Chen passed through the inner courtyard's arched gate and walked deeper inside along a small path paved with bluestone slabs.

The inner courtyard's buildings were more antiquated than those of the outer courtyard. Tall ginkgo trees lined both sides of the path, their golden fan-shaped leaves swaying gently in the autumn breeze and carpeting the ground.

The Frost Cultivation Chamber stood in the northwest corner of the inner courtyard. It was a separate circular building, its walls built from special insulating stone, with a plaque carved with snowflake patterns hanging above the entrance.

Huo Chen pushed open the door, and a wave of cool air rushed over him, a stark contrast to the warmth of the autumn day outside.

The cultivation chamber was not large, roughly half the size of a basketball court. Both the floor and walls were covered in a thin layer of white frost.

The temperature inside was clearly lower than outside, and faint white mist could be seen with every breath. At the center of the room, a figure sat cross-legged on a low ice platform with her back to the door.

Huo Chen's gaze fell on her and lingered for a moment.

(PS: This is the manga version of Ling Luocheng. This isn't a soul power bottleneck—the issue is that her martial soul's strength and ice-element intensity are limited. Just a simple explanation.)

She wore a white inner-court student uniform. Its design was simple, without any unnecessary adornments, yet it could not conceal her slender, well-proportioned figure.

The most eye-catching thing was her hair: a cascade of icy-blue locks that fell all the way to her waist, shifting from deep ice blue at the roots to pale sky blue at the tips. Her hair was light and carried a faint sheen.

Fine snowflakes and icy mist swirled around her, drifting slowly through the air, as though she herself were a walking piece of ice.

On her head was a white ice-crystal cat-ear crown. Two cat-ear-shaped ice-crystal ornaments protruded from her hair, refracting flecks of light beneath the lamps and adding a hint of playfulness to her cool, aloof aura.

Hearing the footsteps, she slowly opened her eyes and turned around.

It was an exquisitely beautiful face.

Her cool white skin possessed a porcelain-like luster beneath the room's lighting. Her features were sharp and cold, carrying an innate sense of distance.

Her eyes were a pale icy blue, set in long, narrow diamond-shaped sockets. A touch of light-blue eyeshadow at their corners made them appear even deeper and colder.

Her lips were a very pale pink, pressed together slightly. She did not smile, nor did she wear any other expression.

She looked at Huo Chen with a calm, icy gaze, as if examining an unfamiliar object.

"Teacher Huo." Her voice was like colliding icicles, cool and pleasant. "Xiaotao mentioned you to me."

"Student Ling Luocheng." Huo Chen walked over and stopped about two meters away from her. "Xiaotao said you encountered a bottleneck at rank sixty and wanted me to take a look."

Ling Luocheng did not answer immediately.

She rose from the ice platform, neither hurried nor slow, moving with composed elegance.

She was not much shorter than Huo Chen. Wrapped in her white student uniform, her slender figure appeared even taller.

She stood there as snowflakes and icy mist continued drifting around her, looking like a walking ice sculpture.

"My martial soul is the ice element," she said in a flat tone, as if stating something unrelated to herself.

"The Ling Family has passed down ice-element martial souls for generations. Whenever my soul power increased before, the degree of my ice element increased along with it. But after reaching rank sixty, I discovered that my ice element's purity could no longer improve. No matter how I compressed my soul power, I couldn't make the ice element undergo a qualitative transformation."

She raised her right hand, palm upward. A cluster of icy-blue light condensed in her palm, forming an exquisite ice-crystal snowflake.

The snowflake was crystal-clear, its patterns sharply defined, gleaming with a cold luster beneath the lights.

But Huo Chen could tell that although its structure was intricate, it lacked a sense of life. It was merely a shape molded by soul power, rather than the will of the ice element itself.

"Your ice element is very pure, but it lacks a soul," Huo Chen said bluntly.

Ling Luocheng's eyelashes trembled slightly. It was the first expression other than calmness to appear on her face.

"A soul?" she repeated.

"Your current use of the ice element relies on soul power to drive and control it. You treat the ice element as a tool, a weapon, a force that can be wielded at your command."

Huo Chen looked at her. "But a true master of the ice element does not use soul power to control ice. They make ice a part of themselves and allow it to respond to their will on its own."

Ling Luocheng fell silent. She lowered her head to look at the ice-crystal snowflake in her palm, a thoughtful glint flashing through her eyes.

"What should I do?" she asked.

"Relax. Don't resist." Huo Chen extended his right hand, holding his palm about four inches in front of hers. "Let me examine the source of your ice element."

Ling Luocheng hesitated for a moment, then slowly lifted her left hand and pressed her palm against his.

Her fingers were cold, as if he were holding a piece of ice. But Huo Chen paid it no mind. He closed his eyes and sent a thread of reincarnation power through their joined palms into her body.

That gentle yet vast power slowly flowed along Ling Luocheng's meridians before gathering at her dantian and enveloping her ice-element martial soul.

Ling Luocheng's body trembled slightly. She could feel her ice-element martial soul seeming to awaken beneath the touch of that power, producing a resonance unlike anything she had ever felt before.

Within the source of her ice element, Huo Chen saw an endless icefield, vast and boundless, blanketed in white snow. Yet a thin layer of mist covered its surface, obscuring the icefield's true depths.

That mist was the bottleneck she had been unable to break through.

"The source of your ice element is extremely pure, but it is wrapped in a layer of 'shell,'" Huo Chen said as he withdrew his hand and opened his eyes.

"That shell is a restriction left behind by your family's inherited cultivation method. You have always cultivated according to the methods passed down by your ancestors. Those methods helped you lay a solid foundation, but they also drew a circle around you. You have reached the very limit within that circle, but if you want to step outside it, you must break that shell."

Ling Luocheng listened quietly without interrupting him.

"Your path is not to pursue stronger ice, but purer ice."

Huo Chen looked at her. "Ultimate purity. Ultimate clarity. When your understanding of ice reaches the point where 'I am ice, and ice is me,' you will no longer be borrowing the power of ice—you will become its master."

Ling Luocheng remained silent for a long time.

She lowered her head to look at her palm. The crystalline snowflake was still slowly rotating there, refracting a cold gleam beneath the lights.

After a moment of silence, she raised her head and looked at Huo Chen. For the first time, a trace of warmth appeared in those pale ice-blue eyes.

"Teacher Huo, please teach me."

Her voice was still cool and clear, but beneath that coolness was a newfound seriousness and sincerity.

Huo Chen looked into her earnest eyes and nodded. "I can help guide you in the right direction, but whether you can break through that shell in the end will still depend on you."

"I understand." Ling Luocheng gave a slight nod. "That is enough."

After a pause, she added, "Thank you."

Her tone remained calm, yet that calmness carried a heartfelt sincerity.

Huo Chen smiled. "No need to thank me. You're Xiaotao's friend, which makes you my friend too."

Ling Luocheng's eyelashes trembled faintly. She did not reply, but the line of her lips seemed to soften slightly. The change was so subtle that no one could have noticed it without looking closely.

Huo Chen turned to leave. When he reached the door, Ling Luocheng's voice came from behind him. "Teacher Huo."

He turned back.

Ling Luocheng stood atop the ice platform, snowflakes and icy mist drifting slowly around her. The crystalline cat-ear crown on her head refracted scattered glimmers beneath the lights.

She looked at him, her gaze calm and serious. "When you come next time, may I call you Huo Chen?"

Huo Chen paused for a moment, then smiled. "You can."

He pushed open the door and walked out.

The cultivation room's door slowly closed behind him, separating the two worlds within and without.

The autumn sunlight outside was warm and bright, utterly different from the chill inside. Huo Chen stood at the entrance and glanced back at the stone door carved with snowflake patterns, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his lips.

Another one.

He withdrew his gaze and walked back the way he had come, golden ginkgo leaves rustling beneath his feet.