As the second ball of deep blue light gathered deep in the giant serpent's throat, the temperature across the entire Ice Sea plummeted. Shen Xiu could feel fine cracking sounds coming from the ice beneath his feet, as though the very land itself were shivering before that chill. He drew a deep breath and summoned every last bit of lightning power within him. Violet-gold lightning flowed over his body like armor woven from thunderbolts, enveloping both him and Liu Qingyan.
The Lightning Shield shuddered violently the instant the blue light struck again, cracks spreading outward like a spiderweb. Shen Xiu gritted his teeth and thrust both hands forward. Fresh lightning power surged from his palms, swiftly filling and mending the cracks in the Lightning Shield, while thickening it by another thirty percent. The blue light and the shield remained deadlocked for several breaths before the blue light gradually faded. The Lightning Shield dimmed as well, its surface covered in shallow turtle-shell cracks, like a bronze mirror repeatedly tempered yet not fully cooled.
The giant serpent seemed somewhat surprised by this outcome. It raised its flattened head slightly, and a thoughtful gleam flashed through its dark golden vertical pupils, as though it were reassessing the strength of the tiny human before it. Its body slowly continued rising from the fissure, several dozen more zhang of its length emerging from the water. Its dark blue-scaled body glimmered with a cold, eerie sheen beneath the sunlight, while the runes faintly flickered, arranged in a pattern Shen Xiu could not decipher. Its tail no longer struck the ice; instead, it hung quietly over the edge of the fissure, slowly stirring the undercurrents beneath the water.
Taking advantage of the pause, Shen Xiu swiftly observed the giant serpent's movements and aura. He could sense that