An Uninvited Guest

She wiped the corner of her mouth.

"And you? You beat those reserve team members until they couldn't get up without even showing your soul rings. What kind of monster are you?"

Yu Chen looked out at the snowstorm beyond the window.

"I'm not a monster."

He turned and stared into Wang Dong'er's eyes.

"I'm here to shatter your laughable understanding of the world."

Wang Dong'er's heart raced beneath his gaze, and she hurriedly looked away.

She touched the fur cloak draped over her body. Its warmth gave her an indescribable sense of security.

Ever since that battle at the Great Soul Arena, she had followed Yu Chen out here as if possessed. Even she did not understand what she had been thinking.

Shrek's glory?

Thinking back on it now, it only seemed childish.

"If you've rested enough, move."

Yu Chen straightened up and dusted off his white robes.

"The master of the Far North doesn't have the patience to wait for us."

Wang Dong'er quickly pulled her cloak tighter and followed.

The two left the inn and headed toward the wall of snow and wind at the end of town.

"Awoo—"

A long wolf howl drifted through the wind.

Wang Dong'er halted, her hand instinctively reaching for her waist.

Several white shadows darted out from the snowstorm wall.

Their four paws touched the snow without leaving a single print.

They were twice the size of ordinary cattle, their bodies covered in white fur like sharp spines.

Icefield Wolves.

Judging by their size, they were at least ten-thousand-year soul beasts.

The beasts spread out in a fan formation, blocking Yu Chen and Wang Dong'er in the middle of the street.

Their green eyes stared fixedly at the two of them.

Drool dripped from their fangs, freezing into icy grit before it could hit the ground.

They were starving, treating living humans as rations.

The leading Icefield Wolf lowered its front body and let out a rumbling growl.

The muscles in its hind legs tensed, ready to pounce and bite through its prey's throat.

Wang Dong'er's palms began to sweat.

The Soul Power of the Light Goddess Butterfly began gathering in her hands.

Blue-gold radiance lit up amid the blizzard, driving away the surrounding chill.

These mere beasts dared block their path?

She was just about to step forward.

A hand stopped her in front of her.

Yu Chen.

"Don't move."

Wang Dong'er froze where she stood.

"They're ten-thousand-year soul beasts! There are so many of them—are you planning to take them head-on?!"

Yu Chen did not even summon his martial soul.

He simply stood there with one hand in his pocket, not even twitching a brow.

"Noisy."

The two words left his lips.

An invisible pressure spread outward from him, skimming across the ground.

It was the pressure of a superior dragon bloodline.

Even the faintest trace of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon's aura was enough to crush the spines of these mixed-blood soul beasts.

The wind stopped.

The snowflakes hanging in midair fell straight down.

The air became so thick it was hard to breathe.

The Icefield Wolves, just about to pounce, suddenly had their front legs give way.

With a plop.

They all collapsed into the snow.

Their tails were clamped tightly between their legs, and pleading whimpers leaked from their throats.

Their massive bodies shook like sieves.

They pressed their heads tightly against the snow, not daring to raise them at all.

It was fear etched into their bloodlines.

The instinctive response of prey meeting its natural predator.

The Soul Power in Wang Dong'er's hands dissipated.

She looked at the wolves on the ground, then at Yu Chen's back.

"Y-You... what did you do?"

How could someone frighten ten-thousand-year soul beasts into collapse without even lighting up a soul ring?

Yu Chen ignored her.

He lifted his leg and stepped over the head of the foremost wolf.

That once-arrogant Icefield Wolf stopped breathing altogether. Only after Yu Chen had gone far away did it dare gasp for air and scramble into the snowstorm.

Yu Chen did not kill them.

There was no need.

What was there to brag about in crushing a few ants?

He stopped and glanced back into the depths of the blizzard.

It seemed, though he was not entirely sure, that a pair of eyes was hidden behind the storm.

"Looks like the master here already knows I've arrived."

He brushed nonexistent dust from his sleeve and strode into the wall of snow and wind.

Deep within the ice valley, the wind stood still.

The terrifying clashes of Soul Power were enough to make even the wind afraid to make a sound here.

"Clang!"

The piercing scrape sounded like fingernails dragging across ice, magnified hundreds of times.

Shrek Academy's Senior Brother Yan—no, Elder Yan now—knelt on one knee in the snow, his chest heaving as he gasped out clouds of white breath. A bone-deep gash on the heavy Black Tortoise Shield before him gave off wisps of cold air, nearly cutting the shield in half.

His Soul Power was being drained far too quickly.

"Cough... cough, cough..."

A suppressed fit of coughing came from behind him.

Elder Yan did not turn around. He did not dare to.

Every bit of his focus was locked on the massive creature ahead.

It was a scorpion.

A scorpion that looked as though it had been carved from ice crystal, larger than a three-story building. Its shell reflected the faint scraps of daylight above the ice valley, gleaming with an eerie, deadly blue light. Its two enormous pincers opened and closed, each movement triggering explosive bursts in the air.

Most terrifying of all was the tail raised high behind it.

The tail hook was jade-green, beautiful as a work of art, but Elder Yan knew how much blood from powerful experts stained it.

A hundred-thousand-year Ice Jade Empress Scorpion.

Damn it.

Elder Yan cursed inwardly.

They had only wanted to find an Ice Soul Mystic Ginseng on the outskirts. Who could have imagined they would step straight into the lair of an overlord-level soul beast?

"E-Elder Yan... I... I'm so hot..."

The voice behind him was broken and tearful.

Ma Xiaotao curled up within the protective barrier Elder Yan maintained with his Soul Power, looking as though she had just been pulled from the water. The bitter cold of the Far North did not make her feel the slightest bit cool. Instead, it was like firewood feeding the blaze of evil fire within her body.

Her skin was flushed an unhealthy red. Her eyes alternated between clarity and crimson, while her reason was slowly being burned away.

"Hold on!"

Elder Yan growled, his voice hoarse with tension.

"Xiaotao! Wake up! Don't let it affect you!"

He knew that the extreme cold domain released by the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion was violently clashing with the extreme fire inside Ma Xiaotao. Rather than suppressing her evil fire, the conflict had only driven it into greater frenzy.

If this continued, Ma Xiaotao would explode and die without the scorpion even needing to act.

He had to end this quickly!

"Seventh Soul Skill, Black Tortoise True Body!"

Elder Yan roared as the eighth soul ring around him blazed with light. His entire body shot into the air and merged with the Black Tortoise phantom behind him, transforming into a mountain-sized giant turtle that slammed fiercely toward the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion!

This was his strongest defensive form, as well as his only means of attack.

He wanted to use it to force the scorpion back and buy Ma Xiaotao a sliver of hope.

A trace of humanlike disdain flashed through the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion's cold compound eyes.

It did not even use its enormous pincers.

Its jade-green tail merely flicked lightly.

A green afterimage flashed past.

"Pfft!"

There was no earth-shattering explosion.

Only the soft sound of a sharp weapon piercing flesh.

Elder Yan's Black Tortoise True Body abruptly froze in midair.

He lowered his head.

That jade-green tail hook had pierced the front of his indestructible turtle shell and emerged from his back, carrying a string of dark black blood.