Mount and Maidservant

Everything was no different from any other day in the past tens of millions of years.

Yet she felt that something was coming.

This feeling did not come from seeing with her eyes or hearing with her ears, but from a warning rooted in the deepest part of her soul.

It was like... like beneath the surface of a tranquil lake, an ancient ferocious beast was slowly opening its eyes.

Ice Empress stopped pacing.

She stood still at the center of the ice cave, her scorpion tail raised high and her emerald eyes closed as she heightened her senses to their limit.

Her spiritual power spread like an invisible net, instantly covering an area several hundred li in every direction.

The wind howled.

Snow drifted down.

Everything was...

Wait!

Ice Empress's eyes snapped open, and a terrifying green flash streaked through them!

She "smelled" a scent.

A scent that rode the Far North's uniquely biting wind from the outer regions toward the core, neither hurried nor slow.

It was not the aura of any soul beast she knew.

Nor was it that of those frail, greedy human soul masters.

It was... the scent of a dragon.

"Dragon?"

A hint of disdain colored Ice Empress's low murmur.

She had seen plenty of dragons. On the Douluo Continent, aside from that pitch-black old dragon in Star Dou, how many others were worth mentioning?

Even if the Dragon God himself came, any dragon in the Far North would have to coil before her!

But...

Why did this dragon's scent make her so restless?

No.

Something was wrong.

Ice Empress's expression changed.

That aura was drawing nearer, and her perception of it was becoming clearer.

It was not one aura at all!

It was two!

Two utterly opposing yet bizarrely intertwined dragon auras!

One of them was domineering and dark, filled with destruction and the desire to devour everything.

That aura filled her with intense revulsion and fear from the depths of her soul. As an Ice Jade Empress Scorpion, she was herself a controller of Ultimate Ice, representing purity and freezing. Yet that aura was like an abyss that sought to drag all things into blazing ruin, leaving not even light a chance to escape.

It was the ender of all elements!

It was chaos, destruction, pure evil!

"Damn thing!"

Emerald light blazed from Ice Empress's scorpion tail, and the terrifying chill caused the temperature in the entire ice cave to plummet once more.

She would never allow such a filthy aura to set even half a foot into her pure domain!

However.

The very next second, just as her killing intent boiled over, her body froze.

Because she sensed another aura.

Accompanying that destructive aura was another... completely opposite aura.

Holy.

Pure.

Bright.

It was an aura that made even her, a three-hundred-thousand-year ferocious beast, unable to resist the urge to prostrate herself in worship!

If the first aura was the end of all things, then this one was the origin of the universe.

It was not scorching, yet it shone brighter than the sun.

It was not cold, yet it was purer than mystical ice.

Before that aura, the Ultimate Ice she took such pride in seemed somewhat... insignificant.

It was a higher-dimensional Genesis Light that transcended every law of the Douluo Continent!

"H-How is this possible?!"

Ice Empress was completely stunned.

For the first time, her mind felt inadequate.

How could a single creature possess two powers so extreme, so opposing?

One was a Destruction Demon Dragon that burned the eight wastelands to ash.

The other was a Genesis Holy Dragon that illuminated all ages.

These two powers actually came from the same direction, from the same... approaching individual?!

What kind of monster was this?!

A demon cloaked in the guise of a god? Or... a god carrying hell within his heart?

An unprecedented sense of threat pierced Ice Empress's entire body like countless icy needles.

Yet at the same time, an indescribable, fatal temptation quietly rose from the depths of her soul.

That holy aura of light held an instinctive attraction for her.

She could feel that if she could bask in such light, her cultivation might even break through the bottleneck that had not budged for hundreds of thousands of years!

Danger.

Opportunity.

Destruction.

Rebirth.

Light flickered wildly in Ice Empress's emerald eyes.

Her irritation had vanished, replaced by extreme vigilance and a trace of... excitement she herself had not noticed!

It had been far too long since she had encountered a challenge worthy of such serious attention.

"Hmph..."

A cold snort echoed through the empty ice cave.

Whatever kind of monster it was!

If it dared intrude upon this Empress's territory, it had better be prepared to be frozen into an eternal ice sculpture!

Rather than making wild guesses here, she might as well... meet him herself!

The last trace of hesitation vanished from Ice Empress's eyes, replaced by soaring battle intent.

She wanted to see with her own eyes what this arrogant fool who dared wield both light and darkness at once actually looked like!

The next instant.

Her figure blurred where she stood, then with a whoosh, transformed into an emerald streak too fast for the naked eye to follow. She tore through the thick ice and shot from her nest at astonishing speed, charging fiercely toward the source of those two auras!

The entire ice cave instantly returned to dead silence.

Only the ice cracks spreading across the ground testified to the turmoil its mistress had felt moments before.

Time seemed to have frozen once again.

However.

Not long after Ice Empress left.

Far beneath her nest, ten thousand meters deep, at the core of the Eternal Frozen Soil, where even the chill of Ultimate Ice could not penetrate.

There was no light there.

Nor was there any sound.

Only an expanse of utterly pure white.

Within that whiteness, a pair of equally pure, flawless eyes, untouched by the slightest speck of dust, slowly... opened.

Those eyes held none of Ice Empress's battle intent or vigilance, only a trace of curiosity and bewilderment that had spanned countless ages.

A soft, ethereal whisper, as though it did not belong to this world, sounded in the absolute silence.

"This aura..."

"Is it the world 'outside'?"

The wind was fierce.

When it struck one's face, it did not feel like blades, but more like a moving wall of ice slamming over with unreasonable force.

Yet when those winds came within three feet of Yu Chen, an invisible force field shredded them, turning them into gentle breezes that merely stirred a few strands of his black hair.

The Ice Jade Scorpion beneath him glided exceptionally smoothly.

This Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, infamous throughout the Far North, now showed none of a ferocious beast's usual savagery. Its four pairs of legs moved with a steady rhythm as its massive body sped across the ice plains with barely a sound, as smooth as gliding across an enormous sheet of silk.

Its carapace was broad enough for three people to sit side by side with room to spare.

Ma Xiaotao knelt beside and slightly behind Yu Chen.

Her face was still somewhat pale, not from the cold, but because the depletion left by the Evil Fire's backlash had not yet fully recovered.