Improvements

In the Ice World, beside the World Passage, the former ice-crystal plain was now covered with buildings. Large numbers of ordinary people lived there.

Buildings stacked from thick blocks of ice reflected dazzling light beneath the sun, as though the entire city had been cast from glittering crystal.

When Green descended from the sun and returned to the sky above the ground in his elementalized form, the sight almost felt like light pollution.

The city's streets were not smooth ice. They had W-shaped ridges that increased friction and kept ordinary pedestrians from slipping.

Apprentices and Wizards came and went in great numbers, trading with one another. The entire plain was unusually lively.

There were far fewer blue crystal pillars than before, but the light they emitted to neutralize radiation was clearly much stronger.

"Looks like the East Coast's radiation-shielding technology has come a long way!" Green nodded with interest.

But as Green hovered above the city and took a closer feel of the environment below, he frowned slightly.

Light flashed in Green's eyes, and a deeper layer of the world appeared before him.

Faint black wisps drifted above the city. They dissipated quickly and never gathered, but Green recognized them at a glance. It was the power the Soul Academy had allowed its students to cultivate only when it had been driven into a corner with no other way out.

"Why is there Despair Force here?" Green was puzzled.

Green's bloodline was extraordinarily powerful and inclined toward Positive Energy. He had an instinctive aversion to this kind of negative energy, which made it easy for him to pick it out of the surroundings.

Yet as Green looked down at the bustling city and recalled the conditions under which Despair Force arose, this hardly seemed like a place that would give