The biting wind swept up ice shards that filled the sky, carving the frozen ground known as the Shattered Ice Shelf into broken fragments.
Black smoke curled beside the enormous corroded ice cavern, giving off a nauseating stench of blood and rot.
Chu Bai stood on a floating sheet of ice, his blue robes snapping in the wind. Beneath his bamboo hat, his gaze pierced the blizzard like two bolts of cold lightning, fixed on the empty air two thousand zhang away.
"Come out!"
He did not shout himself hoarse, but those two words carried his newly advanced divine sense, striking the air like two heavy hammers. Even the snowflakes swirling around him shuddered to a halt.
"Heh..."
A soft chuckle seemed to rise from every direction at once, elusive and uncertain, carrying a chill that seeped into the marrow.
"Such keen spiritual perception. Such masterful acting."
As that hoarse voice rang out, ripples like those on water suddenly spread through the seemingly empty blizzard two thousand zhang away.
There was no earthshaking streak of flight light, only a wisp of gray-white mist quietly gathering.
The mist swirled and instantly became a slender figure. He seemed to move slowly, yet his speed was extraordinary, a single step carrying him several hundred zhang.
In just two or three steps, he crossed that vast distance and hovered in the air a hundred zhang from Chu Bai.
His robes, whiter than snow, stood out starkly against the boundless landscape. A ghastly white demon mask covered his face, exposing only a pair of eyes glowing faintly blue as he looked down upon Chu Bai as though regarding a dead man.
It was Gu Sheng, the mysterious guest elder of the Ghost Cry Hall.
"I thought your lamp had truly burned through its last drop