North of Blackstone Market lay a barren region known as the Spiritless Frozen Wasteland.
Not only was its spiritual qi so thin as to verge on a vacuum, but its geomagnetism was chaotic, and countless remnants of ancient ore veins capable of disrupting divine sense lay buried beneath its thick frozen soil.
It was still more than three thousand li from the Shattered Ice Shelf, where the strange phenomenon had shaken heaven and earth.
For Foundation Establishment and Purple Abode cultivators capable of Sword Flight, that might mean only half a day of racing through the skies. But for Chu Bai, who could measure the earth only with his feet, it was a long and lonely ordeal.
It was the third day after he left Blackstone Market.
Beneath the polar-night sky, fierce winds swept up blade-sharp powder snow, slashing through the air.
This snow was not made of ice crystals, but of condensed ice baleful intent. Any mortal here would have been flayed to bare bones in an instant.
Chu Bai walked along a riverbed that had long since dried up.
Jagged black rocks lined both banks like sawteeth, while the frozen mud beneath his feet was harder than pig iron. With every step, the icy crust underfoot gave a teeth-grating creak.
Deep within his divine soul, the dark-gold [Golden Shackles] grew faintly hot.
The restriction that embodied the Immortal Dynasty's laws now pressed relentlessly upon his spine like an invisible mountain.
Chu Bai silently gauged the burden he bore that day.
As he ventured farther north, the shackles seemed to grow heavier with the changes in the Far North's magnetic field.
To resist that pressure, every muscle in his body pulsed at a peculiar frequency. Beneath his skin, countless tiny flood dragons seemed to writhe madly, wrestling against one