On this forsaken land in the Far North, time often lost all meaning.
Only the despairingly long polar night and the cold wind that howled ceaselessly over the ice served as measures of its passing.
Ever since Zuo Qiu, a steward of the True Spirit Society, established the rule of "contests of strength without bloodshed," and Chu Bai stunned Yin Jiuyou with a single thunderous strike of his divine soul, the Shattered Ice Shelf known as the Whale-Breathing Grounds had settled into a strange, protracted stalemate.
To mortals, these days might have been no more than another cycle of sunrise and moonset, frittered away on firewood, rice, oil, and salt.
But to the dozens of Foundation Establishment cultivators entrenched here, every breath was an ordeal of wrestling fate from heaven and matching wits with their rivals.
The Eagle-Beak Ice Shelf.
Named for its resemblance to a giant eagle's sharp beak jutting into the deep sea, it stood where two deep-sea currents swirled together.
At present, aside from the "dragon's head position" occupied by the True Spirit Society, this was the spot with the fiercest, richest spiritual qi in the entire sea.
Chu Bai sat cross-legged on a precarious rock at the very tip of the ice cliff. Years of exposure to moisture had made the black stone beneath him slick, but now thick white frost covered it, as though it had become one with his body.
He resembled an iron statue frozen for a thousand years. For seven whole days, he had not moved an inch.
Only his bearskin cloak, coated with icicles until its original color was unrecognizable, occasionally stirred in the knife-sharp sea wind, exposing skin that glimmered faintly with a dark-gold sheen.
Outsiders merely watched the spectacle, marveling at the iron-masked cultivator's profound concentration. Only Chu Bai