The Snow Empress did not answer. She merely raised her hand.
Bitterly cold frost and snow condensed in her palm into a longsword forged of ice crystals.
Di Tian smiled faintly, thrusting his dragon claw forward as he charged at the Snow Empress.
The frost-and-snow longsword suddenly swept upward, its edge tracing a crescent of white as the air was sucked away in an instant.
Di Tian narrowed his golden eyes. His dragon claw continued forward unabated, dark-gold patterns lighting up along the edges of its scales.
Clang-!
The dragon claw collided with the ice sword, producing a clear, trembling note that was almost musical.
A ring-shaped shock wave erupted between them. Ancient trees a thousand feet tall snapped at the waist, splintered wood and ice fragments sweeping skyward together.
Di Tian used the recoil to leap thirty feet back. His dragon tail carved a charred trench across the ground as he laughed.
"Seven hundred thousand years. You really are much faster than you were back then."
The Snow Empress said nothing. With a light tap of her toes, she rose as though borne by a cold wind and closed the distance in an instant.
Just then, beneath her snow-white hair, the icy sword-shaped mark suddenly flashed.
"Emperor Cold Heaven: Snow Dance Shining Sun!" As the Snow Empress's clear cry rang out, heaven and earth lost their color.
She pointed her delicate hand, and a pale halo abruptly burst outward with her at its center. Like an inverted sun of snow, it engulfed everything within a radius of ten thousand feet.
Before Di Tian's laughter faded, his dragon eyes abruptly contracted into two golden lines.
He crossed his claws. Pitch-black dragon flames gushed from the gaps between his scales, their cores glimmering dark gold like molten metal flowing through the