As a core disciple of the Heavenly Demon Sect, Lu Xuanqing had no shortage of experience dealing with Nascent Soul Realm experts. Yet neither her grandmaster nor her two great martial uncles could turn everything between heaven and earth into glaciers in an instant, even with their power to move mountains and overturn seas.
That did not necessarily mean the power forming these glaciers surpassed that of the Heavenly Demon Sect's Nascent Soul Realm experts. After all, different cultivators practiced different arts, and the spiritual energy they accumulated differed in its affinities among the five elements.
A water-affinity Nascent Soul Realm expert would naturally find it easier to freeze water into glaciers than one who practiced the Heavenly Demon Art. But when it came to the power of offensive spells, few arts could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Heavenly Demon Art.
Faced with such might of heaven and earth, even Lu Xuanqing felt the urge to retreat. Yet when she saw Liu Xing gazing resolutely northward, courage suddenly rose in her heart again.
Unlike Liu Xing, Lu Xuanqing could not lock onto a target a thousand miles away by merging with a Spirit-Devouring Beast. Still, she was a cultivator, and she could quickly detect any exceptionally large disturbance in spiritual energy.
As the glaciers rapidly advanced toward the coastline, Lu Xuanqing sensed that there was indeed an enormous mass of spiritual energy atop them, spreading relentlessly outward in a violent frenzy.
The sheer scale of this spiritual energy far exceeded Lu Xuanqing's cultivation.
Just as she could not gauge exactly how powerful a Nascent Soul Realm expert was when facing one, she could not determine whether this mass of spiritual energy matched such an expert.
However, this spiritual energy had a fatal weakness. Although the power spreading constantly outward was terrifying, she could sense no concentrated focal point at its center.
No matter how vast the spiritual energy was, if it could not be channeled into a concentrated output and instead kept spreading in every direction like this, its power would inevitably be dispersed.
Once she sensed this, Lu Xuanqing regained a little confidence. Vast though this spiritual energy was, she felt it was not impossible to deal with.
Soon, the source of that spiritual energy came into Lu Xuanqing's view. It was none other than the Icehorn Giant Bear Liu Xing had seen earlier through his divine sense!
The sight of such an enormous beast sent a shock through Lu Xuanqing's heart. A demon beast capable of giving off such immense spiritual energy would rank among the strongest anywhere. But how could such a demon beast have come into being on this Garbage Planet, where spiritual energy was so scarce?
It was just like how even the most dazzlingly gifted cultivation prodigy could never cultivate to the Nascent Soul Realm in a desert drained of spiritual energy.
Lu Xuanqing glanced at the grave-faced Liu Xing and managed a smile. "If you'd run into this monster a little earlier, I wonder whether you'd still have dared to call yourself invincible on this planet?"
Liu Xing smiled wryly. "I've never seen anything like this, and the old man never mentioned that anything like it existed."
Despite his words, Liu Xing had a vague suspicion that, like the Golden-Eyed Eagle before it, this Icehorn Giant Bear had swallowed some extraordinary treasure and become what it was now.
In fact, although Liu Xing's guess was not entirely correct, it was not far off the mark.
Like other planets that harbored life, Connors Star had oceans long before it had land. Since spirit veins could form on land, why could they not form in the far vaster oceans?
Beneath the sea near the poles lay a water-element spirit vein. Its history was almost as long as that of Connors Star itself-a full several billion years!
One could imagine just how densely concentrated the spiritual energy was within the Water Vein Spirit Jade formed by this water-element spirit vein.
Tens of thousands of years earlier, an undersea volcanic eruption had, through a chance convergence of circumstances, hurled this piece of Water Vein Spirit Jade out of the sea. It had struck an Ice-Horned Bear fishing beside a glacier.
Formed beneath the polar region, this Water Vein Spirit Jade possessed an extremely strong ice affinity. In an instant, it had frozen the Ice-Horned Bear, whose encounter might have been either misfortune or good luck.
Over tens of thousands of years, the Water Vein Spirit Jade had slowly released spiritual energy inside the Ice-Horned Bear, gradually transforming its body. Thus, an ordinary Ice-Horned Bear had slowly become an Icehorn Giant Bear...
Once its transformed body could withstand that immense spiritual energy, the Icehorn Giant Bear finally awoke from the frozen slumber that had lasted tens of thousands of years.
By then, the Icehorn Giant Bear had evolved into a genuine demon beast, capable of fully unleashing the spiritual energy contained within the Water Vein Spirit Jade.
However, Ice-Horned Bears were not particularly intelligent creatures to begin with. Even though this Icehorn Giant Bear had become a demon beast, its intelligence had barely evolved. It still acted solely on instinct.
After all, a demon beast transformed by an Innate Treasure was fundamentally different from demon beasts that had survived generation after generation through the law of survival of the fittest. The intelligence of the highest-ranking demon beasts was no less than that of humans. They could even assume human form and communicate with humans.
As for immortal beasts, whose innate qualities surpassed those of demon beasts, communicating with humans was even easier. Indeed, the Cultivation World recognized some powerful immortal beast races as having status equal to great aristocratic clans and allowed them to establish their own sects. Divine Dragons, Phoenixes, and Qilins, for instance, were all illustrious immortal beasts in the Cultivation World.
With its ability to unleash the spiritual energy contained within the Water Vein Spirit Jade, the Icehorn Giant Bear could rank among the strongest demon beasts. Yet its limited intelligence meant it was nowhere near as formidable as it appeared.
It was like a three-year-old child holding a fortune in gold without knowing how to use it, doing nothing but squandering heaven's gifts.
With its limited intelligence, the Icehorn Giant Bear had no idea what had happened to suddenly grant it such immense power. Icehorn Giant Bears naturally preferred a world of ice and snow, and the Water Vein Spirit Jade itself possessed an extremely strong ice affinity. Acting on instinct, the bear kept spreading spiritual energy in every direction, causing the glaciers to expand rapidly in an instant.
How staggering was the force unleashed when spiritual energy accumulated over several billion years erupted? If the Icehorn Giant Bear were allowed to keep running amok, it was entirely possible that it would eventually turn all of Connors Star into glaciers.
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