The fleeing flame suddenly looked as though it had been tossed into disarray by the wind, or like a staggering drunk. It swelled violently, then collapsed sharply, before bursting into a skyful of flower petals, scattering countless tiny specks of blue starlight.
The power unleashed by the explosion disintegrated in an instant. Shi Chun pushed off with his toes, about to charge after it again, only to collide with those scattered blue flecks. His expression changed drastically. Everything around him seemed to change, as though something was about to drain every last trace of energy.
He instinctively drove the Demon-Bathing Art to its limit to protect himself.
Then his vision blurred for an instant, as though a mirror had appeared before him. He felt his entire body become immobile, his skin cold to the touch.
When he tried again, he found he could still move, but the space available was smaller-extremely cramped, in fact. What he saw, together with what his body felt, gave him a terrible shock. Only then did he realize he had been frozen in ice.
And a thick layer of ice had sealed him in. He struck it with his power but could not shatter it, which spoke volumes about its thickness.
He was not the only one. An Wuzhi and Chu Jingtang, who had chased closely behind him, had been delighted to see the Chief catch up with the Divine Fire and blast it apart with a palm strike. But once they collided with the scattered blue starlight, their delight vanished. Both were frozen solid, unable to move.
What the three could not see was that a huge mountain of ice had suddenly appeared out of thin air on the high ridge where they stood, instantly pinning all three beneath it.
Though enormous, this ice