Deep beneath this vast glacier, at its deepest reaches.
This was not solid frozen earth, but a deep-sea icy abyss covered by ancient mystic ice that never thawed!
Light could scarcely reach this place. Its cold could instantly freeze a Soul Saint-level Soul Master, and the water pressure was terrifying. Yet deep within this forbidden realm of life lurked numerous powerful ice-type soul beasts adapted to its extreme conditions.
At the very bottom of the icy abyss, four ghostly blue "lanterns" suddenly lit up in the immense darkness!
Those were not lanterns, but the enormous eyes of two beasts!
A closer look revealed two monstrously huge, savage-looking tiger soul beasts! Dark blue scales covered their bodies, with sharp, ice-crystal-like hairs growing between them. A vicious horn rose from each forehead, and their tails resembled those of giant scorpions, gleaming with a cold, eerie light.
Their auras were ancient and brutal, far more terrifying than those of the tiger soul beasts commonly found outside!
The slightly smaller one seemed disturbed by the strange, provocative aura of a monstrous beast faintly seeping down from above. It gave an uneasy growl, churning the frigid seawater.
Beside it, the larger tiger, whose aura was even deeper and more terrifying, abruptly opened another pair of eyes-it actually had four eyes, the lower pair ghostly blue and the upper pair scarlet!
It had clearly sensed that aura as well and seemed intensely displeased that such an unfamiliar presence, seemingly of an exceedingly high rank yet so weak, had intruded upon its territory.
"ROAR!!!"
An immensely deep tiger roar, laden with terrifying power, erupted from its gaping, blood-red maw! The roar pierced layer upon layer of seawater and ice. Though greatly weakened by the time it reached the surface, it still shook the entire frozen lake, making the ice crack and snap!
Countless weaker soul beasts dwelling throughout the icy abyss were instantly frightened out of their wits by the roar, which carried a king's wrath. They scattered frantically in every direction, triggering a small underwater upheaval.
That sudden, terrifying roar also instantly startled Dai Youheng out of his cultivation!
His eyes snapped open. He immediately reined in the Golden Vajra Evil-Repelling Body technique, a sharp gleam flashing through his eyes as every muscle tensed. In an instant, he darted to the ice cave's entrance and looked warily toward the source of the sound-the depths beneath the frozen lake!
"What a terrifying roar! What kind of soul beast is that? Sister Snow Empress, can you identify it?" Alarmed, Dai Youheng immediately asked the Snow Empress. The pressure within that roar gave him an unprecedented sense of danger, far beyond anything he had felt from any opponent before.
The Snow Empress fell silent for a moment, then spoke with a rare trace of gravity and uncertainty. "That roar... contains extreme cold and an ancient, savage aura. It certainly isn't a soul beast commonly found in the Far North. It doesn't even seem like a species that should exist in this era. Its bloodline likely has an extraordinarily ancient origin. Even I cannot immediately determine what it is. Youheng, be careful. You may have inadvertently disturbed some terrifying being sleeping beneath the glacier. Suppress all your aura for now and watch how things unfold."
Dai Youheng's heart tightened. He immediately followed her instructions, doing everything he could to suppress his aura. The Golden Vajra Evil-Repelling Body technique slowed to an exceedingly sluggish internal circulation, and he seemed to become part of the ice wall itself.
He had only intended to wait quietly here for the Ice Bear King. Never had he imagined that the waters of the Far North ran far deeper than he thought. A single cultivation session seemed to have drawn out an extremely dangerous being hidden beneath this world of ice and snow.
Ever since that terrifying, glacier-shaking roar had risen from the frozen lake's depths, Dai Youheng had remained on the highest alert.
The Golden Vajra Evil-Repelling Body technique circulated slowly within him, ready at any moment to unleash his greatest strength or his greatest speed.
The Golden Vajra Evil-Repelling Body technique circulated slowly within him, ready to unleash his greatest strength or fastest speed at any moment.
Time passed in deathly silence. Only a few seconds later.
Suddenly.
Crack! Rumble-!
Without any warning, the ancient glacier beneath Dai Youheng's feet groaned under an unbearable burden. Then countless enormous fissures spread wildly outward from him like black lightning!
The ice collapsed at an unimaginable speed, leaving him no time to think.
"This is bad!" Dai Youheng's heart lurched, and his survival instinct instantly overrode everything else. His soul power erupted without restraint. He drove the tip of his foot hard against the rapidly collapsing ice and shot toward the seemingly solid frozen shore in the distance like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Yet the rumbling beneath his feet did not recede. Instead, it drew closer and closer, as though some colossal creature were breaking up through the ice, pursuing him relentlessly.
He could even feel a bone-chilling killing intent, filled with savage brutality, lock firmly onto him.
Just as he was about to reach the edge of the collapsing area, something horrifying happened: the terrifying sounds of pursuit and shattering ice behind him abruptly stopped. The ground fell into an eerie stillness, leaving only his own pounding heartbeat and the faint sound of ice fragments slipping beneath his feet.
This sudden silence was even more unnerving than the earlier thunderous rumbling.
Dai Youheng dared not let his guard down. He cautiously slowed, each step as light as a feather, afraid of disturbing the monster below. Every sense sharpened to its utmost limit.
He had the overwhelming feeling that something beneath the fractured glacier was silently staring at him, its icy gaze almost tangible.
At the very moment his nerves stretched to their breaking point.
BOOM!!!
A blast far more terrifying than before erupted, loud enough to seemingly tear his eardrums apart. A vast stretch of glacier behind him exploded as though countless charges had been buried beneath it. Huge blocks of ice and sprays of snow that had lain frozen for millennia shot skyward in a devastating icy explosion.
Two immense shadows that blotted out the sky surged from the shattered glacial abyss, wreathed in suffocating savagery and extreme cold!
They were two giant tigers, each as massive as an ancient tree that had stood for ten thousand years! Thick, dark blue scales covered their bodies, looking as though they had been polished from mystic ice, with sharp, ice-crystal-like bristles growing between them. Their heads were hideous, each bearing a single horn on its forehead, and their protruding fangs gleamed coldly.
Ancient, icy, brutal auras suffused their bodies, as though they were demon gods that had crawled out of an abyssal hell!
"Abyssal Ice Prison Tigers?" Within his sea of consciousness, the Snow Empress's voice rang with incredulous shock. "These legendary ancient soul beasts actually still exist? I thought they had long since gone extinct!"
Snow Empress, you're the ruler of the Far North, and even you didn't know monsters like these were hiding beneath your territory? Dai Youheng's expression instantly turned grim beyond measure. He retreated swiftly while crying out inwardly. The pressure radiating from the two giant tigers almost froze the blood throughout his body.
He knew the hundred-thousand-year soul beast the Snow Empress had said she had prepared for him was probably not this tiger.
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