"Let's go."
Priest Enkai tightened his somewhat tattered Priest's Robe and resumed his lofty, imposing air:
"It's about time we went to collect the bodies... oh, no, I mean check on the situation."
As Priest Enkai led the way, he quietly instructed the two behind him without looking back:
"You two, remember to stay sharp!"
"Wipe those smug grins off your faces!"
"If that idiot Ovid really did die at Kairils's hands, don't look too excited, and don't kick him while he's down!"
"We absolutely cannot give any survivors anything to use against us!"
Priest Enkai added coldly, "They're Ovid's trusted men, after all. If they catch you slipping up, they'll likely complain to the High Priest once we get back."
"If we're putting on an act, we need to see it through. Understand?"
"Understood, sir!"
Lin Shen and [You've Cried Already] immediately wiped away their smiles and adopted expressions of grief, as though their own parents had died. They even dutifully rubbed their eyes red.
"Good."
Priest Enkai nodded in satisfaction.
Following the lingering traces of cold, the three walked unhurriedly through the dense forest for several minutes.
Then they pushed aside the last patch of bushes, frozen solid into ice sculptures.
The sight before them made even Lin Shen and [You've Cried Already], who had thought themselves somewhat prepared, gasp.
"Hiss..."
The once fairly dense forest ahead had been transformed into a graveyard of ice and snow!
Everything around them was coated in a thick layer of solid ice.
Of the twenty-odd elite cultists who had charged off so aggressively,
more than half had become ice sculptures that would never move again!
The ice sculptures retained the frenzied poses of their final lunges, their faces twisted viciously, but the cold had already torn every trace of life from