"Sister Xue, you came." The Ice Empress knelt on the ground, looking up at the Snow Empress with a faint smile.
The Snow Empress approached, sat beside her, and gathered her into her arms, a trace of helplessness crossing her face. "Ice Empress, you know I can't bear to see you die, even temporarily. In the Star Dou Great Forest, you'd already be a soul beast old enough to be an ancestor. Why are you still acting like a child?"
Those words sounded like an older sister's earnest guidance to her younger sister, but to the Ice Empress, they were unbearably bitter.
Yet the next moment, her gaze grew resolute. "Yes, I don't need you to help me. I only wanted you beside me, to witness my resolve."
The extreme ice power surrounding the Ice Empress abruptly dissipated, and she slumped weakly into the Snow Empress's arms. A red soul ring slowly appeared over her body. For beings of their level, taking their own lives truly required no more than an instant. Why would they need anyone else's help?
The Snow Empress seemed to hear the hidden meaning in the Ice Empress's words. She actually understood the Ice Empress's feelings very well, and knew that this sort of relationship would bring them closer. In truth, she did not want to resist it either, but she could not, because although she bore the name of a soul beast, she was not truly one. Rather than a soul beast, she was more aptly called an elemental lifeform, not a beast at all.
The difference between their species was enormous, far greater even than that between humans and soul beasts. Take Tang Hao and Ah Yin, for instance. If Ah Yin had never assumed human form and remained merely a blade of grass,