Even when the riverside camp began setting pots into earthen stoves to cook during the fourth watch, the south wind along the Great River still blew unabated beneath the Twin Moons overhead. Not even North Mang Mountain could block it.
The unrelenting south wind meant that the already fragile ice covering the Great River would continue breaking up after daybreak, swiftly bringing the river into the most troublesome period of ice floods... In fact, by this day, ice had already begun drifting through parts of the lower Great River.
But just then, the cultivators throughout the camp suddenly sensed a vast surge of true qi sweeping across the river to the north. The ordinary soldiers soon reacted as well, though what they sensed was a chill sweeping in from the river. Then, by moonlight, everyone saw the white mist rolling toward them.
On the river embankment, after that cloud of white mist drifted away, Minister Duan Wei was already dumbstruck. A dozen paces ahead of him on the ice, a commandant at the Condensing the Core stage who cultivated Ice True Qi had just swung his sword and was already swaying on his feet... He was reeling in both body and mind.
This commandant from Fengyi Commandery had never imagined that he could unleash such a move in his lifetime. Yet after doing so, he felt utterly drained, to the point that both body and mind slipped beyond his control.
A moment later, Duan Wei gathered himself, drew his sword, and stepped onto the ice. He walked several dozen paces beyond the commandant who had served as a makeshift formation nexus, then unleashed his own River-Cutting True Qi and drove his sword hard into the ice beneath him. That single thrust told him that the ice had indeed been thickened