Bai Zao fell onto the snow at the cave entrance.
The Sword Restraint landed after her, returning on its own to its original sword form, a brilliant blood-red.
Ignoring the encroaching cold, she crawled to the cliff's edge and looked down. All she saw was the raging wind and snow; Jing Jiu had vanished into the center of the dark vortex.
A trace of resolve appeared in her eyes. She swallowed a pill, summoned the Southern Screen Bell with her Divine Sense, and turned to walk into the cave, picking up the sword in the snow as she went.
The Southern Screen Bell illuminated the way ahead, the wind it stirred brushing frost from the cave walls.
Before she had gone very far, she saw a Snow Worm.
The Snow Worm was roughly fifty feet thick, a terrifying high-level creature, but it was already dead, without any sign of life.
Bai Zao walked up to the Snow Worm and looked through its translucent skin, seeing Luo Huainan.
Luo Huainan was actually inside the Snow Worm's belly. Pale-faced and bare-chested, his eyes tightly shut, he lay immersed in the viscous fluid inside its body. The green bamboo token tied to his right little finger shone, though its light was dim, as if it might go out at any moment.
Presumably, during the previous fierce battle, this high-level Snow Worm had swallowed him, while his counterattack had gravely wounded it.
The Snow Worm had passed through the smooth stone tunnel to reach this place, bringing him into this bitterly cold world as well.
After arriving here, the Snow Worm could no longer hold on and had died without a sound.
Gravely wounded, Luo Huainan had been unable to get out either, and could only struggle to hold on inside its belly with