"Like the Image Beast Soul Bone obtained by coming to the Far North with Oscar, it can copy other people's Martial Souls. The Far North truly is magical!"
Before Yang Xingchen finished speaking, the duplicate's fishhook came whipping toward him.
But without the first Soul Skill, the Space-Time Fishing Rod was merely a sturdy fishing rod!
Yang Xingchen kicked the incoming hook away and immediately unleashed his first Soul Skill, Fishing Line · Thousand Threads Lure, hooking the duplicate in the blink of an eye.
But when Yang Xingchen tried to reel in the hook, he suddenly discovered that no attribute orb had appeared on it.
Sure enough, this duplicate was merely a smokescreen. The real enemy was still hiding somewhere, preparing to ambush him or flee.
Yang Xingchen quickly scanned his surroundings, trying to spot anything amiss.
But there was nothing but ice throughout the cavern, with nothing else unusual in sight.
The duplicate seemed to notice Yang Xingchen's intentions and decisively unleashed its own first Soul Skill.
Seeing the hook whipping toward him, Yang Xingchen did not dare hesitate for even a moment. He swung his fishing rod and knocked the incoming hook away.
Yang Xingchen did not dare gamble on whether the duplicate opposite him had copied his Soul Skill's effects as well.
"Snow Empress still hasn't appeared. That proves she's already confirmed that I can defeat this opponent with my own strength alone."
Yang Xingchen glanced back at the ice cavern's entrance. There was no way Snow Empress had failed to come down after so long.
Realizing that Snow Empress was testing him, Yang Xingchen no longer intended to hold back and summoned Cangyuan directly.
Cangyuan, who had grown two dragon whiskers, swam around Yang Xingchen's body and released all the attribute orbs stored within his body to Yang Xingchen.
Seeing Cangyuan suddenly appear, the duplicate instantly realized something was wrong. It dispersed the Martial Soul in its hands and swung a fist at Yang Xingchen.
Facing the duplicate's approaching fist, Yang Xingchen raised a hand and caught it, then twisted its arm until it snapped.
The duplicate, which felt no pain, retreated a few steps and reattached its broken arm.
"There aren't many attribute orbs stored inside Cangyuan, but they're enough for me to beat you to a pulp."
Shrouded in silver radiance, Yang Xingchen unleashed another whipping kick, but this time the duplicate could not withstand it.
The duplicate went flying backward, only stopping after smashing through an ice pillar as thick as an arm.
Yang Xingchen gave the duplicate no time to catch its breath. He charged forward and kicked it to the ground just as it got up.
"I haven't yet seen how powerful my Second Martial Soul, Heavenly Snow Woman, is in the Far North, so sorry for the trouble, but you'll have to test it for me!"
The instant Heavenly Snow Woman possessed him, Yang Xingchen's short hair became waist-length, snow-white hair, and his eyes turned ice blue.
His expression cold, Yang Xingchen raised his hand toward the duplicate and clenched it. Countless ice spikes shot out of the ground, piercing the duplicate's body in the blink of an eye.
The impaled duplicate instantly became a pile of shattered ice. Only then did Yang Xingchen realize that he had fallen prey to an illusion.
Just as he came to his senses, a slender figure resembling a snow ape, its face covered in a translucent ice shell, was clinging to an ice wall nearby.
"An Ice Grudge Snow Fiend?! Didn't Snow Empress say she'd wiped these things out?"
Ice Grudge Snow Fiends fed on fear. As long as they kept absorbing the fear produced by living creatures, their cultivation would grow.
This species had reached its heyday when Snow Empress's cultivation was about to break through five hundred thousand years.
Back then, Snow Empress had entered seclusion to break through the five-hundred-thousand-year bottleneck, leaving the Far North without a ruler out in the open.
An Ice Grudge Snow Fiend that had managed to break through one hundred thousand years by a stroke of luck led its subordinates in a sweeping invasion of other Soul Beasts' and humans' territories.
After emerging from seclusion, Snow Empress personally led the other defeated Soul Beast populations, spending over a thousand years exterminating most of the Ice Grudge Snow Fiends.
Afterward, whenever isolated Ice Grudge Snow Fiends occasionally appeared, Snow Empress would personally act to ensure they never gained a foothold.
Sensing a presence similar to Snow Empress's on Yang Xingchen, the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend shrieked and leaped down from the ice wall, angrily flailing its extremely long, slender limbs.
Yang Xingchen ducked beneath the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's claws, summoned the Space-Time Fishing Rod, and sent it flying with a horizontal sweep.
The instant the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend landed, Yang Xingchen activated his first Soul Skill, and the hook instantly caught its body.
"A spiritual power attribute orb? That's not much use!"
Yang Xingchen fed it to Cangyuan with some disdain. At present, an increase in spiritual power did nothing for him.
His first Soul Skill could not hook attributes indefinitely, either. With every additional attempt, the chance of successfully hooking an attribute grew lower.
Feeling its spiritual power weaken, the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend froze for a moment and shook its head hard. It had never experienced such a sensation before.
Seeing the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend actually freeze in place, Yang Xingchen cast again without another word. He needed to fish out an attribute like strength for it to be useful!
But this time, the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend noticed the hook the moment it caught its body and violently snapped the fishing line.
With the fishing line broken, Yang Xingchen could not use his first Soul Skill for the next three minutes.
"Mm, your strength has improved. It seems the training this empress arranged has worked well."
Snow Empress slowly walked out of the icy passage, clapping for Yang Xingchen, a trace of gratification appearing in her eyes.
At that moment, Yang Xingchen withdrew his hand. Without its support, the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's corpse slammed heavily to the ground, face-first.
Dozens of finger-thick ice spikes were embedded in the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's back.
"That was clearly just my good luck in fishing out the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's defense attribute. Otherwise, Heavenly Snow Woman wouldn't have that kind of power without any Soul Rings attached."
"The Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's strength lies in its spiritual power. Even if you hadn't fished out its defense attribute, you could still have killed it afterward."
Snow Empress truly had no fondness for Ice Grudge Snow Fiends. Back then, their species had killed far too many Soul Beasts and humans to cultivate and reproduce.
While Snow Empress and Yang Xingchen were talking, a purple Soul Ring condensed above the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's corpse.
Accidentally catching sight of that purple gleam, Yang Xingchen was instantly stunned. He had not felt that this Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's strength had reached the thousand-year level at all.
"Snow Empress, what's going on? I don't feel like this Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's strength reached the thousand-year level."
"Could it be that my strength is boosted to the thousand-year level in the Far North?"
At this thought, a trace of excitement appeared in Yang Xingchen's eyes. If that were true, he would have to settle permanently in the Far North.
"What are you daydreaming about? Who knows how long this Ice Grudge Snow Fiend has been starving in this ice cavern? Being able to exert twenty percent of its strength was already its limit."
Precisely because of this, Snow Empress had dared to let Yang Xingchen face the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend himself.
Otherwise, with the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's ability to create illusions anytime and anywhere, Yang Xingchen would long since have become its food.
Just as Snow Empress was about to look away from this thousand-year Ice Grudge Snow Fiend, she suddenly sensed something inside its corpse.
"Xingchen, take a knife and stab the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's head."
Hearing this, Yang Xingchen took a small knife out of Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges and stabbed it into the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's head while chatting and joking with Snow Empress.
"Snow Empress, do you hate Ice Grudge Snow Fiends that much? You even want me to desecrate-"
Before he finished speaking, Yang Xingchen felt the knife in his hand strike something exceptionally hard.
Putting this together with Snow Empress's words, Yang Xingchen had a rough guess as to what his knife had struck.
"Snow Empress, is this what a Head Soul Bone looks like? Why do I feel like it doesn't quite look right?"
Resting on Yang Xingchen's palm was a palm-sized, visor-shaped Soul Bone made of translucent ice crystal, as though the Ice Grudge Snow Fiend's icy facial shell had been peeled off.
"I never expected your luck to be so good. This is an External Soul Bone for the head. Absorbing it might give you a control-type Soul Skill."