The Flame Was Waiting for Someone

There was no sound in the Mystic Yin Abyss. The moment Xiao Yan stepped down onto that ice stair, every sound around him was drawn away completely. He could not hear his own footsteps or his heartbeat, or even the faint hum of Spiritual Energy circulating within him. It was a deathly silence enough to drive a person mad.

He looked down. Beneath his feet was a sheet of ice as smooth as a mirror. Deep within it, a dim blue light flowed faintly, shining upward and bathing everything around him in boundless ice-blue. He could see no ceiling above and no edge in any direction. The entire space was like a giant piece of amber frozen in ancient ice, and he was the only thing moving within it.

Xiao Yan walked slowly forward. The layer of pale golden flame around him had been compressed to a thin line, flickering weakly against his skin, each flicker seeming as though it might be its last. The bone-piercing cold was no longer seeping in from outside; it was emerging, thread by thread, from his own bones, from his own soul.

He did not know how long he walked. He had nearly begun to think the ice-blue expanse was endless when, in its deepest reaches, he saw a light.

It was a flame no larger than a fist, floating in midair.

The flame was an almost transparent pale blue, so blue it was white, so white it looked cold. It burned quietly, its tongues swaying gently. It gave off no heat at all. Instead, the ancient ice around it, unmelted for countless ages, was forming layer upon layer outward, creating a giant ice lotus that held the flame at its heart.

Mysterious Yin Ice Flame.

Xiao Yan's breath caught slightly. But it was not the flame that stopped him in his tracks. It was the figure sitting cross-legged before the ice lotus.

It was a person, or rather, it had once been a person. His entire body was crystalline, from his hair to his fingertips, all of it turned to ice. Yet within that ice, his appearance in the last moment of his life remained. He was a handsome middle-aged man of about forty, his expression serene. He sat cross-legged before the ice lotus, his hands spread open, palms up, raised slightly toward the flame, as though holding something, or perhaps waiting for something.

Three thousand years.

Xiao Yan stood before the ice sculpture for a long time. He recalled what Luo Feng had said: the jade slip the ancestor had left at the entrance to the sixth layer contained only four words: the flame was waiting for someone.

Xiao Yan had thought it was a warning. But now, looking at the ice sculpture's outstretched hands and the ice flame burning quietly before it, he felt a faint, strange sensation in his heart. Those four words were probably something the ancestor had finally understood only before his death.

The Heavenly Flames of heaven and earth were born with spirits. This Mysterious Yin Ice Flame had burned alone in the deepest reaches of the Luo River Abyss for tens of thousands of years, perhaps more. It was not guarding some treasure. It was waiting, waiting for someone capable of bearing it, or perhaps for something it could talk to.

The ancestor had tried to seize it with Spiritual Energy and suppress it with his Sovereign body. And so, he had turned to ice.

Xiao Yan slowly breathed out. No sooner had his breath left his lips than it turned into ice crystals that fell in a soft shower. He did not approach recklessly. Instead, he sank his awareness into his body, settling it on the slumbering wisp of pink fire deep within his heart meridian.

Xiao Yi. Ever since arriving in the Great Thousand World, the little one had remained asleep, her pink flame growing dimmer by the day. If Xiao Yan had not nurtured her day and night with his Emperor Realm Soul, she would likely have gone out long ago.

She was a Fire Spirit formed from the fusion of six Heavenly Flames, a being of ultimate yang and searing heat. Yet the Spiritual Energy of the Great Thousand World was balanced between yin and yang. Having lost her balance, she could not wake. What she needed was a wisp of ultimate yin fire. Not the whole flame; a wisp would be enough.

Xiao Yan slowly raised his left hand. He had long since thought of a method on his way down. It came from the seventeenth form he had learned from the Thirty-Six Forms of Pill Pattern in the Luo Shen Residence's pill room, after six pill furnaces had exploded in succession that night: the Yin-Separating Mark.

Back then, he had used seven Yin-Separating Marks to separate the medicinal properties of the Scarlet Yang Vine and Ice Heart Grass, allowing each to remain in its place within a single pill furnace without clashing. Now he intended to do the same thing, except this time, the pill furnace was his own body.

Xiao Yan's Soul Power became an extremely fine thread and began carving within the meridians of his left arm, stroke by stroke. One mark, two marks, three... With each Yin-Separating Mark he carved, his left arm convulsed violently. Cold sweat had barely seeped from his forehead before it froze into tiny beads of ice that clung to his brows.

Seven Yin-Separating Marks stretched from the center of his left palm to a point three inches outside his heart meridian, isolating the entire meridian as a separate channel. At its end lay the place where the wisp of pink fire slept.

Xiao Yan took a deep breath and stepped forward. For the first time, the Mysterious Yin Ice Flame stirred. Its flame tilted slightly, like a person turning their head. The next moment, a terrifyingly intense cold surged wildly out of it.

Hum!

The last thin line of pale golden flame around Xiao Yan did not last even a breath against the cold before it went out with a puff. Immediately afterward, his feet began to freeze. Ice spread upward from their soles, climbing past his ankles and calves in the blink of an eye. Xiao Yan felt his lower body grow heavy, then lost all sensation in it.

The Flame Mantra circulated madly, but the flames it had just produced were frozen to pieces as soon as they left his meridians. Xiao Yan thought to himself, So this was how the ancestor was gradually frozen, wasn't it?

Xiao Yan gritted his teeth. He did not retreat, nor did he drive the Flame Mantra again. He simply extended his left arm, covered in Yin-Separating Marks, slowly toward the ice flame, his palm open and facing upward, just like the ice sculpture's. Then he carefully drew the wisp of pink fire from deep within his heart meridian and brought it to his palm.

The fire was too weak, reduced to the size of a grain of rice. It trembled pitifully amid the boundless cold, liable to go out at any moment.

But the instant it appeared, the cold that covered the heavens and earth came to a sudden halt.

The Mysterious Yin Ice Flame floated quietly above the ice lotus, its flame utterly still, like someone who had spent far too long alone in the darkness and had suddenly seen another point of light.

After a long time, the ice flame flickered slightly. Then a pale blue flame, fine as a strand of hair, slowly separated from it. It drifted unsteadily across the short distance and landed on Xiao Yan's palm, beside the wisp of pink fire.

The two flames, one pink and one blue, one hot and one cold, nestled quietly together in Xiao Yan's palm. For some reason, his eyes grew slightly warm. He slowly closed his fingers around both flames and carefully guided them back along the meridian covered in Yin-Separating Marks, deep into his heart meridian.

Hiss!

The instant the ice flame entered his meridian, Xiao Yan's entire left arm froze into a pillar of ice. Five of the seven Yin-Separating Marks shattered in succession under the assault of the cold. The remaining two held on desperately until the ice flame finally reached the outside of his heart meridian, where the wisp of pink fire wrapped it up.

One yin and one yang, one cold and one hot. Xiao Yan could clearly feel the wisp of pink fire leap the instant the ice flame entered its embrace. That pulse was stronger than any it had made since he came to the Great Thousand World.

Then, within the wisp of pink fire, a tiny, blurry figure turned over. It was a little one with a topknot sticking straight up, curled into a ball. She frowned in her sleep, smacked her lips, and mumbled, "...Cold."

Her voice was thin, soft, and indistinct. Then she gathered the wisp of ice flame into her arms as though hugging a pillow and sank back into a deep sleep. Xiao Yan stared blankly for quite a while after hearing her. At last, he could not help laughing. His laughter made no sound in the deathly silent Mystic Yin Abyss, but he could not keep the corners of his mouth from rising.

"Hehe, you little sleepyhead," Xiao Yan chuckled.

She had not woken up, but it would be soon.

It took a full half hour for the ice on his left arm to gradually thaw. Xiao Yan flexed his still-numb fingers and raised his head to look at the Mysterious Yin Ice Flame, still burning quietly. Though it had lost a wisp, it did not look much smaller.

"Your main body is too big. I can't carry you now," Xiao Yan said seriously. "Once I've grown stronger, I'll come back for you."

The ice flame swayed gently. Xiao Yan turned to the ice sculpture sitting cross-legged, solemnly straightened his clothes, and bent in a deep bow. "Senior, you were right. The flame was waiting for someone."

The ice sculpture said nothing. Its open palms remained quietly raised toward the ice flame. Xiao Yan straightened, gave him another look, then turned and strode toward the ice stairs he had come down. His steps were much lighter than they had been on the way in.

But just as he stepped onto the last ice stair leading to the sixth layer, his chest suddenly grew slightly hot. Xiao Yan stopped abruptly, reached into his robes, and took out the jade talisman glowing with silver light. It was Luo Feng's life-bound jade talisman. A fine crack was slowly spreading across its surface.