Three years later.
Cold Frontier.
This was a world of boundless white. All around, glacial mountain ranges rose from the earth to prop up the heavens, their frigid white stone and deep-blue ice spires forming an impregnable encircling wall.
They rolled endlessly onward, their ridges carved like blade and axe marks, jagged fangs interlocking beneath the clear firmament. Their serrated peaks bore ancient snow that never melted, refracting dazzling radiance amid countless starlights and draping this Cold Frontier in dreamlike armor.
The mountain bodies wound onward, plunging all the way to the shores of Ice Lake. Their immense masses sank into the crystalline waters, where deep-blue ice layers and snowy rocks intertwined beneath the surface, sketching mysterious patterns.
Ice Lake lay cradled in the embrace of the mountains, like a giant mirror lifted up by the earth. Its surface was smooth as satin, yet lightly brushed by the wind's fingertips, stirring fine shards of ice. The shimmering ripples glittered like scattered diamonds.
The lake water possessed an ultimate blue, the clarity left behind after glacial Immortal Spirit Qi had melted into water, settled through the ages, and been filtered of every impurity. It was blue beyond measure, blue enough to shake the heart, as if it concealed a shadowed path leading into antiquity.
Upon the lake, a small boat drifted leisurely, breaking the silence that had endured for countless ages.
A boat upon Ice Lake, an untroubled silhouette in a frigid realm.
"Wow..." A little girl lay at the bow, her eyes wide as she rowed with two oars. It was Little Mu Feng. "Sister Ling, does our Jade Bamboo Continent have snowy scenery like this too? This is all ice-blue Immortal Spirit Qi!"
"We have not discovered any for now."
At the center of the boat, a poised and