Location: Glacier Spine Range – Southern Edge of the Frozen Abyss
The sky above the Glacier Spine Range was pale and endless, veiled with wind-blown frost that howled like spirits of the forgotten. Towering peaks stabbed the heavens, and beneath their feet, the earth cracked with ancient cold.
Qin Huaian and Qin Xiaoxiao moved carefully through the biting wind, their breath misting in the frozen air. The Void Flame inside Huaian kept him warm, but he could feel something… watching.
> "We're not alone," he murmured.
Xiaoxiao's eyes narrowed.
> "I've felt it since we crossed the ninth ice pillar. And it's not Jiang Mozhen."
---
🏔️ The First Test – Icewalkers of the Snow Cult
Just ahead, they spotted a flicker of movement—white-cloaked figures, faces hidden by bone masks, emerging from behind snow-covered ruins. Each carried spears tipped with Glacier Iron, a metal poisonous to spiritual energy.
> "Outsiders," a voice rasped, speaking in the Ancient Coldtongue. "You tread the bones of the Serpent God. Leave… or freeze in your sins."
These were Icewalkers—remnants of the Snow Cult, a sect once exiled for worshipping beast gods instead of heaven.
Huaian stepped forward calmly.
> "We seek the Frozen One. The heartbeat beneath the abyss."
The Icewalkers stirred. One of them stepped forward, taller than the rest, with white antlers curling from his mask.
> "You speak the Forbidden Beat."
He raised his staff.
> "Then face the Trial of Pulse. If the Frozen One accepts your soul, we shall not stop you. If it rejects you…"
The snow around them began to twist into a cyclone.
> "You become ice."
---
❄️ Trial of Pulse – The Ice of Memory
A sudden burst of spiritual frost consumed Huaian and Xiaoxiao.
They were pulled into a trance-like realm—white void, lined with echoes of their own pasts, but colder, crueler.
Huaian saw himself standing atop a mountain of corpses—his own allies, his parents, Xiaoxiao, even Mu Yinyin.
> "You will end them all," a voice whispered.
He staggered.
But he focused on his heartbeat.
The Void doesn't erase. It chooses what not to hold.
He centered himself. Let the flame of purpose warm the ice of doubt.
Xiaoxiao, meanwhile, faced a different trial.
She stood at her own wedding—watching Huaian marry Song Yueru instead of her.
Alone. Unseen.
But then she laughed. Not coldly, but knowingly.
> "No future scares me unless I forget who I am."
She shattered the illusion with a swing of her blade.
---
⚡ Trial Passed
Both returned to the real world, unscathed—but changed.
The Icewalkers bowed.
> "You are flame that walks in ice. The Frozen One stirs for you."
They handed Huaian a shard of Beastbone Crystal, etched with runes that opened the path to the Tomb of the Storm Serpent.
---
💠 Approaching the Abyss
As they walked deeper, the sky darkened.
Cracks in the glacier revealed a soft, rhythmic thump-thump—a heartbeat that did not belong to anything alive.
The path ended at a vast crevasse, glowing faintly with blue spirit-light.
There, frozen inside a swirling vortex of ice and wind, lay the Tomb.
Carved into the shape of a serpent god, its fangs formed a gateway.
From deep inside, a voice whispered—not aloud, but inside Huaian's Void Flame:
> "You... are not the first."