With a glint in his eye, Ye Chen paused for a moment in contemplation before raising a finger and gently tapping it forward. A spiraling gust of wind blade shot out, striking the silver wolf’s carcass.

Thwack—

The wind blade seemed to impact a block of cold iron, shattering on contact. Ye Chen’s expression immediately turned grave. The strike he had just unleashed was potent enough to slay a peak expert of the Epoch Realm, yet it failed to cleave the dead silver wolf’s body. It was clear this creature possessed the strength of the Void Heaven Realm!

Who killed it?

Ye Chen thought of the colossal monster from Dragon Mirror Lake, his brow furrowing. He looked up toward the glaciers ahead, suddenly sensing that this seemingly reachable distance was actually impossibly long and arduous, as if countless unseen dangers lurked in the shadows!

Ye Chen remained silent, lowering his gaze to the massive corpse before him. A thought struck him, and with a flip of his hand, a golden talisman appeared. Before it could freeze solid, he quickly enveloped it in a barrier of wind.

The golden talisman radiated a faint, soft light.

A gentle warmth transferred from the talisman into his palm.

This talisman was obtained from killing an Abyss Lord within the world of the Abyssal Palace. From that Abyss Lord’s body, he had acquired not only this golden talisman but also a golden bone.

Ye Chen’s eyes flickered as he slowly approached the silver wolf. His gaze sharpened, flashing with cold light. With a pointed finger, a touch of cyan radiance condensed at his fingertip. He floated into the air, hovering before the wolf’s massive skull. At such close quarters, observing the ferocious fangs, one might think the creature was about to wake from death.

Even Ye Chen could not guarantee his survival at this proximity.

His heart accelerated. A cyan blade seemed to form on his fingertip, and he swiftly scored a gash across the silver wolf’s forehead. A trickle of white blood seeped out; in this intensely cold environment, it remained liquid, refusing to freeze.

Ye Chen flipped his hand, retrieving the golden bone, and inserted it into the wound on the silver wolf’s forehead. Then, biting his finger, he let a drop of fresh blood fall onto the golden talisman. Like a sponge, the talisman instantly absorbed the blood, which vanished without a trace.

With a flash of insight, Ye Chen quickly used the golden talisman to seal the wound, as if it were adhesive tape.

“If I haven’t guessed wrong, this should be how it works…” His eyes shone with a peculiar light as he slowly drifted backward, looking down upon the silver wolf from above.

Time passed quietly.

Just as Ye Chen started to frown, the silver wolf’s pupils snapped open. The amber-white eyes were like sharp ice shards, reflecting a glacial sheen, utterly vacant of emotion. Then, its body slowly stirred and rose from the ground, lumbering toward Ye Chen, lowering its head like a docile yet fierce pet.

Ye Chen’s eyes brightened, and a breath of relief escaped him. His silhouette flashed, and he landed atop the silver wolf’s head. “Indeed…” Observing the situation, Ye Chen surmised that the three independent worlds leading to the Ancient Realm—specifically the second world, the Abyssal Palace—and its ten Abyss Lords, must have been conjured by some mysterious, powerful entity. Perhaps even the Heavenly Road, the Black Demon Realm, and the Abyssal Palace were placed there specifically by this powerful figure to bar entry to the Ancient Realm Peak from the Ancient World.

“But for what purpose…?”

Ye Chen frowned, his eyes flickering. Drawing upon memories from his previous life, a bad premonition settled in his heart. After a moment of silence, he shook his head, clapped the silver wolf’s ear, and commanded, “Let’s go. Find me a hidden place.”

As if understanding his words, the silver wolf immediately spread its four limbs and bounded out of the glacier with a low snarl.

“I just pray… we don’t run into that monster that got in ahead of us…” The world before Ye Chen distorted as the silver wolf charged, his thoughts trailing off silently.

Snow Domain, northwest of the Glacier Passage exit.

Blizzards howled, sweeping across the sky and blurring the visible world into a white haze. Sefigran’s silver-white hood was pressed low against the biting wind, the white feathers adorning it gently fluttering. Her long robe billowed, kicking up loose snow from the ground.

She trod lightly across the snow. Behind her, Ling still clutched the cyan battle saber. His hair whipped wildly around his face as he struggled over the snow, each step sinking deep to his knees, making every lift of his foot an effort.

“Cold?” After a few steps, Sefigran turned back, looking at Ling with concern.

“Not cold,” Ling shook his head, grinning and revealing a flash of white teeth. “Sister, you’re amazing. When we first arrived, I thought I was going to die; I was so cold I almost froze into a statue. But now, I can’t feel any temperature at all. Even this snow feels like mere sand when I touch it, devoid of any chill.”

Sefigran pursed her lips slightly, turned, and continued leading the way. She naturally knew why he wasn't cold—the chill of the storm had been filtered away.

Feathery white snow, like scales shed by a giant beast, roared down, enveloping them. On the snowy ground they had passed, a long trail of footprints stretched behind them. In the wake of those prints lay four or five massive monster corpses, sprawled haphazardly.

“Hm?” Sefigran suddenly halted. She tilted her silver-white hood slightly, allowing the wind and snow to sweep past her eyes, which gleamed like clear gemstones. “It seems… someone has arrived.”

Snow Domain, Glacier Passage.

Whoosh—whoosh—

A biting wind roared past Ye Chen’s ears. His long, black hair streamed backward, and the black fabric of his clothing snapped loudly against the skin of his tightly pressed chest.

He favored black.

Black clothing was less likely to show stains of other colors.

The silver wolf beneath his feet charged violently, its body rising and falling as if scaling mountains. Its speed was laser-fast, the surrounding landscape stretching and blurring into streaks of light.

Ye Chen squinted slightly to maintain some clarity in his vision. During this run, he had spotted over a dozen corpses along the path—all white-furred, monstrously large, and bizarre in shape; some resembled giant lions, others colossal bears… Yet, every single corpse bore a fatal, massive puncture wound in a vital spot.

Ye Chen regretted not acquiring more golden talismans and golden bones. If he had known this day would come, he should have slaughtered all ten Abyss Lords in the Abyssal Palace and extracted the golden talismans and bones buried within them to enslave these Snow Domain monsters.

Speaking of the Abyssal Palace, Ye Chen recalled the pursuit when he fled back from the Ancient Realm Peak: the dense swarm of massive, headless ancient corpses, like doomsday giants, relentlessly pressing forward with an aura of death and evil.

But so much time had passed; logically, those monsters should have reached the Ancient World by now. If they had, the Ancient Continent would surely be annihilated, leaving not even dust behind; no one could halt their advance.

Yet, the Ancient World remained intact.

Could it be that those monsters never made it to the Ancient World?

Ye Chen’s brow furrowed as a complex feeling began to surface. As he pondered, the sound of the howling wind ahead abruptly intensified, and the silver wolf screeched to a halt at the edge of the glacier.

Ye Chen felt the temperature around him plummet sharply, far colder than the relative ‘warmth’ inside the glacier. Compared to the outside, the glacier had felt like a furnace. He almost had the urge to turn back.

But the sooner he could secure the Ten Pavilion True Man in cold storage, the sooner he could escape this forsaken place.

He gritted his teeth and urged the silver wolf into the swirling blizzard outside.

Standing atop the wolf, Ye Chen gazed into the distance. The surroundings were an unbroken expanse of ice and snow. Distant, towering snow-capped peaks were faintly visible, obscured by the raging blizzard that blurred his vision.

Ye Chen pondered, guiding the silver wolf to hug the side of the glacier, as he seemed to vaguely spot a sunken slope in the snowy distance.

The silver wolf braved the storm, taking a few quick leaps to reach the slope. Ye Chen peered intently and saw that the downward path curved away into the far distance.

Ye Chen patted the silver wolf’s ear. The creature understood and descended the slope, soon arriving at a sheer cliff face. Along the edge of this crystal-like wall was a narrow, carved path snaking along the cliff edge, with an unfathomably deep valley beside it.

The aerial view was obscured by snow, making the depths invisible.

The invisibility was precisely what bred terror.

So Ye Chen ordered the silver wolf to move slowly, keeping close to the cliff wall, lest a slip send them tumbling into the ravine.

Since leaving the interior of the ice and snow world, Ye Chen noticed he had lost the ability to fly. He wasn't overly surprised; after everything he had experienced, he could now face even the strangest phenomena with equanimity. After all, he knew when he arrived that the Snow Domain was a self-contained world.

A self-contained world naturally possessed its own unique laws.

“Awo—!”

Suddenly, the silver wolf roared, its forward momentum abruptly checked. The roaring blizzard seemed to vanish in an instant.

Ye Chen’s hairs prickled instantly, a chill running down his spine. Before he could react, a flash of white light appeared before him, like a swirl of snow, and when the light dissipated, two figures stood on the icy path ahead.

In front was a woman in a silver-white hood. Behind her stood a slender youth holding a cyan battle saber, looking around blankly, his frame appearing frail and timid.

Ye Chen’s expression darkened slightly, but he remained composed. He asked calmly, “Who are you?”

The silver-white hood lifted slightly, revealing a face of exquisite, near-perfect beauty. Her stunning features seemed carved from the snow and wind, her slender black brows drawn with ink, possessing an ineffable perfection and harmony. A subtle smile played on her lips as she looked meaningfully at the silver wolf Ye Chen was mounted upon. “I,” she said, “am naturally the one who came to kill you.”