The Ice Vein Crystal Corpse, worshipped by the Demon Kingdom as a heretical deity, flickered with silver-cold light in its translucent mouth while emitting buzzing cicada-like whispers. The unmistakable chill radiating from it heralded the imminent emergence of countless Daps bearing the Soul-Frosting Naiqiong Divine Ice.

Fatso, closest to the crystal corpse, sprang into action first. With lightning reflexes he yanked a black donkey hoof from his pack and jammed it into its icy maw before the creatures could erupt. He yanked his hand back just in time as the corpse's interior dimmed with one last flicker of blue-white flame.

Xiaoshan clutched Mingzhu tightly, his voice trembling as he asked, "Hu lao di... why isn't the copper seal working? Are we doing something wrong?"

I slumped to the floor, shaking my head hopelessly. "It's all your fault for screwing up strategy," I muttered between gritted teeth. "That bronze seal was designed specifically to suppress corpse transformations - no ordinary revenant could resist it. But this Ice Vein Crystal Corpse isn't a corpse at all! Even if we'd slapped the seal on its forehead or tail, it would've done nothing."

As I struggled to steady my racing heart, Fatso's improvised donkey hoof had bought us precious seconds of respite. Yet danger still lingered - though the corpse might not spew creatures from its mouth again, seven orifices suggested other possible escape routes. The safest solution? Wrap it up like an Egyptian mummy with thick tape to transform it into a solid bundle.

Still fumbling through my pack for adhesive tape (the roll had fallen between the White Wolf King's remains and the crystal corpse), I staggered toward them when Irley Yang and Fatso screamed in unison, "Hu lao di, get out of there!"

Instantly sensing trouble, I turned - nothing changed on the wolf king's side. Only my back was exposed to danger. As I tried to leap aside, something slick and viscous made me trip forward face-first into a glistening pool of foul-smelling mucus.

Wiping my forehead with one hand while twisting free with the other, I saw the Ice Vein Crystal Corpse shattering open like an overripe fruit. Red-tinted organs spilled out as a blizzard of shimmering ice-worms erupted in a silvery cyclone toward me.

I flung up my hands too late to block - even if I'd reacted faster, there was nothing here that could stop them. My final thought was "Damn it all" when suddenly the swarm froze mid-air like statues of light. In the split-second stillness between life and death, something clicked in my mind.

"Irley! It's the wolf king's blood!" came his urgent shout through the muffled silence. Only then did I realize the face-wiping had transferred some blood from the spilled wolf mucus to my forehead.

The old man Chu's words echoed in my memory: in Tibetan legends, souls lingered with their bodies and blood for twenty-four hours after death. Human souls resided specifically in the brow - covering it with freshly dead wolf's blood masked one's presence completely. And this very wolf had been Chu's kill himself - its silvery-white fur marked it as a descendant of the Crystal Freeing Mountain, ancestral guardian of the Wolf Clan alongside the Naiqiong Divine Ice.

No time to process these revelations before the swirling ice-worms refocused their target on Mingzhu and Xiaoshan. Reacting instinctively I tossed donkey hooves from my pack - why not other items? Perhaps their weight made them easiest for quick throws.

Fatso, normally undisciplined even in crisis, was already slathering wolf blood onto his forehead without a word when the swarm began its deadly pirouette before attacking. This brief hesitation between rotations became our window of survival.

After striking the crystal corpse's fragments, the creatures settled back into their icy prison with fading silver light still crawling across the shattered remains. We pressed against the tower walls like prey cornered by wolves as I studied the frozen battlefield below.

Water-based blue fireflies - but these ice-worms shifted seamlessly between cold and heat realms in a perfect defense system. Without finding this unseen control mechanism, we were trapped here until freezing to death or being devoured tonight either way.

That's when I noticed Mingzhu's strange proximity to the two dropped crystal spheres. One was dull while the other blazed brighter than ever before. Sharing a glance with Irley, we understood instantly - he fired point-blank at the glowing sphere, shattering it in an act of calculated desperation.

"Wang Commander! Lighter fluid now!" I shouted as Fatso produced his spray canister. A single burst suffocated the entire swarm into ash before they could flee, but the confined space left us gasping for air even more desperately than we'd been moments ago.

Prying up the blackwood floor panels (which revealed suspiciously artificial construction rather than original architecture), I found our path downward through an ancient tunnel system. The sloped passage with its stair-carved freeze showed no sign of tomb raiders yet clearly predated modern times by millennia.

When Xiaoshan refused to move past her terror, Fatso invoked his "psychological warfare" tactics: "If you stay here, you'll end up like that burned corpse - no one wants a pretty girl sharing secrets with male zombies at night!" Finally she scrambled after us into the icy depths where Irley asked, "Based on your experience, what might lie at this glacier's heart?"

"The old highland lake might lead to deep underground waterways," I mused. "But these tunnels... they reek of Rebirth Sect's handiwork."

Irley nodded grimly. "From Lama Jigme's tales about the Demon Kingdom in the Song of Enemy-Binding Pearls, I suspect this glacier connects directly to Malakarha - the Cataclysm Gate to the Demon King's capital city. The Rebirth Sect wants it opened, doesn't they?"