Chapter 969: An Ice Mountain

That general's negative ability is deadly; it's already a hassle elsewhere, and in Qingque's mental space it would only make the water even muddier.

If there were no god meddling behind this, she'd rather swallow her staff.

As for who it is, she's too lazy to guess.

The master in Le Tu is already enough of a troublemaker; adding another doesn't bother her.

In the Light Screen, gray‑white‑haired Qingque followed behind Yao Guang, her steps stumbling but still steady.

Heimu shifted the view aside and raised it a few degrees, seeing faint golden specks flickering in the distant dark‑red forest sea; the distance was too great to tell friend from foe.

"Keep your eyes on this line."

She thought to the system, "Don't let Qingque get caught off guard and be pressed to death in there; that would really be a spectacle."

The system replied with a light point, indicating receipt.

So Heimu minimized the view, shrinking it into a small floating block in the lower‑left corner of the field of view, and kept moving forward.

Pa Duo turned another corner ahead; after this turn the passage was noticeably wider, with a faint trace of moist vapor.

"Wind," A Bo Ni Ya said softly all of a sudden.

Pa Duo's ears perked up: "I can smell it too; the area ahead seems quite spacious!"

At the same time, the blocked area.

Xing was lying prone on the ground.

To be precise, she was lying in an extremely narrow ice fissure.

The fissure was only wide enough for her to squeeze in sideways, her shoulder stuck on the left, her hips on the right, her legs completely numb, and only her two hands could move within a small range in front of her body.

Her face pressed against the ice, the exhaled white vapor condensed into a small cloud before her eyes, her nose tip reddened from the cold, and a thin layer of frost formed on her eyelashes.

All around was ice, in every direction ice, and overhead a thick slab pressed down, blocking the moonlight; only a hazy cold glow filtered through the thinnest part of the ice, just enough for her to see where her hands were.

She had almost been frozen here a moment ago.

When Jing Liu made its final move, Xing only managed to see a flash of white light, and then the whole street transformed before her eyes from a "street" into an "ice mountain."

The moisture in the air was instantly drawn out and frozen; the stone‑paved road was covered by ice, the outer walls of the buildings on both sides were sheathed in thick ice shells, and even the breath she exhaled solidified into tiny ice crystals that fell onto her nose tip.

Relying on a survival instinct, she flopped onto the ground, using a groove between the doorway frame of a nearby herb shop and a corner to avoid the first wave of the fiercest frost.

Yet the ice still grew from both sides of her body, forming a narrow ice shell around her, like a half‑finished coffin that sealed her tightly inside.

Fortunately, her hands could still move.

Xing spent a lot of time chipping the ice.

Each strike was muffled and heavy, Ice Shards splashed onto her face; if she hadn't feared a collapse, she would have just used Flame Gun to charge.

Xing's fingers groped the ice shell for weak spots; the surface of her black gloves was coated with a thick layer of ice fragments, creaking with every movement.

After chipping for a while, she finally hammered a hole through the thinnest ice layer above her body.

The opening was small, just enough for her head and one shoulder to stick out.

Xing gritted her teeth, wedged her elbow into the edge of the hole, and wriggled like a dehydrated fish, inch by inch climbing up from the ice cavity.

The edges of the ice scraped her nape and sides of her waist, leaving several white marks on the black trench coat fabric.

She couldn't worry about that; her two legs kicked furiously inside the ice shell, and after her boot soles slipped three times she finally found a foothold, using that force to pull her right leg out, then the left.

Once both legs emerged from the ice shell, she lay on her back on the ice, breathing heavily, her chest heaving, and the white vapor she exhaled rose in successive plumes.

She lay there for about half a minute.

Then she shakily sat up, using her still‑trembling hands to scrape the ice shards off her face and neck, and poured the broken ice out of her boot openings.

After doing that, she let out a long breath, propped herself on her knees and slowly stood upright.

Her legs were still uncooperative; her knees bent several times before she found her balance.

She raised her hand to brush off the ice shell on the hem of her trench coat, but the moment her hand struck, the ice shell didn't budge, and her palm went numb from the cold ice.

Xing lowered her hand and turned to look at the scene behind her.

Her mouth opened slowly.

In front of her was an ice mountain.

Based on the entire blocked‑area street, a several‑hundred‑meter‑tall ice mountain rose from the ground into mid‑air out of nowhere.

Its scale was so vast that even when she tilted her head up she couldn't

reach the summit; she could only see the mountain's body glowing with a swath of cold blue light under the moon, as if someone had dropped an entire ice palace from the sky.

The ice mountain's shape was irregular, higher in the east and lower in the west, its sides studded with jutting ice pillars and ridges; the outlines of buildings could still be faintly discerned within the ice, the sign of a grocery shop blurred into a red blotch beneath the ice shell, and the opposite window of the tea house protruded half‑way from the ice, frozen into a white ice bar.

The street trees were reduced to ice clumps shaped like canopies, each leaf's unfurling curve frozen intact within the ice.

All the moisture in the air turned into ice crystals, and the whole street was swallowed by an ice mountain that rose from underground.

Xing tilted her head back, her mouth forming a perfectly round circle.

In her golden eyes reflected the entire ice mountain, the cold blue light fragmenting into countless tiny specks within her pupils.

She held that pose for a long time, long enough for the muscles in her neck to begin aching.

"Wow."

The voice was light and airy, quickly carried away by the wind across the empty street.

She slowly lowered her head, stood upright again, and involuntarily stepped back two paces.

The base of the ice mountain abruptly ended a dozen or so steps from her feet; the edge ice extended to her boots, as if someone had drawn a line on the ground—this side mortal realm, that side an ice‑bound hell.

Xing lowered her head and glanced at the thin frost at her feet.

Her boots made a light crack as they stepped, the frost surface shattering into a few shards.

"Qingque's family relatives…"

She murmured, her gaze sliding up the mountain's base, trying to locate the gray‑white‑haired figure within the ice.

After looking for a long while, she found nothing.

The ice layer is too thick; the interior structure is so blurred it's like trying to discern stones on the lake bottom through an entire sheet of frozen water.

She can't even tell whether the opponent dodged Jing Liu's attack or was frozen deep within the iceberg.

Xing sighed, and the white mist she exhaled spread out before her.

She raised her hand and tapped the spot on her forehead with her knuckles, knocking off the few ice shards tangled in her bangs.

Just as she was about to step forward again to take a look, a buzzing sound came from the far night sky behind her.

Xing turned around and looked up toward the direction the sound came from.

The night sky was filled with Star Chariot!