Chapter 982: Shuhuo

Jing Liu gave no response, and simply walked to the very edge of the Star Chariot.

The night wind rolled upward from below, snapping her garment's hem, and the smoky‑blue and sky‑blue robe unfurled in the wind.

She still said nothing, only lowering her head slightly to gaze toward the deepest part of the ice plain below.

Fu Xian's small unease swelled quickly; she quickened her pace again, almost jogging forward.

The Star Chariot beneath her turned over an ice ridge, and the terrain below opened up, revealing a vast ice valley before everyone's eyes.

The valley floor was pitch‑black, with faint blue light, and within that darkness several cyan‑yellow arcs drifted slowly.

They clung to the underside of the ice, like living vines or the blood vessels beneath a gigantic being's skin, their luminous tails trailing long, flickering, exuding an ominous chill that tightened one's throat.

Fu Xian's brow furrowed, and the Divination Eye burned uncontrollably.

She could feel the Abundance‑laden light, so viscous it seemed solid, pressing on the chest even through the thick ice.

Just as she was about to speak, hurried footsteps came from behind, followed by Yan Qing's suppressed gasp.

"General! Look!"

Yan Qing jogged to Fu Xian's side; the blond boy's face flushed red from the night wind, his eyes wide open.

He cradled a tablet in both hands, fingertips trembling, the screen's light casting half‑shadow on his face.

Fu Xian turned sideways, took the tablet, and scanned the flickering numbers.

It was a configuration detection terminal, currently displaying the Abundance energy density curve of the frozen zone.

The curve, once as calm as a dying creek, now surged upward as if someone had lit a fire at its base, visible to the naked eye.

It shot up from the normal range, breaching the alert threshold without losing momentum, as if it would burst the screen.

The graph shifted from muted green to a glaring orange‑red, and on the regional map the glacier looked splashed with glowing blood.

The adjacent data‑matching window kept scrolling, past records being retrieved and rejected faster and faster, finally freezing in a conspicuous red light.

A name leapt from the screen's center, black background with yellow letters, dazzling like a muffled thunderclap.

"Shuhuo."

Fu Xian whispered it.

Her expression remained resolute, yet her fingertips trembled involuntarily, the screen's light flashing across half her face.

Jing Liu stood at the edge, as if the wind had pierced her.

She slowly clenched the Ice Sword, a "crack" sound emanating, several frost patterns spreading from her knuckles up the blade.

Her face still faced the ice valley below; the black Eye Mask hid all expression, only her frost‑white hair fluttered in the wind, the tips brushing the shoulder line like moon‑cut shards of snow.

"Shuhuo......" Jing Liu whispered again.

Her voice was faint, yet everyone aboard the Star Chariot seemed pressed upon by those two words.

"This…"

Yan Qing's voice caught in his throat, taking a long moment before he forced out, "How could this be? Shuhuo was completely eradicated back then!"

Fu Xian gave no reply.

She, of course, remembered that the Abundance command had used Shuhuo, that battle that nearly dragged Luofu into the abyss, the Cloud Cavalry suffering countless casualties, and even Jing Liu had fallen into the demonic shadow because of it.

Yet the curve in the database kept climbing, already far exceeding the level of an ordinary demonic shadow body, and the cyan‑yellow light seeped more intensely from beneath the ice plain, as if countless glowing roots were drilling upward from the deepest depths.

Fu Xian pressed the tablet back into Yan Qing's hand, took another half‑step toward Jing Liu, and the Divination Eye burned hotter, as if warning her that whatever lay beneath the ice was awakening in a slow, steady rhythm.

The cyan‑yellow arc flashed again, brighter this time and nearer the ice surface, like several split bolts of lightning opening their eyes simultaneously in the deep blue.

"That is…"

Yan Qing clearly saw it too.

Instinctively, he drew his sword a half‑inch, a cyan‑yellow glow reflecting on the blade before fading instantly.

"Hold your fire for now."

Fu Xian suppressed the tremor in her voice, maintaining a composed tone as acting general, "At this concentration of Abundance reaction, a rash approach would only drive matters into an irretrievable state."

Even as she spoke, she felt a hollow emptiness inside.

What lay below—whether frozen solid or breaking free—no one could state definitively.

The Exhaustive Observation Formation's deductions for this sector came back in a tangled mess.

Fu Xian's Divination Eye throbbed fiercely on her forehead; she knew it was an omen, a terribly bad possibility surfacing from the ice's depths.

"Send the order: the entire sector into highest alert, all Cloud Cavalry withdraw to the perimeter, no one may approach the ice plain's core!"

Yan Qing paused, then straightened his back: "Yes!"

The viewpoint shifted from the main ship Star Chariot, sliding toward the frozen long street below.

Xing emerged from a half‑collapsed paved ruin, gray hair tangled with shards of ice, his garment stained with a patch of black ash.

She brushed it aside, then lowered her head to inspect the frozen phone wreck; the screen was completely black.

Xing sighed, looked up at the main ship Star Chariot hovering high in the distance, its golden pupils reflecting the distant lights.

She shoved the phone wreck back into her pocket, muttering, "Xianzhou really is generous—says they'll drop me here and they do—no ferry even left. I was just chasing a trash can, is that really necessary?"

She walked, kicking the frozen shards at her feet aside.

The white bubbles froze crystal clear, like tiny light bulbs set into the ice; Xing, passing by, crouched curiously and poked them— the bubbles remained motionless, only her fingertip turned red from the cold.

She rose, continued forward, the moonlight stretching her shadow thin, like another silent companion.

"The phone's gone; Yang Shu can't be reached either."

Xing drew a baseball bat from behind, swung it twice through the air, producing a "whoosh" sound, and said, "This dump is colder than Yalilo; should've put on two more pairs of pants before heading out, wouldn't be so exposed."

The more she walked, the more irritated she became, when she suddenly saw a few figures a dozen steps ahead, backs turned to her.

Those silhouettes hunched, shoulders unnaturally rigid, gray‑green tendrils sprouting from their necks and arms, swaying gently in the moonlight.

They were demonic shadow bodies.

Xing raised an eyebrow, and the fire that had smoldered inside her leapt up with a "swoosh."

She was fretting about having nothing to vent on, and these guys showed up on their own.

"Perfect timing." Xing twirled the baseball bat, his steps quickening.

She even began to mimic the atmosphere she had once seen from afar before a duel of strongmen, lowering her voice first, and speaking in a deep tone to those silhouettes: "You impostors ahead, state your names, I will keep your whole corpses."

The three demonic shadows showed no reaction.

Xing stepped a few paces closer, the baseball bat turning half a circle in her hand, a half‑true, half‑false arrogant grin on her face, as if she were playing the protagonist of some xianxia drama.

"My mood is terrible today; you happened to fall into my hand—consider it a lifetime blessing for you... uh, seems like bad luck, never mind, I won't bother. Just tell me how you want to die!"

The few demonic shadows finally moved.

They slowly turned around.

Xing still wore that provocative smile, but when they fully turned, the smile instantly froze on her face.

Her eyes suddenly widened, the baseball bat almost slipped from her palm; fortunately her fingers instinctively tightened, preventing the bat from falling onto the ice.