Cultivation Begins with Daily Intelligence Reports

318: eerie warningTime flowed slowly in the deathly silence. Inside the ice house, only the occasional ”crackling” of the bonfire and the Priest’s increasingly heavy, labored breathing—sounding like a broken bellows—intertwined into a distressing rhythm.

Clan Chief Stone Eagle clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. The muscles on his bronze-colored face were taut, and his cloudy eyes stared unblinkingly at the withered figure before the altar. Every heavy breath he took was filled with an unspeakable tension.

Suddenly!

”Puff!”

A muffled sound shattered the suffocating silence! The Priest’s hunched body jolted violently, as if struck by an invisible hammer. He pitched forward abruptly, and a large mouthful of blood sprayed out!

The blood was not the usual bright red, but an extremely eerie dark gold with a metallic luster!

As the blood splashed onto the freezing stone surface of the altar, it actually made a ”sizzling” sound, as if a red-hot iron had met ice, instantly condensing into strange, dark-golden ice beads.

But these ice beads did not remain completely still; instead, they squirmed slightly on the altar’s surface as if they possessed life, emitting an ominous aura.

What was even more hair-raising was that at the very moment he spat out the dark-gold blood, the Priest’s eyes—which had been closed and blind for untold years, sunken like two black holes—suddenly snapped open!

They were a pair of eyes that defied description!

When they first opened, there were no pupils or whites, only a deathly grayish-white that seemed to contain endless mist and scenes of destruction!

But this terrifying Chaos lasted only for an instant before the grayish-white receded like a tide, revealing normal whites and pupils.

However, those pupils were filled with extreme fear, unbelievable horror, and a despair as if he had glimpsed some great terror capable of collapsing heaven and earth and returning all things to the void!

He stared fixedly in the direction where Lin Jingyu stood, even though his gaze seemed long since unfocused, lacking any true center.

Using the last shred of strength in his chest, he raised his skeletal, trembling arm and extended an index finger, stubbornly pointing toward a certain direction outside the ice house.

A hoarse, broken sound emerged from his throat, a piercing sizzle like red-hot iron being quenched in ice water, sounding like a demon’s whisper from the deepest depths of the Nine Serenities Hell:

”That... direction... Ice Prison Temple... he... is... there...”

With every word he uttered, he coughed violently, and more dark-golden blood clots overflowed from the corners of his mouth. His life force was like a candle in the wind, flickering on the verge of extinction.

Yet he still struggled, his lips moving to spit out the final few fragmented words that were like a curse, branding themselves ruthlessly into Lin Jingyu’s mind:

”Be careful... don’t... trust... anyone... including... you...”

The Priest’s head suddenly slumped down, and the last faint trace of life within him vanished completely, like a kite with a snapped string.

However, those eyes that had just opened, filled with endless dread, remained wide, staring hollowly into the Void Realm.

It was as if, at the final moment of solidification, he was still gazing at some unspeakable and unavoidable horrific future.

”Lord Priest!”

Clan Chief Stone Eagle let out a heart-wrenching cry and fell to his knees with a thud. Tears streamed down his old face as his forehead struck the cold ground heavily, making a dull thud.

The atmosphere inside the ice house became as heavy as a physical weight.

Lin Jingyu stood where he was, his figure tall and straight like a pine tree. His face appeared calm, but deep within, his heart was surging with turbulent waves!

The Priest’s earth-shattering deathbed warning, combined with the ancient and heavy warning from the Mountain Giant Ape Ancestor inside the holy mountain, and the various irrational and eerie events he had encountered after entering this Profound Ice Secret Realm...

...now felt like countless cold venomous snakes, intertwining and coiling to form a massive, dark, and eerie web of unknown danger in his heart.

Ice Prison Temple?

What kind of place was that? It sounded like a place of extreme peril.

Moreover, there was no mention of it in the map provided by the Ancestor Ape earlier.

Was Fei Yangyang there? The Priest said, ”He is there, but he is no longer himself.”

The meaning hidden in those words was chilling. Was everything a lie? A trap? Trust no one?

What exactly did it mean?

The secrets and dangers hidden in the deepest parts of this Profound Ice Secret Realm were far more complex and terrifying than he had initially anticipated.

This was not just a Trial Grounds with a harsh environment; it was more like a massive chessboard filled with riddles and killing intent.

He remained silent as he assisted the grief-stricken Clan Chief Stone Eagle in handling the Priest’s funeral. This wise man, who had dedicated his life to the tribe and ultimately used his life as the price for his divination, deserved a dignified end.

As a token of gratitude for the Great Wind Tribe’s information and out of a shred of pity for their tragic end, Lin Jingyu took out some Spirit Stones and pre-prepared Formation Flag Materials from his Storage Pouch.

His Storage Pouch had considerable space, and he had come well-prepared for this Secret Realm journey with all sorts of supplies.

Combining the extreme environment of this place, he mobilized the Evergreen Spiritual Power within his body to meticulously set up a simple yet practical ”Small Five Elements Cold-Resisting Formation” around the tribe’s crude ice-stone ramparts.

Although this Formation could not completely withstand the periodic outbreaks of the terrifying ”ice fiend” that could freeze everything, under normal operation, it could slowly gather the thin Spiritual Qi in the environment to form a weak protective force field.

It would slightly raise the temperature in the tribal area and block some of the bitter cold, providing a tiny but perhaps life-deciding bit of protection for these Mortals struggling to survive in such desperate circumstances.

Watching the Formation’s light curtain slowly rise and emit a faint warmth, a complex light mixed with gratitude and despair once again emerged in the eyes of the remaining tribespeople.

Having done all this, Lin Jingyu no longer lingered.

He took one last look at this tribe shrouded in despair, then moved his body, transforming into a streak of light as faint as green smoke with tiny flashes of purple lightning at its edges.

Following the direction the Priest had pointed at his death, he resolutely plunged into the deeper, colder, unknown ice field ahead that seemed capable of swallowing all light and heat.

On the journey that followed, the harshness of the environment increased exponentially.

The violent snowstorms almost never ceased for a moment. Goose-feather-like snowflakes mixed with sharp ice shards formed a white curtain of death, severely obstructing vision so that one could only see a dozen or so yards ahead at most.

Even more troublesome was that a strange force field seemed to exist here, suppressing Divine Sense to a staggering degree.

Lin Jingyu’s powerful Divine Sense, tempered by the Spirit Refining Art and far exceeding those of the same rank, was compressed to a range of less than a hundred yards when extended outside his body.

Furthermore, his perception became blurred, as if he were looking through a thick layer of frosted glass.

The ground beneath his feet was no longer solid ten-thousand-year ice but a fragile ice crust filled with bottomless ice cracks hidden by snow. Every step had to be taken with extreme caution, and his Divine Sense had to constantly scan ahead, or else one misstep would lead to a bottomless abyss.

The extreme cold permeating the air seemed to have gained a consciousness of its own, pervasively eroding his protective spiritual light with a ”sizzling” corrosive sound, forcing him to continuously circulate the Evergreen Art.

Only by nourishing his Meridians with pure and gentle Evergreen Spiritual Power while simultaneously invoking the Thunder True Intent within his Dantian to let the most yang and rigid aura flow through his body could he barely resist that bone-chilling cold.