Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

What happened? Another polar outbreak?

It’s impossible. A lot of Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators are staying on alert around. If the tempests with blizzards were arriving, they would’ve sent out alarms!

Li Yao felt that the frost was spreading to his stomach all the way from his nostrils like a pervasive bug, outlining his trachea and bronchia for him. He could even sense that a lot of his alveoli were freezing.

He suddenly fell on one of his knees and sensed the environment clearly by sticking his hands to the ground.

As he expected, he sensed a slight shivering, as if the ground in the mist up head had been split open, and something was crawling out from underground!

After only a few seconds, his palms had been frozen to the ground. When he removed them by force, even the thick gloves were ripped apart.

Li Yao stared at the mist in the front without blinking. Soon, ear-splitting shrieks were echoing from the mist. There was also the sound of something wriggling forward.

“Run!”

“There’s a large area of ice up head. After we drilled through the ice, countless ‘ice devils’ flooded out!”

In the mist, dozens of Cultivators were staggering to run backward.

Everybody’s face was extremely twisted, as if they had been smashed by the hammers of ice right in the head. Many of them were tottering, with their bodies and legs covered in thick ice shells. Despite the severe frostbite, they did not dare slow down at all. Exhausting their spiritual energy, they fled in panic like running fireballs!

Behind him, a giant translucent tide, as if the white snow had been blessed with life, was lunging toward them like a ferocious beast!

One of the Cultivator’s legs was frozen in place. He managed to summon his flying sword, hoping to ride the sword out of danger. It was a pity that his flying sword was malfunctioning in such a frigid environment. Drifting up and down for a moment, he was soon caught up by the translucent tide.

“Hu!”

After the tide swept over, the Cultivator was immediately frozen into a block of ice in midair before he fell to the ground and shattered into pieces, leaving a ground of scattered, blood red ice pieces the size of fingernails!

The sight felt eerie to all the Cultivators who witnessed his end.

Before they marched into the Land of Eternal Night, they had also collected many notes from the previous adventurers and sorted out a large batch of files regarding the Land of Eternal Night.

The Land of Eternal Night was frequented by all kinds of brutal demon beasts living in the coldness. There were also gangs of frost barbarians. The blizzards and the tempests were terrifying natural disasters, too. However, of all the dangers, the most horrible one was doubtlessly the ‘ice devils’!

The ice devils were a type of very special moss.

To survive in the harsh environment of the Land of Eternal Night, they spent most of time lurking inside the thick shells of ice and preserved their lives by means of hibernation.

When they perceived the arrival of prey, they would figure out a way to break out of the shells, proliferate, and move before they lunged at the prey like a man-eating swamp!

The ice devils’ food was the heat in the air and in the body of their prey.

Therefore, when the ice devils went on a rampage, the temperature in the environment would plummet by dozens of degrees because all the heat in the air had been absorbed by the ice devils.

Should the prey be covered by the ice devils, all the heat and spiritual energy inside their bodies would instantly be drained, leaving an empty ice sculpture behind.

After all the prey was cleaned up and devoured, the ice devils would sneak back underground, waiting in hibernation for another batch of unfortunate prey to start a new round of hunting!

Li Yao had once seen a very weird primeval moss named ‘blood tide’ on Kunlun. Feeding on spiritual energy, it could cover dozens of square kilometers and was as thick as a carpet. It was even bold enough to attack the high-level Cultivators who were equipped with crystal suits.

The ice devils were probably the mutants of the ‘blood tide’ in the extremely cold area. They were even weirder and more dangerous!

“Damn it. I should’ve seen it coming!” Li Yao slapped his thigh hard.

All the information that he had collected regarding the ice devils stated that the terrible creatures were rather unpredictable. As long as the explorer was not too unlucky, it was unlikely to ever run into them.

However, if they were truly the mutants of ‘blood tide’, it was possible that they would have an equally keen sense of spiritual energy. Therefore, near the Divine Palace would certainly be their best shelter, just like Kunlun, as a land of dense spiritual energy provided sanctuary for the blood tide!

The appearance of the ice devils suggested that the Divine Palace was not far away. It was possible that the Divine Palace was right below the ice shells that they had drilled through!

It was a pity that Li Yao had failed to associate the ice devils with the blood tide in the beginning. When he figured out the connection between the two parties, the translucent tides of ice had already lunged toward him!

“Run!” Li Yao roared and threw out more than ten grenades, which exploded right above the ice devils. However, the blossoming flames were frozen into half translucent flowers after only blocking the ice devils briefly. Their color changed from crimson to orange, from orange to blue, and from blue to bright green, until they became transparent and melted into the overwhelming tide of ice!

Not only did his attack fail to blow apart the ice devils, it even gave away Li Yao’s existence. With a series of crunching noises, the ice devils flowed toward him mixed with ice and mist!

Cursing, Li Yao turned around and ran away. He was of a mind to ask everybody to keep calm and remind them that, based on his experience in the past, the ice devils would only attack when they perceived spiritual waves. So, as long as everybody concealed their spiritual waves to the minimum, they would not be attacked anymore!

However, on second thought, if they did not summon their spiritual energy to resist the bitterly cold environment, they would be equally dead!

Besides, with the thickness of the mist, even if he condensed his spiritual energy on his throat and roared at the top of his voice, it would not be able to reach hundreds of meters away!

Li Yao suddenly realized that the weird mist could have been a trap made by the ice devils. This place was their hunting ground!

Gritting his teeth hard, Li Yao could only flee in a hurry.

Due to the extremely low temperature, all the magical equipment became highly unstable, especially devices made of metal. They would be covered in thick shells of ice within a few breaths when they were exposed to the air. The circulation of spiritual energy on the rune arrays was seriously jammed. It took a much longer time for the Cultivators to prepare their flying swords.

Many of them had already been devoured by the ice devils before their flying swords were soaked in spiritual energy. Amid long, dry screams, they ended up being bizarre-shaped ice sculptures.

The other survivors were already lightheaded. In the obscure mist, they were wandering like headless flies, and if they missed one or two marks on the ground in their anxiety, it was very possible that they would miss their direction. Some of the more unfortunate guys were even running right toward the ice devils.

When they discovered that the air was freezing around them, there was already no time for them to react. The overwhelming tide of tide soon drowned each and every one of them!

“Don’t run in panic. Follow me. Roar while you run to attract the companions nearby. Do not lose your way!” Li Yao was rather anxious.

Although he did not like the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector very much, he was not heartless enough to watch them to freeze to death without doing anything. He did not know the situation about the rest of the exploration teams in the mist. At the very least, he wanted to bring the exploration team under his lead out of the mist in one piece!

In the mist up front, a lot of people were suddenly shouting and running toward them in panic. They had apparently lost their way under the devastation of the ice devils.

“Don’t panic! The camp is over there!”

Li Yao snatched the Cultivator in the lead and shoved him hard.

He suddenly felt that the Cultivator was somewhat weird. The guy was wearing a battle robe made of smooth bear hide and a hat made of otter leather that dangled to his ears. Although there were no earrings, he could still see part of the tattoos on the guy’s face.

The saber on his waist, the wolf fangs on the sheath as adornments, and the Seven-Star Agates, which were local specialties of the Dark Cloud Prairies, as well as their scream just now that was mixed with the unique accent of the Dark Cloud Prairies. All the signs suggested that it was a team of Ghost Qin Cultivators!

In the middle of the boundless mist, the Great Qian Cultivators and the Ghost Qin Cultivators looked at each other in a daze like two swarms of headless flies.

The atmosphere was a bit intense and awkward. Everybody’s throat was rolling up and down. They were breathing so hastily that more white air was spurting out their nostrils, covering everybody’s frozen faces in the hazy smoke.

It was not until then that Li Yao realized that the exploration team led by the Four Rapscallions must have reached the coordinates of the Divine Palace, which was enshrouded in the mist, at almost the same time as they did, except that the two parties were on different sides of the mist. They had been pushing toward the center from opposite fronts.

Because the vast mist blocked all the light, sound, and spiritual waves, and both parties were measuring and prospecting carefully, they did not discover each other in the beginning.

It was like digging a tunnel from the two ends of a mountain to the center of it. Before the two parts of the tunnel were connected, it was almost impossible for them to notice each other!

However, the weird ice devils sensed the two bunches of prey at the same time and attacked them indiscriminately!

Under the scourge of the ice devils, many people lost their way. Instead of running to their own camp, they ran toward the ice devils, or where there was noise!

The multiple forces there—namely Great Qian, Ghost Qin, the Heaven Battering Army, the White Lotus Cult, and Ghost Character—must have gotten mixed up. Everything was in chaos!

The situation could not have been messier!

“You—” Li Yao only hoped that the Ghost Qin Cultivators in front of his eyes maintained the most fundamental rationality.

Even an idiot could tell that fighting each other while being chased by the ice devils would do nobody any good!

Thankfully, the Ghost Qin people on the opposite side seemed to have realized it, or maybe, in an environment where the temperature had dropped to almost minus a hundred degrees, their fighting will and brutality had been frozen. Although they were clutching the handles of their sabers, they were retreating step by step in silence instead of unsheathing the weapons.

However…

Shua!

A sword aura rushed out from the Great Qian Cultivators behind Li Yao and darted into the Ghost Qin Cultivators, knocking one of them to the ground!