40: Chapter 40 The Ice Crystal Clan, the Frost King!

An Ice Crystal larva lay alone on a pile of frost cores, clutching a core larger than itself and gnawing away.

It didn't know where it came from, what its name was, or what it was supposed to do.

It only knew that it was hungry.

When hungry, it gnawed on cores.

After finishing one, it would gnaw on the next.

There was no other life on the ice plains. No companions, no enemies, no parents, no tribe.

Only it.

And the eternal wind and snow.

In the first year, it gnawed through seventeen cores.

Its body grew a little, from the size of a palm to the size of a fist.

It still didn't know what it should do.

It was simply alive.

By the tenth year, the Ice Crystal larva had grown to the size of a baby.

It still wandered the ice plains alone, gnawing on those cores and contending with the eternal cold.

Until that day.

It was gnawing on a particularly large core when it suddenly sensed something.

It looked up.

Not far away, within that pile of cores, one was glowing.

A faint blue light.

It tilted its head, watching the glowing core.

One day.

Two days.

Three days.

On the seventh day, the core cracked open.

A tiny head poked out from the crack.

Those transparent eyes were exactly the same as its own back then.

The Ice Crystal larva was stunned.

For the first time, it saw something just like itself.

The newborn larva saw it and was also stunned.

The two little things stared at each other for a long time.

Then, the Ice Crystal larva moved.

It picked up a core, walked to the newborn larva, and handed it over.

The newborn larva took the core, hesitated for a moment, and began to gnaw.

The Ice Crystal larva sat beside it, watching it eat.

The wind and snow howled.

But at this moment, it was no longer alone on the ice plains.

By the fiftieth year, the number of Ice Crystals had grown to thirty-seven.

They were all born from that pile of frost cores. The number of cores was limited; for every larva born, one core was lost.

But the larvae didn't know this.

They only knew that there were more and more companions.

They began to build their own home.

Calling it a home, it was actually just digging a large pit in the center of the ice plains and burying themselves inside. The bodies of the Ice Crystals didn't fear the cold; being buried in ice was actually more comfortable.

That large pit was called "Ice Crystal Village" by them.

There were no houses in the village, only individual ice caves. Each ice cave housed one Ice Crystal, and inside the caves were the frost cores they had collected.

That was their only property.

In the fiftieth year, the first Ice Crystal died of old age.

It was an old Ice Crystal who had lived for fifty years; his body had turned from transparent to milky white, a sign of aging.

Before passing, he distributed his collected cores to the other Ice Crystals.

His body turned into countless points of light, dissipating into the wind and snow.

The Ice Crystals gathered before his ice cave, watching those points of light drift away.

No one cried.

Ice Crystals don't cry.

But for the first time, they realized they would die.

In the one hundred and twentieth year, the frost cores were exhausted.

That pile of cores that was once like a mountain, after one hundred and twenty years of gestation and consumption, was finally completely gone.

The Ice Crystals panicked.

They had always thought the cores were infinite. They gnawed when hungry and used them when cold, never knowing that cores could run out.

Now, there was nothing left to gnaw.

The famine began.

In the first month, Ice Crystals starved to death.

In the second month, five more starved to death.

In the third month, the number of Ice Crystals plummeted from one hundred and twenty-three to eighty.

The remaining Ice Crystals gathered together in a circle, looking at one another.

"What should we do?" a young Ice Crystal asked.

No one answered.

After a long silence, the oldest Ice Crystal spoke.

"The cores are gone, but we are still here."

"Our bodies are also Ice Crystals."

"If we die, will our bodies turn into new cores?"

Everyone fell silent.

They were thinking about the meaning of those words.

What did it mean?

It meant that after they died, they would become food for the younger generation.

It meant their lives would continue in another way.

In the one hundred and twentieth year, the Ice Crystals established a cruel rule:

"After death, the body belongs to the whole tribe."

"The living shall use the bodies of the dead to continue living."

After the rule was established, the Ice Crystals survived.

The body of every deceased Ice Crystal would be cut into small pieces and distributed to everyone. Those small pieces contained pure energy, enough to sustain them for a while.

But problems followed.

The Ice Crystals who ate the bodies of their kind began to undergo changes.

The first to change was a young Ice Crystal named Bing Leng.

After eating three of his fallen companions, his body began to glow. It wasn't the usual blue light, but an eerie silver radiance.

His body became more transparent, harder, and sharper. His limbs took the shape of blades, his eyes turned pure silver, and his aura surged from Tier 1 to Tier 2.

He became the first evolver of the Ice Crystal Race.

After the news spread, other Ice Crystals followed suit.

They began to consciously eat more of their kind's bodies, attempting to trigger that change.

Some succeeded, some failed, and some died in failure.

But those who survived all became stronger.

By the one hundred and fiftieth year, the number of Ice Crystals plummeted from eighty to forty.

But each of these forty was Tier 2.

They were no longer just weak larvae.

They were warriors.

In the two hundredth year, the Ice Crystal Race birthed its first Tier 3 hero unit.

His name was Bingshuang.

He was the newborn who had crawled out of the core and seen the first Ice Crystal larva back then.

He had lived for two hundred years, eaten countless bodies of his kind, and undergone numerous evolutions.

His body was no longer a transparent Ice Crystal.

Instead, it was a pure ice-blue that seemed capable of freezing everything.

He stood in the center of the ice plains, looking at the forty tribesmen, his voice deep and majestic:

"We have survived."

"From having nothing, we have lived until now."

"But we are not yet strong enough."

"We need more power."

"Beyond the ice plains, there are other worlds. In those worlds, there is other life, other energy, other cores."

"We must go and conquer them."

"Use their things to sustain ourselves."

"This is our destiny."

"And our mission."

The forty Ice Crystals knelt down simultaneously.

"As you command, Frost King."

The Frost King took thirty Ice Crystal warriors and embarked on their first expedition.

Their target was a newly formed land on the edge of the Netherworld World, the Stone-skin Wasteland.

There, the Stone-skin Clan had gone extinct, leaving only an empty wasteland.

But on the wasteland, a large amount of rock energy remained.

That energy was absorbable for the Ice Crystals.

The thirty Ice Crystal warriors busied themselves on the wasteland for three months, completely absorbing all that rock energy.

They brought back enough energy to last for several centuries.

The crisis of the Ice Crystal Race was temporarily resolved.

The time flow adjustment ended.

The Extreme Cold Ice Plains gradually cleared from the blur, reappearing before Su Bai's eyes.

But it was no longer the same ice plain from three hundred years ago.

In the center of the ice plains, a massive Ice Crystal Castle had been built.

The castle was a hundred meters high, entirely transparent, and shone brilliantly amidst the grayish-white mist. The castle walls were covered in eerie runes that flickered with a faint blue light, as if living things were slowly crawling.

Surrounding the castle were densely packed Ice Crystal buildings. There were ice caves, ice towers, ice bridges, and ice walls.

At the top of the castle, an ice-blue flag flapped loudly in the Yin Qi.

Before the castle gates, an ice-blue figure stood quietly.

He was two meters tall, his body carved like the purest Ice Crystal, with a deep ice-blue showing through the transparency. His eyes were pure silver, piercing through the mist to land on Su Bai.

He knelt.

Behind him, eight thousand Ice Crystal tribespeople knelt simultaneously.

As Su Bai watched this scene, information about him surfaced in his consciousness.

[Frost King (Hero Unit)]

[Level: Tier 3 Peak]

[Grade: 4-Star]

[Skills: Ice Crystal Body (Passive), Extreme Cold Domain (Active), Ice Blade Storm (Active), Devouring Evolution (Passive), King's Pressure (Active)]

[Description: The king born from three hundred years of cruel evolution of the Ice Crystal Race, evolved from the original Ice Crystal larva. Having experienced famine, internal strife, and expeditions, he finally led his people toward a new life. Can absorb any form of energy through Devouring Evolution and freeze all enemies through the Extreme Cold Domain.]

Eight thousand Ice Crystal tribespeople.

A Tier 3 Peak 4-Star hero.

Daily Power Of Faith output: 30 points.

Su Bai looked at that number, then at the ice-blue figure, and remained silent for a long time.

He thought of the five-hundred-year epic of the Shadow Demons.

Unity, evolution, survival.

That was the epic of the Shadow Demons.

But the epic of the Ice Crystals was another matter.

From having nothing, to killing each other, to establishing cruel rules, to devouring their own kind for evolution, to the first expedition.

Every step was taken on the edge of death.

Every step was accompanied by the sacrifice of countless tribespeople.

But in the end, they survived.

Su Bai took a deep breath and said softly:

"Life will find a way."

He turned and walked toward the world core.

Behind him, of the five races, only two remained.

Shadow Demon Abyss, 30,000 people, Tier 4 5-Star hero, daily output of 50 points.

Extreme Cold Ice Plains, 8,000 people, Tier 3 4-Star hero, daily output of 30 points.

Stone-skin Wasteland, empty.

Ghostly Mist, empty.

Shadow Jungle, empty.

This was the evolution of civilization.

Cruel, cold, and unsympathetic.

But because of this, those who survived were all the more precious.

Su Bai stood at the world core, looking at the new information appearing in his palm.

[Current World: Netherworld]

[World Level: Tier 4]

[Civilization Status: Embryonic (Mushroom People Civilization, Shadow Demon Civilization, and Ice Crystal Civilization have initially formed self-reproduction capabilities)]

[Size: 628 kilometers in diameter]

[Owned Terrains: Yaksha Wasteland, Crimson Blood Scorched Earth, Mycelium Deep Forest, Shadow Demon Abyss, Extreme Cold Ice Plains]

[Number of Units: Approximately 58,318]

[Hero Units: Ghost King (Tier 4 5-Star), Black and White Impermanence (Tier 4 6-Star/Twins), Ghost Bride (Tier 3 3-Star), Sadako (Tier 3 4-Star), Slit-Mouthed Woman (Tier 3 3-Star), Mushroom King (Tier 3 4-Star), Shadow Blade (Tier 4 4-Star), Frost King (Tier 3 4-Star)]

[Ordinary Units: Yin Soldiers × 258, Soul-Hooking Ghosts × 60, Mushroom People × 20,000+, Shadow Demons × 30,000+, Ice Crystals × 8,000+]

[Owned Netherworld Buildings: Hall of Impermanence]

[Power Of Faith: 3,311 points (3,911-300-300-300)]

[Daily Power Of Faith Output: 20 (Mushroom People) + 50 (Shadow Demons) + 30 (Ice Crystals) = 100 points]

One hundred points daily.

Su Bai stared at that number, the corners of his mouth curling slightly.

From zero to one hundred.

From having nothing, to three civilizations taking root.

His Netherworld World had finally taken the most critical step.