102: Chapter 102 Testing the Sword Leads to the Sheath

A burst of blood-red light erupted.

This was not a normal energy conflict.

The dark golden glow of the Tomb Guardian Seal was as heavy as the peeling lacquer from an Ancient Tomb's coffin, carrying the musty dust of ten thousand years and an indisputable, suppressive will.

The ice-blue light was Xia Lengbai's own Ice Soul spiritual energy, tempered a thousand times over; it was cold, pure, and had once been the sharpest extension of her will.

At this moment, within the small space of her palm, these two forces seemed to come alive, gnawing, tearing, and annihilating each other!

Every time the light flashed violently, a small puff of scarlet blood mist erupted.

It was not an external attack; it was the skin and flesh of her own palm and wrist, shattering inch by inch under the grinding clash of these two top-tier powers!

The tiny cracks were instantly eroded by the extreme cold or the dusty sensation of time, revealing an eerie cyan-black or ghastly pale hue.

"Urgh!"

A groan of pain, suppressed to the extreme and seemingly squeezed out from the depths of her Soul, finally broke through Xia Lengbai's clenched teeth.

The ice Seal in her eyes shattered completely.

It was no longer the "glazed shell" covered in cracks that could barely maintain its shape, but rather like an ice lake struck by a heavy hammer, exploding into countless sharp, flying fragments!

Beneath the broken ice, what was revealed was not water, but a surging, Chaos-filled undercurrent, brimming with mania and a desire for destruction.

Calm?

What is that?

In the face of the direct, tearing conflict between the cold order of the Tomb Guardian Seal and the violent instincts of her own spiritual energy, it was ground into nothingness.

She whipped her head around to look at Shen Xiao.

The movement was so fast it stirred up a gust of wind, her long, ice-blue hair whipping through the air in a sharp arc.

Under the agitation of the intense pain and some deeper emotion, the corners of her mouth curled upward—extremely slowly, bit by bit.

It was not a smile.

It was a twisted, vivid, and hair-raising expression.

It was like the final wing-spread of a dying swan before its neck snapped—stunningly beautiful, yet bone-chillingly vicious.

"A lock?"

Her voice had changed; it was no longer purely cold, but mixed with a gravelly hoarseness and a morbid, almost joyful tremor.

"Shen Xiao... you found the lock..."

She stared at him, broken light flickering in her ice-blue eyes like two shattered mirrors simultaneously reflecting Heaven and Hell.

"Then do you know?"

She spoke each word distinctly, her breath condensing into a pale mist in the freezing air.

"Sometimes... a poisonous snake crawls out of a keyhole?"

Before she had even finished speaking, every hair on Shen Xiao's body stood on end!

It wasn't a metaphor—absolutely not!

He clearly "felt" it.

A cold, viscous, and corrosive "fluctuation" suddenly radiated outward, with Xia Lengbai at its center!

It was not a simple energy impact, but rather like countless tiny, invisible ice needles—their tips coated with the venom of emotions and the rust of memories—sweeping indiscriminately across every corner of the stone chamber!

The air became stagnant, carrying a strange, mixed scent of metallic blood and ancient decay.

The surface of the broken stele was covered in a layer of grayish "frost" at a speed visible to the naked eye.

This was not condensation; it was as if time itself had been accelerated to decay.

This "pollution effect" was the most direct and vicious product of the residual mirror feedback mixing with Xia Lengbai's own emotions, which had been suppressed to the extreme and were now completely out of control!

Shen Xiao bore the brunt of it.

He was already severely injured and weak as a candle in the wind, his Mental Energy pushed to its absolute limit.

As this corrosive wave swept over him, he didn't even have time to dodge before his chest tightened.

The metallic sweetness he had just forcibly suppressed surged up again, his vision blacked out, and his ears filled with the roaring sound of rushing blood.

His skin felt the cold, excruciating pain of being pricked by countless fine needles; his old wounds tore open, and new pain piled on top.

This thought only flashed through his mind before he ruthlessly extinguished it.

To retreat meant handing over the sliver of initiative he had just fought for with his life; to retreat meant letting Xia Lengbai—this blade that had completely lost control—become an indiscriminate weapon amidst the ruins of her own making.

Whether she would be torn apart by her own power first was unknown, but he, as the "container" closest to her, would certainly be corrupted into a puddle of sludge first.

He could not retreat.

Then... he would advance!

A fierce look flashed in Shen Xiao's eyes.

Rather than retreating, he gritted his teeth, dragged his severely injured body, and took a violent step forward!

This step exhausted almost all his remaining strength.

His body swayed before he steadied himself, placing him directly in the path of the most intense, corrosive wave!

At the same time, he frantically urged the dormant Silver Pattern deep within his Dantian.

He did not attempt to condense an offensive or defensive shield; his remaining power was insufficient for that.

He simply forced the last bit of the Silver Pattern's power to his skin, forming a silver film of light that flowed over him—thinner than a cicada's wing, dim, and nearly invisible.

This was not a defense.

This was an active "contact."

The moment the silver light film made contact with that cold, corrosive wave, a hum resonated.

Shen Xiao's mind jolted violently!

Indescribable pain and freezing cold instantly pierced through the thin barrier of the Silver Pattern, violently crashing into his Meridians!

He groaned, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth; his old wounds felt as if they were being sawed back and forth by a rusted blade.

His vision went completely black for an instant, and his senses were flooded with countless chaotic colors and shrill, screeching noise.

But at the same time, some completely different "information" was forced into his perception through the feedback of the Silver Pattern.

It was a scene of Chaos.

He "saw" it.

Not with his eyes, but through the Silver Pattern's peculiar perception of energy and information residue, he "saw" a localized feedback of the energy field within Xia Lengbai.

It was a vast, absolute-zero ice field, the ice so thick it seemed eternal, exuding the pure order and coldness belonging to the "Ice Soul Fairy."

But at this moment, a crack had appeared in the center of this ice field.

The crack was subtle at first, like a hairline fracture on porcelain.

But the moment he "looked" at it, the crack began to expand rapidly under the tearing pressure from both inside and out!

The ice at the edges let out an unbearable, creaking sound.

Deep within the crack, it was no longer the orderly ice-blue.

It was a surging, murky, multicolored... "thing."

It seemed to be the emotional dregs belonging to the existence of "Xia Lengbai" herself—dregs that had been suppressed and frozen in the deepest depths of her consciousness by the power of the "Ice Soul" for years.

They were the most primitive, chaotic, and unadorned remnants, untouched by the "refinements" of the Heavenly Dao.

There was fear, unwillingness, suppressed violence, the resentment of being sacrificed, and even a vague, twisted longing for "warmth"... These "Impurities," which should have long been stripped away or frozen, were now being stirred by the power of the mirror feedback.

The violent conflict of Xia Lengbai's own power had shaken their Seal, and they were crazily surging and overflowing from that crack!

They mixed with the mirror feedback pollution sweeping in from the outside, creating an internal and external resonance that accelerated the collapse of the fissure.

"A poisonous snake..."

A sound like a broken bellows wheezed from Shen Xiao's throat; each word was stained with blood and forced out through clenched teeth.

He "watched" the ever-widening fissure and the surging "shadows" belonging to Xia Lengbai within it.

A cold realization, mixed with the chill of confirmation, rushed to his head.

He abruptly withdrew the Silver Pattern.

"Pfft!"

Another mouthful of blood sprayed from his lips.

He staggered back several steps, slamming heavily against the cold stone wall before sliding down.

He gasped violently, every breath feeling like swallowing broken glass.

Yet his gaze was sharp as a freshly quenched blade, locked firmly onto Xia Lengbai.

"...It didn't come from the outside."

He stared at her ice-blue eyes—chaotic and insane, yet faintly reflecting a hidden terror deep within the fissure—and spoke, each word falling clear and cold in the dead-silent stone chamber:

"You've kept it locked for too long... and it grew inside you."

The voice was not loud, yet it was like a cold wedge, driven with absolute precision into the center of that wildly expanding fracture in her consciousness.

Time seemed to freeze at that moment.

The cold, corrosive wave radiating outward stopped abruptly.

It was as if a pause button had been pressed.

Xia Lengbai froze in place.

In her palm, the tearing clash between the dark gold and ice-blue seemed to pause for an instant, leaving only the blood trickling down her slender, white fingers—drop by drop, striking the cold ground with a faint, clear "tap, tap" sound.

She lowered her head, slowly—extremely slowly.

Her gaze fell upon her hands—trembling slightly from the backlash of power and the tearing of her palms, and stained with her own blood.

She stared at them.

The mania, the Chaos, and that twisted, vivid expression slowly faded from her eyes, bit by bit.

In the end, only a void remained.

It was not calmness, but something far more terrifying: a total, alien shock toward her own existence, as if a shell had peeled away to reveal what lay beneath.

For the first time, she truly seemed to "see" these hands.

She saw, beneath these hands, the layer of solid ice that had been maintained for who knows how many years—the shell named "Ice Soul Fairy Xia Lengbai."

And beneath that shell, deep within the keyhole, something truly seemed to exist—something slippery and cold that, as she gazed upon it, slowly raised its head and flicked out a scarlet tongue.