63: Chapter 63 Whispers in the Ice Cave and System Noise

A chilly sensation traveled from her fingertips. Xia Lengbai looked down at the white Jade Slip in her palm, while Bailian's warning played on a loop in her mind like a broken record...

"Do not trust any 'Destiny', including your own 'System'."

"Its source... is also on the chessboard."

She suddenly felt that this Jade Slip was colder than ten-thousand-year black ice.

It was so cold that her fingertips went numb.

"The source of the System is on the chessboard..."

She repeated these words softly, rolling every syllable over her tongue as if she were chewing on a poisoned candy.

"Then, is Shen Xiao, this 'Destiny Plunderer', actually plundering Destiny, or is he being plundered by it?"

She turned around slowly.

The halo of the warm jade marrow spilled down, casting a faint, eerie glow on the surface of the ice sculpture.

The ice surface acted like a mirror, reflecting her own pale face. Between her brows and eyes lay exhaustion and scars, but even more so, a near-pathological excitement.

It was like a voyeur who had found someone else's diary in a trash heap; knowing they shouldn't read it, yet unable to stop turning page after page.

"Shen Xiao, oh Shen Xiao..."

Xia Lengbai extended her chilly index finger and tapped lightly on the location of the ice sculpture's face.

"Just how many secrets are you hiding?"

The outline beneath the ice layer was blurry, with only the faint curvature of his features discernible.

She withdrew her finger and took a deep breath. The air inside the Ice Cave, carrying the moisture of the hot spring, rushed into her lungs, making her shiver from the cold.

Never mind.

Saving him was important, but uncovering his secrets was even more important.

Both matters would be done simultaneously.

Xia Lengbai walked to the front of the ice sculpture and sat down cross-legged, no more than three feet away from the pair of tightly closed eyes within the ice.

She raised her right hand, palm upward, her five fingers slightly curled.

A wisp of extremely fine Ice Spiritual Power flowed from her fingertips like a crystal-clear thread, swaying slightly in the air.

This spiritual power was even thinner than a strand of hair, yet it was so condensed it seemed ready to drip water, emitting a bone-chilling cold.

"Pardon the intrusion."

She said softly, then flipped her wrist. The wisp of spiritual power, acting like a living thing, carefully probed along the edge of the deepest crack on the ice sculpture's left leg.

The situation inside the ice layer was far more complex than it appeared on the surface.

Deep within the cracks, thin threads of black Blood Poison were intertwined like venomous snakes. They seemed to possess some sort of low-level consciousness, stirring restlessly under the Seal of the ice layer. Once they sensed the fluctuation of spiritual power, they crazily coiled toward it.

Xia Lengbai held her breath, maneuvering the thread of spiritual power to nimbly dodge the coiling black threads, moving slowly along the veins of the crack like someone walking a tightrope.

Fine beads of sweat seeped from her forehead, sliding down her cheeks and condensing into a crystal-clear ice bead at her chin, which then fell onto the ice surface with a "plop".

Inside the ice sculpture, in that abyss of absolute, deathly silent consciousness.

Shen Xiao's "existence" was like a speck of dust, floating in the boundless darkness.

There was no concept of time.

There was no perception of space.

There were only the occasional, intermittent System notification sounds, ringing out like an old radio with poor reception:

[Host... life... signs... critical...]

[Blood... poison... spread... rate...]

[Cool... down... time... insufficient...]

These fragmented pieces of information could not form complete sentences. Shen Xiao's consciousness was like a drowning person, desperately trying to grab onto something, but only able to grasp at nothingness.

Just then!

"Hum..."

An extremely faint, yet clearly discernible vibration came from somewhere.

Shen Xiao's consciousness shrank violently, as if pricked by a needle.

Something... was approaching.

It was an extremely pure, bone-chilling fluctuation of spiritual power, like a long, thin tentacle, tentatively touching the core area of the ice Seal.

He "saw" it.

No, to be precise, he perceived the existence of that wisp of spiritual power. It was as thin as a hair, yet it contained an aura that shared the same source as the remnant ice-sealing power within his body.

Xia Lengbai?

What... was that woman trying to do?

A trace of vigilance rose in Shen Xiao's remnant consciousness, but it was quickly drowned out by even stronger chaos.

The moment that wisp of spiritual power tentacle touched the core of the ice layer.

"Screech!!"

A noise so shrill it could drive one mad, like a thousand rusty saws grinding against an iron plate simultaneously, exploded in his consciousness!

Shen Xiao felt as if he had been thrown into a giant noise blender; countless fragmented sounds were roaring, whispering, and screaming, yet none of them could be heard clearly:

Buzz buzz buzz...

Hiss hiss hiss... click clack...

Chess... board... is... on...

The last sound suddenly became clear for a moment, and it made his skin crawl more than all the other noise.

Immediately after, a twisted symbol, flashing with an eerie purple-black light, flickered across the depths of his perception.

The symbol was indescribably complex, like some ancient Restriction mark, or perhaps... a snake with open eyes coiled in the Void Realm.

It appeared abruptly and vanished even faster, as if it had never existed.

But Shen Xiao "remembered" it.

That was definitely not an interface element of the System.

Inside the Ice Cave, Xia Lengbai was fully focused, completely unaware of everything happening inside the ice layer.

She controlled that wisp of spiritual power, like the most patient embroidery needle, groping bit by bit along the edge of the crack.

Finally, in a crevice that reached one-third of the way into the ice layer, she found a gap where her spiritual power could seep in.

This was it.

She held her breath and gently probed the tip of the spiritual power thread inside.

"Pfft!"

A sound of penetration so slight it was almost inaudible.

The spiritual power broke through the surface layer of the ice Seal and touched Shen Xiao's frozen body within.

In that instant, Xia Lengbai's pupils constricted.

Not because of the cold.

But because of the faint, resistant life reaction she felt.

It was an almost instinctive repulsion toward an intruder, like a hibernating beast disturbed by a cold wind, emitting a low whimper in a half-awake, half-asleep state.

He was still alive.

His consciousness... was still there.

"Found you."

The corners of Xia Lengbai's mouth curled up slightly; the smile could not be described as relief or anything else.

This weak resistance only stimulated her.

She pursed her lips tightly, and instead of withdrawing her spiritual power, she channeled even more from her Dantian, forcing it into the gap.

Not to harm him.

But like countless cold hands reaching into Shen Xiao's body, forcibly "caressing" and "probing" the situation inside him.

The spiritual power wandered through his nearly exhausted Meridians. Wherever it passed, Xia Lengbai "saw"...

The charred meridian walls, as if scorched by raging flames, pitted and riddled with holes.

The Dantian, as dry as the Sahara Desert, where not even a trace of spiritual power could be found.

And the black Blood Poison, spreading like maggots on a bone. They were no longer just attached to the wounds, but like ink dropped into clear water, they had permeated every inch of Shen Xiao's flesh and blood, every vein, and were even... slowly closing in on his Dantian.

Xia Lengbai's heart sank.

The situation was even worse than she had anticipated.

But just as her spiritual power continued to probe deep into his Dantian!

She "saw" something.

Something that made her freeze instantly.

In the deepest part of Shen Xiao's Dantian, in the center of that dead, empty darkness, floated an extremely tiny point of light.

The point of light was not large, only the size of a grain of rice, yet it emitted a dark gold, heart-palpitating radiance.

It rotated at an extremely slow speed, and with every rotation, it absorbed some kind of indescribable energy from the surrounding Void Realm.

That was definitely not a Golden Core or Nascent Soul produced by orthodox Cultivation.

Its aura... was very wrong.

It gave Xia Lengbai an extremely repulsive feeling, as if two completely opposite frequencies had resonated. The moment her Ice Spiritual Power approached that Dark Gold Core, it shuddered violently, as if it had encountered a natural enemy.

"What is this..."

She subconsciously wanted to maneuver her spiritual power closer to investigate carefully.

But just as her spiritual power tentacle was about to touch the edge of that Dark Gold Core...

Inside the ice sculpture, in the depths of Shen Xiao's consciousness, the halo representing the System fluctuated violently.

The gray mist that originally shrouded the interface seemed to be forcibly torn open by something; countless fragmented garbled text and broken symbols danced crazily on the interface, and the entire halo was trembling.

Immediately after, a cold, mechanical voice, yet with a subtle sense of lag, suddenly resounded in his consciousness:

[Detected... high-concentration... homologous cold spiritual power... intrusion...]

[Analyzing...]

[Analysis complete. This spiritual power attribute... matches 87.3% of the basic conditions for the 'Yin and Yang' Cultivation Technique...]

[Warning: Host's body is on the verge of collapse, Blood Poison spread rate has reached critical value 41.2%...]

[Suggestion: Accept external guidance to conduct emergency energy diversion...]

[Warning: This operation will... expose part of the core data... Do you... allow it?]

Shen Xiao's remnant will, in the quagmire of intense pain and chaos, struggled to grasp two keywords...

Accept guidance.

Expose data.

Allowing it might mean having more secrets pried into by Xia Lengbai, including that Dark Gold Core he hadn't even fully figured out himself.

Not allowing it might mean immediate death from the poison, becoming a real corpse inside the ice sculpture.

Both options were equally treacherous.

But before his Transmigration, Shen Xiao had been a corporate wage slave who had endured the "blessing" of the 996 work schedule; he was most skilled at finding the most favorable balance between the empty promises drawn by his boss and the brutal beatings of reality.

He used up his remaining strength to issue a vague yet firm command to the System in his consciousness:

Allow guidance...

Shield core...

Disguise...

Inside the Ice Cave, Xia Lengbai's spiritual power was hovering at the edge of that Dark Gold Core, hesitating whether to continue deeper.

She suddenly felt it.

That faint will coming from within Shen Xiao's body was no longer purely resistance and repulsion.

But a kind of... tacit consent.