81: Chapter 81 Taking Advantage of Chaos to Find Opportunities

The pulsation, deep enough to reach the very depths of his Soul, did not come from the outside world. Instead, it originated from the palm where he tightly gripped the ice fragment, vibrating directly through his bones and veins to his heart.

It was heavy and dead silent, as if what he held was not a piece of ice, but the "stillness" of an entire grave forgotten by time.

The skin on his palm, covered by the System Silver Pattern, was rising rapidly in temperature, becoming shockingly hot.

Shen Xiao leaned his back against the jagged crevices of the ice rock, panting heavily.

Every inhalation brought the stinging pain of ice shards scraping against his throat and a heavy scent of blood.

In the distance, the suction emanating from the dark cave entrance distorted light and sound. The terrified shrieks of the Cold Marrow Beast, the thundering sound of hooves trampling the ice layer, and the sizzling noise of Lin Yun's golden Luck light colliding with the ancient cold air all blended into a catastrophic symphony.

He lowered his head and opened his palm.

The palm-sized, broken ice fragment lay quietly in his bloodied palm.

Its edges were jagged, as if it had been violently torn away from a larger whole.

Its color was an extremely deep ice-blue, so blue it was almost black. Inside, it seemed to contain countless tiny, flickering specks of light, like a frozen starry sky.

The sensation was not merely cold; it was a "heaviness" that drained all warmth and vitality.

The flesh on his palm that touched it was turning grayish-white and stiff at a speed visible to the naked eye, with tiny ice crystals spreading upwards along his skin's texture.

What made his heart palpitate even more was the change within his Dantian.

On the surface of the Dark Gold Core, those silver lines were flickering violently at an unprecedented frequency, like a faulty circuit, or perhaps like a hungry beast that had just spotted flesh.

A chaotic emotion, mixed with "longing" and "warning," slammed into his consciousness through that abnormal resonance channel.

"Beep, high-dimensional protocol fragment detected... forcing load of protocol interface..."

"Warning! Interface conflict! Unknown protocol structure is reverse-parsing the host's energy circuit..."

"Core stability is dropping sharply... Silver Pattern synchronization rate is fluctuating abnormally... 17%... 23%..."

"It is recommended to discard the fragment immediately... Repeat, it is recommended to discard immediately..."

The System's warning tone was rapid and cold, yet it carried an unprecedented hint of noise that sounded almost like "panic."

Discard it?

Shen Xiao twitched the corner of his mouth, which tugged at the frostbite and splits on his face, causing him to gasp in pain.

His gaze swept across the chaotic valley, and over Lin Yun, who was currently being besieged by several berserk cold beasts, yet still managed to spare a wisp of Qi to lock down this area.

This thing could make Lin Yun's Heavenly Dao Luck suffer a setback, could make the System so "flustered," and might even be of the same origin as Xia Lengbai's deadly "Tomb Guardian Seal"... only a fool would throw it away.

He took a deep breath of the cold air, which was mixed with blood and ice dust, forcibly suppressing the metallic taste of blood rising in his throat once more, as well as the tearing pain in his Meridians exacerbated by the System's anomaly.

With a slight movement of his intent, instead of discarding it, he took a tiny, hair-thin stream of his remaining Dark Gold Spiritual Energy and, with extreme caution, attempted to touch the ice fragment in his palm.

"Sss..."

The instant his Spiritual Energy touched the ice fragment, a torrent of cold, dead silence, far exceeding his limits, surged back along that wisp of Spiritual Energy, violently rushing into him!

The Meridians along the way instantly stagnated, covered in a layer of grayish-white frost, and even the pain became dull.

"Pfft!" Shen Xiao spat out another mouthful of blood, the blood mist freezing into red crystals in front of him.

But his eyes were fierce. Far from cutting off the connection, he instead utilized this momentary impact and the violent fluctuations of the System Silver Pattern caused by the homologous stimulation to actively mix his own weak aura—especially that wisp of Silver Pattern power—into the back-surging cold current. He then crudely mimicked the chaotic, panicked energy fluctuation frequency emitted by the Cold Marrow Beast in the distance, wrapping it around his entire body in reverse.

This was a life-risking disguise.

Using the higher-level dead silence aura leaking from the Seal fragment as the base color, painting it with the "abnormal" glaze of the System Silver Pattern, and then draping it in the cloak of the cold beast's panic.

The three were forcibly combined on the foundation of his severely wounded and weakened state. It was crude, contradictory, and full of flaws, like smearing mud all over a piece of porcelain and sticking a few chicken feathers on it.

But in the chaotic valley floor at this moment, it was enough.

Lin Yun's Luck perception was being continuously interfered with and dissolved by that dark cave entrance, and most of his attention was focused on suppressing the beast tide and resisting the erosion of the ancient cold air.

Shen Xiao's contradictory and weak aura was inconspicuous against the backdrop of the violent beast herd's energy turbulence and the grand dead silence emitted by the Seal, like a grain of sand in a storm.

He took a deep breath, squeezing out the last ounce of strength from his muscles, and slid out from the ice rock crevice.

His movements no longer prioritized speed; instead, he blended into the rhythm of several nearby Cold Marrow Beasts that were equally panicked and colliding randomly in a small area.

Staying close to the ice surface, he used the shadows of jagged rocks and collapsed ice blocks to circle and approach the edge of the deep cave entrance.

An exceptionally large Cold Marrow Beast was sent staggering backward by one of Lin Yun's golden palm strikes, its massive ice-crystal foot slamming down just a few yards in front of Shen Xiao, sending ice shards flying everywhere.

Shen Xiao lowered his body, almost merging with the ice surface.

He narrowed his eyes. Through the flying ice dust, his gaze precisely locked onto the target. Right at the edge of that dark cave entrance, on the slope of a pile of broken ice formed by the collapse that had not yet been fully sucked into the darkness, the deep ice-blue fragment appeared and disappeared amidst the rolling ice shards.

The distance was shortening. Ten yards, eight yards, five yards...

Above Lin Yun's head, a slightly dimmed golden ring of light condensed once more. Runes flowed across the ring, emitting a stern pressure that suppressed evil, slowly covering the most chaotic area of the beast herd.

Wherever the golden light swept, the berserk cold beasts slowed down significantly, their ice armor sizzling.

His Divine Sense was like the finest net, scanning every inch for places where anomalies might be hidden.

Shen Xiao stopped, hiding behind a broken ice stalagmite half as tall as a person.

He could not get any closer. Any further, and he would enter the core area suppressed by Lin Yun's Luck. His crude disguise would absolutely not withstand the close-range "scrutiny" of the Heavenly Dao Luck.

His gaze fell on a fist-sized, sharp-edged black ice rock near his feet.

The ice rock was half-buried in the broken ice, its exposed corner reflecting the faint light of the chaotic energy in the distance.

Shen Xiao slightly curled the fingers of his right hand, concentrating the last bit of weak but condensed Dark Gold Spiritual Energy at his fingertips, with a trace of Silver Pattern flickering within the energy like a breath.

He did not look at the target, but instead stared at a natural crack on the surface of the ice stalagmite, as if calculating something.

He breathed extremely lightly, almost merging with the wailing wind on the ice field.

Now!

Lin Yun manipulated the golden ring to suppress three Cold Marrow Beasts on the left attempting to surround him, and his Divine Sense was inevitably drawn away for an instant by the violent energy collision.

Shen Xiao moved.

He didn't move his whole body, just his right index finger, flicking it extremely lightly against a specific corner of the black ice rock.

"Swish!"

The imperceptible sound of breaking through the air was drowned out by the wider, louder noise.

The bit of Dark Gold Spiritual Energy struck the corner of the ice rock. The ice rock didn't budge, but the precise vibration transmitted from the impact point caused another loose, fist-sized piece of ice diagonally below to jump suddenly, rolling down the slope along a trajectory that just happened to graze the location of the deep blue fragment.

"Click."

The broken ice hit another, larger chunk of ice next to the deep blue fragment, pausing for 0.1 seconds.

It was in this 0.1 seconds that the deep blue fragment was moved by this slight vibration, rolling half a foot down the slope and sliding right into the shadow of an ice rock depression, temporarily escaping the trajectory where the pile of broken ice might continue to collapse, and also slightly deviating from the center line where the suction of the dark cave entrance was strongest.

Shen Xiao slid out from behind the ice stalagmite like a ghost, dashing close to the ground.

He forcibly ignored the severe pain in his right leg, pouring all his focus and strength into this lunge.

His palm reached out, five fingers like hooks, without making the slightest sound of wind, precisely scooping towards that shadow.

Upon touching it, it was still that heavy, ancient "stillness" that drained everything.

But this time, he was prepared. The flesh on his palm had been pre-covered with an extremely thin diaphragm mixed with his own blood and the power of the Silver Pattern.

The spread of grayish-white stiffness slowed slightly, but the cold torrent surging back along the connection still made him grunt, his vision going black.

"High-dimensional protocol fragment detected... Forced load completion 1%..."

"Unknown protocol structure reverse-parsing intensified... Host energy circuit load critical..."

"Warning! External high-dimensional energy perception scanning..."

Almost the instant Shen Xiao's fingers touched the ice fragment, in the distance, Lin Yun, who was slowly suppressing the beast herd with the golden ring of light, suddenly frowned.

He clearly felt a trace of extremely weak, yet fundamentally "strange" energy fluctuation. In the chaotic and violent energy background of the beast herd, it was like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, creating an almost imperceptible ripple.

That fluctuation... it did not resemble any living creature of this realm, and it carried a hint of an ancient and "wrong" aura that his golden Luck light instinctively repelled.

Lin Yun turned his head abruptly. His cold, sharp gaze, like tangible sword light, instantly pierced through the chaotic energy turbulence and flying ice dust, shooting straight toward the direction of the ice stalagmite where Shen Xiao was hiding.

The light of the golden ring above his head condensed slightly, and a more solid, more targeted Divine Sense, like a searchlight, slowly swept toward that area.

Meanwhile, in the far distance of the ice field, at the summit of that solitary peak.

Xia Lengbai had almost merged into the howling wind and snow, with only a pair of ice-blue eyes shining shockingly bright.

Her slender fingertips pressed tightly against the center of her forehead; that "Tomb Guardian Seal" was so scorching hot that it almost burned through her frontal bone.

A palpitation and resonance stemming from her Bloodline and the depths of her Soul contract were coming across the vast space, incomparably clear.

She "saw" it.

Not with her eyes, but with the ancient contract perception of the "Tomb Guardian Seal."

In the energy field of the Ice Rift Valley, which was filled with chaos, violence, death, and the aura of the Seal, a figure as small as a firefly was emitting a weak but unmistakable fluctuation that was of the same origin as the ancient will sleeping deep beneath the earth.

That plunderer... he had touched the "taboo."

In the wind and snow, she slowly stood up straight, her ice-blue skirt hem motionless in the gale, as if synchronized with the breathing of the entire ice field.

Her gaze pierced through the endless curtain of snow, firmly locking onto the direction of the Ice Rift Valley.

Shen Xiao gripped the ice fragment in his palm tightly.

That heavy, dead-silent sensation, the scorching pain of the System Silver Pattern, the cold, tangible gaze sweeping from Lin Yun, and that complex, inscrutable stare from the far distance in the nether... all the pressure instantly converged upon him.

He leaned his back against the cold rock wall and slowly, extremely slowly, withdrew his hand clutching the ice fragment, hiding it under his blood-stained, tattered sleeve.

At his fingertips, that wisp of weak Dark Gold Spiritual Energy, mixed with the power of the Silver Pattern, ignored the System's frantic warnings. Like the most patient engraving tool, it began to follow a tiny natural texture along the edge of the ice fragment, extremely slowly... guiding, infiltrating.

It was not the wind.

Deep within the ice fragment, in that frozen starry sky, a tiny speck of light flickered, ever so slightly.