Chương 36: Chapter 18 part 3

The heavy oak door creaked open, and Evanthe stepped out into the lavishly carpeted corridor of the guest wing. She did not show any resistance. She simply stood in the center of the hallway, her pale hands clasped tightly in front of her dark training tunic, her chin held high despite the terror freezing her veins. Waiting for her at the bottom of the marble staircase was Elder Derry. The high-ranking cultist stood impeccably straight, the hem of his crimson coat untouched by the bloodbath in the courtyard below.

Four surviving Blood Priests flanked him, their hands glowing with residual, dark-red magic. Derry's calculating eyes locked onto Evanthe. He didn't sneer. He didn't gloat. He looked at her with the clinical, reverent awe of a priest gazing upon a holy relic.

"The vessel," Derry murmured, taking a slow step forward.

"We have spent weeks scouring the borderlands for you, little star. Your survival at the Valerius domain was an unexpected anomaly. But the Blood God's design is absolute. You have returned to the fold." Evanthe didn't flinch.

"I am coming with you. Leave the people in this house alive." Derry raised an eyebrow, mildly amused.

"You are in no position to negotiate terms, vessel. However... I have no interest in slaughtering commoners when the grand ritual awaits." As Derry took another step closer, the temperature in the corridor noticeably plummeted. The Elder paused, his eyes narrowing as his magical senses finally registered the anomaly radiating from the fourteen-year-old girl. He looked at her chest. Even through the fabric of her tunic, the faint, rhythmic glow of the crystalline frost was visible.

Derry reached out his hand, not touching her, but hovering his palm a few inches from her sternum to gauge the spiritual density. The moment his dark magic brushed against the edge of the seal, his hand violently recoiled, the skin of his fingertips instantly blackening with severe frostbite. Derry gasped, taking a sharp step backward, his calculating composure finally cracking.

"Absolute-zero Yin," Derry breathed, his eyes wide with genuine shock. He looked at Evanthe as if seeing a monster.

"It is acting as a stasis lock against the Heavenly Killing Star. This... this is impossible. The sheer spiritual density required to construct a seal of this magnitude without shattering your mortal frame... Who cast this?"

"My master," Evanthe said softly. Derry's eyes darted nervously down the hallway. For the first time since he had breached the gates, the Elder felt a spike of genuine, primal fear. If the entity who had cast this seal was anywhere nearby, the entire cult expedition was already dead.

"The architect of this ice is not human," Derry muttered to his priests, his voice tight with urgency.

"We must depart immediately. If the seal sublimates, or if the caster returns, we lose everything." Derry raised his right hand, slicing his palm with his own thumbnail. He smeared the blood in a circle on the carpet, instantly conjuring a swirling, vertical portal of dark, viscous magic. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Come, vessel," Derry commanded, grabbing Evanthe roughly by the arm. Evanthe looked back over her shoulder one last time. Peeking out from the cracked door of the bedroom was Silas Vane, his hands trembling as he clutched his alchemical vials.

"Tell her," Evanthe mouthed silently. Derry pulled her forward, and the two of them stepped through the portal. The Blood Priests followed, and with a wet, sickening schlorp, the blood-portal collapsed in on itself, leaving the corridor completely empty. A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the Vael estate. Five seconds later, a massive, bloody hand slammed onto the top step of the marble staircase. Vice Guild Master Durgan dragged his enormous frame up the final step. The half-orc was a horrifying sight.

A massive, gaping hole had been punched straight through the right side of his chest plate, the edges of his flesh black and necrotic from the blood-spear. He was leaving a thick trail of blood in his wake, his breathing a wet, ragged wheeze. Behind him, leaning heavily against the wall, was Axel. The dark elf was clutching his side, his ribs visibly caved in, his ash-grey skin pale with shock and pain. They staggered down the hallway, Durgan leaning heavily on his battleaxe as a crutch.

They reached the open door of the guest room. It was empty. Silas Vane was sitting on the floor by his desk, his face buried in his hands.

"Where is she?" Durgan croaked, his voice barely a whisper.

"She surrendered," Silas replied, his voice hollow.

"To save us. They took her through a teleportation portal." Durgan's massive battleaxe slipped from his grasp, clattering loudly against the floorboards. The Vice Guild Master's knees finally buckled, and he collapsed onto the carpet. He didn't care about the wound in his chest. He didn't care about his pride. He looked at Axel, and for the first time in his long, brutal life, Durgan felt absolute, unadulterated terror. They had failed. The vanguard had broken.

"May the gods have mercy on this kingdom," Durgan whispered, staring at the empty spot where the portal had been.

"Because when Lady Ming returns... she will have none."

Miles below the bleeding capital, Ming Xuan Ji walked into a kingdom of eternal winter. Floor 20 was not a cavern. It was a sprawling, subterranean ocean that had been entirely flash-frozen. Massive, jagged glaciers of dark blue ice jutted toward a ceiling obscured by howling, blinding blizzards. The ambient Yin energy here was so phenomenally dense that normal magical laws simply ceased to function. If a royal mage attempted to cast a fireball here, the spell would freeze solid before it even left their wand.

But Ming Xuan Ji's internal engine was roaring. The Heavenly Demon Scripture circulated her compressed Yang Qi at maximum capacity, wrapping her physical body in an invisible, searing aura that melted the snowflakes inches before they touched her black-and-crimson silk. She walked across the frozen ocean, her dark eyes scanning the blizzard. The sheer scale of the environment was staggering, a desolate wasteland devoid of the chittering insects and undead foot-soldiers of the upper floors.

This was the domain of apex predators. Only one thing could survive in an environment this profoundly hostile. She didn't have to search for long. The ice beneath her boots began to violently tremble. A massive, deafening crack echoed through the desolate landscape as the frozen ocean fifty yards ahead of her violently ruptured. Bursting from the ice was a creature of myth. The Abyssal Chaos Frost Wyrm. It was easily the size of a naval galleon.

It possessed no scales of flesh and blood; its immense, serpentine body was composed entirely of corrupted, jagged, absolute-zero ice that shifted and groaned like tectonic plates. Its eyes burned with a pale, ghostly blue light, and as it threw its colossal head back and roared, a visible shockwave of freezing death ripped through the blizzard, shattering nearby glaciers into dust. It was a floor guardian that entire kingdoms feared, an entity that royal cartographers had deemed entirely unkillable.

Ming Xuan Ji just smiled. She raised her bare hands, settling into the flawless, immovable opening stance of her martial arts.

"Finally," she whispered into the howling gale, her dark eyes flashing with a terrifying thrill.

"A real target."