No one could defeat time.
A time formation was unquestionably a useful formation, whether used as support or as a killing weapon.
In the extreme cold, fine beads of sweat appeared on the tip of Xia Yunzhao’s nose. He and Shang Shuangze were both trapped in the formation, and neither of them knew much about formations, let alone time formations. What were they supposed to do?
Time formation, time formation… His mind was practically spinning fast enough to fly. The thousands of resources inside his Hundred-Compartment Pouch flashed through his thoughts one after another. There has to be a way…
“Ah! Right!” Xia Yunzhao flipped his hand, and a yellowed sheet of letter paper appeared. 【A Letter from a Certain Cultivator to a Friend: The writer discusses the difficulties he has encountered while studying time formations recently. Why are time formations so easy to fail?】
Xia Yunzhao thought, Easy to fail? That’s wonderful!
He carefully read the letter again. That cultivator had been studying time formations for quite some time, and the reasons for his failures alone took up several hundred characters. Aside from basic mistakes such as choosing the wrong formation materials or drawing the pattern incorrectly, some of the causes sounded extremely mysterious.
“Yesterday, while this foolish elder brother was setting up the formation, I spoke one sentence to someone outside it, and the formation immediately collapsed…”
“On another occasion, my formation was nearly complete. Delighted, I ordered a servant to bring me spirit wine. The instant the wine entered the formation, it collapsed again.”
“There were also several times when I left midway through setting up the formation and returned a short while later to continue. Not one attempt succeeded…”
Xia Yunzhao arranged and analyzed all those reasons in his mind, and the principle behind time formations gradually became clearer.
Before this, he had assumed a time formation worked by accelerating or slowing the passage of time inside it. Now it seemed that was not the case.
A time formation intercepted a single timeline and caused it to operate inside the formation. The different rates at which time flowed inside and outside produced a difference in subjective perception.
Why had that unnamed cultivator’s formations failed again and again? Because he had synchronized the time inside and outside the formation. A timeline that had not yet been established would naturally collapse.
But Xia Yunzhao and Shang Shuangze were different. The formation they were trapped in had already taken shape!
How could they break it?
Xia Yunzhao clenched his teeth and looked up at Shang Shuangze, then quickly lowered his head again for fear Shang Shuangze would worry. The time formation had assigned them to two different timelines. Their perceptions had to synchronize and their timelines had to intersect; once the two lines contradicted each other, the formation would break on its own.
The problem was how to reunite with Shang Shuangze.
At this point, if either of them moved even once, the formation would devour an enormous amount of their time…
Suddenly, in the middle of his frantic thinking, Xia Yunzhao froze as a strand of white hair drifted down before his eyes.
He slowly raised his head and found himself looking directly at Shang Shuangze’s face, now much more weathered. “Y-you…”
Shang Shuangze crouched down and gently stroked his cheek. Half his hair had already turned white and lay across his shoulders. Calmly, he said, “I saw that you were worried, so I came over.”
Behind him, a straight trail of footprints crossed the snow. He had simply walked through the blade-sharp passage of time without hesitation.
Xia Yunzhao stared at those footprints, his heartbeat growing faster and faster. Amid the snowstorm, there was only one figure in his eyes, branded deep within his pupils, something even time itself could not wear away.
Sensing that the two of them had converged, the time formation began to tremble. Streams of light crossed, illusory scenes rose on all sides, and spring, summer, autumn, and winter intertwined and transformed.
Xia Yunzhao glanced around and naturally took Shang Shuangze’s hand. “Do you trust me?”
Shang Shuangze shook his head. While Xia Yunzhao stared at him in confusion, he said, “This has nothing to do with trust or distrust. Every step that follows is a choice we make together. Whatever the consequences, you and I will bear them together.”
Xia Yunzhao stared at him steadily, then answered loudly, “All right!”
With that, he took out two pills and shoved one into each of their mouths.
The Heart-Linking Yuyao Pill: when two people took it at the same time, their spiritual light reflected one another and created resonance.
In an instant, Xia Yunzhao sensed a strand of sword intent. It was incomparably familiar, unmistakably Shang Shuangze’s sword intent.
He had the strange feeling that if someone gave him a sword right now, he would probably be pretty good with it.
But that was not the important part. Breaking the formation was!
He leaned close to Shang Shuangze and quickly said one sentence.
Shang Shuangze nodded and began stepping backward. One step, two steps, three steps… until Xia Yunzhao shouted, “There!”
To Xia Yunzhao, Shang Shuangze’s movements began to distort, stretching into exaggerated slow motion that looked both absurd and wrong.
Their timelines were beginning to fall out of sync.
Xia Yunzhao carefully sensed Shang Shuangze’s state while counting silently, Three, two, one… break!
Boom!
Sword light hummed. The sword intent erupting from Mingyun blazed like a dark sun in the highest heavens, the dazzling radiance so intense that no one could keep their eyes open.
Xia Yunzhao closed his eyes and refused to rely on sight or sound. With time misaligned, if he judged by his own five senses, Shang Shuangze’s sword move might already be spent while Xia Yunzhao had yet to raise his hand.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
That was his heartbeat, along with a powerful emotion that was intense, blazing, yet held firmly in restraint. It was not his own emotion. It came from another direction…
The corners of Xia Yunzhao’s lips lifted involuntarily. In the next instant, he abruptly pulled out the Spirit-Severing Dagger. Block!
The sword tip struck the dagger’s hilt with extraordinary lightness, producing a tiny, almost delicate impact.
The entire formation shook violently. Its timelines began falling into disorder, some fast and some slow, contradicting one another. The illusions changed chaotically. Autumn was followed by spring; spring was followed by winter…
Xia Yunzhao threw away the dagger and caught Shang Shuangze’s hand. They looked at one another and saw, reflected in each other’s pupils, themselves turning into wrinkled elders with crane-white hair, then rapidly becoming children with limbs tender as lotus roots… Growing white-haired together, becoming children together.
The trembling stopped, and the time formation exploded apart without a sound.
“Hey, wait!” Xia Yunzhao snapped back to himself, struck out with one palm, then seized. “Don’t run!”
A formation disk landed in his hand, light flowing over its surface. It was the formation disk for the time formation.
Xia Yunzhao flipped through the air and landed, holding the disk up and turning it this way and that. His delight nearly spilled straight out of his eyes. “I knew a formation this huge had to have a formation disk! Hahaha! A free time formation!”
Behind him, Shang Shuangze sighed, withdrew the hand Xia Yunzhao had just been holding, and bent down to pick up the dagger from the ground.
With the formation broken, the area finally revealed its original terrain.
This was not an endless white icefield at all. The land rose and fell like hills, with hard black permafrost beneath their feet. There was still snow, but it reached only to the calves, nowhere near the exaggerated waist-deep level from before.
Presumably, the time formation had fixed the area in winter, allowing the snow to accumulate until it became so deep.
Farther away, at the center of the small secret realm, a snow mountain towered into the clouds like a pillar reaching the sky. Ice and snow glittered over its surface, and even from this distance, they could feel a heavy pressure radiating from it.
Shang Shuangze slid the dagger back into Xia Yunzhao’s belt and asked, “Are we going to the center of the secret realm?”
Xia Yunzhao stared at the snow mountain. “That should be where the Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus is. We don’t want that, so there’s no need to compete with them. We’re looking for Innate Snow Essence… Wait. Why does this terrain look familiar?”
Shang Shuangze looked ahead as well and also found it somewhat familiar.
Xia Yunzhao thought hard, then slapped his palm. “Ah! The treasure map!”
He slapped his Hundred-Compartment Pouch, and the treasure maps he had stored away appeared in his hand. He fitted the two maps together and compared them carefully. This was the place!
Xia Yunzhao did not know whether to laugh or cry. “Why would a treasure map show terrain inside a secret realm? If the realm never opened, where was I supposed to find it?”
Complaints aside, while everyone else knew nothing about the small secret realm, possessing a treasure map already gave the two of them a tremendous advantage.
The terrain on the two treasure maps connected, and together they marked two treasure locations. Xia Yunzhao pointed between them as though choosing at random. “Left one first?”
Shang Shuangze certainly was not going to say no. The two tidied themselves up, circulated their cultivation methods, and hurried toward the treasure site on the left.
The treasure maps drawn from Xiao Qing had always been detailed and accurate. Following the markings, the two soon covered half the distance.
The farther Xia Yunzhao walked, the deeper his frown became. If he had to describe this secret realm in one word, it would be: barren.
The spiritual energy of heaven and earth inside the small secret realm was fairly abundant, yet there were astonishingly few spirit items. Along the way they had seen only a handful of ordinary Coldsmoke Grass, and several cultivators were fighting even over those!
The northern icefield was poor, but surely it was not this poor.
The two silently detoured around the fighting cultivators. After turning a corner… wonderful. Another familiar face.
An impatient voice said, “Why bother fighting over treasure? We should just rob them!”
Xia Yunzhao thought, Rob who?
A flood of treasure-light suddenly descended over his head, every streak carrying attack power at the Foundation Establishment level.
The Snow-Crane Spirit-Guarding Crown on his head instantly lit up and protected his entire body. At the same time, he felt Shang Shuangze’s unquestionable killing intent through their resonance…
“Wait. No rush.” Xia Yunzhao raised a hand and pressed down on Shang Shuangze’s sword hilt, pushing Mingyun, which had started to emerge, back into its sheath.
The voice opposite them turned strange. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone shove a sword cultivator’s sword back into its sheath. What exactly are you two to each other?”
Xia Yunzhao turned and found himself staring at the same haggard face hollowed out by wine and sex that he had seen at the banquet. Looking around, he saw that the two beauties in palace dress and the four pretty young women were all there as well.
Only then did Xia Yunzhao properly examine the male cultivator. His cultivation was not only low but also extremely muddled, as though pills had forcibly piled it up. His magical treasures, however, were plentiful. At the moment he held a treasure lamp, a mid-tier Level-Two offensive magical treasure. He was also wearing a gleaming golden magical robe, likewise mid-tier Level Two, which was probably defensive.
After Xia Yunzhao looked him up and down, the man snapped impatiently, “What are you looking at? Take out everything good you have and leave it here. This young master will spare your life!”
Xia Yunzhao ignored him and instead looked at one of the women in palace dress. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but how about we leave each other alone?”
The woman froze, then suddenly smiled. As she did, the gentle, seductive aura around her vanished and her cultivation began climbing rapidly, from the almost negligible third layer of Qi Refining to the tenth, then the twelfth… past Foundation Establishment, all the way to late Foundation Establishment.
The other woman in palace dress also gave a faint smile, and her cultivation instantly rose to mid Foundation Establishment. The four young women behind them were all at early Foundation Establishment.
In the blink of an eye, the male cultivator became the person with the lowest cultivation in the entire group. He looked at the woman beside him and frowned. “Ru’er, what are you…”
The beauty in palace dress moved her slender fingers. Several threads appeared, stretching from her fingertips to the man’s chest. With a flick of her hand, he stiffened in place like a puppet under someone else’s control.
Only then did she look across at Xia Yunzhao. “How did you see through us?”
Xia Yunzhao raised a brow. “Oh, it’s just the first time I’ve ever seen a maid feed her master wine, spill some on him, wipe herself clean, and forget to wipe the master.”
The female cultivator’s forehead twitched. A girl beside her burst out laughing. “I told you, Senior Sister, you shouldn’t pretend to be a maid. You don’t know how to serve people.” The other girls covered their mouths to hide their laughter.
The woman sighed and cupped her hands in greeting. “I am Jing Ruyun of the Puppet Sect. These are my junior sisters. We had no intention of opposing you two. This idiot insisted on robbing your magical treasures. My apologies.”
Xia Yunzhao introduced himself as well. “No problem. Can I ask who this idiot is?”
Jing Ruyun hesitated, then told the truth. “He is a direct-line descendant of the Yan family of Xuexiao City. We travel through the north using his identity for convenience.”
Xia Yunzhao asked, “You’re looking for the Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus too?”
Jing Ruyun immediately became wary. “Are you?”
Xia Yunzhao waved a hand. “No. We’re looking for something else.”
Jing Ruyun relaxed and took out a jade token, hanging it at her waist. “In that case, my sisters and I will leave first. We’ll give this idiot to you as an apology. Farewell.”
The other female cultivators also took out jade tokens and hung them at their waists, then bowed and prepared to leave.
“Wait.” Xia Yunzhao suddenly stopped them and studied the jade tokens for a moment. They were clear and crystalline, with a stylized character for “silk” carved into them. He said, “I don’t see any warming magical treasures on you. Want some cold-dispelling pills? They’re not expensive. Just two thousand spirit pearls each.”
Jing Ruyun quickly asked, “The same cold-dispelling pills you two took earlier?”
Xia Yunzhao thought, You saw that? You hid yourselves pretty well. He nodded. “Exactly.”
Jing Ruyun immediately smiled. “Yes, absolutely. Many thanks, Fellow Daoist! There are several of us, so we’ll take twelve!”
Xia Yunzhao took out twelve pills and handed them over. Money and goods changed hands on the spot.
The six female cultivators all took the pills at once. Sure enough, the ever-present chill was driven out of their bodies.
None of them knew how long the pills would last, so the six quickly said farewell and hurried toward the snow mountain.
Watching them run, Xia Yunzhao noticed faint white mist appearing around their feet, somewhat similar to the Flowing Cloud Leg Art. He muttered to himself, “I’ve met plenty of cultivation-clan disciples, and not many were good people. I wonder what cultivators from orthodox sects are like… There should be good people, right?”
Beside him, Shang Shuangze answered calmly, “There are good and bad ones… Most are neither particularly good nor particularly bad.”
Xia Yunzhao laughed. “That reminds me, aren’t you a sect disciple? You’re definitely one of the good ones! No, you’re the very, very best one!”
He suddenly leaned closer and asked with a smile, “I praised you. Now it’s your turn to praise me. In your heart, am I the very best too?”
Shang Shuangze looked at Xia Yunzhao leaning close, those bright, crystal-clear amber eyes staring at him without blinking as though refusing to let the matter go. He sighed and could only give him four words. “One of a kind.”
Xia Yunzhao closed his eyes and sensed for a moment, then smiled. “Mm. You really do think I’m one of a kind.”
It was almost unbelievable that someone so restrained and quiet could contain emotions so intense and blazing, like his sword: still while sheathed, earth-shaking once drawn.
＊
Xia Yunzhao did not stand on ceremony. The man had tried to rob him, so robbing him in return was perfectly reasonable. He stripped the Yan family disciple clean and did not leave a single magical treasure behind.
Sure enough, Xuexiao City deserved its reputation as the greatest city in the north. Its people were far richer than those from Xuanshuang City. A mere Foundation Establishment cultivator actually carried more than thirty magical treasures. Most were Foundation Establishment level, with a few Qi Refining items he probably had not yet disposed of. There was even one Golden Core item, which meant a Level-Three magical treasure.
It was a palm-sized blue-jade bottle. Frost patterns slowly revolved around its body, cold mist drifted from its mouth, and it radiated the pressure of the Golden Core stage.
Even so, Xia Yunzhao could tell that although both were Level-Three magical treasures, this item’s pressure was weaker than that of the Snow-Crane Spirit-Guarding Crown.
Because Shang Shuangze could not use magical artifacts Xia Yunzhao had not personally refined, Xia Yunzhao simply dripped blood on it and claimed it himself. A string of information flowed from the bottle into his sea of consciousness. As expected, it was a Level-Three treasure.
The magical artifact was called the Cold-Jade Spirit-Seizing Bottle. It could forcibly capture and seal spells released by Golden Core cultivators, though only ice-attribute spells. At most, it could store three at once and release them against an enemy when needed.
It could only capture ice-attribute spells, but considering they were in the north, where eight out of ten cultivators practiced ice-attribute arts, that restriction was practically no restriction at all.
Clearly, this male cultivator was extremely pampered by his elders. If they had not spoiled him half to death, they could never have raised someone this rotten.
The two continued on and soon reached the location corresponding to the treasure map.
It was underground.
No one knew whether it had formed naturally or been dug by hand, but a hole actually opened in the rock-hard frozen earth.
Xia Yunzhao and Shang Shuangze prepared themselves and jumped down. Their vision filled with white… Snow-Soul Lotuses everywhere!
Xia Yunzhao failed to react for a moment, then nearly jumped for joy. “Snow-Soul Lotuses! So many Snow-Soul Lotuses! There has to be Innate Snow Essence in here!”
Shang Shuangze was calmer. “Be careful.”
Xia Yunzhao gestured wildly. “Quick, quick! Let’s harvest all these Snow-Soul Lotuses!”
Without waiting for Shang Shuangze, he plunged into the patch and began picking the flowers one by one.
But as he harvested, his expression gradually grew serious and his hands stopped. “These Snow-Soul Lotuses don’t have stamens.”
Innate Snow Essence condensed on the stamens of Snow-Soul Lotuses. Without stamens, how could Innate Snow Essence form?
But that made no sense either. How could a flower have no stamens?
While Xia Yunzhao was still baffled, the ground suddenly trembled. Red lines flashed across the black frozen soil, resembling the meridians and blood vessels of a human body.
Xia Yunzhao froze and exchanged a look with Shang Shuangze.
The two emerged from the hole at the same time and looked into the distance. The ice-pillar-like snow mountain stood in the center of the secret realm and was visible from anywhere inside it.
At that moment, spells were flying all over the mountain, and the fighting was fierce. A golden-red light suddenly flashed and struck the mountain. The entire small secret realm trembled again.
Strangely, no red lines appeared on the surface. They were visible only inside the underground hole.
Xia Yunzhao and Shang Shuangze exchanged another look. “Something’s wrong with that thing!”
They ducked back underground and followed the lines onward. The tunnels beneath the ground branched in every direction, yet all of them were connected.
Neither of them knew how long they walked before they saw an enormous pillar of ice descending from above into the cavern. It was none other than that strangely shaped snow mountain.
After circling all this way, they had actually ended up back at the snow mountain?
“No. Look. These red lines don’t seem to be from Pei Guansheng’s spell!”
Indeed, Xia Yunzhao had recognized the golden-red spiritual power earlier as matching the light around Pei Guansheng, so he had assumed the red lines appeared because Pei Guansheng struck the snow mountain.
Looking again, though, that red light seemed more like bloodlight.
Trusting the protection of his Snow-Crane Spirit-Guarding Crown, Xia Yunzhao went right up to the ice pillar and pressed his ear against it to listen. He could faintly hear the sounds of fighting and people arguing.
Suddenly, a scream rang out. A streak of bloodlight flowed down the ice pillar and followed those red, blood-vessel-like lines toward somewhere deeper underground.
A chill suddenly settled in Xia Yunzhao’s heart. “This snow mountain is absorbing the flesh and blood of dead cultivators…”
Shang Shuangze took his hand. “Keep looking.”
Xia Yunzhao nodded. They passed beneath the snow mountain and continued downward, following the bloodlight.
＊
On the mountain, Pei Guansheng looked coldly at the six female cultivators who had suddenly appeared. “You think the likes of you can steal my things?”
He had already reached the summit. An innate formation stood there, protecting an illusory-looking Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus.
Across from him, Jing Ruyun gritted her teeth. She had no idea where Pei Guansheng came from, but his golden-red spiritual power could injure the soul itself. She had exchanged one move with him earlier and knew her chances of winning were not good.
She said solemnly, “Fellow Daoist Pei, I need this Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus to save someone. If you’re willing to yield it, we will repay you generously!”
Pei Guansheng sneered and answered in a foul tone, “I don’t care whether you’re saving someone or killing someone. Once I kill all of you, the Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus will still be mine!”
Jing Ruyun took a deep breath. “Then there’s nothing more to say. Forgive the offense!”
Just as the two sides were about to fight to the death, a voice suddenly rang out. “Wait! Fellow Daoists, don’t rush. You’ve been tricked!”
Jing Ruyun recognized the voice and instinctively paused. “…Fellow Daoist Xia?”
Pei Guansheng turned impatiently. “What? You want to fight for it too?”
Two figures crossed the distance in several leaps and landed at the summit. They were indeed Xia Yunzhao and Shang Shuangze.
The two were still wearing their Fire-Rat spirit garments, making them exceptionally conspicuous against the endless white snow.
After landing, Xia Yunzhao cupped his hands. “You two should take a closer look first. Is that Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus real or fake?”
Pei Guansheng frowned. “The Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus is a spirit treasure with Level-Five potential. It’s protected by an innate formation, so naturally it’s real…”
“It’s fake!” Jing Ruyun was more willing to listen. After examining it carefully, she said, “I’ve read ancient records. Every stamen of a Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus should be a different color… We’ve been deceived!”
At that moment, laughter suddenly echoed throughout heaven and earth.
The laughter thundered like a storm and made everyone’s heart feel uncomfortable.
They instinctively looked up and saw the enormous Dharma Manifestation of the Xuanshuang City Lord appear across the sky. “You young friends truly are clever.”
Jing Ruyun’s pupils contracted. She instinctively backed up several steps and placed herself in front of her junior sisters. “N-Nascent Soul!”
“Impossible!” Pei Guansheng gritted his teeth. “You were clearly only at peak Golden Core!”
The Xuanshuang City Lord nodded. “That part is true. Without this Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus, I would indeed still be at peak Golden Core.”
“So this Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus really is fake…” Pei Guansheng murmured. “Then why did you trick us into coming here?!”
“Because of this,” Xia Yunzhao said in a low voice.
Everyone present turned toward him.
Xia Yunzhao swept out a hand, and a cold, strange pressure spread outward. Everyone present shuddered uncontrollably, as though sensing a natural predator.
One of Jing Ruyun’s junior sisters trembled. “Th-that is…”
A “baby” suddenly appeared between Xia Yunzhao’s hands. Its eyes were tightly shut, its entire body dark red like blood, while patterns on its skin bulged like blue-green veins. Three dark green leaves grew from the top of its head, and rootlike strands floated from where an umbilical cord would have been.
Its abdomen rose and fell as if breathing. With every movement, thin strands of black qi seeped from its mouth and nose.
Xia Yunzhao said gravely, “Level-Five demonic plant: Blood-Infant Demon Ginseng!”
He raised his eyes and stared directly at the enormous Dharma Manifestation in the sky. “Let me guess what happened. The Blood-Infant Demon Ginseng can raise cultivation by one level regardless of realm. Impatient for advancement, you raised one of these so you could break through to Nascent Soul. Then the small secret realm suddenly appeared, and you found a Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus inside. After taking it, you successfully advanced.”
“But your greed wasn’t satisfied. You thought that since the Blood-Infant Demon Ginseng ignores cultivation realm, taking it afterward might let you leap straight to the Soul Transformation stage. So you moved the Blood-Infant Demon Ginseng into the secret realm, then spread word that the secret realm had opened and contained a Nine-Heart Snow-Soul Lotus, luring cultivators here to compete for treasure. You planned to feed their flesh and blood to this demon ginseng.”
Spiritual power surged, carrying Xia Yunzhao’s voice throughout the entire small secret realm and even into Xuanshuang City outside. “What is this, then? Has the mighty lord of Xuanshuang City actually fallen to the demonic path?!”