Ye An walked beside a lake that hadn’t frozen yet, glancing at the reflected sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.
She looked down and saw her reflection. Where there were once scars, there was now almost nothing left, just clear and unblemished skin. Becoming a Core Formation Cultivator had erased many of her physical scars and healed quite a few hidden injuries.
She wasn’t sure if her extre physique had helped or not, but either way, even the breakthrough hadn’t closed the gaping hole in her face, nor had it grown back her missing eye.
Not that she minded the scars. She wasn’t looking for a husband, only for faster ways to advance through the stages of cultivation.
Still, she didn’t like seeing sothing ugly every ti she bathed in a river or lake.
Her previous face had been easier on the eyes… or eye.
She had never put effort into her appearance before. Where other won powdered their faces and wore lipstick, her lips had always been naturally red, her eyes a pale blue like ice, and her skin soft, creamy, and pale.
But these days, the reflection staring back at her each morning had beco sothing of an eyesore.
With those thoughts lingering, Ye An began to undress, placing her robes into her storage ring one by one until she stood naked on the shore of the abandoned lake.
She didn’t sense any beasts in the water, but even if there were, she was a Core Formation Cultivator. It wouldn’t matter.
She dipped her foot in. Lukewarm, that’s what it felt like to her. In truth, with winter nearing, the water was cold enough to keep even fish still. But she couldn’t feel it.
As the water rose around her body, Ye An closed her eyes and turned her senses inward. She reached out to her spiritual roots, those countless branches that spread like vines, constantly growing within her like parasites.
There were over a hundred and fifty. Once wild and ravenous, they were now partially frozen.
They no longer sucked in Qi with feral hunger. Her usual symptoms, like having to warm herself every night, were gone.
She always kept the roots sealed. She couldn’t even recover Qi during battle because her Qi-gathering organ was locked. Only during cultivation did she unseal it. Recently, she had started working on a partial seal rather than the full one she initially created when she broke through to Core Formation.
It had slowed her condition over the past year. But back then, she hadn’t thought of finesse, and her ultimate technique ended up being a powerful brute-force seal.
Still, she was confident she could live to see her mid-twenties and by so miracle, maybe even her early thirties.
The energy from the first Yang Fruit was long gone, but she’d since found other ways to manage her condition. She was still experinting, but the seal remained her most successful attempt, though she had never expected it to work in the first place.
She had spent a long ti in solitude perfecting it. Except for the unfortunate cultivators who crossed her path and served as test subjects, she hadn’t really spoken to anyone in a while.
Once subrged up to her neck, barely touching the lakebed with her fingertips, she stopped.
Frosty smoke hissed from the water around her.
Lately, she’d found herself reminiscing more often. Maybe the loneliness was finally getting to her. But a part of her felt calr this way.
Her life had never been easy. Even though she was born into the influential Ye Clan, her life never ant much.
The Azure Frost Sect’s current leader was a cold, pragmatic woman. Ye An had no doubt the woman would stab her own child in the heart if it benefited her goals.
Once people learned Ye An would burn bright and briefly like a dying star, no one invested much in her. So she left ho just before her ninth birthday.
Looking back, she didn’t understand where she found the courage. Maybe knowing you were going to die young forced you to grow up early.
She had drifted in and out of ho for nearly a decade until she finally found a Yang Fruit, a heavenly treasure, only for that bastard Hu Jin to steal it.
Just thinking of him made her blood boil.
One of her biggest regrets was finding him dying and not having the chance to make him suffer first. Most of the torture she tried to inflict on him was just desecrating his corpse, which was nowhere near enough.
When she gained a few more years thanks to the second Yang Fruit, Ye An began to wonder what she actually wanted out of life.
She had spent so long trying to survive, she didn’t know what else there was.
For now, she had settled on haunting the living, especially those who had wronged her.
There was another na on her list. Soone who had taken her eye with a smile on their face.
She wanted to torture Song Song. To see how far the infallible woman could fall.
If she ever got the chance, she had a dream. She would slice off Song Song’s nose and cut it to the bone until it resembled a snake’s snout. Then she'd take her tongue, her eyes, and watch her stumble through life as a blind, disfigured wreck.
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And if she really had ti, she’d cut off her arms and legs too. Make her flop around like a tadpole.
Ye An’s face twisted into a grin as she imagined it.
Then she froze.
Soone was approaching.
Her expression vanished.
Strange. Her senses were sharp, and yet, soone had gotten this close?
She looked toward the source, and it was a young man with tan skin and callused hands. He looked like a farr, and if it weren’t for the sliver of Qi that showed he had recently stepped into Qi Gathering, she would have assud he was just a farr.
How did soone even get those kinds of calluses? Did he practice so sort of scythe-based martial art and rub dirt into the wounds? Cultivators healed quickly, and only truly traumatic injuries ever left scars.
The guy’s eyes were wide like an owl’s when they landed on her. But Ye An no longer had the kind of beauty that would leave people stunned, so he quickly ca to his senses and turned to the side as if soone was there.
“Master, are you sure we should be doing this?” asked the guy. “She just seems like a badly scarred and defenseless young girl. I don't even sense any Qi from her.”
“Tian Gou, this old man has so matters to settle. If I don't deal with the one who killed my previous disciple, Hu Jin, how could his soul rest easy knowing what she did to him in his final monts?” Ca a thundering voice from where Tian Gou was looking, “Also, I don’t expect you to sense it, but this girl has already reached Core Formation… at such an age.”
“Oh? Hu Jin's teacher? I don’t rember eting you,” Ye An said.
The first thought that ca to her mind was whether she should try keeping this teacher alive and make the master pay for the sins of his student. But in the end, she decided it was too dangerous.
“This grievance will carry onto your training too. Don’t worry even though I’m in soul form, I’ve had ti to recover. The difference between Nascent Soul and Core Formation is far too great for her to do anything, even with like this,” said the voice as a presence shimred into existence next to Tian Gou.
The man who appeared was translucent, like a ghost, with pale skin, long green hair, and a youthful face that suggested soone in their twenties. But obviously, much older.
“Die!” yelled the man as he unleashed a wave of corrosive dark poison that billowed out like a stormcloud. The mont it touched the ground, the snow-covered grass withered to ash, and the soil turned black and cracked. The once-clear lake around her hissed violently, steam rising as the poison seeped into it, turning the water into bubbling, reeking muck. The corrupted mist spread like a living thing, staining everything it touched with death and decay as fish floated up to the surface.
Ye An clenched her hand underwater.
In that instant, a pulse of her Qi surged outward. The poison that had been creeping through the lake's currents halted mid-spread, its motion arrested as if ti itself had co to a standstill.
A sudden frost spread from her body like an expanding shockwave, enveloping every drop of water it touched. The entire lake crystallized in an instant, turning from bubbling muck into a solid expanse of jagged, glassy ice. Poison froze in wicked patterns within the lake’s frozen veins, suspended like trapped smoke, and the air around her grew still and brittle from the sudden drop in temperature.
She looked at them, her gaze calm and piercing, and slowly raised her arms. Qi pulsed outward from her fingertips, weaving through the watery ice around her. As her will took shape, the water clung to her form and shimred, then began to freeze in delicate layers.
Ice crystals spiraled upward, curling and folding like threads of silk until they ford a flowing dress of translucent frost around her body. Each motion was fluid like a painter sculpting with cold. When the final tendrils of the icy garnt settled.
The surface cracked gently around her as she erged from under the ice, her frozen dress glittering in the sunlight. She stood tall atop the newly frozen lake, her silhouette reflected perfectly beneath her on the glassy surface. Steam curled faintly where the last remnants of poison hissed in defeat, trapped and sealed beneath her feet.
“I am the Great Sage of Divine Slaying Poison and the teacher of Hu Jin, who you killed,” said the ghost.
“Okay? So?” Ye An tilted her head.
She didn’t really understand what the big deal was.
“You want to kill your new apprentice now, or what?” she asked.
The ghost frowned, and his eyes burned with fury. Ye An used that split second of rage to spread her Qi like a lattice of absolute cold. Everything around them, even the air, seed to freeze.
“Dancing Fla Mantra!” the ghost shouted, and a fiery aura surrounded both him and Tian Gou.
It protected them from the freezing, and Ye An deduced it was likely so kind of fire-based Sky Grade Technique.
But Ye An smiled, knowing it wouldn’t be enough as she activated her Core Technique.
Ice Seal.
The temperature dropped sharply, and the air itself froze. In an instant, both the ghost and the guy were trapped in a massive iceberg that surged up around them.
They were locked in place like sculptures, unmoving and trapped in a mont that could never thaw.
“Huh. So I can freeze ghosts? Maybe souls too?” Ye An shrugged.
Her Core Technique revolved around sealing, physically and taphysically. After all, she had used it to stop her own roots from growing out of control.
She increased the Qi fueling the seal, and cracks began forming across the ice, spreading through the figures trapped inside. Then it shattered, ice, ghost, and body alike into a thousand pieces.
The man was dead on impact, and Ye An went so far as to reduce his remains into fine ice dust, along with anything he had on him.
As for the ghost, he looked up at the sky, bewildered.
What was that expression for?
“Why? Heavens! This is impossible, soone–”
Whatever he was about to say, he never got the chance. His soul was torn into icy mist by Ye An’s Core Technique.
Just like that, the revenge plot ended before it could even begin.
“You sure were arrogant, for so re ghost,” she said.
Ye An wondered what she should do now.
Staying out here, undefended against roaming beasts, was tedious. She either had to kill them or stay on edge all day. Maybe it was ti to head for a nearby town?
She shrugged and moved on from this chapter of her life. As for the ghost, whatever his na was, and the other guy, they were just another forgettable footnote.
She dispelled the icy dress around her and put on actual clothes.
…
As she walked toward the nearest town, Ye An felt a little empty inside.
She couldn’t cultivate all day. Her body needed rest cycles, and she needed sothing to pass the ti. Wilderness living wasn’t really her thing.
But as she entered so no-na place, Whitewall Town or sothing like that, she saw people preparing for the winter. The strongest cultivator here was only at the peak of Qi Gathering.
Still, what caught her eye was the announcent posted at the town entrance.
It was from the Blazing Sun Sect… and the na at the bottom read:
Elder Liu Feng.
Perhaps…
A small smile made its way onto her face.
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