Chapter 17 Human-Shaped Stove and Frozen Memories 2
Jiang Xuelan had no time to think about anything else. His entire willpower was focused on resisting the pain and steadying himself. He held Li Jiuyou like a human heater (and source of pain) that radiated constant heat, trudging through the thick, chilly gray fog. The path beneath his feet was still paved with bones, but it was even more slippery and icy, requiring extreme caution with every step.
The thick fog seemed alive, constantly trying to sap their vitality. Ah Che's face had turned blue from the cold, his lips black and purple, and he staggered as he walked, relying solely on his willpower to keep him going. Man Gu wasn't much better. He had been able to move around when carrying the king, but now he could only hug his arms and tremble. Xuan Jia, however, adapted well; his shell itself was an excellent insulator.
"Immortal… Immortal Lord… How… How far are we still…" Ah Che's teeth chattered, his voice sputtering, and he felt as if his soul was frozen. He subconsciously waved the broom handle in his hand, as if that would dispel the chill.
"Almost there... Hold on!" Jiang Xuelan's voice trembled subtly, half from the cold, half from the clashing of ice and fire within his body. He could feel the cold, deathly aura surrounding him growing exponentially as he went deeper. Li Jiuyou's demon core's resistance grew increasingly fierce, the heat it transmitted threatening to incinerate him. Meanwhile, his own "Mysterious Ice Art" was reaching its limit, and the aura of his activated Mysterious Ice Spirit flickered in and out.
At this moment, a faint light, different from the dark blue of the soul fire, appeared faintly in the thick fog ahead. It was a soft, vibrant... **green**?
Everyone cheered up and quickened their pace.
The fog gradually dissipated, and the scene before them stunned everyone (including Xuanjia who was curled up in his shell).
At the end of the dead bone road, there appeared a small, vibrant... **tundra**?
The ground was no longer a pale, bone-white mass, but a thick, soft moss emitting a faint green glow. In the center of the moss, a strangely shaped plant quietly grew. It was only about a foot tall, its entire body like a carved black jade, but its leaves were a deep, icy blue, with ice crystals flowing through its veins. Most bizarrely, at the plant's tip, a translucent, icy-blue dewdrop the size of a pigeon's egg condensed, emitting a soft, pure, cold light. It was this light that dispelled the surrounding fog and some of the chill.
A figure in a ragged gray robe, hunched over, his face hidden by the shadow of a hood, stood with his back to them, crouching beside the ice-blue plant. He carefully scraped dew from the leaves with a small bone knife and collected it in a small jade bottle. His movements were slow and focused, as if he had blended in with his surroundings, completely unaware of the uninvited guests behind him.
"This... there are actually living things in this place? And plants?" A Che was so shocked that he forgot the cold.
"It's...it feels so warm..." Man Gu took a greedy breath. After getting closer to the tundra, the biting coldness was indeed much lessened.
Xuanjia's green eyes narrowed, and the patterns on his shell lit up again. "Black Jade Ice Soul Grass? And... a gravekeeper?"
At this moment, the hunched figure seemed to have completed the collection, slowly stood up and turned around.
Beneath the hood, a face covered in deep wrinkles, as old as withered tree bark, lay. His eyes were cloudy and calm, devoid of whites, a deep, dark hue that seemed to see through aeons of time. He didn't look at Jiang Xuelan and the others, but instead at the unconscious Li Jiuyou in Jiang Xuelan's arms, and... Jiang Xuelan himself.
His gaze lingered on Li Jiuyou for a moment, his cloudy grey pupils wavering before shifting to rest on Jiang Xuelan. When his gaze touched Jiang Xuelan's face, pale from pain and cold, and the icy blue lines on his neck that occasionally flashed due to the heat from his demon core and the operation of the Mysterious Ice Art, his grey pupils suddenly contracted!
"Xuan... Bing..." The gravekeeper's dry lips moved slightly, making a hoarse and almost inaudible sound with an incredible shock.
He ignored the demon king in Jiang Xuelan's arms and took a step forward. His cloudy eyes fixed on Jiang Xuelan, as if he wanted to see through him: "You... have 'it' sealed within you... and... this ice... this physique that shouldn't exist... who are you?"
Jiang Xuelan was horrified! This gravekeeper had seen through the God-Slaying Gu seal within him at a glance? And even recognized the Xuanbing spirit? This place was truly eerie!
He forced himself to remain calm, hugged the "human-shaped heater" in his arms tightly, and said coldly: "Xianmen, Jiang Xuelan. Are you the gravekeeper here? We are just asking for permission to pass through, and we have no ill intentions." He deliberately emphasized the word "Xianmen" in an attempt to distance himself from the matter.
"Immortal Sect?" The shock in the gravekeeper's gray eyes did not subside, but became more complicated. He shook his head slowly, his voice carrying a kind of vicissitudes of life that came from a person who understood the world, "Lies... In your bones, there is no hypocrisy of the Immortal Sect... There is only frozen... pain... and... shackles..." His turbid eyes seemed to penetrate Jiang Xuelan's skin and saw something deeper.
The gravekeeper looked back at Li Jiuyou in his arms, a strange glint in his gray eyes. "The little fellow of the Zhe clan... your life hangs by a thread... The demon pill is calling... You... are bound together by a 'thread'..." He seemed to be referring to the Heart-Slaying Contract. His bony finger pointed at the icy blue dewdrops on the tip of the Black Jade Ice Soul Grass, which emanated a soft, cold light in the center of the tundra.
"The extremely cold dew... produced in the extremely cold land... can temporarily... soothe... the restless origin..." His voice was intermittent. "Giving... him... a drop... can temporarily delay... the collapse of the demon core... but..."
The gravekeeper's cloudy gaze returned to Jiang Xuelan's face once again, with a kind of all-seeing compassion and... a subtle warning:
"If a frozen heart... were to be ignited by... this violent fire... would it be a blessing... or a curse?"
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