The world stank of rot and frozen blood.
Thousands of corpses lay heaped in the mass grave of Blackwind Ridge, limbs twisted, faces gnawed by crows, skin blackened by frostbite and demonic poison. Snow drifted from a starless sky, slow and indifferent, laying another layer of white death atop the rest.
At the very bottom, beneath seven layers of frozen corpses, a hand twitched.
Fingers cracked through the ribcage that had shielded them from the crushing weight above. Ice shattered. Black blood, thick and viscous, oozed between pale knuckles, refusing to freeze. The hand clawed upward, inch by inch, deliberate, each movement costing a thousand years of pain.
A second hand followed. Then a head.
Black hair, matted with gore and frost, spilled over a face so ruined that even demons would turn away. Half the skin flayed, bone exposed. One eye socket gaped empty; the other burned with a cold, blue light no living creature should possess.
Luo Xinghan opened his eye.
Memory struck like a glacier fracturing the sea.
The tribulation platform above the Nine Heavens.
The woman in white, once bound to ascend with him…
The sword through his heart, whispered "for the greater good."
The elders harvesting his Supreme Frost Constitution while he still breathed.
His best friend smiling as he stole his Dao Fruit in front of ten thousand immortals.
Ten thousand years of falling.
Ten thousand years of screaming in the Eternal Abyss as abyssal chains stripped his soul layer by layer.
Then, something ancient and furious had opened its eyes inside the darkness.
A voice, older than the heavens themselves, rumbled through the void:
"Boy… do you want to live?"
Every shred of hatred left in his shattered soul answered:
"I want them to die."
"Good. Then devour me… and I will devour the world with you."
Now, in a broken mortal shell that had once belonged to some nameless slave boy, Luo Xinghan crawled from the grave. Frost spread from his palms at the first touch of snow. Every corpse brushed turned into crimson ice statues, eyes frozen wide, mouths open in silent screams.
He stood.
Tattered rags hung from a body so thin bones showed through. Height barely five feet. Scars layered upon scars. The slave brand "#471" still smoked on his neck where demonic poison had eaten the flesh.
None of that mattered.
Inside his chest, two hearts beat as one.
One belonged to the ruined boy whose body he now wore.
The other belonged to Mo Cangqiong—the Asura Dragon Emperor who had frozen three thousand immortal domains with a single roar.
A low, ancient chuckle echoed inside his soul.
Finally awake, little killer.
Words were unnecessary now. He lifted his hand.
The Eternal Frost Demonic Scripture, born from the fusion of his original Frost Immortal Dao and the forbidden Asura path, unfolded in his mind like a black lotus blooming over a sea of blood.
First Layer: Myriad Corpse Frost Soul Art.
Every frozen corpse in the grave shuddered. Threads of blue-black soulfire spiraled from their mouths into his palm. Ten. A hundred. A thousand. Ten thousand resentful souls, devoured, refined into pure frost demonic qi.
His ruined meridians shattered, then reformed from black ice and dragon bone. His missing eye regrew, iris a vertical slit of glacial blue. Black hair lengthened, strands streaked with frost-silver. The slave brand on his neck cracked and fell away like dead bark.
In less than thirty breaths, the boy who looked like a corpse became something else.
Tall. Straight-backed. Skin pale as moonlit snow. Lips bloodless. A black-and-white fur cloak—once belonging to a dead young master—draped perfectly over shoulders carrying ten thousand years of hatred.
Only his face remained half-ruined. A deliberate reminder. He liked it that way. Let them see what their betrayal created.
Wind howled across Blackwind Ridge.
A group of Northern Frost Palace disciples rode in on snow leopards, laughing, flasks of spirit wine in hand. They came every month to dump new slaves into the grave, harvesting weak resentful souls for their cauldrons.
Tonight, they found only silence… and frost.
The leader, a youth in pale blue robes with a small silver sword embroidered on his chest—a core disciple—leapt down.
"Who froze the grave?" he barked. "Some idiot trying to steal resentful souls again?"
His followers fanned out, swords drawn.
Then they saw him.
A lone figure atop the mountain of corpses. Black hair whipping in the blizzard. One half of his face divine, the other half nightmare. Frost spread from his feet in fractal patterns that swallowed the ground.
The core disciple's smile froze.
Ten years ago, the palace had executed a slave boy for staring too long at an inner disciple. The boy had been beaten until his face was unrecognizable, then thrown here alive. Everyone laughed about it.
That slave had been short, hunched, hideous.
This person… was beautiful in the way a drawn blade is beautiful.
"Name yourself!" the core disciple demanded, voice cracking.
Luo Xinghan tilted his head. The single glacial eye fixed on the silver sword embroidery. Northern Frost Palace. Good.
He stepped forward. The temperature plummeted fifty degrees. Snow leopards whimpered and collapsed, fur encrusted with instant hoarfrost.
The core disciple turned to flee. Too late.
Luo Xinghan raised a finger.
A single thread of frost qi shot out—thinner than hair, faster than light. It pierced the disciple's brow, exiting the back of his skull. He froze. Eyes wide in disbelief. Then shattered into countless crimson ice crystals that scattered in the wind.
The others screamed.
Luo Xinghan walked forward, unhurried. Each step left footprints of blood frozen into black roses.
One disciple fell to his knees, kowtowing until his forehead split.
"Senior! Mercy! We are from the Northern Frost Palace! Whatever offense—"
His plea cut off as his tongue froze solid and shattered inside his mouth.
Luo Xinghan passed without looking. Behind him, every disciple turned into an ice statue, expressions eternally locked in terror.
When the last one fell, silence returned. Only the wind remained, carrying faint crimson snowflakes.
Luo Xinghan stood at the edge of the ridge, looking south.
Far beyond ten thousand mountains of ice and snow, the Northern Frost Palace stood. His palace once. The place where Bai Qingyao still wore mourning white every winter solstice, laying a single white lotus on an empty grave.
He closed his eye. When he opened it, the pupil had become a slowly spinning black frost lotus. A faint, almost gentle smile curved his bloodless lips. Not kind.
Mo Cangqiong's ancient voice rumbled inside his soul.
Begin with this ant nest… or go straight for the heavens?
Luo Xinghan spoke aloud for the first time in ten thousand years.
Soft, hoarse from disuse, yet every word carried the weight of glacial mountains:
"Ant nest first."
He stepped forward and vanished into the blizzard. Behind him, the entire mass grave collapsed inward, crushed by invisible pressure until nothing remained but a perfectly smooth plain of crimson ice.
Far away, in the highest pavilion of the Northern Frost Palace, a woman in pure white robes opened her eyes. For no reason, her heart ached as though pierced by an icy sword. She pressed a hand to her chest, brushing the jade pendant she never removed—stained with a single drop of long-dried blood.
"…Wuxie?" she whispered.
Outside her window, the first snow of the year began to fall. Only this year, the snowflakes were tinged red.