Chapter 1229: Controlling Death

For several breaths after the impact, Anarctica became strangely still.

The ancient storms continued roaring across the frozen horizons, colossal rivers of wind still screamed between mountains, and high above them, great masses of ice continued falling through the bruised heavens like fragments of some shattered frozen moon.

Yet something had changed beneath all of that violence.

The World Transcendents had stopped; snow sheets of snow peeled upward from Anarctica in slow, undulating tides. Frost rose from the Titan’s corpse ad the ancient ice buried beneath kilometers of accumulated winter groaned awake and pushed toward the surface, while the blizzard above bent inward as though some invisible celestial hand had seized the weather by its spine.

Phei stood at the center of it.

Or rather, he stood upon a slowly rising platform of Void-Ice that had grown beneath his feet, lifting him several dozen meters above the shattered glacier while layers of frozen crystal continuously formed beneath him. His hair had changed completely; the dark strands had drained into flowing white, whipping around his face and shoulders inside a storm that no longer seemed capable of deciding where it was permitted to blow.

His eyes had changed with it.

The familiar amethyst was gone and a deep, luminous Void-Ice color filled them now, black-white brilliance bleeding faintly around the pupils until looking directly into Phei’s gaze gave the uncomfortable impression that something endless had opened behind his eyes.

He had stopped restraining Infinity Control!

Everywhere Phei’s perception could reach, ice awakened beneath his authority; the Dead Winter Realm had always possessed too much ice for the mind to properly comprehend.

Now all of it within Phei’s reach had become aware of him.

There was something deeply unnatural about watching a realm this violent become orderly. Anactica had spent ages behaving like a calamity, its storms smashing into one another, its frozen meteors falling wherever ancient weather carried them, its glaciers splitting and devouring their neighbors according to pressures older than civilization.

Tides of frost rose from the land in slow walls and curved through the air, thousands upon thousands of tons suspended in enormous arcs before joining the spiraling sky. Some remained powder-fine, turning the atmosphere into pale mist.

Frost spread over the ancient corpse in a single gleaming tide, filling scars, burying old wounds and pouring across skin that had endured untold ages beneath Anactica. The gigantic face became glazed beneath transparent layers of black-white ice, its dead features preserved beneath a shining sepulchral mask.

The gigantic face became glazed beneath transparent layers of black-white ice, its dead features preserved beneath a shining sepulchral mask. The frozen hair became encased strand by colossal strand, and the ancient crown upon its brow disappeared beneath crystal until Consort who’d ran back after the loud BANG seemed to be standing upon the summit of a divine statue carved from winter itself.

The frozen hair became encased strand by colossal strand, and the ancient crown upon its brow disappeared beneath crystal until Consort seemed to be standing upon the summit of a divine statue carved from winter itself.

And within every reflected surface, the same white-haired figure appeared.

Phei.

Thousands of reflections watched the World Transcendents from beneath their feet.

The sight unsettled them more than Phei expected.

The Blood Elf hovered nearest the Coffer, all four skeletal wings spread behind her while the crimson haze of her bloodline bled through the storm. Her pale hair whipped around the black horns curving from her head, and the living marks across her face pulsed in slow scarlet rhythms. Her presence still stained the snow around her with a rich incarnadine glow, but that snow no longer obeyed the drift of her aura,

Her completely red eyes narrowed; she was no longer looking at Phei as a strangely interesting Mortal.

On the other side of the Coffer floated the Undead Queen.

The pale woman had become even more dreadful after attacking him.

Her robes drifted around her under their own quiet law, layer upon layer of deathly white covered in crawling black inscriptions. The seven-spired bone crown above her head had grown darker, and her translucent face now possessed an expression that was almost impossible to read.

Only her black eyes betrayed her; they remained fixated upon Phei’s chest... because several moments earlier, she had tried an attack had been almost insultingly quiet.

The Undead Queen had merely lifted one pale finger immediately after she saw the huge unconscious body and written a single black character in the air. Phei had never understood the symbol, but the dead empire behind her had bowed the instant it formed.

There had been no projectile to dodge and the next something deathly freezing had appeared directly inside his soul, an ancient death-force carrying enough corrosion to rot spiritual foundations and drag the consciousness toward whatever court the Undead Queen ruled beyond ordinary perception.

Any normal Master Stage cultivator would have died without understanding what had happened.

Phei’s soul had reacted first.

The Death-Kissed Cosmic Dragon Soul awakened.

Sienna’s Nether essence, had tempered Phei’s soul and woven permanently in his soul, had recognized the invading Death with almost insulting familiarity. The death essence had entered expecting prey and instead found a Cosmic Dragon soul already kissed, tempered and marked by the Nether Goddess and Empress of Death herself.

Phei still remembered the sensation of that invading death twisting inside him as his Dragon Soul crushed it, stripped away and began refining the attack into something that belonged to him. What should have rotted his soul became a temporary mantle around it, a black-violet protection layered beneath his soul.

Then Death Owes the Dragon had answered.

Phei took the Undead Queen’s own death-force and hurled it back into the battlefield.

The two Vampires had discovered that particular development personally.

They floated farther to the right now; one was the black-haired woman Phei had already noticed among Danton’s Chained, her crimson eyes burning beneath the winter while dark mist crawled around her elegant body. Beside her hovered a taller male Vampire with pale grey hair and a long black coat that had already been shredded across one shoulder while four severed hands lay frozen several hundred meters beneath them, blackened from fingertips to wrist by the stolen Death attack Phei had released when the two Vampires rushed to him together.

Both had hands again; their previous ones remained on the ice.

Their regeneration had already replaced the damage... from the stumps first, followed by muscle, veins, skin and finally perfect pale fingers, the entire process taking only several breaths.

That had taught Phei something else rather important.

He could hurt these monsters but keeping them hurt was another matter.

The female Vampire flexed her newly grown fingers while looking down at the old hand lying beneath her reflection... her lips tightened.

The male Vampire understood what had happened first.

His gaze shifted from his newly regenerated hand toward the Undead Queen, then back to Phei, recognition sharpening across his pale face. The Undead Queen understood it too; her perfectly black eyes grew colder as the dead empire behind her stirred, several spectral heads slowly lifting toward the young Dragon as though reassessing what exactly had entered their battlefield.

Phei only tilted his head, faint amusement touching his face.

Calling it theft felt a little dramatic.

He had merely returned the woman’s attack with considerably worse manners, and the two Vampires had unfortunately been standing in the way.

Eira gave him a long look from above his shoulder, clearly unimpressed by that interpretation, while below them the proof remained scattered across the ice in the form of four severed hands. It had bought Phei several precious breaths, nothing more.

The Gorgon hovered farther back with his serpent hair writhing restlessly around his head, molten eyes carefully avoiding the countless mirrored surfaces beneath him because even he seemed uncertain what reflections might do with his gaze under Infinity Control. The enormous Naga coiled through the air above the Coffer, his third eye open and the oceanic pressure around his body flattening every rising wave of frost that drifted too close.