Chapter 1296: Months Away from Family

Air entered Phei lungs carrying enough frozen essence that his chest tightened immediately. Moisture inside his airways began crystallizing before his newly tempered lungs and Dragon vitality tore the frost apart.

He breathed again. ℯℯ𝑙.

The second breath hurt worse; this time he felt Primordial Frozen’s Essence moving through the delicate tissues and trying to settle there.

His lungs had only recently been rebuilt by Great Immortal essence.

This place still made inhaling feel faintly suicidal.

Phei exhaled slowly, dark frost left his lips, a white crust had already gathered along the edges of his eyelashes.

He blinked.

Several crystals cracked apart, his hair began freezing next.

Frost first appeared along the loose black strands framing his face. Then the ends hardened. Individual strands stuck together beneath growing layers of ice until portions of his long dark hair became rigid and pale.

Another gust crossed him.

Several strands froze nearly white.

Phei reached up and touched them.

Ice cracked between his fingers.

His expression became flatter. "You really do hate visitors."

The cave responded by becoming worse.

A frozen cliff several hundred meters away began swelling.

Phei’s gaze sharpened.

Ice grew directly from its surface.

Layer after layer erupted outward at impossible speed, crystalline branches spreading across the cliff before splitting into enormous spears, flowers and jagged trees. Within moments, an entire forest of translucent structures covered the wall, blue-black light travelling faintly through their interiors.

For several breaths, it was beautiful before the cold inside them became too profound; the crystalline forest exploded.

Nothing struck it, the ice simply failed to survive itself.

Countless fragments burst into the cavern, every piece moving fast enough to leave pale streaks through the darkness. Some vanished dozens of meters into neighboring cliffs. Others struck the floor and shattered into smaller storms of razor frost.

One came directly toward Phei.

He lifted two fingers.

Infinity Control reached outward.

The shard ignored him as it screamed between his fingers and buried itself behind him.

CRACK!

Ancient ice fractured several meters around the point of impact.

Phei slowly turned toward it.

The shard was barely longer than his forearm, yet it had damaged frozen material his own strength had failed to scratch.

His expression changed. This place did not acknowledge his mastery over ice because the thing filling it seemed to predate the Void-Ice he commanded.

Another roar rolled through the depths. The floor trembled beneath his bare feet.

Something moved below.

For a moment he expected a beast.

Instead, the world beneath him split open.

A crack spread across the cavern several kilometers away, beginning as a narrow black line before tearing apart wide enough to swallow frozen hills. Whole cliffs collapsed inward. Blue-black slabs weighing millions of tons disappeared into the abyss without ever producing a sound from below.

Then the abyss breathed.

Cold erupted upward.

Phei’s body reacted before thought, his muscles contracted.

His heartbeat slowed.

The blood near his fingertips cooled violently enough that sensation began fading. Frost raced across his wrists beneath the skin in branching white lines before Primordial Blood forced it back.

His lips cracked beneath the cold, a thin wound opening across the lower one before the blood could even gather properly. It froze almost the instant it surfaced, leaving a dark-red crystal against his mouth that Phei rubbed away with his thumb while the deeper wind continued pouring from the abyss.

His eyelashes had already begun whitening. More of his black hair froze together with every passing breath, dark strands becoming rigid beneath thickening frost while ice crusted over his shoulders and gathered along the folds of the Void-Ice robe.

Dragon Regeneration tore through the forming frost before it could spread farther, breaking it apart while damaged tissue repaired itself beneath the cold. Pain climbed through his chest hard enough to nearly force a cough from him, but Phei swallowed the reaction and kept his breathing steady while the abyss continued exhaling around him.

Frozen mist crawled across the cavern floor in low tides. Wherever it passed, already-frozen surfaces became something deeper. Ancient blue ice whitened, fractured and hardened further beneath the primordial chill, as though ordinary freezing had always been an unfinished state and this place alone remembered what true cold was supposed to become.

Phei watched the mist creep closer and found himself thinking of Anactica.

He had once believed the Dead Winter Realm had shown him winter at its most violent. There, storms peeled ancient metal apart, frozen mountains fell from heaven and glaciers large enough to bury nations crashed against one another beneath an endless murderous sky.

Every direction promised another catastrophe, and even powerful beings had been forced to respect the weather itself.

Anactica had been a world suffering beneath winter.

This place felt like its birthplace.

The Primordial Frozen Zone had never been conquered by cold because cold seemed to originate here.

There was no sky overhead toward which one might escape, no warmer horizon beyond the storm and. Ice occupied the heights, the floor, the abyss and every impossible distance between them. Frozen mountains collapsed only to expose colder caverns beneath their foundations, while ancient winds carved through primordial glaciers until the glaciers screamed apart.

Crystalline forests rose from nothing and shattered beneath their own internal chill, and pieces of the ceiling fell through darkness like dead frozen worlds before striking the cavern hard enough to reshape entire regions.

Phei looked down at himself again and found frost beginning to cling properly to his skin. Blood had frozen into dark crystals along two fresh cuts before Dragon Regeneration erased the wounds beneath them, while sensation had started fading from the tips of his fingers. His long black hair had become partly rigid, several ends already turned pale beneath thick ice, and white crystals gathered along his eyebrows and eyelashes while every exhalation became glittering frozen dust before his face.

A slow smile returned to Phei’s lips despite the crack running through them. "Yeah," he murmured, his amethyst eyes brightening as he studied the frozen hell around him. "This is much worse."

A voice reached him through the cold, it was faint and impossibly distant, it slipped into his awareness from no direction True Void Sense could identify.

"Shei."

Sienna?

Phei turned instinctively, although he already understood she was nowhere nearby. Her voice seemed woven through whatever method had brought him into the Primordial Frozen Zone, stretched across such a tremendous distance that even the connection carrying it felt unstable.

"Phei."

He rubbed frost from one eyebrow. "Now you explain things..."

Sienna ignored the complaint entirely. "There’s something you should know before you begin. Time here moved faster world outside," she continued, her voice already weakening beneath the distance. "Ten days inside this region can be approximately one hour outside."

Phei became still.

For several breaths, even the cold slicing across his skin seemed less important. He stared into the endless frozen dark before repeating, "Ten days?"

Phei looked around the immeasurable cavern again, and suddenly those impossible distances carried an entirely different weight: "How long am I staying here?"

Sienna remained silent for just long enough to make him suspicious.

"Months?"

Phei closed his eyes... she wasn’t sure when she was age one who brought him here?

When he opened them again, the frost had already thickened across his lashes. "Months."

"You wanted strength."

"I also occasionally enjoy civilization."

"You’ll survive."

Phei gave the surrounding darkness an unimpressed look. "Inspiring."

Her voice softened only slightly before returning to the matter at hand. "Temper your body properly. Don’t rush for the Primordial Frozen’s essence. Let your flesh, bones, marrow, organs, meridians and Void-Ice become accustomed to it until this region can no longer threaten you the way it does now."

A fresh cut opened across the back of Phei’s hand while she spoke.

"Minor detail," he muttered.

Sienna continued as though he had remained perfectly silent. "When the body tempering is complete, you’ll begin combat training."

Phei’s head lifted immediately. "Combat training?"

"Yes."

Something in her tone made suspicion arrive before curiosity could.

"Against what?"

"Don’t worry about finding your opponents."

That was precisely when Phei began worrying. The cold wind screamed through the cavern while somewhere far away another frozen mountain collapsed with enough force to send a trembling groan through the ground beneath his feet.

"They’ll come to you," Sienna said.

Phei narrowed his eyes. "Who are they?"

No answer came.

"Sienna."

"They’ll come before you do."

The connection started fading.

Phei immediately straightened. "Sienna."

Nothing answered.

"Sienna, what the fuck does that mean?"

For one heartbeat he thought she had already gone. Then her faint voice slipped through the cold one final time. "Have fun, Dragon."

The connection vanished.

Phei remained where he stood for several breaths while the wind dragged microscopic blades across his cheek and opened another narrow wound. His frozen hair crackled softly when he turned his head, the strands stiff enough now that they scraped together like thin pieces of glass.

Somewhere inside this frozen hell were apparently creatures intelligent enough to watch him cultivate without being seen, patient enough to wait months if necessary and confident enough to decide for themselves when he had become strong enough to fight them.

"Lovely."

Phei started walking deeper.

The floor beneath his feet refused to crack despite the body Great Immortal essence had only recently tempered to monstrous hardness. After several steps he deliberately pressed harder, driving more physical strength through one foot.

Phei increased the force.

The ancient ice remained perfectly intact.

He crouched and placed one hand against the frozen surface, only for cold to shoot through his fingers so quickly that frost immediately spread across his knuckles despite Void-Ice already circulating through his body. His first instinct was to withdraw.

He closed his eyes and allowed Infinity Control to spread outward through the ice.

Phei opened his eyes again.

That was new.

He tried once more, extending his intent and will into the frozen ground exactly as he had commanded oceans of ice throughout Anarctica. He had seized glaciers, storms, weapons and mountains with less resistance than this.

The cavern ignored him completely.

Phei remained crouched with one palm pressed against the ground before a quiet laugh escaped him.

"Okay."

That was genuinely exciting.