Chapter 1297: Cultivating the Primordial Zone Essence

Infinity Control had made ice almost embarrassingly obedient. Whether it took the form of a glacier, storm, weapon or mountain scarcely mattered once his will reached it. Yet the primordial ice beneath him possessed absolutely no interest in his confidence.

Perhaps because it was not truly the same thing.

Phei slowly looked around the primordial cavern again while his heartbeat quickened.

If Void-Ice was one manifestation beneath his greater Void, perhaps ordinary ice itself was only one lesser expression of the frozen source filling this region.

Another stream of primordial wind crossed the cavern.

Three narrow cuts opened across Phei’s cheek before he could blink. Blood surfaced and froze instantly, and although Dragon Regeneration began sealing the wounds immediately, faint primordial frost remained inside the damaged flesh long enough to slow even that restoration.

Phei touched one of the frozen cuts with the tip of his finger.

"You’re nasty."

He liked it.

That was probably not evidence of an especially healthy personality.

Phei continued deeper until the passage eventually opened into a chamber whose boundaries his ordinary eyes could not find. Even True Void Sense placed the distant walls far enough away that the place felt less like a cavern and more like a subterranean realm buried beneath endless ice.

He stopped near its center and sat cross-legged directly upon the primordial ground.

The response was vicious as the cold drove through his thighs and legs so violently that every muscle in his lower body locked at once. His Void-Ice robe stiffened around him, frost racing across his waist before penetrating through cloth, skin and blood beneath it. Phei drew one careful breath and immediately felt his lungs burn, yet he settled both hands upon his knees and deliberately stopped trying to push the cold away.

The Primordial Frozen Zone flooded him.

His shoulders locked beneath the first wave. His abdomen contracted painfully, his blood slowed and frost thickened so quickly across his eyelashes that his vision became hazy behind white crystal. Pale-blue traces briefly appeared beneath his skin as primordial essence entered the vessels before Primordial Blood surged in response and forced circulation to continue.

Phei remained seated.

The body forged within the Great Immortal spring endured, although only barely, and that difference had became obvious almost immediately. Before the three-day tempering, this environment would likely have overwhelmed his flesh before he completed even a single proper cultivation cycle. Now his heart hammered harder to keep blood moving, his strengthened vessels resisted the cold invading them and his tempered marrow continued producing enough vitality to keep his body from surrendering.

More importantly, his widened meridians gave the Primordial Frozen Essence somewhere to enter.

Not to mention his regeneration.

Phei guided the first true thread inward and agony followed.

The primordial essence entered one meridian and immediately coated its inner walls in frost. Phei’s fingers twitched against his knees as the channel contracted around the invading cold. That meridian had already endured Great Immortal refinement, yet a single thread of Primordial Frozen Essence still hurt enough to make every muscle surrounding it tense.

He pushed it deeper.

Void-Ice rose to meet it.

The instant the two powers touched, Phei’s entire cultivation base and foundation shuddered.

Black-white essence erupted beneath his skin before drawing back, and his frozen hair lifted faintly around his shoulders while the surrounding winds began turning around him in slow circles. The Primordial Frozen Essence refused to merge, while Void-Ice pressed against it with the same dominance that had always forced lesser frost to submit.

This time, the older cold simply resisted.

Phei felt the difference immediately.

His Void-Ice ruled the frost it had encountered because those forms of ice stood beneath it. The essence entering him now came from something far older than anything it had dominated before, and command alone would accomplish very little.

"Fine," Phei muttered through clenched teeth. "Let’s do this properly."

He widened his cultivation cycle.

Cold entered from every direction at once.

The wind curved toward Phei carrying countless microscopic blades that opened cuts across his face, neck and exposed hands, each line of blood freezing along its edges before Dragon Regeneration closed the tissue beneath it. Primordial essence rose directly through the ice under him, while each breath carried more of it into his lungs. Frost gathered across his robe so quickly that the dark fabric disappeared beneath a white crust, and his black hair hardened strand by strand until the ends beneath his shoulders had frozen together.

The cold climbed higher through his hair while thick ice buried more of the darkness beneath white. His eyelashes froze together until Phei opened his eyes and shattered the crystals apart, then closed them again and continued cultivating. More splits opened along his lips, dark blood freezing within them, while his fingertips paled as sensation disappeared from the outer skin.

Frost gathered beneath his nails and fine fractures opened across the backs of his hands faster than Dragon Regeneration could immediately erase them.

Phei remained silent through all of it.

The primordial cold entered his muscles next, stiffening fibers until they threatened to tear whenever he moved. Phei circulated Primordial Blood through them, keeping the tissue alive while refusing to drive the Frozen Essence away.

He wanted his body to endure the cold itself rather than survive only because his powers protected it.

Then the essence reached bone.

The hidden scale-like structures created during the Great Immortal tempering contracted beneath the strain. Tiny fractures appeared within them, too small to see from outside, and Dragon Regeneration immediately began repairing the damage while the primordial essence remained inside. The restored structures endured slightly more before the next fracture formed.

The cold sank into his marrow.

Phei’s blood temperature plunged.

His heart slowed enough that one beat arrived noticeably late, and Primordial Blood surged through his chest almost angrily before forcing another contraction. The next beat came heavier and drove blood through vessels stiffening beneath frost.

Phei’s only outward reaction was the faint tightening of his brow before his lungs began freezing.

Every breath drew more Primordial Frozen Essence into tissue never meant to hold it. Frost formed along the delicate inner surfaces, opened countless tiny injuries and was followed almost immediately by Dragon Regeneration.

The first repaired tissue returned little different from what it had been before.

The next endured slightly longer.

The tissue after that lasted longer still.

Phei noticed.

A faint smile appeared beneath the frost coating his lips.

Pain was forcing his body to adapt, and Dragon Regeneration was rebuilding it around every new demand exactly as it had inside the Great Immortal spring.

The primordial essence continued deeper into his organs. Pale crystalline traces gathered through his liver, kidneys and stomach before Primordial Blood and Dragon Regeneration pushed vitality through tissue the cold was steadily forcing to change.

The difference eventually reached his skin.

Another cutting wind crossed the chamber.

This time some of the finest particles struck Phei and failed to break the surface of his skin.

Others still opened him.

Blood froze but Dragon Regeneration restored the damage.

The next gust left fewer wounds.

Phei continued cultivating.

Ice accumulated over his thighs until the outline of his legs disappeared beneath it, while thicker layers formed across his shoulders, chest, arms and back. Before long his Void-Ice robe had vanished completely beneath the frost, and the crust continued thickening until Phei looked less like a cultivator meditating in the cavern and more like a corpse the Primordial Frozen Zone had slowly accepted into itself.

His black hair disappeared beneath white.

His eyelashes became crystalline.

Every breath escaped as glittering frozen dust and gathered across the lower half of his face before the next exhalation cracked the accumulation apart.

Beneath that growing frozen tomb, Phei’s heart continued beating.

Each slow, heavy pulse drove Primordial Blood through tissues the cold was trying to claim while the Primordial Frozen Essence descended farther through his meridians and into his cultivation until it once again reached the Void-Ice waiting within him.

This time the black-white essence reacted differently.

It stopped trying to crush the older cold; instead, it touched it and remained there.

For several breaths, the two powers existed against one another without either yielding. Then something inside Phei’s elemental foundation shifted open, and the smallest trace of Primordial Frozen Essence disappeared into his Void-Ice.

Phei’s eyes snapped open beneath the frost. Black-white brilliance flashed through the amethyst.

The cavern reacted.

A distant crack rolled through the darkness, followed several breaths later by another much deeper sound. Something far beneath Phei shifted inside the primordial ice.

True Void Sense immediately reached downward.

It found ice.

Then more ice.

Depth after depth of ancient frozen matter descended beyond everything he could presently perceive, yet somewhere inside those unreachable regions something had reacted when he absorbed that first trace.

Something had noticed him.

Phei slowly closed his eyes again.

The smile returned.

Three days earlier, he had believed Great Immortal essence had shown him what brutal body tempering truly felt like.

Apparently it had merely made him durable enough to begin this.

The Primordial Frozen Zone continued pouring itself into him while the winds carved across his flesh, frost buried him beneath layer after layer and the ancient ice beneath his body continued refusing every attempt to command it. Phei accepted the pain, drew the essence inward and continued taking from a place that had yet to acknowledge him as anything more than another warm thing foolish enough to enter.

Whatever waited inside the primordial dark though where his eyes couldn’t reach, was bound to change the Young Dragon forever.