Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1022 - Bone-Chilling Water
Chapter 1022 – Bone-Chilling Water
Back when Liu Wuxie fought Yin Xue, many disciples from the First Sword Manor had mocked him. There was one disciple who jeered the loudest, so Liu Wuxie quietly cast the Conversion Art and turned him into a devotee.
He didn’t expect that one impulsive act would uncover such critical intel. The First Sword Manor had already launched their counterattack, leaving the Renowned Sword Manor at a clear disadvantage.
Most of the Renowned Sword Manor’s disciples busied themselves with refining weapons, and Miao Jianying had dispatched a portion of their elite disciples to assist Liu Wuxie in his search.
As for Miao Feichen, he left Northern City with a group, heading for the Central Plains.
That decision left the Renowned Sword Manor vulnerable, and that was exactly why Liu Wuxie urged Ji Qiu and Miao Jianying to return at once.
When Ji Qiu and Miao Jianying learned the Renowned Sword Manor was in danger, the two men exchanged grave looks.
“Set out at dawn tomorrow,” Liu Wuxie ordered with a heavy tone. He patted their shoulders and left Ji Qiu and Miao Jianying behind.
With Liu Wuxie gone, Ji Qiu pondered briefly about what they should do. “Ying’er, you stay behind. I’ll head back first.”
“No! I’ll go back! Uncle, you stay behind,” Miao Jianying said insistently.
Now, both of them fought to be the one to leave the extreme north. They knew well that returning to Northern City could mean putting their lives in danger. By contrast, whoever stayed in the extreme north would stay relatively safe.
To Ji Qiu, his nephew, Miao Jianying, represented the future of the Renowned Sword Manor, and he refused to let anything happen to him.
To prevent Miao Jianying from arguing further, Ji Qiu stated, “Since you call me your uncle, I’m your elder, and you should listen to your elders.”
They camped at the mountain base for the night, planning to make their journey back to the Renowned Sword Manor at dawn.
Liu Wuxie didn’t interfere in their argument. Inside the tent, he shut his eyes and reviewed the intelligence he’d gathered through Ghost Eye.
He had chosen this spot because the glacier here was thinner. Elsewhere, the ice layers were far too thick.
Master Yi had only given him half a month. If he failed to retrieve the Frost Bead, she would force Xu Lingxue and Murong Yi to undergo ordination.
At dawn, Ji Qiu made his journey back to the Renowned Sword Manor while Miao Jianying stayed behind with a heavy heart. His eyes were bloodshot as he hadn’t slept well the night before.
A group of nuns appeared, wanting to see how Liu Wuxie intended to enter the glacier layer.
Xu Lingxue and Murong Yi stood nearby, wearing snow beast fur coats, their faces filled with concern.
Liu Wuxie wore a specially made outfit that clung tightly to his body like fish skin. He walked toward the marked spot he’d circled earlier, with half the nuns from the Half-Moon Nunnery trailing behind him.
When the young nun, Little Lan, saw Liu Wuxie, she offered an embarrassed and slightly apologetic look.
Xu Lingxue sobbed, “Big Brother Liu, are you going down there?”
The two ladies knew Liu Wuxie was doing this for them. He wanted to take them from the Half-Moon Nunnery openly and honorably, not by force.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine,” Liu Wuxie said and wiped the tears off their eyes.
He created a large crater on the ground with his palm before he quickly descended. The glacier layer was thick, reaching nearly ten thousand meters in depth. This meant he needed to break through the ice layer and retrieve the Frost Bead within half a month—a task that pushed the limits of possibility.
He plunged downward, channeling Frost Dao Art to part the ice ahead. The nuns watched on in stunned silence.
None of them expected Liu Wuxie to control the ice element with such precision, manipulating it entirely at will. Since the Frost Dao Art could condense icy energy into ice, it could also dissolve ice into icy energy.
Liu Wuxie didn’t have to dig. He used Frost Dao Art to easily dissolve the surrounding ice, accelerating his descent. Within just fifteen minutes, he had already descended nearly a hundred meters.
From the surface, everyone saw only a circular hole about a meter wide. It was a bottomless abyss, its end vanishing into darkness. An eerie, unsettled sound drifted up from the abyss to their ears.
Beneath the glacier, the world resembled purgatory, where countless evils lay imprisoned.
As Liu Wuxie continued his descent, he performed the Ghost Eye technique to prepare himself for any potential danger. However, the technique reached only about ten thousand meters. Beyond that, his vision blurred and became unreliable.
Two hours later, Liu Wuxie paused to rest. Then he activated Ghost Eye again and continued his descent.
A deafening crash thundered through the ice, slamming into Liu Wuxie’s ears and shaking the entire underground world.
“What’s going on? Could there be other creatures beneath the glacier layer?” Liu Wuxie muttered with deep concern.
Any creature that could survive beneath a glacier buried for ten thousand years had to be extraordinary. Even those at the Earth Profound Realm wouldn’t survive. Only those at the Heaven Profound Realm could resist such intense cold.
Liu Wuxie searched for half a day but noticed no visible changes. The surrounding ice remained unbroken as he continued his descent, dissolving it into mist along the way.
He had to return within fifteen days, or he’d face serious trouble.
Descending was easy, but climbing out of a sealed world without spiritual energy was another matter entirely. Therefore, he had to return to the surface before the tunnel resealed itself.
No rocks or flowing water surrounded him. There was only endless ice, pressing in from all sides.
Liu Wuxie suspected the extreme north had once been a vast ocean, long since frozen by time.
Days passed, and the glacier ice grew tougher the deeper he went. The ice dissolved more slowly as he descended. By his estimate, he needed at least five days to reach ten thousand meters.
Every day, Liu Wuxie used Ghost Eye to gauge how far he was from the bottom. However, in the extreme north, the bottom felt nonexistent. The ice stretched endlessly into the depths of the universe.
On the third day, when he activated Ghost Eye, he finally discovered something. He heard the flow of water and the soft scrape of ice shards grinding against each other.
“Just as I’d imagined. There’s an underground ocean beneath,” Liu Wuxie muttered to himself.
He estimated he’d reach the core in two days. As for the Frost Bead, he still had no idea where it was. Master Yi had only said it lay beneath the mountain.
Meanwhile, conflict erupted in Northern City as the First Sword Manor launched multiple sneak attacks on the Renowned Sword Manor. Fortunately, the Renowned Sword Manor had prepared in advance and avoided significant losses. Only the blacksmithing workshops took damage.
The First Sword Manor deliberately targeted those workshops, choosing to destroy them rather than letting them fall into Renowned Sword Manor’s hands. Their actions enraged many people. If the First Sword Manor destroyed the workshops, everyone who had ordered weapons from Renowned Sword Manor would face longer delays.
Just yesterday, the Lao Clan, the Xue Clan, and several powerful sects joined forces to boycott the First Sword Manor and sent reinforcements to Renowned Sword Manor. With that, the tide of the conflict began to turn.
In desperation, the First Sword Manor unleashed the Supreme Harmony Sword, but Miao Feiyu countered with the Heavenly Xun Sword and defeated Yin Qiong. More importantly, the fight heavily damaged the Supreme Harmony Sword, significantly weakening its power.
The moment Miao Feiyu drew the Heavenly Xun Sword, everyone in Northern City felt its presence. They could sense a formidable sword aura slicing through the city’s sky.
Had Liu Wuxie been on the surface, he would’ve felt it, too.
By the fifth day, Liu Wuxie had a clear sense of the horror of the underground world. The water beneath was bone-chillingly cold. When water gets cold enough, it paradoxically stops freezing, yet it instantly freezes anything it comes into contact with.
Liu Wuxie looked up and saw the glacier layer hovering above the bone-chilling water.
“Could the extreme north be constantly drifting?” Liu Wuxie pondered.
He watched the ice around him shift, realizing that the entirety of the extreme north floated and drifted atop the water. The extreme north drifted with the current, but the thick layer of ice prevented anyone on the surface from sensing the movement.
Liu Wuxie stopped when he was only a few meters from the sea. Even with his powerful physique, entering the sea posed a danger. If he entered recklessly, he could easily become part of the glacier layer and freeze to death.
“Where’s the Frost Bead?”
He activated Ghost Eye and scanned the icy void.
Only the extreme north could produce a Frost Bead. It formed after absorbing chill for ten thousand years.
If Liu Wuxie could absorb even a wisp of it, it would allow Frost Dao Art to advance dramatically. Most importantly, the laws in the Frost Bead resembled those of the Thunder Saint Pearl, which formed after absorbing countless bolts of lightning.
The Thunder Saint Pearl had helped Liu Wuxie to reach the Spirit Profound Realm. If he could draw the Frost Bead’s laws, there was a high chance he could attain the third level of the Spirit Profound Realm.
The idea thrilled him, but achieving it wouldn’t be easy. After all, few people could comprehend the Frost Dao Art, and the Frost Bead could freeze an entire city.
If he placed the Frost Bead at the heart of Astral Glory City, it would freeze the entire city in under a minute.
Liu Wuxie scanned the area but still couldn’t find the Frost Bead anywhere.
Time slipped by in silence, steadily cutting into the time he had left. He didn’t give up and rested briefly before searching with Ghost Eye again.
He spotted a dark patch underneath the mountain, shaped like a reef floating atop the bone-chilling water.
Liu Wuxie remarked, “That’s weird. Why are there so many shadows there?”
He frowned, feeling something was amiss about the underside of the mountain.
“Could Master Yi have lied to me? Is she hiding something beneath this peak?” Liu Wuxie muttered, squinting at the shadows.
He began to suspect that Master Yi had made her request with ulterior motives.
The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!
