Chapter 1453: The Bitter Winter Talisman

Beneath the surface of the sea, Shi Xue had put herself on the highest alert the moment Elder Mei's warning reached her.

An evasion technique did not account for the whole of an opponent's strength, but a speed that could shock both elders was enough for her to treat him as the most formidable enemy of her life.

Fortunately Elder Mei's order was only to tangle him up and buy time, not to fight to the death.

Just then Shi Xue saw a light appear at the horizon and knew it had to be the man Elder Mei meant. She was about to move when an inexplicable dread welled up in her and her pupils constricted sharply.

The next instant a violent force came crashing down from the sky. Her scalp prickled and she jerked her head up in alarm, her whole body going rigid as silver-white light filled her vision.

Over the empty sea, out of a clear sky without a cloud for ten thousand li, a thick bolt of lightning gathered from nowhere and split the air with a deafening crack, striking the water in an instant like a punishment from heaven.

Boom! A deep crater blew open in the sea, and countless streaks of lightning scattered outward, weaving a fine net across the surface.

A woman's figure emerged. Her face was pale, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and she held her head half raised, her eyes seeming frozen with horror.

Above her floated a phoenix coronet made of ice crystal.[1]

Its patterns were mysterious and exquisite, the whole of it carved from a single piece of transparent mystic ice that threw off a seven-colored halo under the daylight and the lightning.

But now a fine crack ran across the coronet, plain enough to see with the naked eye. Its luster had turned strangely dull, too.

Shi Xue had not yet recovered from the shock. Had she not been careful enough to add a layer of defense to herself beforehand, that single bolt of heavenly lightning might well have crippled her, or killed her outright.

She looked instinctively toward the direction the man was coming from, and a violent unease surged through her. Clenching her teeth, no longer able to spare a thought for her astra, she wasted no time, and the talisman in her palm quietly melted away.

Whoosh! Heaven and earth dimmed at once.

The cold spread outward at lightning speed.

The waves the lightning had thrown up froze solid in mid-air, and the seawater congealed into an ice field of rolling swells.

Snow began to fall. A vast stretch of the sea drowned beneath howling wind and blizzard and passed into deep winter, and at the center of it was the direction Qin Sang was coming from.

Qin Sang watched the figure of a woman in a long green dress take shape and found the outcome unsurprising.

He had opened with a bolt of heavenly lightning for reasons of his own.

At the trade fair, by his own reckoning, he had let slip nothing. His spiritual perception had caught no sense of being watched, either.

The odds that this person was one of the Chaotic Devil Elder's minions were low, which left two possibilities. Either Mystic Heaven Palace had come, or it was a thief fishing in troubled waters, out to kill him and take his treasures.

If they had come for wealth, being struck dead by lightning was no more than they deserved.

If Mystic Heaven Palace had come, then whoever could sense the mysterious ice box would also have noticed that his evasion speed was out of the ordinary, and would be wary and prepared. Such a person would not die easily. Gravely wounded and stripped of the ability to fight, at worst.

And that was exactly the outcome Qin Sang wanted. He intended to return the mysterious ice box and trade it to Mystic Heaven Palace for something else of value.

Since they were being this careless, he would hardly refuse a chance to learn what was sealed inside the box, or even how to open it.

Beyond that, trading called for strategy.

Being forced to hand the ice box back because he was outmatched, and displaying enough strength that Mystic Heaven Palace held its hand and came to him with terms of its own, were two fundamentally different things.

To draw out the box's full value, he first had to let Mystic Heaven Palace understand what sort of opponent it was dealing with, and a fight beforehand was unavoidable.

"Only one of them?"He found no one else lying in wait around her, which puzzled him. Is she really just a bandit out to rob me?

Mystic Heaven Palace held sole dominion over an entire realm. Even if it was inconvenient for the palace master to act personally, they should at least have sent a middle-stage Spiritual Infant cultivator. This one was only at the early stage, and probably could not have held the traitor either.

Then Qin Sang felt a wave of cold. Without any warning the world around him turned to a field of snow, and his figure was swallowed up in a blizzard and freezing wind.

His expression darkened slightly.

He could say for certain it was not the power of a spiritual array. Neither he nor the Sky-Eyed Butterfly had detected any ripple of array power.

At the same time the cold around him grew heavier and heavier, as though he had walked naked into a frozen waste. It did not merely eat into the body. It became a near-tangible set of shackles, sweeping up countless blade-like snowflakes that wound themselves around him without pause, forming layer upon layer of restraint in the empty air, trying to seal him in ice.

"So this is their strategy?" Qin Sang's figure flickered in and out of sight within the blizzard.

His question was answered, and he understood now why the woman in green was alone out here.

By this point he could be all but certain she came from Mystic Heaven Palace.

They had surely sent no small number of people, and out of caution toward the Chaotic Devil Elder they had not dared to act near Chaotic Devil Island, so they had scattered across every direction instead.

Her task was to stall for time until help arrived.

"So the seal of the Devilish Flames of Nine Hells didn't cut off Mystic Heaven Palace's sense of the ice box after all, though that sense must have a limited range. They were afraid of missing their chance and having me disappear with the box, which is why they were willing to risk provoking the Chaotic Devil Elder to strike here. Otherwise, they just needed to follow me secretly and find my cave dwelling..."

From the way they had acted, Qin Sang had guessed near enough to the truth and read the situation accurately.

But if they thought tactics like these would trap him, they were being far too naive.

His sleeves stirred, and a wisp of devilish flame slid out in silence to weave an armor of fire beneath his robes, shutting out the bone-deep cold in an instant.

Chaotic Devil Island was not far from here, and a drawn-out struggle might draw that old devil over, so Qin Sang wielded the devilish flames with an extra measure of care.

Provoking Mystic Heaven Palace and the Chaotic Devil Elder at the same time was more than even he could take.

Clang! Sword light leapt from his fingertip, the arc of it flickering as it flew upward.

Accompanied by a clear, ringing sword cry, the light flared without warning, became a giant sword in the blink of an eye, and hacked down hard at what lay ahead!

Wherever the sword passed, the cold qi was thrown into disorder and the snow melted away.

That single stroke cut a swath of clear space straight through the blizzard.

Seeing that Qin Sang appeared entirely unaffected, Shi Xue stared in disbelief, the corner of her eye twitching, and turned to run.

She had been wounded first by a bolt of heavenly lightning she never saw coming, then spent a precious Bitter Winter Talisman to pin him down, and her true essence was draining fast. Once he broke free, she had no confidence she could take more than a few exchanges.

She dreaded ending up a prisoner before reinforcements ever arrived.

"What on earth is going on? How did the sacred relic fall into the hands of someone this terrifying?" Shi Xue complained.

"Quick on her feet, this one!" Qin Sang muttered.

Stroke after stroke opened a clear road through a blizzard that blotted out the sky. Qin Sang sensed what Shi Xue was doing and snorted coldly.

He had guessed that more opponents might be on the way, and he had no intention of staying to tangle with them. Still, before fleeing he could try to seize the woman. She should be good for some information.

And if the treasure proved useless to him, he could always trade her back along with the mysterious ice box.

1. Some information about phoenix coronet: Fengguan, also known as phoenix coronet or phoenix hat, is a type of guan for women in Hanfu. It was worn mainly by noblewomen for ceremonies or official occasions. ☜

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