Chapter 340 – You Lead, I Follow. Shall We CoRule the Western Extremes? - Part 3

“Khagan, Khagan...”

The words rasped through the darkness.

“A body of living flame. How can anyone like that exist? Why hasn’t the Everflame burned him to ashes?”

Ice and darkness tangled together, revealing a landscape of spectral blue crystals and corpses frozen in contorted poses.

“That day I should have killed him. Killed him! Anyone who covets the Deathless Tomb deserves to die here.”

𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

The voice quivered with frustration.

“He’ll be back. What do we do? He’s bound to return to the Deathless Tomb.”

“He will come,” the voice repeated, hardening with malice. “Fine. I’ll stir the Nine Flames, turn them against the outsider.”

But after a long silence, the speaker sighed. “No... Better to meet him face‑to‑face.”

A frigid wind whipped a white‑fur cloak, revealing lips thin as a blade. A pack of wolves ringed the speaker, a young girl whose eyes, ancient and deep, did not match her age.

“Come, then, Khagan.”

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Three months later, spring arrived.

By now, Li Yuan had welded the Nine Flames into a single tribe. He had tried to personally tame the direwolves, which shouldn’t have been a problem with his beast taming skills. However, something inside these beasts, as though another presence lurked within. So he abandoned the effort and turned his attention back to the Deathless Tomb, scouring every text he could find.

One odd discovery confirmed a nagging intuition. The sacred flames of all nine tribes had shrunk the moment he stepped onto this land.

The

Everflame

, Li Yuan reasoned, was localized Yang energy, gathered by a hidden power he decided to call a

fire seed

. He carried one inside his body; each tribe housed another, drawing the surrounding Yang energy into itself.

Yet the reach of the tribes’ flames was vast, far wider than any normal fire seed should command. Something was wrong.

Li Yuan finally decided to head to the only place that might contain the answers he was seeking—the Deathless Tomb.

This time, he went alone. Compared to the previous time, nothing looked the same.

Red light glimmered in his eyes, cutting through the haze; a faint corona of flame surrounded him, denying the snow and cold any hold on his body.

Blizzards howled, hail slashed the air, and black snowbanks pressed in. But everything melted before touching him.

He stopped and gazed at a vision out of myth—an immense crystal garden, shards of blue ice jabbing the earth like the spears of giants. Between them, the freezing wind slithered like white‑scaled serpents, hissing and rattling.

Figures lay trapped in the ice, perfectly preserved at the instant they froze.

Li Yuan crouched, gripped one ice‑bound corpse, and coaxed his flame outward. The ice cracked, water dripped and refroze mid‑air, falling with sharp clicks onto the permafrost.

He watched. If the man inside were alive, warmth would revive him.

Nothing happened. The limp body sagged, dead beyond doubt.

“Hey, wake up.”

No response.

Patiently, Li Yuan kept the corpse warm. He tipped a swallow of Springdream Brew between its lips.

After an hour, a stale, long‑dead odor seeped out at last.

Li Yuan frowned, reset the corpse in its original pose, pressed it back into the ground, and let the cold reclaim it.

“So this isn’t a

deathless

burial at all. It’s all just a lie.”

Had he sent Xue Ning and the others here, it would have been condemning them to hell.

He moved on, studying the land. West of the burial field, he found a terraced ravine forming a natural chute. Snow piling high at the upper lip was slowly shoved into the slide, carrying nearby bodies with it. In time, the corpses would certainly spill out below.

Li Yuan straightened, eyes narrowing at the silent, deadly machine of ice.

He had uncovered only the first layer of the Deathless Tomb’s deception.

“The ice coffin ghost... ” Li Yuan muttered.

Anyone who woke to find they were not merely frozen but truly dead would drown in hatred. Without meat fields to bind those souls, the shifting glacier would eventually carry their resentful corpses outward. Let one tumble into a place of deep Yin and a ghost would be born. Everything fit neatly in place.

Li Yuan drew White Serpent from his robe and turned toward the depths of the Deathless Tomb.

“All answers lie inside that maze.”

He advanced warily, comforted by the 3,600~51,341 that flickered across his inner vision. His would-be assassin had been a mere 625~635.

“Whatever happens, I can at least put up a fight.” Li Yuan told himself.

The labyrinth loomed several dozen feet high, its passages twisting out of sight. On either side yawned bottomless chasms. At the entrance, he pressed a palm to the ice‑crystal wall. Flames poured from his body. The ice sagged like a sandcastle under a wave, only to refreeze the instant it began to run.

After melting the ice walls to no effect, Li Yuan decided to drop all sense of courtesy. Gripping White Serpent, he tapped the ice as lightly as brushing dust from his sleeve.

BOOM!

The wall shattered; he strode on.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

One ice wall after another exploded as Li Yuan simply

disassembled

the maze.

When still nothing happened, he rose into the air. Apparently, there was no sort of power that forbade flight. He drifted about the broken entrance, lobbing chunks of ice to test for invisible boundaries.

At last a woman’s voice, equal parts despair and exasperation, echoed from the depths.

“Khagan, stop destroying things. Come in and talk!”

“Come out and talk,” Li Yuan called back.

“A man of your stature afraid to meet a little girl?”

“Yes, I’m terrified!” he shouted.

Silence fell over the surroundings.

Then, the voice replied, “This concerns a secret of tremendous weight. Since you’ve come this far, you’re qualified to know. Rule the Western Extremes with me. You as the greater, I as the lesser. Together we can guard Nine Flames. As proof of good faith...I’m willing to be your woman.”

A light laugh followed.

Direwolves poured from the labyrinth like a tide, greater in number than the ones in all nine tribes combined. Something strange lay within them; otherwise Li Yuan would have bent them to his will already.

He merely narrowed his eyes, smiling, unmoving...

The wolves fanned out like dancers, tails sweeping the icy, until a bare-footed girl in a silver dress stepped forth on their backs. She swayed forward like the snow. Her face was pure, her gaze bewitching, an innocent temptress ripe for the picking.

“Come, Khagan,” the Wolfmother beckoned, “Take me, and together we’ll rule.”

Li Yuan glanced at the 625~635 hovering beside her, then stepped forward.

She spread her arms and skimmed down from a wolf’s shaggy spine. He reached out as though to embrace her—then blurred, fingers like lightning clamping her throat, and slammed her hard onto the ice.

The direwolves growled and bared their fangs.

She only laughed. “So you like it rough, huh? Fine, crush me harder.”

Li Yuan smiled back. “No. Let’s talk. What’s the secret of this place?”

“Carry me into the maze and you’ll see. What are you so afraid of? I’m in your hands, aren’t I? Killing me would take only a thought.”

“Not just yet.” Li Yuan tightened his grip. “First, why can’t I tame your direwolves? I’m not without skill as a beastmaster; by rights they should obey.”

The Wolfmother blinked. “Is this really the time for that question?”

“Yes. I’ve got all the time in the world,” Li Yuan said evenly.

“...” The Wolfmother fell speechless.