Chapter 940: Hidden Realms (2)

The destination of the Grand Princess’s party was the Ice River Cavern, classified as grade eight in difficulty. That place contained the most suitable realm for the Hui Yao clan to enhance their bloodline.

The journey posed no small amount of danger; hence, the need for escorts. After the reorganization, the total number of people in the team decreased to one hundred and twenty.

All of them were experts of and above the sixth stage. They included Lao Xinhua, the elder of the Dusa clan, and the elder administrator from the Port Family. These two had defied all objections and left their favored concubines behind.

Upon entering the Frost Plains, Li Xiaofei felt the sudden drop in temperature assaulting his body. He found that he felt like an ordinary person in such an extremely cold region, with the extreme cold quickly making him feel frozen and causing him to shiver involuntarily.

Of course, he was acting. After all, he was posing as a sixth stage Reaper. If he had remained unperturbed in such a harsh environment, some sharp-eyed individuals might have grown suspicious.

Suddenly, a white fur cloak was draped over Li Xiaofei’s shoulders. The Grand Princess’s pure and lovely face revealed concern as she said, "Keep warm. Frostbite here doesn’t heal easily. If you lose a hand or foot, it can never grow back."

Li Xiaofei did not refuse the Grand Princess’s kind gesture and put on the white cloak. Sure enough, the white cloak was a treasure. Once he put it on, he immediately felt a warm current flooding through him. The howling wind and falling snow around him no longer felt so unbearable.

That scene made Liu Shaji, who was also shivering from the cold, gnash his teeth in anger.

Damn it. That pretty boy is so popular. Why am I, after arriving in the Reaper world, still being forced to watch nauseating human drama playing out right before my eyes?

These idiotic Reapers were so obsessed with transforming themselves that they had practically gone insane. Zhou Shisan was even more furious. He felt like he had shown true devotion to the Grand Princess, risking everything to accompany her into such a perilous place, only to be completely ignored while the Grand Princess flirted openly with a down-and-out noble right in front of him. It was truly infuriating.

Zhou Shisan stared at the dim sky ahead and the astonishingly heavy Flying Snow, his eyes flickering with a hint of ruthless determination as he resolved to take some kind of action.

The group walked for ten hours across the snowy, dark night ice field. Then they saw a fortress of ice and snow standing atop a hill. It was a camp built by the Reapers.

"We have arrived." The Grand Princess let out a sigh of relief and said, "This is Fortress Number 38. We will rest here for a day and a night, resupply, and then continue onward."

The Frost Plains had been far too dangerous. The extreme cold plagued everyone. Even the Grand Princess, a genius, and the other clan elders and experts did not dare to advance through the icy wilderness for long stretches. Otherwise, they would have risked frostbite and death.

The crowd arrived at the fortress. After undergoing a strict inspection, the gates opened.

“It turns out to be the Hui Yao clan’s Grand Princess. Please, come in,” The fortress’s guardian, an elder from the Wind Ruins clan at the peak of the seventh stage, carried a highly respected status. Yet he had personally come to the gate to welcome the Grand Princess, honoring her in full.

The crowd was arranged to shelter inside the fortress. The fortress stood on a hilltop, and had been built with materials extracted from black blood rock found beneath a thousand-meter-deep ice layer in the glacier. It could resist snow, frost, and the cold.

Everyone settled in. Of course, the living conditions weren’t good. Li Xiaofei was assigned a stone room in the outer fortress area. There wasn’t even a bed inside. Fortunately, it was a single room. The temperature barely reached around minus fifty degrees. For cultivators, the temperature posed no real threat. Other experts from the various Kings clans received roughly the same treatment.

Only the Yeniao clan and the Grand Princess’s entourage were invited into the inner fortress, where the conditions were slightly better.

That night, the Wind Ruins clan hosted a banquet. Besides the Grand Princess’s group, they also invited notable figures such as Zhou Shisan from the Yeniao clan and Lao Xinhua from the Dusa clan.

The Wind Ruins clan’s sentries evidently didn’t take notice of Wei Xiaotian, a minor King, and he wasn’t on the guest list.

Wei Xiaotian cursed about this, muttering clichés like “Thirty years on the east bank, thirty years on the west bank. Don’t underestimate the poor youth,” and “Today you may ignore me, but tomorrow you’ll look up to me,” then dragged his Chicken Brother off to drink away his frustrations.

𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Li Xiaofei stayed alone in his room to cultivate. During that time, the Grand Princess sent someone to invite Li Xiaofei to the banquet. Li Xiaofei declined the invitation, explaining that he needed to cultivate and adapt to the abilities gained from the Realm.

The Frost Plain remained shrouded in darkness. Li Xiaofei quickly began to read the information the Grand Princess had given him once again in what light he could find. The section about the Frost Plain was particularly detailed.

The information stated that the Reapers had spared no expense or effort in their frenzied exploration of the Holy Ruins for many years, under the rule of the Twin Ancestors. The Ancestor Court regarded the Holy Ruins as just as important as the war against humanity.

Thus, they had constructed numerous camps and fortresses inside the Holy Ruins. Regions with lower stages of danger, like the Huangliang Desert, Pure Water Swamp, and Blood Flow Gobi, had already been thoroughly explored, and they no longer posed much threat for high-level Reapers, so no outposts had been established there.

However, in highly dangerous areas like the Frost Plain, they couldn’t afford to be careless. The Reapers invested considerable financial and material resources to build outposts and fortresses that served as communication hubs and temporary shelters.

Only the special armies of the major King-level clans were qualified to garrison these fortresses. They fought against the Ruin Beasts in these areas to obtain various evolutionary resources. This was one of the privileges of King-level clans. Danger always came with immense rewards.

The evolutionary resources obtained from here could be brought back to the Ancestor Court star system for massive profits, and also formed the foundation of a clan’s evolution. Therefore, even if a typical King clan produced experts at the sixth or seventh level, or even the eighth, they still couldn’t obtain a fief in such high-risk areas to build an outpost. They couldn’t secure the right to garrison a fortress.

Take, for example, the Death God’s Eye clan. After Wei Xiaotian seized their fortress, he had pushed the Death God’s Eye clan’s prestige to new heights and received accolades from the Ancestor Court, making him something of a rising star.

Yet, even he couldn’t secure territory within the Holy Ruins, let alone the right to garrison. Even the Wind Ruins clan elder, who did have garrison rights, looked down on Wei Xiaotian, the leader of the Death God’s Eye clan, and hadn’t allowed him into the inner fortress.

In Li Xiaofei’s view, this Wind Ruins clan elder truly didn’t know how to treat people, and probably wouldn’t last long. But none of that had anything to do with him. The real reason he had refused the Grand Princess’s invitation was because he was waiting for someone.

The long night stretched on. Snow and wind filled the sky, but Li Xiaofei waited patiently.

Two hours passed.

Knock, knock, knock.

A knocking sound came at the door.

Li Xiaofei opened it to find a familiar face. It was Xue Xiangyang, the personal servant of Lao Xinhua, the Dusa clan elder. Li Xiaofei didn’t ask many questions and let him in.

“So you’re that senior,” Xue Xiangyang said, bowing to Li Xiaofei, his eyes filled with excitement.

Then his figure began to twist and shift. A faint gleam flashed across his body, and his entire appearance transformed into someone else.

Zhu Zhixun. Xue Xiangyang was actually Zhu Zhixun.

“What a marvelous transformation technique,” Li Xiaofei exclaimed in admiration.

Zhu Zhixun explained, “This is one of the cultivation arts the Sword Immortal taught to the rebels. It’s called the Eight-Nine Mystical Arts, known for its transformations and ability to deceive even the heavens. It’s thanks to this technique that we’re able to infiltrate the Reaper world.”

The more time Zhu Zhixun spent with Li Xiaofei, the more trust he showed, sharing increasingly sensitive information.

“How many of us made it inside this time?” Li Xiaofei asked curiously.

Zhu Zhixun replied, “Counting you, there are seven of us.”

Seven people. That was quite a number. Li Xiaofei guessed they were probably the last elite force of the resistance. These people clearly came to the Holy Ruins prepared to die.

He thought of something else and couldn’t help but ask, “Among the seven of us, how many were chosen by the Realm to enter and seek opportunities?”

Zhu Zhixun said, “Every one of us entered the Realm. We all passed the Realm’s test and received rewards.”

Li Xiaofei’s heart stirred. A one-hundred percent selection and success rate. That result was leagues ahead of the Reapers.