Chapter 944: Scheming Against Each Other (2)

“Surprised? Didn’t expect our next meeting to be under such circumstances, did you?”

Zhou Shisan looked at Li Xiaofei with a triumphant grin. “I told you, we’d meet again. It took a little longer than I’d hoped, but this moment is perfect.”

Li Xiaofei’s gaze swept the area but he didn’t see the succubus, Xue.

“Where is she?” he asked.

It wasn’t that he held deep feelings for her. She was a different race and had a different heart. He had saved her once during the banquet, and he considered whatever shallow tie that formed between them to be long since settled.

The only reason he came here was because he had planned to find Zhou Shisan anyway. This confrontation had always been part of his plan. He hadn’t expected Zhou Shisan to lose patience and make the first move. But that was just fine, since it gave him the perfect chance to turn the tables.

Li Xiaofei had always suspected that Zhou Shisan, for all his apparent cleverness, lacked true precision in his actions. He seemed like the kind of man who, driven by personal emotion, would execute seemingly flawless schemes riddled with exploitable flaws. When dealing with a fool like this, the best thing to do was to play along.

Zhou Shisan let out a hearty laugh. He gave a small gesture with his hand. One of the Yeniao Clan warriors stepped forward and smashed a chunk of ice.

Behind the pale-blue crystal was the succubus girl, frozen in place. Her once-beautiful face was frozen in a final expression of fear and pleading, etched in her last breath of life.

She was already dead. The severed arm’s wound had frozen over, and the blood that had poured from it was now locked in glittering crimson ice, like a red rose blooming in the darkness of the icy plains.

Even though he felt no real attachment to the succubus, at that moment, a surge of fury erupted from deep within Li Xiaofei. A flood of cold rage, like a tidal wave, threatened to burst forth and consume everything.

“You look very angry,” Zhou Shisan said with a mocking, taunting smile as he shrugged. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t plan to kill her at first, but as you know, the Frost Plains are just too cold. I barely brought her here, and she couldn’t even withstand the chill so she froze to death all on her own.”

Li Xiaofei extended his palm. The Darkblade appeared silently in his grip. Without a single word, he stepped forward and struck. The blade’s light flared like a stream of fire. It tore through the air, shattering snow and ice.

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Zhou Shisan burst into laughter, retreating swiftly. The Yeniao Clan elites at his side stepped up together to meet the charge. Anyone qualified to accompany Zhou Shisan into the Frost Plains was, at minimum, a level six powerhouse. They would already be considered elites among countless Reapers.

There were even level seven cultivators among the twenty. Zhou Shisan was utterly confident. But his grin froze on his face almost immediately.

Li Xiaofei moved like a mad beast, taking two full-force strikes from peak-level level six warriors head-on, and yet, with a single swing of his Darkblade, he split a half-step level seven expert clean in two.

Splurt.

Blood sprayed into the air, and froze before hitting the ground, turning into red crystal shards. The severed corpse, still midair, solidified into ice in an instant.

In this extreme cold, even normally uninjured level six or seven cultivators risked frostbite they couldn’t recover from. There was only one outcome for the seriously wounded. Death. The half-step level seven Yeniao warrior died instantly.

Li Xiaofei charged forward like a maddened tiger. The sheer force of his assault stunned the other Yeniao warriors. Their expressions changed drastically as they instinctively backed away.

No one dared take damage in this kind of environment. A light injury meant ruin, and a serious one meant death. And in their eyes, after taking those two hits, Li Xiaofei should already have been half-dead. There was no need to engage him head-on; they just had to avoid him and wear him down.

Thus, the twenty elite warriors were forcefully scattered as Li Xiaofei charged straight through them. He reached the ice sculpture that had once been the succubus, Xue, and swept her frozen form into his arms. Without hesitation, he bolted toward the deeper recesses of the icy valley fissure like a man possessed.

“After him!” Zhou Shisan roared, “Don’t let him get away!”

The Yeniao Clan warriors dared not delay and launched into full pursuit.

Moments later, Li Xiaofei was cornered inside a crystalline ice cave.

The entrance to the cave was just wide enough for a single person to crawl through, requiring one to hunch over to get inside. But beyond the entrance, the interior expanded into a chamber roughly the size of a fifty-square-meter hall, with a ceiling about ten meters high.

There were no other exits. The Yeniao Clan warriors surrounded the mouth of the cave. Zhou Shisan’s expression darkened as he stared at the entrance. He knew that terrain like this absolutely could not be assaulted head on.

The old saying held true, One man defending a pass can hold off ten thousand. The narrow entrance gave Li Xiaofei an overwhelming defensive advantage, completely neutralizing the attackers’ numbers.

A direct assault would only increase casualties. Zhou Shisan had brought many of his most trusted elites for this operation. Losing them here over one enemy would be a disaster, and hard to explain when he returned.

He gave the order to dig through the ice but the effort proved painfully slow. The ice of the Frost Plains within the Holy Ruins was exceptionally resilient. The glacial rock found in these ancient fissures had hardened over tens of thousands of years. Even a full-power strike from a level seven cultivator left only a shallow mark, like a knife scraping against steel.

At this rate, even ten days and nights of digging wouldn’t be enough to widen the entrance.

“Guard this place.” Zhou Shisan growled through gritted teeth. “I don’t believe he can hide in there forever. He’s wounded, so he won’t last long.”

The warriors quickly obeyed. One of Zhou Shisan’s trusted aides stepped forward and whispered, “Young master, we could pump in poisonous gas... or toss in explosives...”

Zhou Shisan’s eyes lit up and replied, “Brilliant.”

Even if those methods didn’t kill Li Xiaofei outright, they would at least harass and exhaust him. He wanted to see how long the man could last.

***

Inside the cave, Li Xiaofei gently placed the frozen body of the succubus, Xue, to one side. Then, with a clean strike of the Darkblade, he split open the icy floor, carving out a burial hollow in the glacial rock. He laid her within and sealed it carefully with more ice.

“For what little our acquaintance was worth... may you rest in peace,” he murmured with a sigh.

Then, turning back toward the entrance, he swung again, sealing the narrow cave mouth with several thick slabs of solid ice. The same ice the Yeniao Clan’s warriors couldn’t chip away was nothing in Li Xiaofei’s hands, especially with the high-grade Darkblade.

He could sense Zhou Shisan and the others stationed right outside. It was exactly what he wanted. With everything in place, Li Xiaofei activated the Spatial Point Theft ability from his Secret Time Pavilion.

A soft glow flickered as he vanished from the icy cave without a trace.

***

Twenty-five thousand kilometers away, Zhu Zhixun, Xiong Gang, and three other companions huddled nervously beneath a range of towering, majestic ice peaks.

Looking up, the ice mountains soared tens of thousands of meters into the sky. Jagged outcrops jutted like countless blades of ice, each one sharp enough to pierce through a cultivator's body at any moment.

The slick surfaces glistened with a lethal sheen. One misstep, and it would mean a fatal fall. Their boots were wrapped in the hide of a Void Serpent. The belly scales of the Void Serpent were covered in fine, razor-like reverse scales, allowing it to slither effortlessly across even the smoothest ice. Reapers often hunted them to craft equipment for ice traversal and climbing.

“Brother Zhu, are you sure that senior will come?” Xiong Gang couldn't help but ask.

Zhu Zhixun replied, “I've already made arrangements with him. He’ll definitely be here. Stay focused. Once we scale this peak, the Burial Ice Cliff will be right on the other side.”

“I don’t know... something feels off. There's a strange aura here.” A middle-aged man with a square face said quietly.

Zhu Zhixun replied, “The Burial Ice Cliff is classified as a weak stage eight danger zone. It’s natural for it to feel threatening. We factored that in when we came. Even if it's a mountain of blades or a sea of fire, we’ll push through.”

The square-faced man shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I think... there’s something above us.”

“Hm?” Zhu Zhixun froze for a moment and slowly raised his head.

His pupils contracted sharply. A massive head was emerging from behind the ice outcrop above. Its enormous eye was like a pool of blood, radiating a chilling aura of death as it locked directly onto them.

“It’s a Void Python!”

“A mature Void Python, we’re done for.”

A wave of cold despair washed over the group. They had smeared themselves with concealment ointment designed to suppress their presence. Unless their luck was abysmally bad, they shouldn’t have encountered any Void Beasts. Yet, they had barely reached the Burial Ice Mountains when they came face-to-face with a level seven Void Python.

“Move! Take a detour!” Zhu Zhixun shouted urgently.

But in the very next instant, the Void Python launched itself down the near-vertical ice wall like a flash of lightning, lunging straight at them. Its gaping maw surged toward Xiong Gang, ready to swallow him whole—

Whoosh!

A single streak of sword light tore through the air.

The Void Python’s massive, hundred-meter-long body was instantly sliced into dozens of segments. Its writhing remains plummeted from the cliff, tumbling into the blizzard below.

“Senior!” Zhu Zhixun cried out in joy.

He saw Li Xiaofei’s figure appear nearby. Unlike them, who had struggled up the cliff on foot, Li Xiaofei had arrived by sword flight. That alone was a staggering display of strength.

Zhu Zhixun was stunned. In the Frost Plains, even peak level seven Reapers found it difficult to fly under the suppressive laws of the Holy Ruins.

“We’re late. We need to move quickly,” Li Xiaofei said calmly.

As he spoke, the flying sword beneath his feet expanded in size. With a single sweep, he lifted all five of them onto the blade.

Whoosh.

The flying sword sliced through the air. In an instant, it soared past the towering Burial Ice Mountains. Zhu Zhixun and the others exchanged glances, their eyes filled with shock.

Not only can this senior fly on his own, he can carry others as well. Just how high has his cultivation realm reached? Could he be a Golden Immortal? Or even higher?

The more they thought about it, the more thrilled and awed they became.

The flying sword crossed the icy peaks in just a few seconds, and reached the vast ice plateau at the summit of the mountains. A massive abyss appeared in Li Xiaofei’s view fifty kilometers ahead. It stretched fifty kilometers wide, and its depths were unfathomable. A thick, black mist that was darker than the darkest night seeped faintly from within, drifting silently into the frigid air.

“The Burial Ice Cliff is right down there!” Zhu Zhixun called out loudly.

The sheer cliff face of the abyss was the Ice Cliff, and the actual Burial Ice Cliff was located nine thousand meters down that vertical wall. It was the most dangerous zone in the entire Frost Plains.

Li Xiaofei peered down over the edge. A sudden intuition struck him; this bottomless chasm didn’t feel like something formed by nature. It felt as though something unimaginably powerful had once slashed the ice field itself, carving this vast scar into the land.

“Let’s go,” Li Xiaofei said.

He tilted the flying sword into a steep dive and plunged straight into the abyss.