Unsealing

Shards of shattered ice pierced her knees, the cold, hard sensation creeping up through her skin.

Ning Qinghan knelt there as if she had been kneeling for a lifetime—so long that her body could no longer distinguish between pain and cold.

Blood continued to trickle from the corner of her mouth, running down her chin and falling drop by drop onto her grayish-blue Daoist robe.

Once the fabric was saturated with blood, the color darkened, looking like flowers blooming in the dead of night.

Several yards away, the middle-aged man gathered dark gray spiritual power in his palm once more.

The orb of light trembled restlessly, emitting a low hum.

In his world, nothing was more important than his own life, let alone risking it for a stranger.

Thus, he could not understand; he could not fathom why Ning Qinghan, who also hailed from a demonic sect, would do such a thing.

"Is it worth it? For someone you don't even know?"

As he spoke, the spiritual power in his palm expanded violently, the dark gray light nearly swallowing his fingers.

The next strike was about to fall.

Bai Qingxue looked at the back shielding her.

The blood-flowers on the Daoist robe were still spreading bit by bit, yet that person remained motionless, as if nailed to the spot.

She lowered her head and looked at the bell in her palm.

The bronze body of the bell was mottled with rust and felt ice-cold to the touch.

Ning Qinghan had taken it off and tossed it to her just now—tossed it so casually, as if discarding something worthless.

Bai Qingxue slowly closed her fingers.

The bronze chill seeped into the lines of her palm, crawling up her wrist along her veins like a slender ice snake.

"How do I break it?" she asked.

Ning Qinghan did not look back.

Her voice drifted from ahead, sounding hoarse. "Inject spiritual power into the bell. And then..."

She paused.

It was a very brief pause, so short it was almost imperceptible.

"...Give me your hand."

Bai Qingxue did not hesitate.

She gripped the bell tightly as spiritual power surged from her dantian, rushing through her meridians and pouring into her palm.

The bell lit up, a layer of faint golden light emerging from the dull bronze surface. The dormant engravings seemed to suddenly awaken, swirling across the bell's body in faster and faster circles.

Then, she reached out her hand, palm facing upward.

Ning Qinghan turned around.

She saw that hand.

The palm was thin, the fingers long and slender with distinct knuckles—clearly a pair of hands accustomed to holding a sword.

At this moment, with the palm spread open, there were several red indentations left by the bell, some deep and some shallow, like plum petals fallen on the snow.

Faint golden light radiated from the palm, making it look as if the hand itself was glowing.

Immediately, Ning Qinghan placed her own hand upon it.

Two hands, equally ice-cold, clasped together.

Then, both of them injected spiritual power into the bell simultaneously.

The bell left their hands and floated in the air, suspended between their clasped palms.

Runes spun frantically, and a dark red light surged from deep within the bell, flowing along their joined hands like a red-hot chain, being pulled inch by inch from Ning Qinghan's wrist.

The middle-aged man's expression changed drastically.

The spiritual sphere in his palm expanded abruptly, the dark gray light exploding as it hummed and smashed toward the two of them.

Lu Xueqing drew her sword. Her sword light flashed like a ribbon of silk, striking the spiritual sphere and forcefully parrying it off course.

The spiritual sphere slammed into the ice wall, exploding into a cloud of dark gray corrosive mist. Shards of ice fell in a flurry, hitting the ground like a fine rain of ice.

Bai Qingxue did not open her eyes. She pressed all her spiritual power into the bell; the ice lotus in her dantian spun frantically as a chill erupted from within her, condensing into a thin layer of ice armor around her body.

Ning Qinghan did not open her eyes either.

For ten years, her sealed spiritual power had lain dormant deep within her dantian.

Now it was awake, like a trapped beast that had finally smashed through its cage. It raced out along her arm, roaring as it charged into the bell and collided with Bai Qingxue's Mystic Frost spiritual power.

At this moment, the two streams of spiritual power were like two rivers that had been separated for many years, finally merging into one.

The bell exploded with a blinding blue light.

The patterns on Ning Qinghan's wrist began to fade.

Fading from dark red to light red, then from light red to transparent, one by one, as if an invisible finger were erasing words that had been written on her skin for years.

At the same time, new patterns were emerging on Bai Qingxue's wrist.

At first, it was just a faint redness showing beneath the skin, like a mark left by a light scratch of a fingernail.

Then that redness slowly deepened and gathered, beginning to take shape along the line of her wrist bone.

From nothing to something, from shallow to deep, it was as if someone were using a very fine brush dipped in invisible cinnabar, writing on her skin stroke by stroke.

With every stroke, the skin there turned slightly cold, as if a very thin sliver of ice had been pressed against it.

The way the patterns entwined was exactly the same.

Only, on one person's wrist, they were vanishing, while on the other's, they were growing.

Ning Qinghan did not look at her own wrist.

She kept her eyes on Bai Qingxue's face.

She watched as the things being written spread inch by inch across Bai Qingxue's wrist, while Bai Qingxue's brow furrowed tighter and tighter.

The moment the last trace of dark red vanished from Ning Qinghan's wrist, she let out a muffled groan and doubled over.

Her forehead nearly touched their clasped hands; she was so close she could almost feel the temperature of Bai Qingxue's fingertips.

The weight of ten years was suddenly lifted, and Ning Qinghan's body had not yet had time to learn how to be light.

In this moment, she was like someone who had been bound for a very, very long time; the moment the ropes were loosened, she simply didn't know how to stand.

Bai Qingxue caught the falling Ning Qinghan.

Bai Qingxue's hand moved up from her forearm to support her elbow, while her other hand pressed against her shoulder blade.

It must be said that Bai Qingxue's movements were very gentle—so gentle it was as if she were touching a piece of porcelain that would shatter the moment she let go.

Meanwhile, the blinding blue light receded at this moment, sinking into Bai Qingxue's palm.

The bell in Bai Qingxue's palm slowly lengthened and narrowed.

Finally, the bronze shell faded away, like pure white jade revealed after the snow melts.

The originally rounded body of the bell had now transformed into the slender body of a flute.

It was a jade flute.

Pure white throughout, held in Bai Qingxue's hand, it was as if she were holding a sliver of moonlight.

Its name: Frost Moon Chant.