After Ning Qinghan left, the quiet room remained silent for a long time.
Bai Qingxue sat at the table and opened the wooden box.
The Frost Moon Chant lay quietly on the velvet lining, its entire body a translucent white, resembling a plucked crescent moon.
For some reason, Bai Qingxue suddenly thought of it tonight.
Since this item had been transformed from the bell of the restriction, would it also have the effect of suppressing the restriction?
At this thought, Bai Qingxue reached out to pick up the flute. The moment her fingertips brushed against its body, a cool sensation traveled up from her finger pad.
But this time, the chill was gentle and docile.
It was as if it recognized Bai Qingxue.
Bai Qingxue brought the flute to her lips. Her fingers naturally found the position of each hole, as if the flute had been custom-made to fit her hands.
When the first note sounded, the candlelight dipped by half an inch in unison.
The sound was unlike any flute music she had ever heard.
It was clearer, colder, and more resonant.
The notes did not merely enter her ears; they seeped directly into her skin.
Guided by a gentle force, Bai Qingxue’s fingers moved over the flute holes, and a melody she had never heard before flowed out on its own.
Then, an image appeared.
An endless frozen plain materialized in her mind, with countless stars sealed beneath the ice.
Those stars were not points of light, but runes, arranged line by line.
One line was a formula, and ten formulas made a spell.
The name of the first spell branded itself into Bai Qingxue’s consciousness.
It was called 《Ice Condensation》.
Bai Qingxue opened her eyes and raised the flute again. She channeled a strand of Ice Spirit power into the instrument and blew the first note of 《Ice Condensation》 according to the arrangement of the runes in her mind.
The temperature in the quiet room plummeted instantly.
Immediately after, the candlelight on the table froze.
Bai Qingxue’s pupils contracted slightly.
After all, this was not freezing water into ice; this was freezing the flame itself.
But Bai Qingxue had no time to dwell on it.
As the notes flowed, the Ice Spirit power inside her circulated in an unprecedented manner. The notes vibrated the air, the air vibrated the spiritual energy, the spiritual energy vibrated her meridians, and the Ice Spirit power surged outward from every inch of her flesh simultaneously.
The sudden surge of Ice Spirit power was far too rapid.
It was so fast that even Bai Qingxue could not help but tremble, causing the pitch of the flute to suddenly spike.
The frozen candlelight beside her instantly shattered into countless fragments. Deep within her dantian, the ice lotus also shuddered violently, tearing open an old injury on one of its petals.
A sharp pain surged up from her dantian.
Bai Qingxue lowered the flute and pressed a hand over her dantian, slowly restoring her spiritual power to a stable state.
As expected.
As a high-level spell that compressed spiritual power into every single note, 《Ice Condensation》 was incredibly powerful, but its consumption was equally terrifying.
With Bai Qingxue’s current cultivation, if she forced herself to play the entire piece, the restriction would undoubtedly trigger a backlash.
Bai Qingxue closed her eyes and regulated her breathing for the time it took to drink half a cup of tea before picking up the Frost Moon Chant once more.
This time, she broke the melody down.
The first phrase had three notes, stopping right where her fourth finger was supposed to press down.
At the same time, spiritual power welled up, condensing into a palm-sized ice crystal in front of her.
The second phrase had five notes. The ice crystal shattered into three hundred and seventy-two fragments of ice, each wrapped in a speck of candlelight, slowly rotating around Bai Qingxue like a river of ice and fire.
Simultaneously, Bai Qingxue gradually got the hang of it.
The trick to utilizing the Frost Moon Chant was not to forcefully control her spiritual power, but to control her breath.
By controlling her breath to be as thin as a strand of hair, each note would only carry away a minuscule amount of spiritual power. It was like scooping a ladle of water from a vast river, which naturally reduced the consumption and the demand on her spiritual power.
In this manner, on her seventh attempt, Bai Qingxue managed to play to the third section.
As she entered the third section...
All the previous ice fragments stopped simultaneously and began to vibrate.
It was as if each fragment had turned into a tiny amplifier, catching the sound of the flute and magnifying it.
At this moment, the entire quiet room became a massive musical instrument, with the flute music surging in from all directions.
Bai Qingxue’s fingers flew across the holes as she blew the final three notes.
With the first note, the ice fragments gathered toward the center.
With the second note, the ice fragments spun at high speed. The resulting icy wind swept up the papers on the table, and the candlelight flickered on the verge of extinguishing.
With the third note, Bai Qingxue parted a tiny slit in the petals of the ice lotus, pouring a torrent of spiritual power into the flute.
The sound of the flute exploded like muffled thunder. All the ice fragments compressed into the size of a fist before the ice core imploded. An ice crystal tornado formed in the very center of the quiet room, with tens of thousands of hair-thin ice crystals spinning at a speed too fast for the naked eye to track, emitting a low hum.
The tornado was exactly half a foot narrower than the walls on all sides, avoiding all the furniture, yet the walls were instantly covered in a thick layer of white frost.
The candlelight was compressed into a blue dot the size of a bean, yet it did not go out.
The storm lasted for ten breaths before dispersing silently.
Myriads of ice crystals drifted down, refusing to melt on Bai Qingxue’s shoulders and hair for a long time.
After a moment, Bai Qingxue finally put down the Frost Moon Chant. At this point, the spiritual power in her meridians was nearly depleted. Even though controlling her breath reduced the consumption of each individual note, the spiritual power required to sustain this ice blade storm was still staggering.
Outside the door.
Ning Qinghan stood barefoot in the corridor, her back leaning against the wall.
She had walked out the moment the first note of the flute drifted through.
Ning Qinghan closed her eyes, feeling the sound of the flute leaking through the crack in the door.
At first, it was intermittent, like a fledgling flapping its wings. Then there was a crack in the tone midway; she heard the candlelight shatter, and her hands clenched tightly inside her sleeves.
Then came that muffled thunder, followed by the ten-breath storm.
When everything returned to silence, Ning Qinghan opened her eyes, though it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
“What a stubborn snail,” Ning Qinghan murmured to herself, her voice so low that only she could hear.
She recalled the nearly imperceptible curl of Bai Qingxue’s index finger when she had pulled her hand back.
“Even a snail needs a leaf to shelter from the rain.”
Ning Qinghan rested the back of her head against the wall, gazing at the moon drifting westward past the eaves.
When she was rejected earlier, what she saw in Bai Qingxue’s eyes was not disgust, but a plea so subtle it was almost imperceptible.
Ning Qinghan reached up to press her hand over her collarbone. That mole was hidden behind her collar; other than herself, Bai Qingxue was probably the only one who had ever seen it.
“You won't accept that kind of help,” she said to the door, “but surely there must be other leaves.”
Ning Qinghan turned and walked barefoot back to her room. As usual, her footsteps were incredibly light, and even on such a quiet night, they did not disturb the pool of moonlight.
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