A delightfully thorough shower came to an end.
Jiang Zhaoye shut off the water and stood on the wet tiled floor, letting out a comfortable, long breath.
Shaking his head, he grabbed a bath towel and stepped out of the glass-enclosed shower stall while drying his dripping hair, strolling stark naked in front of the bathroom mirror.
The mirror was covered in a thick layer of steam, obscuring any reflection.
He reached out and wiped away the steam from the surface. The mirror clearly reflected a wet face that was both familiar and strange.
Jiang Zhaoye froze.
Something didn't seem quite right...
He leaned in for a closer look. The face was still the same face, the underlying foundation hadn't changed, and the facial features were still the same ones, yet the overall feel was completely different.
The youth had originally just had delicate, clean-cut looks that weren't particularly noticeable at school, but now, the contours of his brow bone seemed a bit more defined, the bridge of his nose was straighter than before, the baby fat on his cheeks had melted away a little, and his jawline had become softer yet sleeker. Even his skin had grown fairer and more translucent.
What surprised him the most were his eyes.
In the mirror, a pair of ice-blue eyes stared straight back at him. Both were a pale ice blue, clear and bright, like two rare pieces of icy blue jadeite shimmering with an exquisite radiance beneath the soft bathroom lighting.
The colors of his left and right eyes were actually uniform now—no longer that bizarre mismatch of one black and one blue, but identical, even shades of blue.
Jiang Zhaoye blinked, and the reflection in the mirror blinked as well.
As those ice-blue eyes opened and closed, a shimmer of flowing light seemed to sweep across the surface of the irises, gorgeous beyond anything of the mortal realm.
This pair of immortal-like eyes practically injected a soul into his entire face. Even Jiang Zhaoye, who normally fancied himself a handsome guy, felt like his character model had suddenly been upgraded by several tiers.
He stood dazed for quite a while, then used his still-dripping hand to wipe the steam completely off the entire mirror. Stepping back, he began posing and striking attitudes in front of the mirror, inspecting himself up and down, front and back.
His body proportions seemed better than before; his shoulders looked slightly broader, and his formerly scrawny frame actually possessed some defined lines of muscle now. He hadn't developed abdominal muscles on his belly yet, but his waistline was noticeably firmer.
His line of sight seemed a tiny fraction taller than before as well. Although the change wasn't huge, for a boy his age, growing even a single centimeter was something to celebrate.
He looked down, turning his hands over to examine them closely. The old scars on the back of his hands were gone, and even the callus on his middle finger from years of gripping pens had disappeared. His hands looked clean, fair, and slender with distinct knuckles.
Whoa, who said this female cultivator's body-refining technique was bad? This technique was fantastic!
A buff to your character model~
Strength is only temporary, but looking handsome is for a lifetime!
He touched the corner of his eye again, leaning close to the mirror in both satisfaction and distress to inspect his blue pupils. With his eyes suddenly becoming so conspicuous, wouldn't people be startled out of their wits if they saw him when he went outside?
Most importantly, there was Mom... When Ms. Wen returned from her business trip, how on earth was he going to explain this to her?
After agonizing over it for only a brief moment, Jiang Zhaoye decided not to dwell on it. Too much had happened overnight. He was now so sleepy he could practically pass out on the spot; that he could still stand upright was solely thanks to what little excitement remained propping him up.
Exiting the bathroom, heedless of the messy floor, Jiang Zhaoye didn't even dry his hair. He crashed headfirst onto the bed and, without even pulling up the quilt, lay sprawled face-down against the pillow, sinking into a deep sleep.
...
In his dream was a boundless expanse of blue.
He floated within it. All around him was empty and void, with neither sound nor imagery—only an ultimate tranquility, as though he had submerged into a deep sea ten thousand meters down.
In a daze, Jiang Zhaoye didn't know where he was, nor did he feel afraid; there was only a subconscious sense of peace.
Then, he saw two cicadas.
One large and one small, they floated quietly in the deep blue void.
Their bodies seemed carved from the purest frost and white jade, crystalline and translucent throughout. Their forms emanated a soft immortal radiance, while their wings rippled with a cold, faint glimmer like a sea of stars.
The two white cicadas, like holy spirits of an immortal palace, snuggled closely together with wings folded and antennae drooping, appearing lost in a long, ancient dream, forgetting the rotation of the world's sun and moon, and the return of all things to the void.
Jiang Zhaoye subconsciously drew closer to them, his soul drifting over weightlessly and silently like a cloud, disturbing nothing.
The instant he drew near, a stream of information gently flowed into his awareness, natural and pure. It was as though this knowledge had always been part of his own memories, only sealed away in the past, and now the dust on the surface had been brushed away to reveal its true form.
Naturally, Jiang Zhaoye came to know their name.
Great Void Ice Soul Cicada.
A wondrous creation nurtured by the universe, both a holy spirit and a divine treasure.
Only one pair existed in the world, divided into mother and child cicadas. Born harmonizing with the Dao, they innately contained the two laws of space and time. They favored places of extreme cold and fed on the purest ice and snow. Born to ignore all barriers, they could effortlessly traverse worlds and leave behind coordinates anywhere. No matter how far the distance or how many worlds separated them, they could arrive in a single thought.
Yet absolute perfection did not exist in this world. Blessed by heaven in the path of the laws, they possessed very little intelligence of their own. Regardless of how many years they existed, they were just like ordinary cicadas, acting purely on instinct—slumbering, awakening, seeking a habitat, and nothing more.
Before going to sleep, they would seek out a heavenly treasure called [Mystic Sea Ice Marrow], burrow into it, seal away everything about themselves, and sink into a long slumber.
Mystic Sea Ice Marrow was a treasure nurtured in regions of extreme cold. Over thousands or tens of thousands of years, only a single wisp would condense. Deep blue in color and cold to the touch, it contained the world's purest ice-attribute spiritual energy—exceedingly pure and potent, vanishing from sight upon entering ice.
The Great Void Ice Soul Cicadas chose it as their resting place both to protect themselves and to absorb its spiritual energy to nourish their bodies.
The conditions for forming a contract with the Great Void Ice Soul Cicadas were exceedingly harsh.
It required an aura they were familiar with and recognized. The contractor's soul had to be pure, harboring not even a shred of malice or desire. In addition, one had to simultaneously possess spirit roots or an essence of both ice and water attributes; neither could be missing. The timing, solar term, and hour of establishing ownership were also exceptionally stringent, where not even a fraction of an error was permitted.
That Jiang Zhaoye was able to contract the child cicada was purely a stroke of luck.
He had worn that "amber" for seven or eight years from childhood to youth; his aura was pure and had become familiar and accepted by the child cicada. His psionic attributes happened to include both ice and water, and he had spent a whole month continuously cultivating only these two types of psionic energy. When he dropped his blood to claim ownership, the hour and solar term happened to coincide by freak coincidence.
Talk about coincidence opening the door for coincidence's mother—it was coincidence to the extreme.
The Mystic Sea Ice Marrow fused with his right eye, transforming it into an ice-attribute spirit eye still in its infancy. The child cicada dwelled inside it, and the moment it woke, it instinctively sensed the mother cicada's aura, guiding him across space and bringing him to the cave abode where the mother cicada resided.
And because he had already gained the child cicada's recognition, the mother cicada naturally accepted him as well, and his left eye was likewise transformed into a spirit eye through fusion with the other piece of Mystic Sea Ice Marrow.
Jiang Zhaoye had endured agonizing pain during the fusion process. Sensing its host's emotions and perceiving that he was in danger, the Great Void Ice Soul Cicada instinctively activated its ability, following the coordinates previously left behind by the child cicada to teleport him back home.
Mystic Sea Ice Marrow was exceptionally pure and potent; without the Great Void Ice Soul Cicadas neutralizing it, it would have frozen him solid in an instant. And had the Great Void Ice Soul Cicadas not acknowledged him as their master, the power of space they mobilized would have torn him to shreds in a flash.
If even a single detail among them had gone wrong, Jiang Zhaoye likely would have died without a grave.
Yet the Great Dao moved with its own rationale. With so many coincidences converging into a single line, it could truly be called mystery upon mystery.
Rate on N.U.
