When Lu Xueqing's consciousness drifted to the surface, the first thing she perceived was a cold fragrance.
The scent was extremely faint, like the year-round snow atop Xueji Peak being warmed by the midday sun, or the first breath of cold air rushing in when opening a window on a deep winter night. It was so crisp it felt almost transparent, carrying a slightly cool weight as it seeped into her nasal passages.
The fragrance condensed in the air without dispersing, flowing slowly along the ground. It washed over the back of her hand resting on her knee, climbed up her forearm, and finally swirled at the tip of her nose before dispersing and gathering once more.
Lu Xueqing opened her eyes.
Before her was the pale blue, cold light of Ice Spirit crystals, evenly and constantly illuminating the entire stone room.
The frost-white figure in the center of the jade platform was still sitting in her original spot, the lines of her shoulders and back tensed straight. Her long silver hair draped over her back and shoulders, its ends resting on the green jade platform, almost merging with its color.
Bai Qingxue's eyes were closed, her eyelashes casting two shallow, curved shadows in the light. Her breathing was shallow and slow, like a distant pendulum ticking once, and then again.
Lu Xueqing's gaze fell on Bai Qingxue's profile, sliding from her temple along the curve of her brow to the bridge of her nose, and then down to her jawline, where it lingered.
She watched her for a long time. So long that her own breathing unconsciously grew lighter, as if she feared that even a slightly heavier breath would blow the scene before her away.
For some reason, a strange sense of satisfaction welled up in Lu Xueqing's heart.
The satisfaction came suddenly, yet it brought Lu Xueqing a sense of inexplicable nostalgia.
Looking at the slight furrow between Bai Qingxue's brows as she closed her eyes to regulate her breathing, at the stray strands of silver hair scattered across her cheek, and at the direction the flute tassel hung from Frost Moon Chant resting on her knees, Lu Xueqing suddenly felt that everything in this stone room was just right.
The cold light, the chill, the jade platform, the frost—including the very fact that she was sitting here, guarding her.
It was as if Lu Xueqing was always meant to sit here, having walked all the way from the cold stone slabs of her past to the side of this jade platform, to the front of this frost-white figure, to sit down and simply look at this person.
She would absolutely never let go.
As Lu Xueqing gazed at Bai Qingxue's profile, the voice in her heart repeated itself, softer yet more resolute.
She would not let go.
In the past, Lu Xueqing had possessed nothing; everything ever given to her had been taken back.
It seemed that in her life, she could grasp onto nothing.
But this time, Lu Xueqing did not intend to let that happen again.
Suddenly, Bai Qingxue's brow furrowed even deeper.
And with that, Lu Xueqing's train of thought was broken.
She saw Bai Qingxue's fingers, which were resting on her knees, tighten slightly for a brief moment, her fingertips turning white before slowly relaxing.
The spiritual energy fluctuations around them began to grow violent.
It was no longer the steady, circulating trickle from before. Instead, it was as if something had stirred it up; undercurrents surged from the depths, swirling, pushing, and piling up layer upon layer, pressing against an invisible barrier.
Yes, Bai Qingxue was breaking through a bottleneck.
The iron wall of the late stage of Foundation Establishment—Bai Qingxue had been stuck there for quite some time.
That barrier was like a sealed stone door. When her spiritual power crashed against it, it produced a dull vibration, rebounding with a soft, unyielding resilience that refused to crack.
Yet this time, when Bai Qingxue's spiritual power surged against it, it was fiercer than ever before. It was as if an undercurrent accumulated over a long time had finally found an outlet, crashing against the barrier wave after wave. The thin mist of spiritual energy in the stone room churned violently under the impact, like a pool of still water having its bottom sediment stirred up.
Lu Xueqing leaned forward half an inch.
Her gaze was fixed on Bai Qingxue's profile, watching her every subtle change.
The first impact struck. The barrier trembled, but did not crack.
The second followed immediately, heavier than the first. Bai Qingxue's shoulders tensed backward.
Just as her spiritual power surged to its peak for the third time, ready to strike again, the dark red patterns suddenly emerged from the inner side of her right wrist.
They appeared without warning, like a thin vine scorched by hot coals crawling out from beneath her skin.
The patterns climbed along the curve of her wrist, wound around the inner side of her forearm, and spread all the way to her elbow, where they split into two thinner branches.
One continued upward along the outer side of her upper arm, while the other sliced diagonally into the line of her neck and shoulder.
A dark red light pulsed faintly deep within the patterns, as if something was burning inside her blood vessels. It heated the lines until they glowed, growing so hot that a faint, wispy white vapor rose from the skin on the back of Bai Qingxue's hand.
Lu Xueqing's hand clenched her sleeve tightly.
At this moment, she could naturally feel that the restriction was acting up. A dark red, scorching aura radiated from Bai Qingxue's wrist, colliding with the extreme cold of the stone room and producing a tiny hissing sound, like red-hot iron plunged into cold water.
Though Bai Qingxue's expression did not change, her breathing faltered.
Her deep, even breathing suddenly became shallow and rapid, as if her airway was partially blocked by something.
At the same time, Bai Qingxue's spiritual power was being pulled in two directions at once.
On one hand, the barrier still blocked her path, unyielding; on the other hand, the restriction had begun to burn from within.
The scorching heat backflowed through her meridians, cutting off the momentum she had just built up. It was like a blade slicing through a flowing river, forcefully splitting her river of spiritual power.
Lu Xueqing wanted to do something, but she held herself back.
After all, Bai Qingxue was in the middle of a breakthrough; she could not disrupt her.
Lu Xueqing's knuckles turned white from clenching her sleeves, her nails leaving shallow indentations in the fabric. Yet she grit her teeth and made no sound, staring intently at the dark red pattern that continued to spread along Bai Qingxue's wrist.
She watched as it climbed from her shoulder to the side of her neck, looking like an expanding burn against Bai Qingxue's frost-white skin.
Fine beads of sweat began to break out on Bai Qingxue's forehead.
The moment they appeared, they were frozen by the extreme cold radiating from her body into a thin layer of fine frost. It covered her forehead and temples like a shell of ice that had melted and refrozen.
Bai Qingxue's breathing continued to grow shallower, and her spiritual power circulation was being wrung by two completely opposing forces.
With the barrier blocking her from the front and the restriction burning from behind, Bai Qingxue was caught in the middle. She was like a string being pulled from both ends, taut to the point of turning visibly white.
At that exact moment, Frost Moon Chant resting on Bai Qingxue's lap vibrated slightly.
A tiny, silver bell-like sound echoed from deep within the flute. It was brief and clear, like someone gently flicking a thin silver sheet with a fingernail.
The sound spread from within Frost Moon Chant, carrying the exact same aura as when the flute notes of 《Divine Oracle》 had summoned the phantom earlier, yet it was more restrained and introspective. It was like a hand reaching out from the flute, gathering the stray thoughts churning in Bai Qingxue's sea of consciousness and pressing them down into a deeper place.
The patterns on Frost Moon Chant lit up for a brief moment.
The light flowed from the end of the flute to its head, then seeped through Bai Qingxue's fingers into her meridians. Like a tiny stream of cold current, it flowed upstream along the scorched pathways, wrapping the dark red, burning heat in layers of extreme cold wherever it passed.
The ice lotus deep within Bai Qingxue's dantian shuddered violently the moment the cold current entered her body. Its petals folded inward and then bloomed once more, forcing the burning heat back to the edges of her meridians and suppressing it beneath the roots of the ice lotus.
Bai Qingxue's breathing stabilized once more.
The spreading dark red patterns on her wrist slowly receded, pulling back from the side of her neck to her shoulder, and shrinking all the way down. Finally, they condensed into a thin line at her wrist bone, vanishing beneath her skin like a frozen serpent retreating into its lair.
The thin layer of frost on Bai Qingxue's temples remained, and the frozen sweat still covered her forehead, but the furrow between her brows had mostly smoothed out.
Her spiritual power gathered once more.
This time, without the interference of the restriction, the long-accumulated chill was forcefully pushed from the depths of her dantian. It climbed along her meridians and crashed against the barrier in a form far more condensed than before. A dull vibration echoed through the stone room for a moment.
Then, a tiny crack split open on the barrier.
Immediately after, a second and third surge of spiritual power crashed against it, each strike landing precisely on the first crack, widening it inch by inch.
Frost Moon Chant on Bai Qingxue's lap vibrated slightly in response, emitting a low hum as if resonating with something deep inside the barrier, carving out a path for her spiritual power bit by bit.
When the final surge of spiritual power struck, the barrier shattered completely.
The air in the stone room suddenly froze for an instant. Then, with Bai Qingxue as the center, the chill surged outward like an exploding wave.
The green jade platform was instantly covered with a thick layer of fresh frost. It spread from the platform to the floor, then climbed up the stone walls, reflecting overlapping halos of eerie blue and silver-white light under the cold glow of the Ice Spirit crystals.
The ice lotus deep within Bai Qingxue's dantian slowly bloomed.
Its original seven petals stretched open in the lingering aftermath of the freezing wave. From the heart of the flower, two new petals sprouted—one eerie blue, the other silver-white. They were thinner and more translucent than the older petals, their edges tracing patterns identical to those on Frost Moon Chant, like two repeatedly refined jade pieces embedded into the outermost layer of the lotus.
The seven-petaled ice lotus had become a nine-petaled ice lotus.
Bai Qingxue's aura surged dramatically in that instant. It felt as if something deep underwater had suddenly breached the surface, raising the level of the entire body of water by a significant margin.
The threshold of peak Foundation Establishment seemed to turn to water beneath Bai Qingxue, directly pierced through by her aura without even a moment's pause.
The fresh frost on the stone walls grew thicker, spreading from the walls to the ceiling, refracting the light of the Ice Spirit crystals. A flowing, cold light drifted through the stone room, resembling the aurora drifting slowly across a polar night sky.
The unique cold fragrance on Bai Qingxue grew even richer amidst the explosion of cold air. It flowed along the floor, washing over Lu Xueqing's ankles and knees, and over the back of her hand resting on her scabbard, wrapping her like a thin layer of cool silk.
Lu Xueqing looked at the figure in the center of the jade platform. Bai Qingxue's long silver hair was even longer than before her secluded cultivation, its ends draping over the edge of the green jade platform in a smooth curve, with a few strands almost touching the floor.
The usual coldness in her features remained unchanged, but within that coldness lay an added layer of settled composure, like an ice surface repeatedly polished by the wind atop Xueji Peak.
Bai Qingxue's eyelashes fluttered.
When she opened her eyes, her pale pupils still carried the lingering spiritual power of her breakthrough. A faint ice-blue glow swirled slowly in the depths of her eyes, like a paper-thin layer of ice floating on a lake on a winter morning.
She turned her head slightly, looking in Lu Xueqing's direction. The light in her eyes gradually gathered from the daze of her breakthrough, growing clearer bit by bit.
Lu Xueqing met her gaze.
She parted her lips, realizing she was already half-kneeling at the edge of the jade platform. She didn't know when she had moved from her sitting position, but her knees were pressed against the cool green jade platform, her hand resting on its edge, only a palm's distance from Bai Qingxue's robe.
Her breath was still slightly tight, and the palpitations that had surged when the restriction acted up hadn't fully dissipated. Yet, seeing Bai Qingxue sitting there steadily, with those clear eyes quietly watching her, the anxiety receded layer by layer, like the firm, damp sand revealed after the tide goes out.
Bai Qingxue lowered her gaze slightly, as if sensing the changes within her body.
Her fingertips lightly touched the body of Frost Moon Chant. The flute glowed faintly at her touch, as if in response to her breakthrough.
Then she raised her eyes and looked at Lu Xueqing.
Lu Xueqing looked at the thin layer of frost on her forehead that had not yet fully melted. Tiny ice particles still clung to the tips of her silver-white eyelashes, glittering in the cold light.
Lu Xueqing raised her hand, her movements extremely gentle and slow.
Her finger pad hovered for a brief moment near the edge of Bai Qingxue's temple before gently brushing over the thin frost, gathering the tiny ice particles away from her hair.
Under the warmth of her finger pad, the frost melted into a tiny trail of water, sliding down her fingertip and vanishing after a brief gleam in the eerie blue light.
Bai Qingxue did not flinch away.
She sat there, her long silver hair draping down by her side, her pale pupils quietly watching Lu Xueqing withdraw her hand, accepting it all with serene composure.
The cold light in the stone room continued to flow slowly.
The nine-petaled ice lotus rotated quietly in the depths of her dantian, each petal shimmering with a blend of eerie blue and silver-white. Bai Qingxue's aura had completely stabilized at peak Foundation Establishment, like a newly formed iceberg rising from the deep sea—only a small corner showed above the water, but what lay hidden beneath was heavier than a mountain.
Lu Xueqing withdrew her hand, the melted frost water still lingering on her finger pad.
She did not wipe it away, simply letting it dry in the air, slowly evaporating in the cold light.
Bai Qingxue closed her eyes once more, slowly guiding the newly born spiritual power from her dantian into her meridians, smoothing it out cycle by cycle.
The nine-petaled ice lotus rotated gently inside her, its core a pure, translucent white like the year-round snow atop Xueji Peak—thicker and brighter than before.
Lu Xueqing closed her eyes, but a faint curve had appeared at the corner of her lips.
She sat and watched, her breathing once again becoming even and long.
Like a small boat that had finally docked, gently and peacefully swaying by the water's edge.
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