The storage bag left behind by Perfected Hanyu was an exquisitely crafted pouch of cyan-blue satin, embroidered with a few simple, elegant blossoms. Its stitches were fine and even, and the entire thing was only the size of an adult’s palm—rather than a storage bag, it seemed more like an exquisite accessory.
Jiang Zhaoye held it and turned it over and over, inspecting it. He tried pulling the drawstring at the pouch’s opening, and with a gentle tug, it opened. Holding the opening wide, he closed one eye and peeked inside.
Pitch-black; he couldn’t see a thing.
He reached in with a finger to feel around, but his fingertip seemed to poke into an empty void, unable to touch anything. Jiang Zhaoye simply reached his entire hand inside and stirred it around, yet he still fished out nothing.
“No way...” the young boy muttered dejectedly. He flipped the pouch upside down, opened end facing downward, gave it a vigorous shake, and patted the bottom of the pouch.
Still, nothing fell out.
Jiang Zhaoye flipped the pouch right-side up again, held the opening wide once more, and shoved his entire arm inside.
To his surprise, the opening of the pouch expanded as his arm pushed deeper, its elasticity seemingly boundless. His entire forearm sank into the darkness inside the pouch, yet he still felt nothing. Pulling his arm back, he sank somewhat dispiritedly onto the chair behind him.
In truth, he had anticipated this all along. He had not even awakened his psionic energy yet, let alone projected mental energy outside his body, so naturally he could not open this storage bag that supposedly required divine sense to manipulate. Now, his lingering hope was finally dead and buried.
Yet there were clothes inside this storage bag!
Perfected Hanyu had mentioned in the jade slip that she kept some everyday clothing and accessories stored inside the storage bag. He had searched all the other chests and truly found nothing wearable. In other words, if he could not open this storage bag, he would have no choice but to endure the subzero ice cave in what he was currently wearing.
He looked down at his knees, turned purple from the cold, and then glanced back at the pouch he had tossed onto the desk.
After that, Jiang Zhaoye tried every method he could think of.
The jade slip described two exits. He couldn’t open the stone door inscribed with formation patterns; pushing that required at least the strength of the third level of Qi Refining or the first level of Body Refining.
There was also the opening blocked by a thick layer of ice that Jiang Zhaoye had seen when he first arrived.
That was actually a formation; one needed to understand the formation’s operation, required spiritual energy, and specifically needed ice spiritual energy cultivated through 《Mystic Ice Mirror》 to operate it.
What the hell did he know about formations?
The entire cave abode was like a sealed box of ice, trapping him firmly inside.
Presumably, Perfected Hanyu hadn’t anticipated that anyone who managed to enter the cave abode from the outside would be unable to leave... Jiang Zhaoye didn’t even know how he had gotten in himself; he merely guessed it was the doing of that blue amber that had melted into his eye, with no understanding of the underlying principle.
All he knew was that he couldn’t get out right now, and if he didn’t find a way to warm up soon, he might die here.
The cold surged like a tide, wave upon wave. Jiang Zhaoye’s hands and feet had begun to go numb, his fingertips had lost sensation from the freezing temperature, and even clenching his fists was difficult. He knew this was the onset of hypothermia; if things continued like this, he would first lose consciousness, then die in his sleep.
He didn’t want to die.
He had finally finished his high school entrance exam with great effort, and he had finally raised his ice attribute to seventeen.
His mother was still waiting for him to come home, and he couldn’t let that old bastard Jiang Chengsi laugh at him.
He couldn’t just die like this in an ice hole no one knew about.
In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly remembered 《Ice Muscle Jade Bone Art》. In the jade slip’s introduction, it seemed to have mentioned that this technique had the effect of granting invulnerability to cold and heat... Jiang Zhaoye’s eyes snapped open. Flustered, he fished the jade slip out of his pants pocket and pressed it against his forehead once more.
Quickly skipping over the other sections, he reread the first layer of 《Ice Muscle Jade Bone Art》 carefully.
This was a body-refining technique. Unlike Qi Refining techniques, its requirements for spirit root aptitude were not very high; the threshold mainly lay in the delicate manipulation of spiritual energy and the control over the body’s endurance limits.
The introductory stage involved repeatedly tempering the skin, flesh, sinews, and bones with spiritual energy, gradually making them tough and dense, ultimately achieving the first layer’s effects: invulnerability to cold and heat, imperviousness to blades and swords.
The technique described in detail the pathways through which spiritual energy circulated within the body, as well as how to guide the spiritual energy to permeate the skin, flesh, and bones for tempering. Cultivating the first layer of this technique required rich ice-attribute spiritual energy, paired with the ingestion of a Marrow Cleansing Pill. The two complemented each other, preventing the practitioner from being overwhelmed by the excruciating pain and the backlash of cold energy during the tempering process.
Marrow Cleansing Pill.
Jiang Zhaoye lowered the jade slip, turning his gaze toward the half-open wooden chest in the corner.
He remembered clearly that there were Marrow Cleansing Pills in that chest.
Jiang Zhaoye wants it, Jiang Zhaoye gets it!
Excitedly, he poured a longan-sized jade-green pill from the bottle in his hand. Following the identification method described in the jade slip, he placed it on his palm to inspect its color and shape, then brought it to his nose to sniff it.
This was it!
As for Perfected Hanyu’s remains, Jiang Zhaoye had previously found an empty chest and properly laid them to rest.
Clutching the Marrow Cleansing Pill with ambitious resolve, he sat on the cold jade bed that supposedly housed an ice-attribute spirit-gathering array.
Wearing the “Han”-inscribed jade pendant close to his body—which was said to calm the mind, steady the spirit, and nourish the body—he cross-referenced the jade slip, silently reviewing the circulation route of spiritual energy for the first layer of 《Ice Muscle Jade Bone Art》 in his mind several times until he was certain he had memorized it thoroughly.
With reckless abandon, he tossed his head back and threw the Marrow Cleansing Pill into his mouth.
The pill melted the moment it entered his mouth, a bitter medicinal liquid sliding down his throat. Immediately afterward, a warmth rose from his stomach, rapidly spreading toward his limbs. The warmth soon turned into a scorching heat, as though a ball of fire were raging and spreading through his abdominal cavity. The heat radiated along his meridians, and wherever it passed, his skin burned with a faint reddish flush.
Grit-toothed, Jiang Zhaoye followed the method of 《Ice Muscle Jade Bone Art》, combining it with the 《Psionic Guiding Technique》 he had practiced for a month over the summer break. He began absorbing spiritual energy while guiding the meager sliver of spiritual energy newly drawn into his body to circulate slowly along the designated route.
Starting from his dantian, the icy spiritual energy climbed upward along the meridians of his spine, passed through his chest cavity, branched off into both arms, converged in his torso like streams flowing into a river, and branched downward once more into his legs... The frigid spiritual energy and the searing, burning pain of the Marrow Cleansing Pill’s medicinal power clashed and merged in turn, slowly running through a complete cycle within his body. To Jiang Zhaoye, it felt as though an entire century had passed.
He suppressed his nerves that throbbed with pain and continued to circulate spiritual energy. With every cycle, the spiritual energy integrated a portion of the medicinal power, seeping trace by trace into his skin, flesh, and bones.
A world of ice and fire, scorching yet stabbing, as though countless needles were piercing into his flesh.
As the cycles progressed, the stabbing pain turned into an aching soreness that bored from his skin and flesh into the crevices of his bones, seeping inward bit by bit. It then grew increasingly intense; the silver needles became iron hammers, striking against his bones one blow after another. The pain was not sharp, but lingering and enduring—like a tide, one wave rising before the previous had subsided, wave crashing upon wave, washing incessantly against his nerves with ever-growing force.
A layer of fine sweat beads seeped from his forehead, quickly freezing into frost.
Jiang Zhaoye was finally no longer cold; he was merely trembling with pain.
Yet he did not stop. Stubborn to the end, he gritted his teeth and circulated his spiritual energy again and again, guiding the medicinal power to penetrate every corner of his body. After an unknown amount of time—a thin layer of gray substance silently emerged upon the surface of Jiang Zhaoye’s skin, greasy and giving off a faint, fishy odor.
At first, it was only gray grease, but then the color gradually darkened, deeper and deeper, growing more plentiful and blacker, gradually coating his entire body like flowing petroleum.
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