At first, the undead swarms were ants underfoot, a gray tide you could sweep aside with one lazy swing. Then the trouble thickened.

Their strength didn’t climb. Their shells did. A strange power wrapped them like rime on iron, and their defenses kept hardening with every breath.

Barely half an hour in, Lixue and the others felt the drag in their bones. The road ahead looked steeper than a cliff of ice.

More and more undead poured in, a carpet of bodies crawling like locusts. The press felt suffocating, a stone lid on the chest.

No point saving strength for some last-minute burst. Lixue flared her Sword Domain—Heavenly Snow Dance Burial. Her output spiked like a winter gale, chopping away the slump.

“Lingxiao, killing them head-on won’t end. We’ll run dry. Let’s drag or trap them. We just need three hours.”

Dozens—hundreds—of Sword Aura arcs raked the swarm back. Lixue stole a breath and tossed the plan to Lingxiao and Lingsaki.

“You’re right, but we’ve only culled ten thousand at best. Trapping the other nine hundred thousand? That’s a fantasy.” Lingxiao’s breath ran ragged from wide-area casts.

“Then blend it,” Lingsaki said, eyes like cold stars. “Stronger ones are showing up. Kill what we can. What we can’t, we bind.”

“Mm. It’ll have to do… Wait—no. Their defense just spiked again.”

That strange force tightened around the undead like a second skin. Lixue’s face hardened. Ice-aligned Sword Aura gathered in her palms like winter light.

“Ice Moon Feather.”

Snow filled the sky. Ice-crystal short swords, forged from Sword Aura, seeded the void with glittering teeth and fell in a white storm.

They struck and took root as crystalline blossoms. Everything nearby froze mid-scream and shattered, corpses turned to bright blue grit.

“Not enough. Ice Moon Scatter.”

A new wave bulged at the gate while shards still glittered underfoot. Lixue chose speed. Every blossom on the ground burst into bloom.

Slender petals turned into razors and fanned out like a killing frost. Those without the wit to dodge became fields of ice dust. Only ragged, ugly screams remained.

By then, the sisters’ joint magic was primed. They caught the timing of the next surge and let it all go.

“Extreme Dark • Final Holy Light.”

Giant magic circles stacked in the sky like halos. At each heart, a violet-blue beam condensed, hungry and cold. The instant the swarm spilled from the portal, it fired.

Boom. The world flashed ruin-white. Beams fell like pillars of judgment and kicked up a storm of rock and ash. The circles kept turning. The assault didn’t stop.

“Huh? A few undead tanked that? This deathly aura isn’t normal…”

The pressure from the portal slithered over the skin. Lingxiao’s gut went tight. She shot a look at Lingsaki.

“They aren’t protected the instant they step out. We can strike that gap.”

Lingsaki nodded. She had her vector already. The remaining power folded inward, locked on the portal, and became a beam several times stronger.

Boom!!

The ground bucked. The portal zone went up in a sky-splitting blast. Everything nearby got swallowed. Screams tore the air, then cut off. Thousands of fresh arrivals vaporized on the spot.

The reprieve lasted a heartbeat. As the sisters exhaled, an evil light wave knifed through the rolling smoke, screaming fast. Its force made the air buzz like a plucked string. A direct hit wouldn’t just bruise.

They had just dumped a high-cost spell. Their bodies lagged. Danger bared its teeth.

“Extreme Snow Flash.”

An ice-blue sword light blinked across the sky, leaving white frost hanging like breath in winter. It caught the evil wave at the last instant and split it.

“What a terrifying hit!”

They were safe—barely. Lixue got driven back dozens of steps, boots tearing trenches in frost. Without her Sword Domain, that would’ve broken her.

“Lixue, you okay? Anything torn?”

“I’m fine. Just burned a lot.”

She uncorked a bottle of Supreme Divine Elixir. The glow slid down her throat, and color crept back into her face.

“Good. But where did that evil wave come from? That could’ve killed us!”

“Yeah. Look.”

As the dust thinned, a ruined undead swordsman showed by the portal, armor in shards. It let out one last roar and faded like smoke.

“That one was only a shade weaker than us. Good timing, you two. If it had walked out, we’d be in real danger.”

Lixue steadied as her state climbed back to normal. Not even an hour and a half had passed. The rest would be a climb through knives.

“Right—but save it. Those stubborn things are coming again. Get set.”

A minute’s rest was enough to pull the sisters back from the red.

“We tweak the plan,” Lixue said after a beat. “Defense first. Stall whenever we can. Don’t overburn and die before the trial ends. One last hour or so. That’s all.”

“We’ll try. More numbers means more trouble. Lixue, watch yourself.”

No more talk. Before the swarm closed, the three sprang back to their posts.

“This wave is twice the last. That’s a headache…”

The law of ice thickened like a storm bank. It gathered from all directions, hardened into Sword Aura, and spread into crystal wings behind Lixue.

“Wind and Snow • Thousand-Mile Freeze.”

Knifelike winds rose. A blizzard roamed heaven and earth, scourging the plain. The ground glazed over with hard frost.

Cold knifed to the soul. The charging swarms froze mid-step and shrieked, throats rasping. In a blink, the world became a forest of ice statues, countless shapes glittering, dizzying to the eye.

…