While they chatted, the men sprawled on the ground slunk off like rats melting into shadow.

Qianyue touched Tangxue’s back with a timid tap, her voice a thread of frost. “Sister… they ran.”

“…”

“It’s fine.” Tangxue’s tone was wind over ice. “Whether they go or not isn’t our concern. I didn’t aim to kill anyway.”

“But…” Qianyue’s doubt rippled like a pebble in a pond.

“Qianyue, do you really want them dead?” Tangxue’s gaze was moonlight on a blade.

Panic first, then words. Qianyue flustered, her thoughts a tangled thicket. “No, Sister, I just…”

Tangxue didn’t take the explanation. She stood and stretched, lazy as a cat in snow.

“I don’t kill them because I’m a fake saint,” she said, a wry smile thin as frost.

“Inside, I want them dead. When I strike, my mind throws shackles.”

“At the last moment I think, they’re lives too. Who am I to erase their breath?”

“Yet my hands won’t behave.” Her fingers curled like pale petals. “It’s like two voices in my skull.”

“One wants them gone. The other swears killing is wrong.”

“I know what you fear,” Tangxue said, turning with a smile bright as cold dawn. “But so what?”

“If they dare provoke me again, I’ll kill them without a twitch of guilt. That’s my line in the snow.”

The words left a chill, like silver ants crawling up her spine.

If those people came again, they might die miserably, like candles drowned by sleet.

Soon they followed the slope to a colossal icicle, a sky-pale spear rooted in earth.

The place was a no-man’s land, a white map without footprints. No one blocked their path.

That group was basically every Blood Clan in this sector. From their gear, they meant to rob the Vampire Royal Mausoleum.

What a pack of scavengers, Qianyue thought, disgust coiling like smoke.

The disaster in the imperial district back then began with tomb raiders, a spark in dry reeds.

If Ling Yehan hadn’t passed by, the City of Woe would’ve been a dead sea.

The Queen of the Blood then didn’t care if the city lived or died. Her eyes were shut like winter buds.

Later, when it was over, Qianya—by then Queen of the Blood—asked a single question, then lost interest after hearing the Vampire King had died.

The savior of the City of Woe never even saw the queen’s face, a hero kept outside the gate.

The old entrance to the mausoleum had been sealed by a giant shard of ice, a crystal door that still refused to melt.

Its nature matched the unmeltable ice at the cloud-top, a skin the sun couldn’t bruise.

No one could thaw it. Those raiders dreaming to break through were chasing mirages.

“If I remember right, this ice is the entrance.” Tangxue stared at the frozen wall, her breath a pale mist.

Marks littered the way, crude arrows like scars. They all pointed here and shouted: entrance.

A heap of devices sat by the ice, iron bric-a-brac glinting like cold teeth. They meant to crack it.

Too bad they didn’t know there was a door inside the ice, and traps behind that—thousands of hungry needles.

One mistake and you’d be a sieve. Even the Blood Clan’s famed recovery would fail against that storm.

“Qianyue, let’s go in.” Tangxue touched the ice, her body flowing like winter light, and slipped into it.

“Sister, wait for Qianyue!” Qianyue dashed after her.

Oof! She smacked face-first into the ice, like a bird into a window of sky.

“…” Silence rang like a bell in snow.

Tangxue vanished from sight, and panic bloomed in Qianyue’s chest like black thorns.

She knocked on the ice. It didn’t care. The cold bit like iron.

“Sister… Qianyue can’t get in…” Her voice quivered like a candle flame.

“…” The ice gave back only her breath, white as smoke.

“Sister… it won’t let me in…” The words fell like dull beads.

No matter how hard she tried, the ice didn’t change, a wall of winter without a seam. Tears pricked like salt.

“…” The quiet stretched thin as glass.

“I almost forgot…” Tangxue popped out of the ice like a fish from a clear lake. “Looks like only I can enter.”

“How about this…” She rummaged through her storage and pulled a drink cup, bright plastic in the pale light.

“Qianyue, drink the blood in here. Then you should be able to go in.”

“Really?” Doubt pooled in Qianyue’s eyes like ink. That ice had carved its fear into her bones.

“Really.”

“Sister… is this your blood?” Qianyue peered at the clear cup, curiosity fluttering like a sparrow.

“Probably… maybe.” Tangxue turned her head, guilty as a cloud hiding the moon.

It was ninety-nine percent water as the base, a river thinned to a thread.

Qianyue didn’t hesitate. She lifted the cup and drank in one swallow, like swallowing a snowstorm.

“Are you crazy?” Tangxue saw Qianyue’s color change. She snatched the cup and patted her back, palm a hurried drum.

“So cold!” Qianyue’s back felt like a slab of ice, hard and numb, not the soft, fragrant warmth from before.

They had warmed it, yet the chill still bloomed, a flower of frost that wouldn’t die.

Seeing Qianyue sink as if into an ice cave, Tangxue’s heart clenched. She had no cure. Her own blood was a map she barely knew.

By the scraps of memory, Qianyue was now caught inside the ice layer, a fly in amber.

If she couldn’t walk out, she would stay there forever, her body freezing into a crystal doll.

“Qianyue, steady your mind,” Tangxue said, holding Qianyue’s icy right hand, voice calm as falling snow.

“Don’t resist the cold. Let it melt into you. Then… walk out.”

Maybe Qianyue couldn’t hear any of it. Her body shook like a leaf in rime.

Tangxue could only burn with helplessness, a fire behind glass.

She shouldn’t have given her that bad stuff. Regret bit deeper than the cold.

Vampires could gain another’s power by drinking their blood, but the price came with the gift, a blade with two edges.

Tangxue gazed at Qianyue, emotions knotted like reeds. She gathered the small body into her arms, offering what warmth she had.

To embrace the cold—that was the road she had always walked, snow under bare feet.

Half a day passed. Qianyue finally opened her eyes, a thawed lake showing gold under red.

Her blood-red pupils held a thread of gold. She also seemed a little taller, a sapling stretching after frost.

She looked at Tangxue asleep while holding her, and a smile bloomed, soft as spring on ice.

In that endless ice, Qianyue found the path because Sister never let go of her right hand.

She followed the warmth in Sister’s palm, a wick in the storm, and woke.

What made her happiest was simple—she was more like Sister now, a mirror touched by the same moon.

She had walked where Sister walked. Her body ran with Sister’s blood. She could follow and call her Sister forever.

She had drained the cup without a blink because she feared being left behind, fear dark as deep water.

Thank goodness, inside the ice, Sister didn’t abandon her. Without that hand, she’d never have escaped.

Qianyue curled into Tangxue’s arms and grinned, a cat stealing warmth.

While Sister still slept, let me steal a little more of this heat, like a moth basking in dawn.