Yaya finally pried her eyes open, and a sheet of white glare flooded her vision like noon-snow off a glacier.
Panic hit first; then little Tangxue bolted to shield Mom Yaya, a swallow diving through hail. A heartbeat later she felt it—the force was aimed at her like a storm front.
White light drowned the whole sea, boiling it to steam as if summer burned the ocean bare; in the blast’s seabed heart, a slab of iron-cold ice guarded the last surviving homes like a lone fortress.
Yaya lay on a plank of driftwood, staring blankly at the girl sprawled over her like a fallen breeze; her five senses were fading like dusk, and she could barely make out the girl’s face.
“Tang…”
Little Tangxue smiled and reached to stroke Mom Yaya’s cheek, a spring touch meeting only winter glass; she wasn’t inside the ice, so her fingers found cold, not skin.
She’d taken most of that deathblow head-on, a tidal weight; her self-healing was gone, and her life was ebbing like a receding tide.
But it was enough. She’d done it—saved Mom Yaya, and claimed this Divine Artifact like a star won from night.
She brushed her fingers over the heavy halberd that had just spared her life, a spark flashing in her eyes like gold leaf; with a gentle push, she sent it elsewhere in a ripple of light.
To shield the sea from the blast, the Divine Artifact had burned through most of its strength, a candle in a gale; it would need ages to recover, and could grant no more wishes.
Yaya, entombed in ice, seemed to grasp her meaning; she ignored Tangxue’s motions and just drank in those tender eyes, like blossom-light on snow.
Suddenly, understanding struck like thunder; she hammered the ice in a frenzy, desperate to break it before strength slipped away like sand.
She gaped and roared, yet no sound came, only fog on glass; her soft fists couldn’t rattle the ice at all. Yaya’s hands sagged to the frost, and she watched her daughter lay a blood-streaked right hand on the ice, life leaking away like color in rain.
‘What good am I…’
At the final breath, the girl drew the Divine Artifact across her own wrist, letting her blood seep the ice like crimson springwater, to heal Mom Yaya on the brink; then she closed her eyes, calm as falling snow.
“…Mom Yaya… warm… like… first time… full…”
Maybe it was a phantom, but Yaya seemed to hear Tangxue’s voice; hope flared like a struck match, and she pounded the ice again—maybe Tangxue could still be saved.
But this ice wasn’t hers to command; Yaya’s face shifted from rage to refusal, then to raw grief and guilt like storm-broken sky. Eyes wide, she watched as Tangxue’s life winked out, and her body, along with Frostwhisper, scattered into light motes like fireflies.
In the nearby waters, deep-blue ice sealed the world like a winter coffin; no one could approach. The icefield held like a binding, for who knew how long.
“…”
‘This doesn’t feel like my memory…’
Qingsheng Tangxue froze, her gaze dimming like clouded glass, then brightening like dawn.
‘It’s Yaya’s. It’s Mom Yaya’s.’
Her features knotted into something complicated; memories flickered like a lantern carousel, and at last her own thread unspooled.
The girl didn’t know her parents; most wakings began in ice-blue, a horizonless cave, yet she could pass through it like a fish through reeds. Sometimes she got lost for years, resting with eyes closed like a wintering bird; sometimes she got lucky, out in days—and then she’d drop from tens of thousands of meters like a stone from the heavens.
Many times she died on impact, and then began again, like a looped tide. Even when she lived, her body was frail, thinner than a human girl’s shadow; a vicious beast meant certain death. Because she was beautiful, she was sometimes sold as a high-grade slave, a caged flower—and soon died anyway from a hollow body.
The more she remembered, the worse her face turned, pallor pooling like frost; her fists tightened in silence, a knot in cold water.
From first awareness till now, almost everything was the ice pit, a tunnel of winter; bad memories were the flood, good ones not even a drop in a sea.
At last, little Tangxue’s memories and Mom Yaya’s overlapped, threads twining into a single braid.
Her identity was strange as moonlight on snow. Each time she died, her body drifted into motes and vanished, and she lost that life’s memory—because her true self lay far away, in an ice palace, not here. Her blood worked like a Mermaid Tear—snatching souls from Death’s hook, stitching bone and flesh, even stretching a waning wick of life.
She was a walking, human-shaped divine medicine—and also the deadliest poison, honey with hidden venom.
Ice forged from Qingsheng Tangxue’s blood and the world-sealing hard ice were the same winter steel; inhale it without her control, and death was certain, a blade under silk.
“Yeah… I’m Qingsheng Tangxue.”
Little Tangxue closed her eyes; when she opened them, gold blazed in her pupils like twin suns, and the God of Heart Realm’s miracle snapped off like a candle pinched.
“You had your fun just now?”
“Now, it’s my turn.”
[Miracle: Silent Frost Annihilation]
A terrifying frost breath surged in, a blizzard face-first; the God of Heart Realm jolted and snapped out a miracle in return. Two powers crossed like colliding comets, almost flipping the city; the World Tree shed a soft glow, a canopy of light that pressed the disaster down to embers.
It was her first time trying a miracle, a path she’d never even dared to imagine, like stepping onto thin ice and finding steel.
“Damn thing—you’ve recovered?” The God of Heart Realm’s brows tightened like drawn bowstrings. Her eyes met the Tianhuo Yan from Tangxue’s memory; they were the same person, two flames from one wick.
“…”
Qingsheng Tangxue stood on a leaf, face blank as frost; her gaze turned glacial, killing intent peaking like an icicle’s edge.
“What? You want to kill me?” The God of Heart Realm laughed, arrogance clacking like jade; she pinched her fingers and sneered. “Even your ‘aunt’ can’t be sure to hurt my true body. You?”
“Crawl back to sleep.”
She knew she couldn’t kill Qingsheng Tangxue, so she never meant to trade deathblows; instead, she turned her attack toward the elves like a wolf switching lanes.
“Got the guts to stop me? Hahaha!”
She tossed away a god’s dignity like a torn robe; in front of her enemy’s kin, she dropped the mask. Shame? She’d already done worse.
[Miracle: Starburn]
“Frostwhisper… limit release!”
The instant the God of Heart Realm cast her miracle, Qingsheng Tangxue drove the giant sword Frostwhisper into the ground without a second thought; towering ice rose into a barrier, caging them both. The miracle’s violent surge battered the walls, yet stayed trapped in this narrow winter cell.
“Maniac…!” The God’s eyelid twitched like a plucked string; she frowned and raised a shield, bracing against the shockwaves like a cliff taking waves.
