“Sis, are you okay?!” Xuewei burst through the side gate like a gust through wet leaves, her gaze sweeping the room like a lighthouse beam. The strange aura had thinned like smoke in rain.
“I’m fine, Xuewei. That thing’s gone…” Bai Zhi’s face was a wilted blossom under pale dawn.
“Sis… what just happened?” Xuewei’s voice carried storm-weight, her shoulders tight as drawn bows.
“No time to explain, Xuewei.” Urgency surged like a rising tide. “Alert the guards. Evacuate the capital’s people. Two days. Move them to the nearby cities.”
“...All right.” She nodded once, then sprinted out like a swallow slicing the wind.
Watching Xuewei’s retreating back, Bai Zhi’s eyes wavered like a lantern in a draft. Guilt pricked like sleet. Should she use Xuewei’s bond with that child to bring the Merfolk Queen here for help?
“Wouldn’t that be too selfish…” Her chest ached like winter sap. “I won’t make Xuewei’s situation even harder.”
She weighed it, then let the thought fall like a stone into deep water. If the Merfolk Queen came, the storm she’d bring might save the imperial city, but the people would drown by the millions.
‘Nearly ten million souls live in the capital… The Merfolk Queen won’t pull her tide back just because I ask. The flood could only grow worse.’
‘But the seal beneath the imperial city…’ Fear crawled like frost. ‘Generations of ancestors traded their lives for peace. Will it all break in my hands?’
Bai Zhi bit down until pain flashed like lightning. If anything went wrong, the ground beneath them would turn into a battlefield. She didn’t know what monster lay chained by that seal. She only knew the ancestral warning: if the seal broke, the nation would fall, like a forest swallowed by fire.
“Maybe that person was right,” she breathed, a thin plume in cold air. “Land is dead. People are living.” The thought settled like a flock finding branch. If she saved lives, even a fallen country could be rebuilt from ash and rain.
“Go help,” she told herself, spine straight as a spear of bamboo. “Moving millions needs my own hands. And my voice, to calm the storm.”
Demon lands.
“Demon King Jiuqi, you react fast.” The voice slipped from shadow like a knife under silk.
“I came here to wait for my sister…” The petite Jiuqi stood small as a fox, yet her presence hit like iron. Even in sleepwear, she wore a crown of night.
“And me?” The masked priestess laughed, warm as poison. She brushed off her robe and bared her face like the moon stripped of clouds. “Did you forget me, Jiuqi?”
“Who?”
“I’m here to kill you.” Her features twisted like a wind-torn mask. A tiger’s roar split the air, and two monstrous forces crashed together like thunderheads over black sea.
…
“It’s been a while.” Qing Feng Yuelian stood before the city of ice and snow, its walls bright as frozen mirrors. “Last time, I came with little Dreamsound.” She murmured to herself like a snowfall of half-remembered songs, then drifted inward as if following the tide.
‘I heard some of the Merfolk survived by living here,’ she thought, heart tight as a fist in a blizzard. ‘War blooms like wildfire across the world, but this place never burns. Just like… the old Merfolk royal city.’
“I didn’t expect the ruin of this beautiful city to come from my own hand…” Her chin dipped like a willow under frost. “What a cruel joke.”
‘Forgive me,’ she prayed, the words falling like cold petals. ‘For the future, I have to do this.’
“Hurry. Leave this place, everyone who lives here.” Her voice carried like a bell through snow.
This polar city kissed the sea, and to one who could stir oceans, ending it would take a thought, a wave, a breath. But she wanted time for the people to scatter like birds before a storm.
Rain veiled the far north like iron chainmail. The nearby ocean heaved, whitecaps rearing like beasts. Every resident felt it: a black-winged omen circling closer.
Some packed early, fear-touched, like deer before thunder. Some stayed, trusting this city’s stubborn miracle like a rock in flood. The Ice Dragon clan, guardians of this reach, felt the tremor and took wing, encircling the source like a ring of frozen spears.
“Qing Feng Yuelian…? Why is it you?” Their voices rasped like wind across glaciers.
“Ice Dragon Bingxue, long time no see.” Her eyes were calm as a winter lake. “Please. Lead everyone out. This will be the last battlefield. Soon, the upper ranks of the Flower of the Other Shore will come to open Hell’s Gate.”
“No wonder you vanished for years,” Bingxue snorted, breath smoking like frostfire. “You joined that ancient cult.”
Qing Feng Yuelian said nothing. Her head bowed a fraction, snow gathering on lashes.
“Qing Feng Yuelian,” another voice asked, flinty as ice on stone, “are you with us, or with them?”
Silence answered like a falling leaf on snow.
An old ice dragon lay along a snowy ridge like a sleeping mountain and sighed, the sound hollow as winter caves. “What did they promise you? Enough to make you abandon your only surviving kin, and do something that scars the heavens?”
“Revenge,” she said, voice flat as steel. “And to let those who can live, live.”
“…Huh?” Bingxue tilted her head, confused, a falcon in crosswinds.
“Telling you would only salt the wound.” She stepped back, the air around her tightening like a drawn bow. The ice-blue spear in her hand rose like frozen lightning and aimed at the dragons.
The Ice Dragons were, in a way, the Ice Deity’s chosen. Friends to the Merfolk, yes—but for the root of the far north, they would not budge, like mountains shouldering the sky.
“Wait! What are you doing?!” A female ice dragon who knew her burst forward like a streak of moonlight, spreading her wings between both sides. “Don’t fight before you talk! Sit, breathe, explain—please!”
“Are you guarding this land for the Ice Deity’s last wish?” Qing Feng Yuelian’s voice was steady, winter-clear.
“Yes.” The elder’s answer fell like ice, sure and cold.
“Even if this world will fade soon?” Her gaze held theirs like frost on glass.
“Yes. That’s our fate.” The elder’s eyes shone like old stars. “We didn’t leave with the other dragon clans then; we won’t now. We’ll wait here until the Ice Deity’s true heir comes and opens the secret.”
“We don’t care about your secret,” Qing Feng Yuelian said, the words drifting like breath in cold. “But the Ice Deity’s relic sits on Hell’s Gate. The Flower of the Other Shore must open it and release the ancient demon god, to break the lock of approaching absolute zero. To save those who can still live, we have to.”
Silence fell like thick snow. The Ice Dragons might have known, but another prophecy coiled in their bones like buried fire.
“A demon god won’t save the world,” the elder murmured, voice low as distant thunder. “Even if you loose the chained beast, it won’t give you the salvation you’re selling.”
“Maybe.” Qing Feng Yuelian smiled, thin as a crack in ice. “But it’s the only chance we’ve got. The hellborn god made a pact with us. I can make sure some live. That’s enough.”
