"So what are you going to do next?" Ping asked. "No clue yet. I'll start by finding somewhere cold."
Xuekui raised a finger. A snowflake-shaped crystal formed above it. "After all… I came from snow."
Ping nodded, then watched the yaksha grin awkwardly and grab her sleeve. "…What now?"
"Hehe. Ping-jie, do you know where it's cold?" Ping: "..."
Humans had a saying: the higher you go, the colder it gets.
In a region without true extreme cold, Ping's advice was simple— Go upward.
So after they parted for a few days, Xuekui walked along a steep mountain path, exhaling softly as his breath blended into the clouds around him.
He snapped off a sprig of mint still beaded with morning dew and popped it into his mouth. Sweetness and cool freshness spread across his tongue, helping him suppress the urge to run down the mountain, hunt, and roast something on the spot.
Mostly because his own cooking wasn't very good.
This mountain, called "Aozang," was strange. The higher Xuekui climbed, the more he sensed elemental power flowing through the leylines. He couldn't help muttering.
"A leyline running through the entire mountain… rare." Especially through such a tall peak.
Before he even reached the summit, he was already walking among clouds, marveling.
The temperature had dropped low enough to freeze mortals stiff. But for a yaksha born of blizzards, it was perfect—comfortable.
It felt like coming home.
At last he reached the highest point. The summit was barren—no creatures, not even weeds. There was a reason.
Xuekui crouched, pressed his palm to the ground, then lifted it slowly. A thin layer of frost coated his skin.
He rubbed his fist. Shards of ice scattered on the wind. Such dense Cryo…
Only Cryo Whopperflowers or Cryo Slimes could endure it. Standing in the center of the summit, the little yaksha blanked out.
Even someone as clever as him didn't know how to use this place to trace his origin. Thinking through the nature of yaksha, Xuekui lowered his gaze.
Yaksha were born from extremely dense elemental power. He was no exception.
And where elemental power was dense, there were usually pure leylines. In a sense, yaksha were birthed by the leylines.
So, like human infants born within their mothers…
If he wanted to return to the state of being "nurtured"— Did he need to bury himself inside the leylines?
Xuekui scratched his head. He couldn't think of anything better. So he pulled out an ice pick and started digging straight down. This time, he didn't hit some mighty elemental creature.
After digging for a while, he reached the point where Cryo was thickest. He stopped and began searching his earliest memory.
After gaining awareness… what was the first thing he saw? Darkness.
He felt heavy, like something was pressing on him.
When he reached upward and broke through something, he felt biting cold. Through a crack of light, he saw what had buried him—
Snow.
So at the beginning, he'd been buried?
Xuekui looked up at the hole above. After appreciating the faint light, he raised his fist and slammed it into the rock wall.
Stone fragments rained onto his head. Darkness crept in. Xuekui shook his head helplessly.
This didn't feel like birth. It felt like a human burial.
But perhaps death symbolized another rebirth? Who knew.
When darkness fully swallowed his sight, Xuekui closed his eyes.
The Cryo around him felt intimate—same-rooted. Strangely, warmth bloomed in his heart.
His body relaxed. The elemental power within him dispersed outward, becoming part of the flowing leylines. And the leyline's power flowed into him, meeting his own.
A cleansing.
Cryo that had been tainted by the mortal world was returning to its original purity.
Xuekui felt as if he'd brushed against his origin… but only with fingertips. Something was missing—something that would let him truly grasp it.
His birth—beyond the leylines—must have involved something opposing them. What was it?
In the darkness, Xuekui frowned, then relaxed again, sinking deeper into the leylines.
Time meant nothing to him down there. Outside, day and night passed as usual. The Cryo on the summit—once so dense it was razor-sharp—gradually softened.
The leylines, once too pure and violent to flow smoothly, became more passable as their intensity eased.
The summit's temperature finally became approachable.
A crane flying overhead was drawn by the anomaly and landed on the peak, pacing curiously. Its eyes—clear blue like a bright sky—held a glimmer of spirit.
It had always been special among its kind. Otherwise it would never have flown so high. Its keen senses couldn't explain what it felt, but it still sensed the changing leylines.
Something slowly seeped into its body—cool and crisp. Then sunlight warmed its feathers, heavy with drowsiness.
It chirped softly, lowered its head, and fell into sleep. That sleep lasted over a month.
A body that should've needed food began changing under the leylines' nourishment, slowly learning to draw energy from elemental power. Some of its white feathers took on a pale blue tint.
Then—suddenly—the crane jolted awake.
The summit erupted. Rock beneath it crystallized into ice and shattered. The shockwave flung the panicking crane into the air, but it steadied itself on instinct.
The flying ice shards didn't harm its newly strengthened body.
In the blizzard of glittering ice, the crane looked down and found the summit had become a basin—raised around the edges, sunken in the center.
From the very middle came a faint, familiar pull.
The crane landed there without thinking—then turned and saw a white-haired child in human form, staring at it.
Two pairs of curious eyes met.
Then the white-haired child suddenly grabbed the crane's long neck, drool shining at the corner of his mouth.
"Hehe… roast goose~"
The crane shrieked and thrashed wildly.