My right thumb was entirely numb, which was strange, considering it was the middle of July.
The mountain's summer humidity usually settled into the courtyard like a wet, suffocating wool blanket by mid-morning. But standing on the stone steps of the main hall, my breath plumed white in the air.
I watched the tiny cloud of condensation drift from my lips and vanish. A delicate, geometric layer of frost was rapidly crawling up the splintered wood of the doorframe next to my shoulder. It made a faint, continuous crackling sound, like a thousand microscopic glass needles breaking all at once.
"Master," Zhou Bao said from the courtyard.
His voice didn't sound panicked. It sounded entirely hollowed out.
I stepped over the threshold. The temperature dropped another fifteen degrees the second my boots hit the dirt. Because my meridians were completely dead, I had no internal Qi circulation to fight off the chill. The cold bit directly into the fluid of my joints, a deep, agonizing ache that made my knees lock instantly.
Zhou Bao was standing near the stone well. He looked at the shattered remnants of the outer gate. He looked at the frost rapidly spreading across the dirt, turning the summer mud into iron. He let out a long, shuddering sigh, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he simply folded in half, fainting quietly into the weeds.
Given what was gliding up our mountain path, I couldn't blame him.
The woman leading the group did not walk. Walking required displacing air and interacting with friction. She simply moved forward, and the world froze out of her way. She wore white robes that seemed to actively reject the ambient dirt of the ruined sect. Her hair was silver-white, but her eyes were the real problem. They were a pale, translucent blue, completely devoid of anything resembling human warmth. She looked at the ruined sect the way a glacier looks at a pebble.
"Core Formation Stage Seven," Old Geezer's voice vibrated in my skull, stripping away the heavy silence he'd maintained since the vault. "Shen Yuebing. The Glacier Sect's prodigy. Do not make sudden movements, boy. Her Absolute Ice Domain is passively active. If you startle her, the ambient moisture in your lungs will crystallize."
Good to know, my brain supplied, highly unhelpful. I will try not to breathe aggressively.
Behind her trailed five disciples in pale blue robes. They looked terrified. Not of me, and not of the ruined sect. They were terrified of the woman they were following. The disciple in the rear had his jaw clamped shut, but his teeth were chattering so violently I could hear the rhythmic clicking from thirty feet away.
She stopped in the center of the courtyard. The temperature bottomed out. My eyelashes froze together when I blinked.
I folded my hands behind my back, tucking my numb right thumb out of sight. I drew heavily on Wei Liang's inherited muscle memory, letting his aristocratic, deeply bored expression settle over the muscles of my face.
"Shen Yuebing," I said.
The baritone voice came out low and steady. It didn't shake. I was immensely grateful to the dead man whose vocal cords I was currently hijacking.
She looked up at me. It wasn't the constructed, arrogant coldness of the debt collectors from yesterday. It was an absolute, terrifying emptiness.
"Sect Master Wei," her voice chimed. It sounded like a silver bell striking a block of ice. "Five hundred spirit stones. The loan maturity date expired at midnight."
I searched the fragmented mess of Wei Liang's memories. Right. Buried under the massive four-thousand-stone debt to the Iron Mountain pavilion was a smaller, older debt. The previous Wei Liang had borrowed five hundred stones from the Glacier Sect during a famine crisis two years ago.
I didn't have five hundred stones. I didn't have five stones. I had a fainted teenager and a pile of broken roofing tiles.
"I am aware," I said.
I walked down the steps. The cold was agonizing, biting through my thin silk shoes. I walked straight toward her, stopping exactly three feet away—well inside the lethal radius of her passive domain. The five trailing disciples collectively gasped, taking a synchronized half-step backward as if expecting me to explode into a red ice sculpture.
I didn't explode. I just felt the skin of my cheeks tightening uncomfortably.
"Honored guest," I said, gesturing casually toward the single intact stone table sitting under the dead willow tree. "Please. Sit."
Shen Yuebing stared at me. Her pale eyes tracked my face. She didn't blink.
I didn't blink back, mostly because my eyelids were frozen.
Slowly, with perfect, geometric precision, she walked to the stone table and sat down.
"I will prepare tea," I said.
I turned and walked to the kitchen. My legs felt like heavy wooden stilts. Once out of her direct line of sight, I leaned my forehead against the cold stone of the cooking counter and squeezed my eyes shut, letting out a single, shaky breath.
My brain fixated entirely on the chipped ceramic cup sitting on the shelf. The crack is on the left side. If I hold it by the crack, it might break. If it breaks, I'll spill boiling water. If I spill boiling water, the Glacier prodigy will probably assume it's an assassination attempt and turn my blood into a popsicle.
"You are stalling," Old Geezer noted drily in my mind. "It is a poor tactical choice, but given your absolute lack of options, it is the only one you possess. Make the tea."
I grabbed the chipped cup. I dumped the withered, brittle leaves into the bottom. I poured the scalding water from the rusted kettle directly over them. The water instantly turned the color of a bruised plum. It smelled like burnt tires and old dirt.
I walked back out into the freezing courtyard.
I set the chipped cup on the stone table in front of her. I deliberately rotated it so the broken edge faced away from her. A basic courtesy.
"It's an old recipe," I lied, my voice perfectly smooth. "The previous occupants favored it."
Shen Yuebing looked down at the dark, muddy liquid. She didn't say anything. The five disciples standing by the wall were staring at the cup with wide, horrified eyes. Serving a Core Formation elder a cracked cup full of boiling garbage water was, presumably, an execution-worthy offense in their sect.
She reached out. Her pale, slender fingers wrapped around the ceramic. A thin layer of frost instantly bloomed across the outside of the hot cup, fighting a violent, hissing war with the boiling water inside.
She brought it to her lips. She took a sip.
I watched her face.
I waited for the micro-expression of disgust. I waited for the killing intent to spike. I waited for my heart to stop beating.
She slowly lowered the cup. She looked at the dark liquid. She looked up at me.
I maintained my completely blank, aristocratic stare.
Silence stretched across the courtyard. The only sound was the clicking of her disciple's teeth and the wind rustling through the dead willow branches above us.
Shen Yuebing raised the cup again. She took a second sip.
"What is happening," Old Geezer whispered in my mind. He sounded genuinely confused. For an ancient deity who claimed to know everything about the cosmos, his bewilderment was deeply unsettling.
She set the cup down. The ceramic clicked sharply against the frozen stone table.
"I will extend the debt repayment deadline," Shen Yuebing said. Her voice was entirely flat, carrying no inflection whatsoever. "By three months."
The collective intake of breath from the five disciples was loud enough to echo off the ruined walls. One of them actually dropped his scabbard in the dirt.
I didn't react. I kept my hands folded behind my back.
"Understood," I said.
Shen Yuebing stood up. She didn't ask for interest. She didn't demand collateral. She just turned around and began to walk toward the ruined gates. Her disciples scrambled to fall in line behind her, shooting me looks of absolute, unadulterated awe. They were looking at me like I was a primordial beast disguised in human skin.
I watched her go. The moment her white robes disappeared down the mountain path, the suffocating cold in the courtyard finally began to recede. The summer humidity rushed back in, heavy and wet, making my frozen skin sting.
My locked knees buckled slightly. I caught myself on the edge of the stone table.
Before I could even exhale, the cold, clean interface of the system panel snapped open behind my optic nerve.
[ SOUL CULTIVATION BOND ARRAY — STATUS UPDATE ]
[ SOUL RESONANCE DETECTED ]
[ Target: Shen Yuebing ][ Current Stage: 0.3 / 5.0 — Preliminary Resonance ]
[ WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTION LEVEL — MINOR ]
[ Tier 1 Monitoring Formation Active ]
The phantom spike behind my eye throbbed as Old Geezer's presence surged forward.
"Hmm," the ancient god hummed. It was a low, calculating sound. "She felt something. A microscopic crack in her foundation. How did you do that?"
"I gave her garbage water," I wheezed, rubbing feeling back into my stiff face. "I literally don't know what just happened."
"The array requires genuine emotional movement," Old Geezer mused, ignoring my panic entirely. "She is a weapon of the Glacier Sect. She has been treated as an untouchable artifact her entire life. Perhaps... you treating her with absolute, mundane normalcy—serving her terrible tea without fear or fawning—registered as authenticity."
I didn't care about the psychology. I cared about the flashing red text at the bottom of the panel.
"Tier 1 Monitoring Formation," I read aloud to the empty courtyard.
"The shadow that passed over the vault yesterday," Old Geezer confirmed grimly. "The array's activation sent a ripple. Heaven's bureaucratic hounds are now actively logging the anomaly. Do not celebrate yet, boy. The noose is tightening."
I pushed myself off the table. My body was shivering violently as the adrenaline crashed.
I walked toward the broken gates, intending to check if the Glacier Sect had left any lingering traps. The morning frost was already melting rapidly into the dirt, turning the ground to dark mud.
I stopped.
I looked down at the stone pathway passing through the ruined archway.
The frost had captured the departure perfectly. Shen Yuebing's light, hovering steps had left faint, frozen ovals that barely disturbed the earth. Behind her, the heavy, frantic boots of her terrified disciples had crushed the ice deep into the dirt.
I looked at the tracks. I did the math.
Yuebing was one. Her disciples were five. That was six people who had walked through the gate.
I traced the messy, overlapping tracks in the melting mud.
One set of frozen ovals. Five sets of frantic, heavy boots. And one extra set.
It was a pair of completely silent, perfectly spaced footprints, walking lightly along the top of the courtyard wall, merging seamlessly into the shadows of the treeline.
Six sets of footprints. But Yuebing hovered.
Five disciples. One shadow.
The courtyard was completely empty. Zhou Bao was still unconscious by the well.
I stood there for a long time, listening to the summer heat slowly melt the ice into water, staring at a set of tracks belonging to someone who was never supposed to be there.