chsdbacks Chapter 428 Dragon Soul?
Chapter 428 Dragon Soul?
"This is it." Nie Lingfeng stopped twenty steps away from the ice wall. He took off his gloves, spread his bare palms in front of him, his five fingers slightly open, pointing towards the ice wall.
The blue light on the ice wall suddenly brightened by one degree, as if it had noticed his approach.
"Brother Nie, aren't your hands cold?" Zhang Chulan shrank back when he saw him take off his gloves, and pulled up the zipper of his collar.
"Cold." Nie Lingfeng's answer was brief, but his gaze remained fixed on the ice. "But you'll only know what it is by touching it with your skin."
He took a step forward. The blue light inside the ice wall brightened even more, and the rhythm of the flowing light changed from slow breathing to a faster pulsation, as if something behind the ice sensed his approach and was quickening its heartbeat.
Another step. Several fine white cracks appeared on the ice surface, as if they were being torn apart by the light surging from within. The light seeping from the cracks was more intense than the blue light on the surface, so intense that a thin golden thread appeared at the edges, moving against the dark blue background.
Step three. Nie Lingfeng raised his hand.
The moment his fingertips touched the ice, the entire ice wall emitted a long, resonant hum from the point of contact. The sound wasn't loud, but it was extremely deep, like a double bass string stretched to its limit and then pulled back with a bow. Everyone felt a tingling sensation under their feet at the same time—the tiny ice chips on the glacier surface leaped up, paused in mid-air for a moment, and then fell back to their original positions.
Nie Lingfeng pressed his palm against the ice surface. His five fingers pressed against the cold, slippery ice, the touch under his fingertips was initially hard and smooth, but the moment his palms were fully pressed together, a warmth surged up from inside the ice wall—that warmth penetrated through the millennia-old ice layer, seeping into every inch of his palm's skin, flowing along the meridians of his arm towards his chest, as if someone had gripped his wrist, pouring a stream of turbid and scalding blood into his veins.
Then he heard those words. Not through his ears, but directly inside his skull, low and hoarse, carrying a weariness and stubbornness born of being suppressed for too long.
"You've arrived."
Everyone saw Nie Lingfeng's shoulders suddenly tense. He bent his wrist, as if trying to pull his hand back from the ice, but his fingers remained motionless. After a moment, his shoulders and back slowly relaxed. He turned his head, his lips moved as if he were talking to someone, but all he could see in front of him was the glowing ice wall.
"Who are you?"
No sound came out of his mouth—the words were spoken in his mind, and he was certain that what was inside the ice wall could hear them.
The heartbeat within the ice wall paused for a moment. Then the voice rang out again, clearer than before, each word carrying a heavy echo, as if rising from the bottom of a deep well: "I am the guardian of this Kunlun Mountain. I am a remnant soul of the last dragon in this world. I have waited here for too long, so long that I thought no one would ever come again."
Nie Lingfeng's palm remained pressed against the ice surface. He could feel the ice thinning—a continuous, slow receding sensation emanated from beneath his palm, as if the ice was melting from the inside, spreading outwards from the point of contact with his palm.
"How do you know me?" he asked himself.
"You have the same blood flowing through your veins as me," the voice said. "The true form of the Qilin is fused with the power of the Dragon Essence, something that was peeled from my flesh and blood. I smelled you when you reached the foot of this mountain. I thought you would turn and run away like those humans. But you didn't."
Nie Lingfeng was silent for a moment. He heard someone behind him whisper "Master," it was Lu Linglong's voice, filled with undisguised worry. He turned his head slightly and waved to the back of him, indicating that everything was alright, then turned back to look at the ice surface.
Why were you sealed here?
The light inside the ice wall suddenly fluctuated violently, as if stung by those words. The flow of those golden threads accelerated abruptly, wildly tangling and dispersing against the dark blue background, eventually slowly returning to its original rhythm, but now a few shades dimmer than before.
"Because I trusted the wrong person."
The voice lowered, a thin layer of deep anger rising from its hoarse tone, like ash covering the surface of embers yet not extinguishing: "You humans respectfully call him the True Man. When he came before me, I thought he was different from others—he didn't seek power, he didn't seek immortality, he only sought 'peace throughout the world.' How laughable."
"You mean Zhang Sanfeng?"
The moment Nie Lingfeng asked the question, Wang Ye gasped behind him. Wang Ye had clearly heard something too—perhaps Nie Lingfeng's self-talk was a bit too loud, or perhaps the Qi fluctuations seeping from the ice wall were so strong that everyone could vaguely sense the existence of that remnant soul.
"That's the name." The anger in the voice rose again. "He traveled to Kunlun, where we sat facing each other for three days and nights, discussing the Dao, debating magic and life and death. I thought I had met a kindred spirit. But on the third night, while I was meditating, he used the Nine Palaces Dragon Sealing Formation of Wudang Mountain to trap me in this ice wall. He severed seven branches of the mountain's dragon vein, transferring their power to suppress me, and then used his own lifespan as a conduit to strengthen the seal."
"He used up his own lifespan?" Nie Lingfeng frowned.
"Yes. So he left early—in fact, he could have lived much longer. But he traded those decades of lifespan for my centuries of hardship." The voice suddenly chuckled, the laughter mingling with the vibrations within the ice wall, causing the ice beneath everyone's feet to tremble slightly. "I've always wondered, in the moment he closed his eyes, did he ever regret anything?"
Nie Lingfeng didn't reply. Behind him, Wang Ye's expression had shifted from shock to a deeper complexity. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again.
Suddenly, a muffled, explosive sound came from within the ice wall, as if something had surged up from the deepest depths and crashed into the final barrier of the seal. The cracks on the ice wall spread rapidly, expanding from the thickness of a needle tip to the width of a chopstick. The blue-gold light emanating from the cracks grew increasingly intense and bright, dyeing the entire valley a deep, eerie blue. The glacier beneath their feet trembled violently, and Zhang Chulan had to grab Zhang Lingyu's backpack strap to avoid being shaken over.
"Did you feel it?" The voice suddenly became urgent, a newfound anxiety in its tone. "The seal is about to break! That crack—someone on the other side helped me tear the seal—I don't know who it was, but they did it—"
"who?!"
"I don't know! But that power is corroding the final core of the Nine Palaces Dragon Sealing Formation! I can already feel the ice layer loosening—" The voice paused for a moment, then resumed with a frantic anticipation, "Nie Lingfeng! I don't need your help anymore! The seal is collapsing on its own! I'm coming out—I'll be out soon—!"