The night was like ink, the moonlight torn into fragments by dark clouds, scattering like crushed silver across the wilderness outside Qinglan City. Su Han stood beneath the ancient pagoda tree at the top of the hill, the trunk within his inner world trembling slightly with his heartbeat, the silhouettes of the four women on the bark glowing with a faint, soft light.
He could clearly hear the sound of his own blood flowing—an enhanced perception brought by the Unity of Heaven and Man talent after breaking through the Star Shattering Realm. That pitch-black mass of Qi in the north drew closer; for every mile it advanced, a layer of black frost seeped from the ground, freezing even the chirping of insects into ice shards.
"Young Master." A hoarse voice came from the left. Su Fan turned his head slightly to see Su Qingxue leaping up the earthen slope from beneath the mountain ridge, the bronze lock of the mechanism box at her waist gleaming coldly in the moonlight. The begonia hairpin in her hair was crooked by half an inch, clearly having just run a full circuit along the left flank: "The tripwires on the third ridge are all set. When I wedged the final pin into the rock seam, I added Hanmei Pavilion's secret-recipe ice-flame powder to the fuse—if the Nether Soldiers dare step on it, the resulting ice mist will freeze them for half a quarter of an hour."
Chapter 400