Chapter 126: Is this... cultivation?
Cassian vanished completely. A stream of pale yellow energy flew from the spot where he died, cut across the city, and shot straight toward Ethan.
Ethan didn’t dodge. The energy entered his body, but he didn’t let it merge directly into the Celestial Gate. The Primordial Armor on his left arm lit up, the energy lines across the metal surface fluctuating as they channeled the entire surge of power into the internal containment zone.
He felt it for a moment. The amount of energy was larger than expected; it didn’t belong to Cassian alone but was mixed with what he’d plundered from everyone before him. Absorbing it right now could cause his level to shift drastically. And Ethan had no reason to rush.
’Hold onto it for now.’
The electromagnetic dome in the sky began trembling at the same time.
[Representatives remaining: 1.]
[The victor of the second round has been determined.]
[Representative: Ethan Ashford.]
[Second round complete.]
Immediately after the announcement, the currents enveloping the city withdrew, every strand of blue-white light pulled back up into the sky until the massive dome dissolved entirely.
The Thunder Wing on Ethan’s back trembled faintly. Laira’s half-wing also hummed with a very soft note. Both of them recognized the current state almost simultaneously: full. The electricity absorbed over the course of several hours had replenished nearly all of the previous expenditure. More importantly, the Cataclysmic Thunder Gate, which should have taken a very long time to recover after its last use, had also been fed to capacity by the enormous energy from the dome.
Ethan looked at its status for a few seconds, then sighed. "What a shame."
Ruo Yan turned to him. "What’s a shame?"
"If there were a few more domes like that, it’d be great."
Ruo Yan: "..."
"What?" Ethan looked at her.
She was silent for a few seconds, then shook her head. "Nothing."
Laira nodded very seriously. "I feel the same."
Ruo Yan turned to look at her, and finally abandoned any intention of continuing this topic. For everyone else, the dome was a thing that forced them into slaughter; one step outside the safe zone meant death. For Ethan and Laira, it was a giant charger. Ruo Yan decided she should get used to this kind of absurdity sooner rather than later.
Ethan retracted Thunder Wing, and Laira did the same. Teleportation light began rising beneath all three of them.
[Preparing to enter the third trial round.]
[Teleportation time: 5 seconds.]
"Don’t get cocky this time," Ethan turned to the other two.
Laira leaned down to look at him. "You’re telling us not to get cocky, after we spent almost the entire last round lying around?"
"That’s exactly why we need to be serious this time."
"I’ll remember you said that," Ruo Yan cut in flatly.
Ethan pretended not to hear. White light covered all three of them.
Cold.
That was the first sensation when Ethan’s feet touched the ground. A snow-laden wind swept across, blowing his hair to one side, and his breath turned into a layer of white frost the moment it left his mouth.
He opened his eyes. Before him was a snowfield stretching all the way to the horizon, without a single building, tree, or rocky outcrop for the eye to cling to. The sky above was a pale gray, snow falling continuously, wind occasionally whipping it into white curtains that obscured visibility.
Laira appeared to his right, Ruo Yan to his left. The moment Laira steadied herself, she frowned slightly. "Cold."
Ethan turned to her. "You’re a Red Dragon."
"I can still feel cold."
"In the desert you said it was hot."
"I like hot."
Ruo Yan brushed snow off her shoulder. "At least this time there’s no sand in our shoes."
Laira was silent for two seconds. "Then this place is better."
Ethan was about to respond when his gaze stopped.
Ahead, roughly a hundred meters away, a figure stood in the snow.
Entirely white, not white from clothing, but a seamless, solid white, no skin, no eyes, not even the outline of a mouth, like a human statue sculpted from light. Yet the body’s contours were very clear. A woman. Very tall, close to two meters. Long hair partially pinned up at the crown with what appeared to be ornamental hairpins, the rest cascading down her back. Wide sleeves, a long flowing skirt, fabric sashes at the hips swaying gently in the wind.
Ethan watched for a few seconds, the sense of familiarity growing stronger by the moment.
Laira narrowed her eyes. "I don’t like her."
"You recognize her?" Ethan turned.
"No." Laira kept staring straight ahead. "But I don’t like her."
Ruo Yan was also observing. "I feel like I’ve seen this silhouette before."
Ethan finally remembered: the woman descending those white stone steps, a scroll held in her hand, white garments accented with red and jade-green, a frame taller than nearly everyone around her, and the way the entire crowd parted on its own before she even spoke.
"Thanh Lien."
Ruo Yan turned. "The one who presided over the ceremony?"
"Yeah." Ethan looked at the white figure. "Even though I only met her once, someone that tall dressed like that... hard to mistake."
Laira immediately looked at him. "She’s that easy to remember?"
Ethan paused. He recognized this tone. "I’m identifying an opponent."
"You seem to remember her very well."
"Laira."
"I’m just saying."
Ruo Yan stood beside them, the corner of her mouth curving slightly.
Right then, a notification panel appeared.
[Third trial round.]
[Simulated opponent has been generated.]
[Combat data extracted from a previous Trial Gate champion.]
[Objective: Survive and defeat the projection.]
Ethan finished reading and turned his eyes back to the figure ahead. ’Thanh Lien’s data?’
Outside the Trial Gate, the observation room that had just grown noisy after Cassian’s death fell silent once more. Quite a few people looked at Ethan’s screen, then almost simultaneously turned toward the chairman’s seat.
Thanh Lien was still sitting there, her teacup just set down. She looked at the white projection on the screen, her expression unchanged by even a fraction.
A young representative sitting below couldn’t hold back, lowering his voice to ask the person beside him: "The third round is really her?"
The older man nodded. "It is."
"When is that data from?"
"Many years ago." He glanced toward the chairman’s seat. "From when she participated in this Trial Gate herself."
The young man froze. He knew Thanh Lien was powerful, anyone qualified to sit in this room knew that, but the details of that year weren’t something everyone was clear on.
Another person who had overheard the conversation slowly interjected: "The third-round projection isn’t randomly chosen from some powerful individual. It uses the data of the person who left the highest achievement record at the corresponding stage."
"So Lady Thanh Lien..."
"Passed it flawlessly."
Those four words silenced the young man completely.
In other rows, similar discussions were beginning to surface. "It’s Thanh Lien’s projection again." "After all these years, still nobody’s replaced it?" "No." "I remember how long the strongest person lasted last time?" "Don’t ask."
The younger ones who heard this unconsciously sat up straighter.
On the screen was only a single white figure standing in the snow. It emanated no pressure, created no explosions, hadn’t even moved. But knowing it was the combat data of the woman currently sitting in the chairman’s seat made the feeling entirely different.
Xue Ji turned to look at Thanh Lien, then back at the screen, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "Now this is interesting."
The secretary beside her asked immediately: "Think Ethan can win?"
Xue Ji fell silent. This time she didn’t answer right away. "I don’t know."
"Even you have moments where you say you don’t know?"
"I only invest. I don’t predict the future."
"Before, you sounded a lot like you did."
Xue Ji pretended not to hear.
At the chairman’s seat, Thanh Lien paid no mind to the gazes around her. She only watched Ethan, her eyes calm. But the finger holding the teacup had stopped against the rim of the cup.
In the snowfield, the white figure moved.
Just one motion. The right hand rose, the wide sleeve draping down, slow enough that Ethan could see every detail: the thumb touching the middle finger, the index finger raised, both hands switching positions, then forming a strange seal before the chest.
Ethan frowned. A wave of cold entirely different from the snow wind washed across his skin.
He looked up. The falling snow had suddenly stopped, tens of thousands of snowflakes suspended motionless in midair.
Laira dropped her smile. Ruo Yan raised her hand, Soul Threads appearing between her fingers.
In the sky behind the white figure, points of blue light slowly took shape, one, then ten, then thirty, fifty, a hundred. They elongated, sharpened, and became swords. One hundred longswords made entirely of ice hovered in the air, their tips all aimed at the three of them. Without anyone directing them, they arranged themselves in multiple layers, sealing off nearly every direction.
The wind stopped blowing. The snowfield went dead silent.
The white projection of Thanh Lien remained standing in place, one hand holding the seal, the wide sleeve draping gently downward, a hundred ice swords hanging behind her.
Ethan stared at the scene before him for a long time, the corner of his eye twitching slightly. Then he slowly turned to Ruo Yan. "Let me ask something."
"What?"
Ethan looked back at the white figure, looked at the seal, then looked at the hundred flying ice swords in the sky.
"Is this..." He paused for a beat. "Cultivation?"