Vessel of Worlds

The moment he passed to the restriction's far side, Andy deployed two mid-grade defensive spirit tools, one guarding his front and one his back, and wove a measure of Primal Unity Qi around himself besides, wrapping his body in yet another layer of defense.

There was no telling how long the passage ran, and his spiritual sense now reached only a few dozen zhang—a limitation he found deeply uncomfortable.

Walking at an ordinary pace, he continued for about half an hour before the passage finally changed.

An underground cavern a thousand zhang across opened before him. By the light of moonlight stones, Andy saw glittering insects beyond counting, flitting back and forth beneath the cavern's ceiling dozens of zhang overhead.

"Gold-Winged Fire Ants!"

The instant one of the gleaming insects flew near, Andy recognized it.

The Gold-Winged Fire Ant was only a rank-one high-tier insect beast, attacking with gouts of golden flame, its individual strength equal to a cultivator above the tenth layer of Qi Condensation. But the species was infamous for swarming in enormous numbers.

They were common enough in the Star Sea, emerging tens of thousands at a time and often wreaking terrible harm. Short of a Core Formation cultivator, anyone who ran into a swarm faced a splitting headache at best—and no small number had died in the ants' jaws.

By Andy's rough count, this cavern held no fewer than a thousand.

A thousand Gold-Winged Fire Ants, each spitting a single ball of golden flame, could merge those flames into a sea of golden fire.

Still, the species was not especially aggressive; left unprovoked, they rarely attacked in force.

After all, once a Gold-Winged Fire Ant spat its golden flame, it needed years of recuperation to recover even partially—and never fully.

And in its whole life, each ant could spit flame only three times; after the third, it died.

But ant-type beasts bred prodigiously—each generation that died was replaced by a larger hatch.

Whether the ants in this cavern had multiplied over untold years from breeding stock the dwelling's mistress had deliberately left, or had tunneled in from elsewhere and settled by accident, Andy couldn't say.

Either way, he had no wish to disturb them.

But to his great misfortune, Andy saw that the sole passage mouth on the cavern's far side had a swarm of the ants wheeling directly before it.

He waited patiently for two hours; the ants showed not the slightest intention of leaving.

To reach that passage, then, the ants would have to be provoked. There was nothing for it but to fight.

And if fight he must, it had to be fast—strike before they massed, destroy the greater part in the opening blow. Once the ants gathered their golden flames into a concerted attack, defense would become desperately hard.

So Andy shook his sleeve lightly, and a dozen-plus puppets took their stand around him, bows in hand, while he gripped the Blazing Heaven Blade in both fists.

"Die!" Andy roared, raising the blade high and hacking down. A single-horned fire dragon a dozen zhang long burst from the edge, sweeping on a wave of heat toward the thickest mass of ants.

In the same breath, the puppets drew and loosed, a dense hail of attacks raking the swarm.

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Several hundred Gold-Winged Fire Ants, before instinct could even trigger their golden flame, were rolled into the dragon's fire and burned to ash. Many more fell to the puppets' concentrated barrage—or spat their golden flames in frantic resistance.

And an ant that had already spent its flame was, for a good while after, effectively harmless—nothing to fear at all.

Thus in a single exchange, Andy had wiped out fully half the swarm.

Before the ants could rally, he swung the Blazing Heaven Blade again. Another single-horned fire dragon lunged out, fangs and claws bared.

But the ants' response was quick too: golden flames in staggering numbers rose from every corner of the cavern, streaking toward the dragon.

Before the fire dragon could kill many more, the mass of golden flames ground its power away, and it scattered into motes of light.

The swarm's numbers, it seemed, ran far beyond Andy's estimate.

More golden flames sprayed forth—now all converging on a single point, where they swiftly fused into a golden fireball several chi across.

The fireball drifted slowly toward Andy; even before it drew near, waves of scorching heat rolled over him.

Andy swung his third stroke at once, simultaneously commanding the puppets to redirect their fire from the ants to the golden fireball.

With his stroke, the single-horned fire dragon leapt from the blade, stretched wide its furnace of a mouth, and clamped the golden fireball between its jaws.

The dragon could not crush the fireball; the fireball could not break the dragon. The two locked in stalemate.

But from all around the cavern, flames the size of a thumb kept streaming in to join the golden sphere, swelling it larger and larger—at any moment it might overwhelm the dragon.

The puppets' attacks pelted the fireball in dense sheets, but most were repelled by its radiating heat before they could even close, posing no real threat.

Andy gathered a great surge of spiritual power and swung the Blazing Heaven Blade with everything he had. A vast sheet of flame poured from the blade, streaming straight into the single-horned dragon.

The dragon swelled hugely in length and girth—and swallowed the golden fireball whole.

Moments later, a violently rippling wave of heat rolled outward on a thunderclap: dragon and fireball had annihilated one another.

The Gold-Winged Fire Ants still capable of attack were few now, and posed Andy no threat. Under the cover of his two shields, he calmly recalled the puppets and the Blazing Heaven Blade, crossed the cavern, and entered the far passage.

He had not walked long before the temperature began dropping steeply.

Within a few kilometers, even his Foundation Establishment cultivator's body felt the cold bite to the bone. A mortal here would have frozen solid inside half an hour.

Andy slapped seven or eight Fire Cloud Shield talismans onto himself in one go, and felt somewhat better.

But before long the talismans' power was drained dry, and he had to apply several more.

Another kilometer on, even under the Fire Cloud Shield's protection, waves of cold still reached him, and he resorted to spending spiritual power on the Primal Unity Qi, wrapping his whole body.

This served far better than the talismans, carrying him another two or three kilometers—into a cavern walled on every side with blue icicles.

The cavern was neither tall nor broad, only a few hundred zhang long, but the cold in it was unearthly, breathing out a pale blue frost-mist. A Qi Condensation cultivator would freeze to death in it within a few breaths.

Even the purple qi shielding Andy burned spiritual power at a ferocious rate under the cold's assault.

At this pace, he would drain himself dry and stand frozen into an ice sculpture before he ever cleared the cavern.

Andy took out several high-grade spirit stones and drew steadily on their power.

He was thoroughly baffled. What had this ancient female cultivator intended? First a swarm of Gold-Winged Fire Ants, now a road of killing cold—without high-grade spirit stones and a high-grade spirit tool, no ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator could ever finish this passage; he'd be turned back broken at the halfway mark.

Hadn't the ancient mistress left a technique for women only? Why insist a male cultivator retrieve it—and then torment him at every turn? Andy chewed the question over and got nowhere.

Forget it. A woman's mind is like an alchemy furnace's success rate—a thing of vast and unknowable variance. With that thought, he gave up puzzling.

By now he had reached the cavern's midpoint, where the blue cold devoured his purple qi at a fearsome pace—his spiritual power was straining to keep up.

He brought out the Blazing Heaven Blade again and carved out a fire dragon, setting it to circle his body and fend off the seeping cold. With that, the purple qi's drain eased greatly, and his spiritual power flowed with room to spare.

Andy let out a light breath and pressed on at a quick stride.

Just as he passed the coldest point—the very center of the cavern—the spirit beast pouch at his waist suddenly squirmed, and the Ice-Wind Snake, joined to him mind to mind, pressed a stream of urgent meaning into his spiritual sense.

Andy's face lit up, and he stopped exactly where he stood.

Who would have thought it—this road of bitter cold, built to torment him, was about to serve him handsomely!