Vessel of Worlds

After several fruitless charges, the Ice-Wind Python began losing patience.

The instant the fish school slipped clear of its jaws yet again, the python abruptly blasted out a stream of white cold a chi thick and over a zhang long, laced with a dozen ice spikes several cun in length.

The white frost-breath was so bitterly cold that the surrounding lakewater froze at its touch, forming in an instant a pillar of ice over a zhang long and more than a chi thick.

The Ice Blade Fish caught in the frost turned sluggish, and before they could dart away, they were frozen fast within the pillar. The rest of the school, battered by the dozen ice spikes, scattered in every direction.

The surviving fish tried to regroup—but the python loosed another gout of frost, and dozens more were frozen solid.

A few repetitions later, the school was all but gone, too few to mass again, fleeing singly into the dark water.

The python gave up the chase, swallowed every fish in the ice pillars, and hissed in deep contentment.

Andy marveled quietly. So the python's frost-breath, beyond its brutal cold, carried the singular effect of slowing an enemy's movements. Paired with attacks in a real fight, it would be nearly impossible to guard against!

Man and python went on searching the strange depths. Beyond a few more schools of Ice Blade Fish—to the python's great gastronomic delight—they found nothing. And the spiritual energy here ran thin and ordinary; this was no place to birth a treasure like Nine Colds Mystic Nether Water.

After the better part of a day with nothing to show, Andy ordered the python back to the ice sheet, and it swam upward with evident reluctance.

Andy did not retrace their path but rose straight to the underside of the ice. He deployed his two peak-grade sword artifacts again, cut a circle through the sheet, and at one ram from the python the plug of ice burst free of the surface, opening the way out. Man and python emerged.

Andy had gained nothing—but the python, gorged on Ice Blade Fish, seemed to have advanced its cultivation a little. The change was slight for now; once the beast fully digested the ice spiritual power in those fish, it would likely show plainly.

The fish were ice-attribute beasts, after all—for a python with ice spiritual roots, the perfect tonic.

Many hours had now passed since his arrival in the Mystic Cold Realm, yet the sky remained the same leaden gray. Day and night, it seemed, did not exist here.

Andy set the python to lead on toward new ground.

It bore him along a few zhang above the surface, its tongue of several chi flicking out at intervals, tasting the faintest shifts in the air.

Half an hour later, three cultivators appeared in Andy's view, drawing gradually closer.

All three wore long black robes belted in white. Two were late-stage Foundation Establishment; the third, mid-stage. All looked young—twenty or thirty by appearance.

They plainly belonged to one sect, and were searching a small valley for treasure. What struck Andy as odd was that the mid-stage cultivator—weakest of the three—seemed to be in charge: hands clasped behind his back, he sauntered about the icy valley as though strolling a garden, while the two late-stage youths labored diligently, deploying artifacts to crack and carve the thick ice in search of any trace of treasure.

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The python carried Andy past the three at a distance of two or three kilometers.

They had long since spotted the purple-robed young cultivator. The two late-stage youths gave Andy one glance and returned to their work—but the mid-stage cultivator locked his eyes hungrily on the great python beneath Andy's feet.

Some transmission must have passed from him, for the two late-stage youths abandoned their search, and all three rose on streaks of black mist to bar Andy's way.

Andy's brow creased slightly. "Fellow cultivators of the Heaven-Defying Alliance—abandoning your treasure hunt to block my path? To what purpose?" he said evenly.

The two late-stage youths said nothing. It was the mid-stage cultivator—an ugly young man whose broad nostrils tilted skyward—who spoke: "That python of yours is a fine spirit beast. Sell it to this young lord—name any price in spirit stones!" All the while his eyes hung greedily, gleefully, on the python beneath Andy's feet; at Andy himself he did not so much as glance.

Andy snorted inwardly but kept his voice calm. "Setting aside that this beast is master-bonded and cannot be transferred—even if it could be, I would not."

One of the late-stage youths moved his lips faintly, plainly transmitting to the broad-nosed young man.

The latter nodded, finally lifted his gaze from the python to Andy, and split his wide mouth in a grin. "Then follow this young lord for the next few days, and let me play with the serpent awhile."

The broad-nosed youth was strange-looking enough at rest; grinning, with his sparse, jutting buckteeth bared, he achieved something worse.

Cultivators could not all claim unearthly looks, but a specimen like this Andy had truly never met.

The appearance he could forgive—but the words out of the man's mouth left Andy caught between laughter and disbelief.

"I'm a solitary sort by long habit—I don't travel in company," Andy replied wearily.

"What's the hurry? This young lord hasn't named terms! Follow me these few days and I'll gift you a thousand spirit stones a day. That's a year's earnings for you, surely!" the ugly youth said with a grand sweep of his hand.

"I don't travel in company. Offer what stones you like—the answer is no." Andy let deliberate anger edge his voice, hoping to end the pestering before it wasted more of his time.

"Two thousand a day! Surely that settles it!" the broad-nosed youth said with open mockery.

Andy's brow drew down. The man's head was plainly not screwed on right. He glanced past him at the two late-stage youths—and sure enough, both wore looks of helplessness tinged with apology.

Andy simply stopped wasting words, turned the python, and sped away. The broad-nosed youth's shouting chased after him:

"Don't go! Three thousand a day! Five thousand! Five thousand a day! Hey—come back! You dare disobey this young lord?! You two—go cut him off! Go! What are you standing there for—!"

Whatever excuses the two late-stage youths found, they never gave chase. And the broad-nosed youth—young lord though he was—could see Andy's peak late-stage cultivation well enough not to pursue alone. Besides, the Ice-Wind Python's speed was nothing easily overtaken.

Soon Andy had vanished from the trio's sight.

Robbed of time and led far off course by a man with a scrambled head, Andy could only shake his own and press on.

Had the three not been Yingzhou heterodox cultivators by every sign of their techniques—and three against one besides—he would have skipped the talk entirely and given that young lord a lesson to remember, perhaps killed him outright.

A young lordling that free with money would surely carry treasures in quantity. Stones and artifacts Andy didn't covet—but strange and mighty techniques could not be bought with stones. On his own merits the broad-nosed youth could never have offered such prices to "hire" Andy; he clearly came of consequence—seven or eight parts likely the direct descendant of some demonic titan. If so, the odds that he carried powerful techniques were high indeed.

Andy was still speculating on the man's origins when, far ahead, he spotted two cultivators locked in combat before a mountain slope.

Had they found some treasure at the same moment and fallen to fighting over it? Nothing else made sense—with only seven days to search, everyone was hunting treasure; who would squander the time dueling? Even sworn enemies meeting here would likely trade glares and, by unspoken accord, hold their hands.

Andy drifted closer and made out the combatants: a man and a woman, both late-stage Foundation Establishment. And the woman struck him as deeply familiar—recognition came in a flash, and the words escaped him: "It's her! She's here too!"