Lin Mo coughed up a third mouthful of black blood at the cliff's edge, the Snowbell herbs between his fingers now stained crimson. In the distance, outer disciples of the Black Ice Sect glided across ravines on ice blades, frost blossoms settling on his tattered coat and hardening into blue-black scabs.
"Cripple Mo, gathering herbs for that sickly girl again?" Wang Hu, youngest son of the blacksmith, stomped forward in newly forged tungsten-alloy boots, sulfur fumes rising from melted snow. Three lackeys fanned out in a triangular formation, obsolete ice talismans dangling at their waists—spoils from last month's ambush when they'd stolen Lin Mo's herb basket.
Clutching three Snowbell stems to his chest, Lin Mo retreated until his heel cracked thin ice at the frostpool's edge. A jade-chime resonance surged from the depths, igniting Wang Hu's talisman mid-sleeve. In the confusion, Lin Mo tumbled backward into the pool. As icy water flooded his nostrils, he recalled his sister's morning murmur: *"Big Brother's spine... houses a crystal spider..."*
His descent slowed unnaturally. Hair floated upward like frost-threads, tangling around an ice coffin at the pool's floor. Lin Mo recognized the swirling snow patterns on the lid—identical to the embroidery on his mother's handkerchief, vanished the night she disappeared. A headless skeleton raised its hand, its fourth finger bone piercing Lin Mo's nape. Agony flooded him with visions: Grandfather extinguishing a bronze lamp with his lightning-struck staff.
*"Mo'er... remember—better to freeze three souls..."* The feminine voice from the skeleton's ribcage cut short. Lin Mo surged upward, his herbs disintegrating into blue mist that seeped through ruptured eardrums, crystallizing into ice-winged butterflies.
He breached the surface as Wang Hu's boot hovered above the pool. Lin Mo's right hand convulsed toward the ice, frost patterns crawling his knuckles—only to disintegrate before reaching Wang Hu's ankle. Counterforce cold curled him shrimp-like, his coughs spraying ice shards mingled with organ fragments.
"The cripple's done for," a lackey sneered, kicking a stone that froze mid-arc against Lin Mo's back. As the gang retreated cursing, none noticed the blood droplet beneath Lin Mo's left ear crystallizing into a swastika-shaped ice prism.
At dusk, Lin Mo dragged frostbitten legs back to their thatched hut. Lin Xue huddled by the cold stove, frost blooming on the medicinal dregs she pinched. When she turned with a smile, Lin Mo glimpsed eight-faceted ice fractals in her pupils—perfectly matching a fragmented sigil on the underwater coffin.
"Brother's eyelashes are frosting," Lin Xue reached out. He jerked away, toppling a medicine jar. Amid shattered clay, his reflection revealed an ice-spider tattoo pulsing frost veins into his spine.
Midnight found Grandfather's lightning-struck staff glowing faintly in the woodshed. As Lin Mo's frostbitten palms brushed the wood, a half-unfurled star map sprang from its core—the North Star position marked by the gear emblem of Celestial Artifice Hall.
The blizzard intensified. Returning with the last firewood, Lin Mo found Lin Xue clawing her neck in sleep, icy-blue blood oozing from scabs. He smeared the blood on the windowsill to staunch the flow, inadvertently replicating half the coffin's Sanskrit inscription.
At fifth watch, Lin Mo dug a charred potato from the ashes. His teeth struck something hard—a tear-star gemstone, though no such ore existed on yesterday's herb-gathering path.