The Seventh Truth of the Licking Path:
True control is making your opponent willingly become the sharpest piece on your board.
Supreme strategy is when every piece believes it is the one holding the game.
The instant the Profound Ice Gate opened, time itself seemed to freeze.
Not metaphorically.
Frost crystallized at the threshold—suspended midair. White cold surged outward like a massive spectral serpent, cracking the air with fine, brittle sounds as it passed. Jiang Muchen's lashes iced over in an instant. Behind him, Wang Duobao's teeth began to chatter uncontrollably, while Zheng Xiaoqi's hand reflexively closed around the fire talisman at his waist.
Beyond the gate lay another world entirely.
A chamber ten zhang wide, its walls and domed ceiling carved from millennia-old Profound Ice, polished so smooth they reflected fear itself. At the center stood an ice platform. Upon it sat a middle-aged man in white robes, cross-legged, motionless—like a statue sealed away for a hundred years.
Murong Yuan.
Patriarch of the Frostbound Clan.
His complexion was translucent pale, dark green-black veins webbing beneath the skin. But it was his breathing that chilled the soul. With every inhale, black mist spilled from his mouth and nose—within it, writhing shadows of insects. With every exhale, those things crawled back inside him.
The Heart-Eroding Demonic Seed.
One of the Netherworld Court's most vicious curses—slowly devouring his organs from within.
"Three hours. At most."
The hunchbacked elder clutched his ice-jade compass, its needle spinning wildly. His voice trembled. "The demonic seed has entered the heart meridians. If we don't act now—"
Murong Xueli stood before the ice platform, her back straight as a sword planted in snow.
But Jiang Muchen saw her hand at her side—fingers digging into her palm so hard that blood beaded, froze, and fell onto the ice in crimson shards.
"Begin," she said as she turned.
Her face was utterly calm.
Jiang Muchen placed the resonance array disk on the floor.
The metallic ring echoed sharply in the silent chamber.
He produced eight Unity Talismans and swept his gaze across the eight Frostbound cultivators present—Shen Lingshuang, the black-clad man, the woman in blue-green robes, and the five core disciples Murong Xueli had brought.
"Qian position," Jiang Muchen said evenly. "Primary output. Strongest energy required."
He handed the first talisman to Shen Lingshuang.
The moment her fingers touched it, her pupils contracted. The resonance inscriptions embedded within were three layers more sophisticated than even the high-tier arrays in the sect's Transmission Hall.
The black-clad man was assigned to the Zhen position.
The woman in blue-green robes, to Xun.
Jiang Muchen lingered on them for a single heartbeat as he handed over their talismans.
His gaze was calm as a deep pool.
Yet both felt an inexplicable tightening in their chests.
Eight cultivators entered formation.
Jiang Muchen stepped into the center and lifted his jade flute.
He did not play immediately.
Instead, his fingers brushed over the seventh tone hole—where a hairline crack marred the surface. A scar from three months ago, when he had intercepted Lin Tianying's sword to save a nameless errand disciple.
The first note sounded.
Every frost crystal on the ice walls trembled.
The sound was no longer that of a flute—it was the deep rumble of ancient glaciers tearing apart. Low. Vast. Carrying a rhythm that seemed to awaken the world itself.
The air around the ice platform rippled.
The black mist surrounding Murong Yuan writhed violently. The insect shadows twisted in panic.
The eight cultivators shuddered.
Their spiritual energy surged—not seized, not forced—but flowing freely, like winter streams awakening under spring sunlight, racing joyfully along the cadence of the melody.
"Relax," Jiang Muchen's voice resonated directly into their minds through the array.
"Imagine your spiritual energy as strings. My flute is only the hand that plucks them.
The looser the string, the deeper the resonance."
The black-clad man's expression changed.
He secretly circulated his family's Iceheart Art, attempting to resist. But his energy behaved like a wild horse finally reunited with its master—leaping eagerly into the collective flow.
Worse still—
The strand of malignant cold energy hidden deep within his dantian stirred.
The Unity Talisman at his chest suddenly burned hot.
He stifled a grunt and hastily dispersed it, cold sweat soaking his back.
Jiang Muchen's eyes remained closed.
But the faint curve at his lips deepened ever so slightly.
When he had modified the array disk, he had added a Source-Tracing Sigil.
Any impurity introduced into the resonance would rebound first—multiplied.
The flute entered its second movement.
The sound waves began resonating directly with the demonic insects.
One by one, tiny black worms crawled out of Murong Yuan's mouth and nose, thrashing wildly—only to shatter into black smoke under the vibration.
"They're coming out! They're really coming out!"
The hunchbacked elder wept openly.
Then—
BOOM!
The entire Ice Pavilion shook violently.
Icicles rained from the ceiling.
"Miss!" Han Song's hoarse scream came from outside, mingled with clashing steel and dying cries.
"Murong Li has forced his way in! The maze array is broken—they're here!"
The eight cultivators' energies wavered.
The woman in blue-green robes flashed a vicious look and spat out blood.
"I—I can't hold it… backlash—"
Her body collapsed—falling deliberately toward the array's core.
The Bagua formation dimmed instantly.
Jiang Muchen's flute pitch spiked sharply, like a phoenix crying blood. The formation stabilized—barely.
His face drained white.
Blood seeped from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
A Qi Refining cultivator commanding an eight-Foundation resonance was already dancing on a blade's edge. With the core disrupted, the backlash struck him first.
"Junior Jiang!" Shen Lingshuang cried.
"Continue!"
Jiang Muchen bit through his tongue.
Blood dripped onto the array disk.
It glowed crimson.
Outside, roaring footsteps thundered closer.
"Murong Xueli! Get your ass out here!"
A massive man smashed through the corridor wall, an ice axe the size of a door dripping with blood.
"You think some pretty boy with a flute can turn this around? Today I'll show you who the Frostbound Clan really belongs to!"
BOOM—!
The Profound Ice Gate exploded into shards.
Murong Li stormed in.
Nine feet tall. Draped in ice-bear pelts. Flesh fragments still clung to his armor. Behind him stood more than a dozen black-robed cultivators radiating killing intent.
Worst of all were his eyes.
A pinpoint of crimson burned in his pupils.
Blood-Ignition Pill.
"Clan rules?" Murong Li sneered, axe pointing at the ice platform.
"When my brother rules, the first new rule will be gifting you to me. And as for that flute-playing dog—"
His gaze locked onto Jiang Muchen.
"Chop him up. Feed him to the dogs."
Murong Xueli stepped forward.
Frostblade unsheathed.
"Try it."
Murong Li roared and swung—
Not at her.
At Murong Yuan.
He intended to shatter all hope.
But three feet from the ice platform—
The flute changed.
The sound plunged from glacial thunder into abyssal lament.
The chamber's ice walls responded.
No—they awakened.
Ice spikes erupted from every surface, tipped with eerie violet frost, coiling like venomous serpents. Their arrangement sealed every line of attack.
Murong Li struck one.
CLANG!
The axe rebounded. His tiger's mouth split open.
"Ice marrow manifestation?!" the elder screamed.
"That's a Nascent Soul–tier art!"
Murong Li finally panicked.
"Kill the flutist!"
Three black-robed cultivators lunged.
They entered the ice field—
And the "dead matter" moved.
The spikes danced. One pierced a man's shoulder clean through. His blood froze before it could spill.
"How is this possible?!" Murong Li snarled. "He's only Qi Refining—"
Jiang Muchen opened his eyes.
There was no white in them.
Only endless, abyssal violet.
The flute cried—
A dragon's roar.
All ice spikes shattered into mist.
The blue fog spread.
Protective energies dissolved like paper.
"Ice Soul Frost Poison—RETREAT!" Murong Li howled.
Too late.
Frost climbed his skin. His movements slowed. One weaker cultivator froze into an ice statue, terror locked on his face.
Murong Li smashed through the wall and fled with five survivors.
Silence returned.
Jiang Muchen lowered the flute and swayed.
Shen Lingshuang caught him.
His body was ice-cold.
"It… worked," he whispered.
Murong Yuan opened his eyes.
Clear. Bright. Free of corruption.
"Xueli," he said softly. "Your father is fine."
Then he looked at Jiang Muchen.
"What you did today transcends any 'transaction.'
The Frostbound Clan owes you a life—and a karmic debt."
Jiang Muchen tried to smile.
He coughed black blood.
The array disk shattered.
The world faded.
As darkness claimed him, one thought lingered—
Blood-Ignition Pills are forbidden. Where did Murong Li get them?
And—
That final resonance…
Someone, far away, had been listening.