The spark was weak. A tiny, pathetic fleck of orange in a world of crushing black and blue.
Ji Han's hands were numb blocks of meat. He struck the flint against the Black Iron striker again. Click.
Nothing. The cold was a physical weight, pressing the life out of the air itself. Beside him, the pile of furs that was Lin Qinghe had stopped shivering. That was bad. Shivering was the body fighting; silence was the body surrendering.
"Come on," Ji Han hissed through chattering teeth. "Don't go out. Don't die."
He grabbed a handful of the dried Azure Grass root shavings—the finest, most flammable tinder they had. He placed it directly under the striker.
He didn't just strike. He channeled his Qi. The grey, heavy energy in his core—now laced with the blue chill of the Myriapod—flowed into his hands.
Ignite.
He struck with violent intent.
SNAP.
A shower of sparks, hotter and brighter than normal, landed in the tinder. The dry root fibers caught instantly, curling into a small, frantic flame.
Ji Han cupped his hands around it, protecting it from the lingering drafts. He blew gently. The flame grew, licking at the larger chunks of charcoal.
"Feed," Ji Han commanded.
He piled on the beetle shells. The fire caught the residual oils in the chitin.
WHOOSH.
Green fire roared back to life.
Heat—glorious, painful heat—radiated outward. The frost on the tunnel walls began to weep, turning to water.
Ji Han didn't bask in it. He turned to Lin Qinghe. He pulled the furs away. Her face was pale, her lips blue. He dragged her closer to the fire, propping her up so the warmth hit her chest.
He rubbed her hands, his own rough, calloused palms creating friction.
"Wake up, Empress," he growled. "The war isn't over."
She gasped, a sudden intake of breath as the heat shocked her system. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy.
"The... wind..." she whispered.
"Gone," Ji Han said. "We won. Drink."
He held a cup of warm water (melted snow from the floor) to her lips. She drank, coughing as life returned to her frozen limbs.
"We froze them," she murmured, looking at the roaring fire. A faint smile touched her lips. "Strategist Lin... still has it."
"You still have it," Ji Han agreed, sitting back against the wall. He felt the exhaustion crash into him. "But now we have a new problem."
"Which is?"
"Our basement," Ji Han pointed to the lower shaft, "is a glacier."
An hour later, when the tunnel temperature had stabilized to a livable "cool," Ji Han descended the rope.
He didn't need the moss-light. The hole in the floor glowed with a ghostly, pale blue luminescence.
He landed on the limestone ledge.
The Yin Hollow had been transformed. The condensation on the walls had frozen into diamond-dust frost. The stalactites were encased in ice.
But the centerpiece was the pool.
The water, once black and rippling, was now a solid block of milky-white ice. It hadn't frozen smoothly. Because of the flash-freeze effect of the wind, the surface was rippled, catching the moment of turbulence in suspended animation.
Ji Han stepped off the ledge.
CRUNCH.
His heavy Isopod boots landed on the ice. It held. It felt as solid as the granite above.
He walked forward.
"System scan," he whispered.
He looked down through the ice. It wasn't perfectly clear, but it was translucent enough.
Just a foot below his boots, a Shadow-Swimmer Myriapod was frozen mid-lunge. Its many legs were splayed out, its mandibles open in a silent scream. It looked like a museum exhibit preserved in glass.
He walked further. Another one. And another.
There were dozens of them. A swarm of nightmares, trapped in the moment of their death.
"It's a pantry," Ji Han realized.
They weren't rotting. They were cryogenically preserved. He didn't have to hunt them; he just had to mine them.
He reached the center of the cavern—a place he had never been able to reach when the water was liquid.
Here, the ice was clearer. And deep down, perhaps ten meters below the surface, something was glowing.
It wasn't a beast. It was a structure.
A pillar of black stone rose from the bottom of the pool, ending just a few feet below the current ice level. On top of the pillar sat an object.
It was small, spherical, and pulsed with a slow, rhythmic blue light.
[System Notification: Rare Object Detected.] [Yin Spirit Pearl (Natural Treasure).] [Grade: Earth-Low.] [Effect: Massive Yin Qi concentration. Catalyst for water/ice cultivation.]
Ji Han stared at it through the ice.
"That's what attracted them," he whispered. "That's why this is a spawn point."
The Pearl was radiating the energy that mutated the beasts. It was the battery of the hollow.
Ji Han raised his Frost-Iron War Pick. He judged the depth of the ice. Two meters.
"I can dig that out," he calculated.
But then he paused.
If he removed the Pearl, the Yin Qi concentration might drop. The "freezer" might stop working as efficiently. The meat might rot.
Or... if he absorbed it...
He looked at his hands. Qi Condensation Level 2. He was strong, but his foundation was still grey—mixed.
"Not yet," Ji Han decided. "I'm not ready to swallow a nuclear reactor."
He marked the spot with a scratch of his pick. He turned back to the frozen Myriapods.
"First, I eat the guards," Ji Han said, swinging his pick down onto the ice above the nearest carcass. "Then I take the treasure."
CHIP. CRACK.
The sound of mining returned to the eternal night. But this time, he wasn't mining rock. He was mining power.