Chapter 6: The Dance of Extremes
The night inside the hut was silent, save for the low, rhythmic whistle of the wind through the bamboo. Ye Jun sat on the floor, the Frost-Fire Manual open on his lap. The pages were made of thin, translucent jade, cold to the touch, yet the ink seemed to pulse with a faint, reddish warmth.
This was a manual that shouldn't exist. Traditional cultivation taught that Fire and Ice were mortal enemies; to mix them was to invite one's own meridians to shatter like glass under thermal shock. But as Ye Jun read the opening lines, he realized why Su Yan had given it to him.
"Balance is not the absence of conflict, but the mastery of it. To hold the sun in one hand and the moon in the other is to hold the key to the Origin."
Ye Jun closed his eyes and gripped the rusted cauldron. "Take me in," he whispered.
Inside the Second Chamber's Silver Pavilion, time slowed to a crawl. The ten-to-one ratio meant he had an entire night of the world's time to become something more than a Level 4 disciple.
He sat in the center of the silver tiles and began the first movement of the manual. He drew the biting, ambient frost of Su Yan's peak into his left arm, while simultaneously pulling the golden heat of the Chaos Spark into his right.
The result was agony.
His left arm felt as though it were being crystallized, the blood turning to shards of ice, while his right arm felt like it was being dipped into molten bronze. His breath came in ragged, steaming gasps. His vision blurred as the two opposing forces met in his chest, right at the center of his heart.
"Do not fight them," the cauldron's voice boomed, sensing his distress. "You are the vessel. You are the Alchemist. Refine the conflict!"
Ye Jun roared, his voice echoing through the violet sky of the inner world. He stopped trying to keep the energies separate. Instead, he forced them to spin. He used the Chaos Spark as a central axis, whirling the frost and the fire around it like a celestial hurricane.
Slowly, the screaming pain began to dull into a numbing, electric vibration. The blue and gold didn't merge into a single color; they became a braid—a double-helix of power that felt denser and more potent than anything he had ever felt.
Boom.
A shockwave of energy erupted from his body, cracking the silver tiles of the pavilion. Ye Jun's eyes snapped open, glowing with a dual light—one eye gold, the other a piercing, glacial blue.
He had reached the Fifth Level of Qi Condensation. But it wasn't a standard breakthrough. His Qi was now "Frost-Fire Essence," a mutated energy that could freeze a man's blood while simultaneously scorching his skin.
He spent the remaining "days" of his dilated time practicing with this new power. He found that he could now manipulate the growth of his herbs in the First Chamber with even greater precision. The Bone-Strengthening Grass he had planted was already waist-high, glowing with a vibrant, healthy light. He harvested it and, using the cauldron, refined a batch of Marrow-Cleansing Pellets.
When he finally stepped out of the cauldron and back into his hut, he felt a strange sense of foreboding. The sun hadn't yet risen, but the air felt heavy.
He stepped out into the snow, his senses expanded to a terrifying degree. He could hear the heartbeat of a squirrel three hundred yards away. And he could hear the muffled footsteps of three men moving through the bamboo grove.
They weren't wearing the robes of the Azure Mist Sect. They were clad in black, light-absorbing leather, their faces masked. These were the Shadow Hounds—the private assassins of the Law Hall, the men Han Feng's father used to make "problems" disappear.
"You should have died in the trench, boy," a voice whispered from the darkness.
A black-steel bolt shot from a crossbow, aimed directly at Ye Jun's throat.
In the past, Ye Jun would have been dead before he heard the string snap. Now, the world seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the bolt spinning through the air, trailing a faint line of poison.
He didn't dodge. He reached out with two fingers and caught the bolt an inch from his neck.
The metal hissed as the Frost-Fire Qi in his fingers instantly froze the poison and then melted the steel tip into a useless blob of slag.
The three assassins emerged from the shadows, their eyes wide with shock. They were all at the Seventh Level of Qi Condensation—far above what Ye Jun was supposed to be.
"Seventh Level," Ye Jun said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous tone. "Han Feng's father really wants me gone. It's a pity he sent such slow messengers."
"Kill him!" the leader hissed, drawing a jagged dhal.
The three lunged at once, their blades coated in a dark, corrosive Qi. They moved with the precision of trained killers, cutting off every avenue of escape.
Ye Jun didn't move until they were a foot away. Then, he slammed his palms together.
"Frost-Fire Burst!"
A wave of blue and gold energy exploded from his body. The snow around him was instantly vaporized, creating a blinding cloud of steam. The two assassins on his flanks were sent flying, their leather armor freezing solid before shattering like glass, their skin beneath covered in blistering burns.
The leader, more experienced, managed to tuck into a roll, but Ye Jun was already on him.
He grabbed the man by the throat, hoisting him off the ground. The assassin clawed at Ye Jun's arm, but it felt like grabbing a pillar of heated iron.
"Who sent you?" Ye Jun asked, his eyes glowing in the dark.
"Go... to hell..." the man managed to choke out.
"Wrong answer," Ye Jun whispered.
He didn't kill the man. Instead, he funneled a needle-thin strand of his new Qi into the man's meridians. The assassin screamed—a high, thin sound that didn't belong to a human. He could feel his internal organs freezing while his veins felt like they were filled with boiling oil.
"I'll ask one more time," Ye Jun said. "And if you lie, I'll leave the fire in your heart and the ice in your brain, and let you spend the next week deciding which one hurts more."
Five minutes later, the assassin was a sobbing mess on the ground, spilling every secret of the Law Hall's shadow operations.
Ye Jun stood over him, looking toward the main peaks of the sect. The game had changed. He wasn't just defending himself anymore. He had the location of the Law Hall's secret treasury and the names of the corrupt elders who took Han Feng's father's gold.
"The Law Hall thinks they are the hunters," Ye Jun said, looking at the rusted cauldron tucked in his belt. "They don't realize I have a Nine-Chambered world that needs more 'resources' to grow."
He turned back toward Su Yan's residence. He needed to tell her. But more than that, he needed to start refining the next level of pills. To take down the Law Hall, he needed to reach the Foundation Establishment stage, and he needed to do it before the week was out.