The golden rings turned in complete silence, intersecting at angles that made my eyes ache. A mechanical eye the size of a city, scanning the mountain.
I exhaled. My breath plumed white.
Wait. It was mid-summer.
"Old Geezer," I whispered, watching my breath drift into the ruined courtyard. "Does a monitoring formation usually freeze the air?"
The tectonic rumble in my skull returned. The grinding weight was gone, replaced by a sharp, vibrating buzz. "The Heavenly Dao does not alter local weather. That is coming from your front gate."
I looked away from the sky.
The splintered timber of the ruined main gate was turning stark white. Frost chewed into the wood, crawling up the grain like a living fungus. The air in my lungs turned to shards of glass. The summer heat simply died.
A woman walked through the ruins of the gate.
She was dressed in immaculate white. I noticed the frost clinging to her eyelashes first—it wasn't melting. Then the eyes underneath, pale and washed-out, looking at the courtyard like the dirt offended her.
Four disciples followed her, wearing the same white robes. They were shaking hard enough to rattle their sword hilts. The weather had nothing to do with it. They kept a rigid six-foot distance. If she slowed her pace by a fraction, they hitched their steps to avoid closing the gap.
Zhou Bao, who had just managed to scrape himself off the dirt after the cauldron incident, took one look at her.
He made a noise like a stepped-on toy. His eyes rolled up. He tipped backward and hit the stone bench, dead to the world.
I didn't blame him. My own knees wanted to join him.
My spine snapped straight without my permission. My hands folded neatly behind my back, hiding the dried blood on my thumb.
The woman stopped in the center of the courtyard. The dead moss under her boots shattered like glass.
"Wei Liang," she said.
Her voice didn't echo. It simply froze the air it passed through.
The dead man's memories hit the back of my skull. Shen Yuebing. Glacier Sect. Five hundred spirit stones borrowed two years ago against the outer territories. The debt was due.
She was here to collect. I didn't have five stones to give her, let alone five hundred.
"Honored Guest," I said. My voice carried across the frost, slow and heavy, betraying none of the panic chewing at my stomach. "Please, come in."
I didn't invite her to the main hall. The council chairs were still covered in a century of dust. Instead, I gestured to the cracked stone table sitting under the dead willow tree in the courtyard.
She walked over and sat. The stone frosted over instantly where her robes touched it. The four disciples remained standing by the gate, rigidly at attention, staring straight ahead.
"I will fetch tea," I said.
I walked to the kitchen. My pulse was thumping so hard in my throat I could barely swallow. I grabbed the rusted iron kettle from the hearth. I picked up the chipped ceramic cup containing the murky, swamp-water brew I had made earlier that morning. The one that tasted like hot copper and burnt pine needles.
"You are not going to serve her that," Old Geezer said.
"I have literally nothing else," I muttered, grabbing a second chipped cup.
I carried the kettle and the cups back out to the courtyard. The air was getting thicker. Breathing actually hurt my lungs.
I set a cup in front of her. I poured the purple-brown liquid. It steamed violently against the freezing air, the smell of burnt weeds entirely failing to mask itself.
I sat across from her. I didn't say anything. I just waited.
Shen Yuebing looked at the cup. She looked at me.
She reached out. Long, pale fingers. She pinched the ceramic rim with two pale fingers, lifting it slowly.
She took a sip.
She froze.
Her shoulders physically locked. The air around us plummeted another five degrees. A thin layer of ice instantly formed over the surface of the tea in my own cup.
Dead silence. Her left eye twitched. That's it. She's going to freeze my spine. I'm going to die over over-steeped leaves.
I didn't blink. I forced the muscles around my mouth to stay completely dead.
"It's an old recipe," I said, my voice heavy and smooth. "The previous occupants favored it."
Her pale blue eyes dug into my skull. She stared at me for ten long seconds, waiting for me to break. I just looked back over the rim of my cup.
She lowered the cup. She looked at the murky liquid.
Then, she lifted it again. She took a second sip.
By the gate, the four disciples collectively inhaled. One of the disciples flinched, his heel scraping backward in the dirt.
Shen Yuebing set the cup down precisely in the center of the stone table. The ceramic made a sharp, definitive clack.
"I will extend the debt repayment deadline," she said. Her voice was still glacial, but the frost creeping across the stone table stopped advancing. "By three months."
I nodded once. Slowly. "Acceptable."
She stood up. The frost on the table stopped spreading. She turned and walked back toward the shattered gates. She didn't look back. The four disciples scrambled to follow her, their faces masks of pure, unadulterated shock.
I stayed seated. I didn't move until they were entirely out of sight, down the mountain path.
A blue rectangle snapped into existence over my field of vision.
[ SOUL RESONANCE DETECTED — SHEN YUEBING ]
[ STAGE 0.3 INITIATED ]
[ HEAVEN DETECTION LEVEL: MINOR — TIER 1 MONITORING ACTIVE ]
A pause in my skull. Then, Old Geezer spoke. The tectonic rumble was gone, replaced by a quiet, absolute focus.
"Hmm."
"Hmm what?" I whispered, my hands finally starting to shake under the table.
"Nothing," he said. "Just... hmm."
A groan came from the stone bench across the courtyard.
Zhou Bao peeled himself off the freezing granite. He scrubbed his face with both hands, his head snapping left and right.
"Master," he said. I could hear his teeth clacking together. "Are we dead?"
"No," I said, letting out a breath that came out ragged. "We have three months."
Zhou Bao staggered toward the gate, staring down the mountain path. He was rubbing his arms, trying to get warmth back into his fat.
He stopped. He looked down at the dirt just past the shattered timber.
"Master," he said, his voice dropping an octave.
"What."
"I saw five people leave," Zhou Bao said slowly. "The Glacier lady. And her four followers."
"Yes."
"Then why..." Zhou Bao pointed a trembling finger at the entryway frost. He swallowed hard. "Why are there six sets of footprints?"
I stood up. My knees popped. I walked to the gate and looked down.
Five sets of boots had broken the frost, walking in a neat, retreating formation.
A sixth set of footprints—light, barely disturbing the ice, completely silent—trailed right beside them. They didn't start at the gate. They started from the shadow of the main hall's pillars.
I stared at the extra tracks. The frost on the table was melting, but the hair on the back of my neck stayed standing at attention.
"Clean the courtyard, Zhou Bao," I said, turning around and walking back inside.
I didn't look at the shadows.