Lu Chen knew that taking the dark seed into his own body would only turn him into a pawn in Fang Yuan's game. To truly save her, he had to destroy the Patriarch's influence at its root, even if it meant sacrificing his own progress.
Lu Chen dropped to one knee, the pressure of the Rank 9 gaze threatening to crush his internal organs. He ignored the blood trickling from his nose and focused everything on his right index finger.
"You think your shadow can possess everything?" Lu Chen whispered, his voice jagged. "Today, I'll show you the power of the Smallest Point."
He began to reverse the flow of his Qi. Instead of expanding it for defense, he compressed his entire Rank 4 cultivation into a single, microscopic point at the tip of his finger. This was the "Heavenly Needle" technique. The air around his hand began to scream as the density reached a critical level, mimicking the very essence of Fang Yuan's World-Breaker power, but on a miniature scale.
With a roar of defiance, Lu Chen lunged forward.
His finger struck the obsidian seed hovering above Yue Xiao. For a heartbeat, time seemed to stop. The dark, Rank 9 seed resisted, its abyssal energy trying to swallow Lu Chen's soul. But the "Needle" was sharper. It pierced the dark exterior, striking the core of Fang Yuan's "Blessing."
CRACK.
The seed shattered. A shockwave of dark energy exploded outward, throwing Lu Chen back across the ice. His finger turned black from the backlash, and he felt his cultivation base shudder and drop—from the peak of Rank 4 down to the middle of Rank 3.
The dark gaze of the Patriarch vanished from the mountain, replaced by the pure, cold aura of the Frost Pillars. Without the corruption, the Nine Frosts finally began to harmonize with Yue Xiao's body.
She let out a soft gasp, her eyes fluttering open—eyes that were now a piercing, crystalline blue. The silver in her hair stabilized, glowing with a divine light. She descended from the air, landing softly in front of the collapsed Lu Chen.
"Who... who are you?" she whispered, her voice like the chiming of ice bells. She didn't recognize him yet, but her soul felt a strange, ancient pull toward the broken man at her feet.
Lu Chen coughed up a shard of ice-cold blood, a weak but triumphant smile on his face. "Just... a friend... from a nightmare you'll never have to see."