The Snow Sprite Lord threw Cheng Wenming to the ground. It did not devour him immediately. Instead, it opened its mouth and spat out a small flag, which floated out from its mouth and was caught by its giant hand. It formed a hand seal, and with its fingers like a sword, it first wiped the small flag. Its eyes were tightly closed, and it chanted. The small flag immediately floated up from its hand, slowly hovering in the air, unfurling without any wind. With a "pulala" sound of the flag's surface shaking, as the Snow Sprite Lord's incantation was uttered, the small flag began to rotate in place in the air. And the speed of rotation became faster and faster. In the end, one purple light after another, as if thrown out by the rotating small flag, shot from the surface of the flag towards the surroundings of the cave.
This cave residence of his was seventy zhang in size. Although the furnishings inside were not very luxurious, and there was not a speck of snow on the walls, it was a sparkling and translucent world, like a crystal palace. At the back of the cave wall was a huge ice throne. On the wide back of the ice throne was carved an ice phoenix that was about to spread its wings and fly. The ice phoenix was carved so vividly that its feathers were like jade and crystal, and its pair of phoenix eyes were sharp with a murderous aura.
The small flag flew and spun in the air, and one purple light after another was thrown out and hit the surrounding walls. After a full half a tea's time, the sound of the Snow Sprite Lord's incantation finally slowly stopped. Then the Snow Sprite Lord opened its mouth again and sucked, and the small flag was once again swallowed into its belly.
The Snow Sprite Lord did not immediately open its eyes. It just stood where it was and released its Divine Sense to sense the outside world. After another quarter of an hour, it finally opened its eyes and nodded in satisfaction.
He had obtained this set of formations by chance many years ago. It had belonged to an extremely powerful Pseudo-Core cultivator, who had once resisted the combined attack of the four Snow Sprite Lords in this Melting Cave with his own strength. Among those four, there was also a high-tier grade-two Snow Sprite Lord, which was equivalent to a Pseudo-Core realm cultivator. Normally, in the same realm, a demonic beast's combat power was much stronger than a cultivator's, yet that cultivator had been able to fight one against four.
At that time, the current Snow Sprite Lord was just a small Snow Sprite. He could only watch the earth-shattering battle in the center from a distance. Even now, whenever he thought of what happened back then, he would tremble with fear. He didn't know why that human cultivator was different from the ones he had seen before. The feeling he gave him was that he was so powerful that it made one lose the will to resist.
That cultivator, while fighting against four Snow Sprite Lords, still managed to kill all four of them one by one, killing them until the demonic beasts in this Melting Cave fled one after another. It was not until three hundred years later that a new Snow Sprite Lord was born. And that cultivator was also seriously injured as a result. After finding a hidden place to heal, he still passed away due to his serious injuries. Even long after he had passed away, no demonic beast dared to approach his body. That place even became a forbidden area in this Melting Cave. All the demonic beasts avoided it at all costs. And in the hundreds of years after that, any cultivator who entered this Melting Cave again, without too many demonic beasts blocking them, would pass through this Melting Cave very quickly, and no one discovered the cultivator who had long since fallen.
It was not until decades later that a small Snow Sprite felt that because there was no powerful Snow Sprite Lord to lead them, they could not stop and devour cultivators, and their cultivation growth was abnormally slow. So it mustered up its courage and slowly approached the side of the cultivator who had been sitting in meditation for a long time. In the end, it got his storage bag. After that, with the help of many medicinal pills in the storage bag, he became stronger and stronger, starting from devouring his own kind, to finally waiting for opportunities to stop and kill cultivators who passed by here. In the end, he became the first Snow Sprite Lord here after three hundred years, which was him now.
When he became a Snow Sprite Lord, his intelligence was greatly opened. After slowly studying the storage bag of the cultivator who had terrified him back then, he discovered that the cultivator back then was actually a Pseudo-Core realm grandmaster of array formation. And the reason he was able to fight one against four back then was that his array formation realm had reached the level of "formations manifesting with every art." He had long since condensed the array formation into himself. His entire body could be used as an array to fight the enemy. When his art was unleashed, the array would appear, instantly killing the enemy. To think that a formation master's every move was an array formation, then facing four Snow Sprite Lords at the same time, he could naturally separate them and defeat them one by one.
After this Snow Sprite Lord found this small flag, as his intelligence opened up, he finally slowly understood the incantation carved on one of the Jade Slips, which was the incantation to control this small flag. And if he was not mistaken, this small flag was the most powerful defense and enemy-trapping method of this cultivator back then. Just this small flag alone had trapped that high-tier grade-two Snow Sprite Lord, which allowed the cultivator to have time to deal with the remaining three Snow Sprite Lords.
This formation was called the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation." It was refined from the soul of a rare Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. Not only was its defense so strong that it made one feel powerless, but when it trapped an enemy, its attack could also shake heaven and earth. This formation was refined from ten Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants. It was a gift from the fallen cultivator's master. It was said to have been passed down through the generations of that sect for a long time.
After finally confirming this small flag, this Snow Sprite Lord was overjoyed. This undoubtedly increased his strength severalfold. In the following years, he relied on this formation to kill many cultivators, and his strength grew rapidly. He also became the strongest Snow Sprite Lord in this Melting Cave, a mid-tier grade-two demonic beast. It was just that he was not in a hurry to expand his territory. He knew that in these hundreds of years, two more Snow Sprite Lords had appeared here. He did not touch those two Snow Sprite Lords. He wanted to raise them, waiting until he had advanced to the high-tier of the second grade. Then he could capture both Snow Sprite Lords at once, devour their demonic cores, and break through to the Snow Sprite King in one fell swoop. At that time, the sea would be vast for the fish to leap, and the sky high for the birds to fly. He would no longer be forever trapped in this damned Melting Cave.
So today, when faced with a mysterious cultivator, although this Snow Sprite Lord was frightened, he did not leave immediately. That was because he had the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" in hand. As long as it was not a Golden Core cultivator who came, he was confident that that person could not cause him any harm at all. But he did not use this trump card when he was dealing with Cheng Wenming's group of three later, to keep a card up his sleeve. And now that he was in his cave residence, although he had the protection of a formation, on this matter of life, death, and advancement, he did not dare to be careless in the slightest. So he added the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" inside the cave residence's formation.
Only then did the Snow Sprite Lord nod in satisfaction. He believed that even if the other two Snow Sprite Lords knew that he was about to devour a cultivator and had entered a weakened state, let alone breaking through his cave residence, he estimated that those two Snow Sprite Lords would not even be able to find his cave residence. The formation restriction outside his current cave residence was also extremely strong. It was another set of defensive illusion formations from that cultivator's storage bag. Although it was not as good as the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation," it was also a rare item. Especially for the demonic beasts here, they had no idea what a formation was, let alone what a cave residence transformed by an illusion would look like. What he had to guard against now was that mysterious cultivator. Although he was not afraid before, after he entered his weakened state, he would be powerless to summon the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" again.
Looking at Cheng Wenming on the ground, the Snow Sprite Lord took a step and, as if crossing time, instantly arrived on the huge ice throne. After a slight adjustment of his somewhat comical, huge body, he sat cross-legged on the ice throne. He made a grabbing motion towards Cheng Wenming on the ground in the distance. Cheng Wenming's stout body, as if weightless, was grabbed by him from a distance and then placed flat on the empty space on the ice throne in front of his knees.
A pair of ethereal, glowing eyes on the Snow Sprite Lord now flickered with a greedy light. As long as he devoured this cultivator, then he would have hope of entering the high-tier of the second grade. In all these years, cultivators had entered the Melting Cave, but there were not many fire-type cultivators. The main reason was that there were too many Melting Caves outside the long wall of ice and snow. For a cultivator to happen to choose this particular Melting Cave passage in several decades was considered good luck.
After calming his mood for a while, the ethereal glow in the Snow Sprite Lord's eyes slowly faded. Only then did he slowly raise his hands and then directly cover the dantian of the unconscious Cheng Wenming. The Snow Sprite's arms were very long, and this posture was very easy for them to achieve.
The moment the Snow Sprite Lord's arms were placed on Cheng Wenming's dantian, his arms instantly burned with a raging blue flame, which then enveloped his palms. But under these blue flames, Cheng Wenming's clothes showed no sign of burning. Instead, a thick layer of frost quickly condensed. Then Cheng Wenming's stout body trembled violently, as if about to bounce off the ice throne, but was forcefully pressed down again by the Snow Sprite Lord.
The unconscious Cheng Wenming's eyes suddenly opened wide, his entire eyeballs seeming to want to burst from their sockets. Then, as his face twisted, his mouth opened wide enough to fit a fist, as if he were screaming in pain, but not a single sound came out. With his body unable to move, he tried to twist his head to lessen his pain, but it was extremely difficult to even move a sliver. In the end, it could only be described as a slight "scrape." And because he was using too much force, the hair and scalp on the back of his head had been stretched and scraped off bit by bit. Gushes of blood flowed from the back of his head onto the ice throne. And what was strange was that the moment the blood flowed onto the ice throne, it disappeared without a trace in less than a breath, leaving only a large, disgusting patch of scalp with hair on it. The bloodstains on it were also completely gone. In the sparkling and translucent cave, it was like a black and white piece of filthy ice slag.
The Snow Sprite Lord's cold eyes showed not a shred of pity for all of Cheng Wenming's reactions. On the contrary, the ethereal blue flame on his arms flared up by several degrees. This caused Cheng Wenming's originally pressed-down body to tremble slightly and continuously in a fast rhythm, like a patient suffering from malaria.
Time passed just like that. In the ice cave, apart from the slight sound of Cheng Wenming's body hitting the ice throne and the tooth-chilling "shashasha" sound of his scalp and bones scraping on the ice throne, which could be heard at the beginning, later, no other sound could be heard in the room.
After another half an hour, a heavy exhalation was heard. The Snow Sprite Lord's long arms slowly withdrew from Cheng Wenming's lower abdomen. The ethereal blue flame on his arms was slowly fading. And in front of him was left a Cheng Wenming with half of the back of his head ground away, blood flowing from his eyes, and his mouth wide open. At this time, apart from his nauseating appearance, his entire body was deformed. He was no longer stout. Only a thin layer of skin was tightly wrapped around his skeleton. His robe lay loosely on the ice throne. Only from some protruding parts of the robe could one see that it was the joints supporting the clothes. At this time, he was no different from a dried corpse.