Chapter 13: The Frozen Blood
CRACK.
The sound was sharper than a thunderclap.
The ambient moisture in the air directly above the city walls flash-froze in a fraction of a millisecond. A massive, breathtakingly beautiful lotus flower made of pure, indestructible blue ice bloomed across the sky, forming a domed shield over Ironwood City.
The ten thousand flaming arrows struck the ice lotus.
There was no explosion. There was no fire. The moment the fiery tips touched the petals of the Absolute Zero Lotus, the flames were instantly extinguished, and the arrows shattered into harmless dust, completely drained of their kinetic energy.
The battlefield plunged into a dead, horrifying silence.
The archers stared at their empty bows. Xiao Tian’s jaw literally dropped, his eyes twitching in sheer disbelief.
"My turn," I whispered.
I stood up, pushing off the battlements. I floated into the air, passing right through the center of the ice lotus. My golden gown billowed around me as I hovered over the thirty-thousand-strong army. The golden runes on my skin ignited into a blinding, divine light.
"You brought thirty thousand men to my doorstep," I announced, my voice echoing with the layered resonance of the Dragon Qi. "But you forgot one crucial detail, little prince. Your men are standing on my earth."
I raised both hands high above my head and then violently slammed them downward.
BOOM!
The wasteland violently rebelled. For miles in every direction, the dry, cracked earth turned into a torrential, churning swamp of viscous mud. The heavy, crimson-black armor of the Blood Cavalry—their greatest asset—suddenly became their death sentence.
"What is happening?!" a commander screamed as his horse sank up to its chest in the bubbling mire.
"Move! Retreat!"
But there was no retreat. Beneath the mud, glowing emerald roots thicker than tree trunks surged upward like sea serpents. They wrapped around the legs of the demonic horses, dragging them under. They coiled around the waists of the elite soldiers, crushing their armor like tin cans before pulling them deep into the suffocating earth.
Screams of terror filled the night air. The invincible Blood Cavalry, the pride of the Usurper's empire, was being swallowed alive by the very ground they sought to conquer.
Xiao Tian’s chariot was sinking rapidly. His rhino-beasts roared in panic, thrashing in the mud.
"No! No! I am the Crown Prince! I am the Son of Heaven!" Xiao Tian shrieked, his pristine golden armor splattered with foul-smelling mud. He channeled his dark blood-art, a sickly red aura flaring around his body as he tried to leap to safety.
"Sit down," I commanded.
I pointed a single finger at him. A massive hand formed entirely of hardened, razor-sharp ice erupted from the swamp. It swatted Xiao Tian out of the air like a bothersome fly.
SMASH!
The Crown Prince plummeted back to the earth, crashing face-first into the filthy, bubbling mud.
[DING! Utter Annihilation of the Enemy Force! Humiliation Protocol Maximized! +150,000 Shock Points!] [Host has reached God-Tier Invincibility in the current region!]
I slowly descended, my bare feet touching down on a smooth, flat pillar of ice that rose perfectly from the mud to keep my dress clean. Around me, thirty thousand elite soldiers were pinned, buried to their necks, completely immobilized and terrified out of their minds.
I walked over to the crater where Xiao Tian lay groaning.
He spat out a mouthful of mud and blood, trying to push himself up on his hands and knees. His golden crown had fallen off, sinking into the muck.
"You..." Xiao Tian gasped, looking up at me with eyes filled with pure, unadulterated terror. The arrogant predator had finally realized he was nothing but prey. "You can't kill me... My father... the Emperor... he has the ancestral dragon seal..."
I smiled, a cold, merciless curve of my lips.
"I don't need to kill you yet, brother," I said smoothly. "But I do have a debt to collect. Ye Chen! Come down here!"
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