Chapter 174: The Snow Empress's Clothing Tears
"Why didn't you say so earlier?"
Qian Xunji raised his arm with a snap, and a whip of golden light more than a hundred meters long flew out as he cracked it. Wherever the golden light whip passed, the people of Slaughter Town were shredded, flesh and bone spraying in every direction, spattering those nearby and landing mostly on the ground.
Within the span of a single breath, dozens of the Slaughter Town denizens were annihilated. The remainder scattered at top speed, fleeing with cries that sounded like wailing ghosts.
Qian Xunji had no intention of chasing them down. He stepped lightly off the town gate and drifted in front of the Snow Empress, eyeing her filthy, tattered clothes—dark with grime—that barely covered her body. They were ragged and dirty, yet they still couldn't hide her peerless beauty. Her skin remained as fair as jade, untouched by the dust of the world.
"Why go to such trouble? You could have stayed in my Spirit Hall as a guest and avoided this suffering. This outfit—did you steal it off some villager? And you dared raise your hand against ordinary folk. Snow Empress, you've sunk pretty low."
The Snow Empress ground her teeth in fury but was powerless to respond. "Restore my cultivation! I'll give you the soul core cultivation method!"
"That won't work. What if you recover and then go back on your word and escape?"
She shouted in anger, "Don't compare me to you despicable humans! We soul beasts always honor our promises!"
"Who knows whether that's true? You even assaulted a defenseless, weak human just to snatch her clothes. Right now, there's nothing you wouldn't do."
Qian Xunji seized the Snow Empress by the collar behind her neck, just as he had when first bringing her to Spirit Hall, and shot into the air, heading back there.
Suddenly came the sound of fabric tearing: the Snow Empress's top ripped apart. That simple villager's outfit wasn't nearly as sturdy as the garments she formed herself. The moment Qian Xunji sped up, the cloth tore to pieces.
Rip, rip, rip!
In a flurry of tears, Qian Xunji was left clutching half a ruined garment. The Snow Empress fell downward, twisting in midair. She instinctively cried out, now fully bared from the waist up. Her skin was whiter than snow, a perfect jade-like radiance, with a slender waist that was just right in every aspect. Her proud curves—more ample than even Ah Yin's—gleamed like translucent crystals, every part of her body exposed to the air.
In a flash, Qian Xunji thrust out his hand to catch her by that slim waist, his palm pressing against the cool, smooth skin that felt astonishingly good, while something on his chest was also squeezed, giving him a strange sort of pleasure. If only her body were warmer, he mused.
Finding herself nude and pressed tight to Qian Xunji's chest, the Snow Empress snapped back to her senses, collapsing entirely into an irrational fit, screaming and flailing wildly. She swung her fists, but to no effect. She was too weak right now, so her blows had no power at all. Instead, her chest jiggled up and down with each motion, a sight that could easily draw blood from an onlooker's nose. Were the Snow Empress at her full strength, she would have self-destructed on the spot to kill them both.
Qian Xunji, caught off guard by the sudden turn of events, worried that any more toying with her might really drive her to suicidal ends once they returned to Spirit Hall—potentially freezing the entire place into a wasteland of ice shards.
"Fine, all right—I'll restore your power. Hand over the soul core cultivation method first. I can restore you, and I can seal you again, just like my father did."
He revealed eight black spirit rings and one red—nine in total. Resting his hand on the Snow Empress's back, she reclaimed a hint of composure, crossing her arms over her chest to hide those pale, snowy mounds brimming with allure.
Soon, a mass of energy that could purify all things glimmered gold and left her body, flowing into Qian Xunji. This was the Angel God power Qian Daoliu had poured into her. Compared to a few months ago, it had already diminished by forty percent.
When the angelic power was completely withdrawn by Qian Xunji, the Snow Empress felt her own strength slowly returning. Spirit power once again coursed through her, converting the ambient spiritual energy into ice energy. The first thing she did was form a new long dress around herself from that bit of regained ice energy. The filthy trousers she'd worn were shattered by her spirit power, reduced to scraps drifting down from beneath her long skirt.
After meditating for several hours, the Snow Empress had finally restored her peak condition, regaining that lofty presence of the Extreme North's ruler, who disdained all. Still, she did not break her word, explaining to Qian Xunji how one forms a soul core.
"It's not difficult to form the first soul core—your spirit power control must be formidable, and you also need a strong spiritual force to gather your spirit power in the upper dantian, compressing it until it becomes solid. Even then, you can't be sure it's formed a soul core until it strengthens your spirit power circulation, boosts your energy flow and recovery. Only then do you know your soul core is successfully formed."
"So the first soul core is in the upper dantian. That means there's also a lower dantian, a second soul core, or maybe a middle, then lower, then upper—altogether three soul cores?"
She scoffed. "Keep dreaming. A third soul core? Nobody's even tried. Just forming the second one is so much harder than the first that they can't be compared."
"You must have tried forming a second yourself, so you've experienced its backlash?"
The Snow Empress didn't answer. She'd recovered from those earlier injuries long ago, but she dared not even imagine the backlash from failing to fuse yin and yang for twin soul cores. When her seven-hundred-thousand-year tribulation arrived, she'd most likely perish.
"My Spirit Hall has a treasured site called the Ice-Fire Yin-Yang Well, overflowing with massive ice energy so pure it might even match yours. If you fail at forming your second soul core, you can use that energy there to heal. But as payment, after you succeed, you must inform Spirit Hall."
"Such a place actually exists?" The Snow Empress's bright eyes narrowed. "Another scheme from you humans? Trying to trap me in some ploy? Qian Xunji, I won't fall for it!"
"I have no desire to waste that much time. Had I intended such a thing, I wouldn't have let you regain your full strength. Also, that place is in the Sunset Forest, near the Heaven Dou Empire's capital. You must have passed by it once yourself."
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