Cold shards of rock scraped against Jiang Jiang's cheeks and arms as he all but crawled and rolled his way through the narrow gap the wraith had indicated, half‑blocked by collapsed boulders.
Behind him, the silent yet agonized roar of that spirit surged like a tangible wave, mingling with the Dark Medical Gate pursuers' angry shouts and the sharp hum of their energy weapons. It grew fainter with distance, yet clung to him like a parasite that would never let go.
Beyond the gap was a steep, narrow fissure that sloped downward, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. The air was damp and freezing to the core, droplets condensing on the rock above and dripping onto his neck, each touch slicing cold through to the bone. In the absolute darkness, his Medical Sight gave him just enough vision to pick out the jagged, wet rock walls. His shoulder wound, crushed and scraped in the crawl, had split open again; every breath tugged at it like a fresh tear. The metallic tang of blood mingled with the musty, sulfur‑tinged air of the depths.
None of it mattered. One thought drove him onward—forward! The last moments of the wraith's will had bought him this chance. He couldn't waste it.
The fissure wound endlessly downward. He had no idea how long he'd been crawling—time had no meaning here. When his strength was nearly gone and his mind clouded from cold and blood loss, his Medical Sight caught something that froze him mid‑crawl.
The darkness ahead broke open into a vast, echoing void.
Hauling himself out of the fissure, his foot slipped into empty air and he staggered upright. His flashlight beam swept forward—and words failed him.
A massive underground ice cavern stretched out before him.
The domed ceiling soared out of sight, hung with countless gigantic icicles like an upside‑down forest. The rock walls were buried under ancient ice, crystal‑clear, scattering the flashlight's glow into a kaleidoscope of colors like some frozen palace. The cold bit deeper than the blizzard outside; every breath steamed into long plumes that crystalized instantly. The floor was not stone but iron‑hard permafrost and shattered ice.
Yet the true shock was not the cave's frozen beauty.
In the center stood a massive, irregular wall of black‑glacier ice, ten meters high and several times as wide—like a waterfall frozen mid‑fall. And inside the ice…
His Medical Sight pierced its crystalline depths—
A battlefield lay entombed.
Dozens—hundreds—of warriors in ancient armor: Song dynasty gear, Jurchen styles, and even older tribal garb, all locked in the final moments of combat. Faces twisted in rage, despair, or madness. Broken blades, splintered shields, torn banners, and blackened blood‑flowers were all sealed in this colossal, transparent tomb.
"This… is the end of the 'Trail of Blood and Tears'?" Jiang Jiang muttered, his voice barely a whisper in the dead stillness. The wraith from 1898 had led him here… could this place have seen another slaughter centuries earlier, linked to the Xuan Tian Medical Line?
Suppressing the chill crawling up his spine, he swept the ice wall with his Medical Sight, hunting for any sign of "Han Yuan" or the so‑called seal.
Then the jade pendant on his chest flared hot. In his pack, the brass acupuncture box and the ice‑shard map vibrated in unison.
He pulled out the map. Under his gaze, the nine‑needle sigil marking Han Yuan's entrance now blazed brighter than ever—aimed straight at the ice wall's heart.
Following its guidance, he focused both flashlight and Medical Sight there—
And saw a figure unlike the others.
An elderly man with white hair and beard, clad in a tattered indigo robe, knelt on one knee, back to the outside world. One hand was thrust deep into the frozen ground; the other was raised high, fingers splayed as if holding back some invisible force—or sealing it away. His posture radiated both defiance and finality.
Before that raised palm hovered not empty air, but a massive ice‑crystal needle, shimmering in eerie blue. Its tip aimed directly at his palm's center.
The power pulsing from the needle was cold, vast, and domineering, matching the resonance of Jiang Jiang's box and map—it had to be the "needle" the wraith mentioned, the core of the seal.
And the man… his outline, his robe—it was nearly identical to Lin Nine‑Needles in the frozen pavilion, though older, his stance entirely different.
"Lin… senior Lin?" Jiang Jiang gasped. Could Lin Nine‑Needles not be the only one to flee here?
Then a voice, weak to the point of vanishing, weary beyond words, sounded in his mind—familiar, yet more fragile than ever:
"Boy… you've… finally reached it…" Lin Nine‑Needles' remnant soul.
"Senior! What is this place? Who is that?"
"This is… the Xuan Tian lineage's last refuge… and its cage… The man in the ice… my junior brother, Lin Zhenyue… Three centuries ago… chased here by the Dark Medical Gate's 'Ice‑Soul Death Soldiers'… He used himself as the key… to activate the 'Dark Ice Soul‑Locking Needle'… sealing the enemy, and even some of our own… twisted by sorcery… forever… at the cost of his own life…"
The Dark Medical Gate—again. Lin Zhenyue, sealing both foes and corrupted allies.
"And Han Yuan's entrance?"
"Beneath… the needle… His soul anchors it… but after three hundred years… it wanes… the Death Soldiers' malice gnaws at it… The wraith you met… may have been a miner caught in that leakage…"
Jiang Jiang understood instantly. The wraith's guidance, its plea to "take the pain away"—this was what it meant.
"How do I open it?"
"With a drop of the lineage's blood… to wake my brother's will… Then the Nine‑Sun Needles in resonance… move the Soul‑Locking Needle aside for moments… The entrance will show… But beware… the backlash will be fierce… Go in fast…"
Blood. Resonance. Moving the needle. And backlash.
And behind him—through layers of stone—his Medical Sight sensed it: the pursuers were breaking past the wraith's defense.
"No choice!"
He strode to the ice wall, directly before Lin Zhenyue's palm and the needle. Biting his fingertip, he pressed a drop of blood, hot with faint lineage power, to the frozen surface—
Vmmm!
The entire wall shuddered. His blood became a thin red line, boring through the ice to the elder's palm—
A roar exploded in his mind, not Lin Nine‑Needles' voice but Lin Zhenyue's own, three centuries old, full of pain and defiance. His ice‑bound form stirred; empty eyes flared with a faint but unyielding blue‑green glow, locking onto Jiang Jiang.
Now!
Nine silver needles flashed into his fingers. Channeling every scrap of strength, he arranged them in the sigil from the map—
"Xuan Tian Nine Needles—open!"
They floated before him, needlepoints aimed at the crystal spear.
A resonant chime filled the cavern. Blue light rippled between the two, the great needle trembling, the corpses in the ice creaking as if restless. Malice flooded outward, colder than death; his head pounded, his brow burned.
"Quick!" Lin Nine‑Needles' voice barked one last time, then faded entirely.
The crystal needle, groaning like a glacier, began to lift. Below it, the ice at its base flared blue, melting into a narrow, downward‑sloping tunnel of utter darkness—the entrance to Han Yuan.
And then—
Boom!
The fissure behind him exploded in a storm of debris. Three black‑armored figures burst in, visors down, weapons leveled.
"Target sighted! Han Yuan anomaly confirmed! Execute 'Ice Burial' protocol!"
Blinding beams slashed toward his back. Another tossed a blue‑lit sphere toward the entrance.
No retreat—death. Forward—maybe life.
With a roar, Jiang Jiang hurled himself into the tunnel.
A beam grazed his leg, tearing blood and burnt cloth; the sphere detonated at the entrance in a frozen cyclone, sealing the opening in meters of ice just as he plunged into the dark.
The last thing he felt was cold—soul‑freezing cold—before the sound of the ice sealing shut thundered behind him.