A blizzard of apocalyptic fury raged, billions of white devils shrieking and tearing at the world. Ice pellets, accelerated by hurricane winds to bullet speeds, exploded against millennia-old ice walls in a relentless fusillade, capable of stripping flesh from bone in seconds. The air was thinner than a ghost's whisper, each breath a searing agony like razors scraping lungs. Visibility was zero, swallowed whole by a churning, suffocating shroud of white.
Within the heart of this frozen hell, sheltered barely by the lee of a massive ice cirque, five figures huddled in a shallow depression. Hypothermia clawed at their bones, consciousness fraying under the twin tortures of cold and oxygen starvation. Despair, cold and insidious, gnawed at their last reserves.
Team Leader Li Weiguo bit down until his gums bled, the coppery tang mixing with the frigid air, a desperate anchor to awareness. He uselessly mashed the controls of his dead satellite terminal, its screen a mocking, faint red SOS beacon against the indifferent fury outside. He dared not look towards the cirque's depths, where the blizzard churned most violently. There, within the swirling white, twisted half-transparent phantoms – the Snow Specters – glided silently. Each pass radiated a soul-numbing cold, stealing their life force by degrees.
"Hold on... hold on..." Li rasped, the wind swallowing his words, a futile command to his own failing strength. Beside him, Nepalese guide Sangye huddled, lips blue, eyes glazed, muttering ancient prayers in his mother tongue, begging the mountain spirits for mercy. The others – two Western scientists and a Chinese engineer – were worse, bodies stiffening with severe hypothermia, consciousness fading.
Then—
BOOOOOOM!
A sound deeper than the earth's core punched through the wind's shriek. The entire ice cirque convulsed violently! The ancient ice ceiling overhead groaned like a dying beast, and massive icicles, sharp as swords, rained down, shattering on the ice floor near the huddled figures!
Li snapped his head up, his heart hammering against his ribs. Above, the dense, sky-blotting curtain of snow was violently ripped apart by unimaginable force!
Four blinding lances of light, like spears of divine judgment piercing hell itself, stabbed down through the gap! The deafening roar of engines instantly drowned the storm's howl! A wave of superheated air and slush descended like scalding rain!
The light resolved into four steel behemoths. Three smaller mechs hovered in a protective triangle formation. Their scarred, battle-worn metal frames bore faintly glowing runes along shoulders and legs, cerulean particle streams flowing through joints like cold blood. Heavy rune-enhanced cannons and forearm blades tracked the churning snow mist, radiating lethal intent.
At their center hovered a larger, heavier machine, its lines brutal and functional, painted in arctic camouflage – Thunderclap-Zero. It hung like a king of ice, massive vector thrusters beneath blasting superheated plasma, melting a crater into the glacier below, sending plumes of steam skyward.
Its cockpit canopy was transparent. Inside, strapped into heavy restraints, was a figure Li's disbelieving eyes struggled to comprehend.
A face deathly pale, marred by jagged grey stone creeping up the jawline. Eyes sunken, yet burning with twin pits of shadow-fire. Chu Xuan! The "Doomsday Chief Engineer" demonized by the media, the focus of the world's terrified gaze!
What was he doing here?! Piloting this sci-fi monstrosity?! To save them?!
The sheer absurdity froze Li's thoughts.
The Snow Specters reacted faster.
SCREEEEEEEEE—!!!
A psychic shriek, beyond human hearing but shredding the soul, erupted! The five specters (one had pursued the fallen climber) abandoned their haunting glide. Their forms twisted, expanded violently in the mist! Translucent bodies solidified into figures of purest, living ice, radiating an aura of absolute zero! They became five streaks of frozen lightning, ignoring physics, enveloped in fields that could halt molecular motion, converging from different angles with murderous intent on the hovering Thunderclap-Zero!
They sensed the threat. They sensed the terrifying, higher-order Devouring aura emanating from the human within!
"Targets locked! High-energy Frost Cores detected! Open fire!" The roar of Thunderclap Squadron Leader Lei Zhan (piloting *Thunderclap-1*) exploded over the comms. The three rune-mechs reacted instantly. Shoulder-mounted spirit cannons flared, unleashing three beams of rune-empowered energy, crackling with high-frequency vibrations and arcs of lightning, intercepting three specters!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Beams met phantoms in blinding detonations! Shards of ice and chaotic energy sprayed! Struck specters wailed in agony, their crystalline bodies fracturing, momentum halted! The rune-mech weapons hurt them!
But the specters were faster, and outnumbered! The remaining two ice wraiths ghosted past the energy barrage, closing on Thunderclap-Zero in an eyeblink!
One aimed straight for the cockpit! An ice-talon, shimmering with soul-freezing cold, slashed towards the transparent canopy! The other flowed like liquid frost up the mech's massive leg armor. Where it touched, thick, glowing blue rime instantly encased the alloy, internal power lines shrieking under the strain!
"Chief Chu!" Lei Zhan's cry held despair. His squad was locked in furious combat with the three wounded, enraged specters. No time to aid! Zero was experimental, tough, but against this conceptual cold and physical assault… how long?!
Inside the Cockpit.
The thousand-ant-bite agony of the Nirvana Injector warred with the soul-deep freeze invading from outside. Chu Xuan's body strained against the restraints, skin frosting over only to steam and melt under the internal furnace, the cycle excruciating.
Yet his eyes were pools of glacial calm. The shadow-fire in his pupils locked onto the ice-talon lunging for his face… and the frost wraith eating into the leg armor.
Not fear. Only ravenous hunger.
A low, bloody chuckle escaped Chu Xuan's clenched teeth.
HMMMMMMMM!
Without warning, Thunderclap-Zero's massive, stone-sheathed left arm (synced to his own) erupted in blinding grey-white light! An overwhelming, rule-defying suction exploded from the stone fist!
The ice-talon striking the canopy was first.
RRRRIIIIPP!!!
Like a hot blade through frozen tallow! The limb, forged of absolute cold energy, capable of rending tank armor, melted upon contact with the grey-white radiance! It dissolved into a viscous, freezing blue energy stream, saturated with pure Freezing and Fear, greedily sucked into the stone hand!
AAAAAARRRGGGHHH—!!! An unearthly scream of ultimate agony tore from the specter! Its entire "arm" and a chunk of its torso simply vanished, consumed! The remnant form recoiled violently, its icy visage twisting into unmistakable, primal terror!
Simultaneously!
The specter engulfing the mech's leg, pouring its absolute zero field into the metal giant, froze mid-assault. An irresistible suction, a predator's maw opening from within the very armor it clung to, swallowed it whole!
CRUNCH-SHATTER!
The specter imploded! Its crystalline body fragmented into a torrent of blue frost-energy, far denser than before, surging like a river into the mech – drawn into Chu Xuan's raised, grey-white stone left hand!
"Guh—ARGH!" A guttural roar, equal parts agony and ecstatic consumption, tore from Chu Xuan's throat inside the cockpit! His left arm instantly sheathed in thick, glowing blue rime! The soul-numbing cold clashed violently with the Nirvana Injector's furnace within his meridians! The grey stone curse covering his arm crackled under the pressure, fine spider-webs fissures appearing on the petrified skin!
Devoured! Two Snow Specter Frost Cores, forcibly consumed!
The sight paralyzed everyone.
The surviving climbers forgot cold and fear, staring dumbfounded at the mech-god casually shredding the ice phantoms.
The three specters battling Lei Zhan faltered, their forms trembling violently, radiating sheer panic! They felt their kin extinguished! They felt the apex predator!
Lei Zhan and his pilots were thunderstruck. They knew Chu Xuan was powerful, knew he possessed strange abilities, but witnessing this casual consumption of dimensional energy entities shattered their understanding!
Yet, Chu Xuan's gaze burned beyond the specters.
"Lei Zhan!" His voice, cold and ragged with command, cut through the comms static. "Saturation fire! Coordinates… deep end of the cirque! Blast it open!"
His shadow-fire eyes pierced the swirling snow, locking onto the energy anomaly at the cirque's heart – the convergence point marked by both the Zhenyue sword's corruption and Chen Mo's aberrant energy! The place the slain specter had guarded! The faint, yet magnetically alluring signal of the ice-bound life… lay behind that wall of ancient ice!
Lei Zhan understood instantly. No hesitation.
"Thunderclap Squadron! Maximum firepower! Target: Cirque depths! Saturation barrage! FIRE!"
The three rune-mechs disengaged from the panicked specters. Shoulder, arm, all spirit cannons swiveled, runes blazing with incandescent power! With earth-shattering roars, beams thicker than before, wreathed in violent lightning and shockwaves, lanced down like divine retribution upon the energy anomaly!
KABOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!
The detonation was cataclysmic! Millennia-old ice proved no match for rune-empowered spirit beams, shattering like glass! A crater dozens of meters wide erupted, spewing ice shards and rock like volcanic ejecta! Revealed within the shattered ice face was a dark, yawning entrance to a hidden, ice-sealed cavern!
A breath far older, purer, and infinitely more savage than the specters' erupted from the cavern depths! A glacial exhalation of a primordial beast waking after eons! It engulfed the entire cirque instantly!
CRACKLE! CRACKLE! CRACKLE!
The three Thunderclap mechs were encased in thick glacial armor, movements grinding to near halt! Even their energy beams froze and shattered mid-air! The climbers on the ground felt their blood crystallize!
And through the heart of this maelstrom of cold…
Thunderclap-Zero moved!
Its vector thrusters vomited torrents of cerulean plasma. The massive machine, like a primeval titan defying the current, surged forward against the steel-freezing gale, plunging into the newly opened maw of the ice cavern!
"Chief Chu!" Lei Zhan's cry was swallowed by the glacial fury.
The cavern's interior defied expectations.
Its walls were studded with countless fragments of ice that glowed with an internal, ethereal blue light, like captured starlight, transforming the space into a cathedral of frozen crystal. At its very center stood a massive, natural sarcophagus carved from pristine blue profound ice.
Within the ice, entombed, lay a "man."
He stood nearly three meters tall, his frame colossal even in repose, muscles like corded steel visible beneath the thick ice, radiating explosive power. His skin was a cold, metallic deep blue. His face, hewn as if by a battle-axe, was fiercely handsome, framed by ice-blue hair frozen like captured flame. His eyes were closed in deep slumber. Most striking were the pair of short, curved horns upon his brow, seemingly carved from purest ice crystal!
He wore tattered, archaic armor of dark crimson bone, scarred by countless blades and scorched by energies, deep wounds visible even through the ice. Despite his frozen state, an aura of primordial ferocity, a battle-lust honed over eons, mixed with the world-freezing cold, saturated the cavern, thickening the air to syrup.
"Asura…" Chu Xuan's pupils contracted violently! Inside the cockpit, his system's fractured interface flashed crimson warnings!
[Warning! High-Dimensional Lifeform Energy Signature Detected!]
[Race Match: Asura (Subordinate Battle-Fiend of Nine Hells)… Confidence: 87.3%…]
[Status: Deep Cryo-Stasis (Sealed by Profound Ice Crystal)… Vital Signs: Minimal… Energy Level: Foundation Establishment Peak (Suppressed)… EXTREME DANGER!]
[Warning! Target Harbors High-Activity "Battle-Wraith Qi" & "Nine Hells Death Qi"! Unknown Attraction/Repulsion Effect on Host Devourer's Physique Detected! Recommendation: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION!]
Asura! A battle-fiend of the Nine Hells! A Foundation Establishment Peak powerhouse, sealed and suppressed beneath Everest! Even capped at Qi Condensation levels, the sheer pressure of his life force dwarfed the specters!
The instant Chu Xuan breached the cavern and his gaze fell upon the ice coffin—
The entombed Asura warrior's eyes snapped open!
No whites. No pupils. Only twin orbs of burning, soul-chilling crimson fire – the guiding flames of the deepest Nine Hells abyss! Cold. Savage. Pure, undiluted bloodlust!
THOOOOOM—!!!
An invisible hammer blow of psychic energy, saturated with annihilating battle-intent and Nine Hells corruption, smashed against Thunderclap-Zero's cockpit! Aimed directly at Chu Xuan's mind!
"ROOOOOOOOOAR—!!!"
A bellow ripped from the battlefields of antiquity exploded within Chu Xuan's soul! Rage at being disturbed! Fury at the insect daring to trespass!
CRACK!
The reinforced cockpit canopy of Thunderclap-Zero spider-webbed! Instrument panels inside sparked and died! Chu Xuan felt like red-hot spikes had been driven through his skull. Darkness swam before his eyes; blood mixed with ice shards sprayed from his mouth onto the cracked canopy! The Nirvana Injector's sensory amplification turned the soul-strike into pure agony!
Worse, as the Asura's eyes opened, the pristine blue ice of the coffin began to fracture! A web of cracks spread like lightning! An aura of terror far exceeding the specters', like a volcano stirring, erupted from within the coffin!
"Thunderclap Squadron! Target inside the cavern! Fire! Stop him breaking free!" Lei Zhan's enraged bellow echoed over the comms. The three mechs, joints screaming against the cold, wrenched their cannons towards the cavern interior, runes flaring anew!
Too late.
KA-SHOOOOOM—!!!
The ice coffin exploded!
Shards of profound blue ice, sharper than monomolecular blades, infused with eons of frozen power, blasted outwards in a lethal storm! The spirit beams fired by Thunderclap Squadron were shredded, annihilated by the wave of energy-infused ice! The three mechs were hammered as if by a god's fist! Their icy armor shattered; even their metal plates dented visibly. The shockwave hurled them backwards, slamming them into the cavern walls with bone-jarring force!
A figure of deep blue, colossal as a titan freed from chains, stepped from the shattered remnants of the coffin! Battle-Wraith Qi, dark as clotted blood, and Nine Hells Death Qi swirled around him like a living cloak of annihilation! In his hand, he gripped a brutal weapon – a greatsword forged from the colossal femur of some unknown beast, its bone blade wreathed in crimson, bloodthirsty light!
Those burning crimson orbs swept past the slammed mechs, instantly locking onto the only machine still hovering near the cavern's center – Thunderclap-Zero. More precisely, onto the human within the cracked cockpit – bleeding, pale as death, eyes burning with shadow-fire.
"Vermin… dare disturb my slumber?!" The voice was a grating rasp, like stone on stone, echoing directly in Chu Xuan's mind, each syllable a psychic battering ram!
The bone greatsword rose. Dark crimson energy gathered, compressed along its edge, radiating waves of pure obliteration! Target – Thunderclap-Zero!
Death hung by a thread.
Inside the cockpit, Chu Xuan wiped blood from his lips. The Nirvana Injector's fire and the soul-strike's ice warred within him, threatening to tear him apart. Yet his gaze remained locked on the rising sword, on the Asura's deep blue skin, on the swirling Battle-Wraith and Death Qi.
A hunger deeper than instinct, a Devourer's craving, burned like poison in his veins. The faint, electric tingle along the new fissures in his stone-cursed left arm, born from consuming the Frost Cores, screamed at him.
Foundation Establishment Peak sustenance… Even suppressed… it was an unprecedented feast!
"Who devours whom… remains to be seen!" Chu Xuan's shadow-fire eyes blazed! As the bone greatsword began its world-cleaving descent, he moved.
Thunderclap-Zero's massive, stone-armored left fist didn't block. Didn't evade. Instead, it shot forward aggressively, almost mockingly, towards the blade gathering its apocalyptic energy – and grabbed!
Simultaneously, from the center of that grey-white stone palm, a suction force far more violent, far more profound than that used on the specters, erupted at full power!
HMMMMMMMMM—!!!
Grey-white light swallowed Chu Xuan's hand and the mech's stone fist! A miniature black hole vortex, light-devouring, spun into existence in the palm! Its target – the descending bone greatsword! And the pure, savage, Asura Battle-Wraith Qi coalescing upon it!