The howling blizzard seemed to freeze in mid-descent, held motionless by the suffocating weight of four colossal avatars of absolute-zero energy towering over the mountain basin.
Behind Haoran, the seven young disciples of the Mystic Water Sect who had tumbled down scrambled backward on their hands and knees and run away, their sobs drowned out by the groaning bedrock as the fifty-meter glacial ape and the armored ice-serpent postured above them.
Haoran didn't even spare the fleeing girls a glance.
"Xun'er, you deal with those remaining disciples," said Haoran, his voice light and dismissive.
Shen Xun'er turned her head toward the surviving girls, her eyes carrying neither malice nor mercy—only the quiet, detached efficiency of someone tidying up stray pebbles.
"... understood, young master."
Without a single chant or manual sign, her body suddenly phased out of existence until she disappeared.
It was not high-speed movement, nor was it a common shadow-cloak.
