"Never did I imagine this place would be so bitterly cold. Yue'er, wrap yourself tight in the quilt—do not let the chill take you." Fan Xiaoniu and Yue'er stood roughly a hundred meters from the graveyard, yet the frost bit at them unrelentingly.
The temperature hovered at over ten degrees below zero. Though they swaddled themselves in thick quilts, they still shivered violently, unable to ward off the cold.
"Xiaoniu… what if… what if…" Yue'er's voice trailed off shyly, her cheeks flushing scarlet. She lowered her eyelids, too bashful to meet his gaze.
"Hmm? What is it, Yue'er? Your face is burning—are you ill? Should we return to the village to fetch warmer clothes?" Seeing her hesitation and flushed complexion, Fan Xiaoniu thought she had fallen sick.
Yue'er stole a glance at him, then scolded him playfully in a flustered tone. "You fool! I was saying… if we share a quilt, we might keep each other warm."
With that, she buried her face in the covers, too embarrassed to look at him any longer.
Fan Xiaoniu stared blankly for a long moment before a look of unbridled joy spread across his face, and he scrambled beneath the quilt beside her.
The covers rustled, and soft, breathless sounds echoed through the desolate valley.
The moment Gao Han stepped into the solitary tomb, a wave of bone-chilling frost rushed toward him, filling him with a strange sense of comfort, as if he had returned to his truest abode.
The thought struck him as odd: a graveyard as his final resting place—did that make him one of the dead?
Yet despite the peculiarity, he found himself drawn to the sensation. The frost seemed to freeze away all sorrow and unease, leaving only peace in its wake.
The frigid currents swirled around him like lively sprites, surging into his body one after another, merging seamlessly with his true essence to strengthen his cultivation and power.
In a single month, Gao Han's cultivation had leaped three major stages, each breakthrough a great leap forward.
He resolved not to pursue further ascension for the time being. To advance recklessly now would only leave his foundation unstable.
Though he had taken the Solid Foundation Pill, stabilizing his cultivation with medicinal herbs could never compare to gradual, natural tempering.
Fighting back the urge to absorb more power, Gao Han calmed his mind and channeled the frost into his flesh and bones, using it to refine his physique.
The moment the frost entered his body, the comforting warmth vanished, replaced by a stabbing pain that shot from every limb to his brain.
It felt as though countless steel needles were piercing his flesh, and his body began to convulse. The agony was so intense that he longed to collapse into unconsciousness.
His teeth ground together so fiercely they threatened to shatter, yet he held on. To faint would spell disaster; he might even perish within the tomb.
He cursed his own foolishness. He had overlooked a critical flaw: the limits of his physical strength.
While his true essence had reached the Third Layer of True Essence, his physical body was only at the First Layer.
The frost was far colder than his flesh could bear, turning his muscles and veins ice-cold.
Worse still, his flesh began to freeze, and faint crimson ice threads snaked through his meridians.
A glistening layer of ice even formed over his skin, encasing him like a frozen statue.
Yet his true essence continued to circulate steadily within him. Though the frost harmed his physical form, to his Third Layer true essence, it was nothing less than a tonic.
In a flash of insight, Gao Han guided the frost toward his Sea of Consciousness, where it merged perfectly with his soul. The soul power he had depleted was restored by a hair's breadth—less than one thousandth of his total, yet better than nothing. He diverted a portion of his spiritual energy to guide more frost into his soul.
As the frost was absorbed, the frozen parts of his body thawed, but the searing pain remained.
The cold had lessened in quantity, but its intensity was unchanged.
The stabbing, slicing agony made his eyes bulge, and he let out a guttural roar.
The frost refined his flesh relentlessly, freezing and expelling impurities from his body, strengthening his physique bit by bit.
With the frost tempering his body in steady waves, Gao Han endured the pain and took out the Profound Shield martial art he had "bought" from the Yiwu Pavilion, beginning to study and practice it.
Martial techniques differed from foundational cultivation arts. The latter could be mastered to their peak easily enough, but unleashing their full power required comprehending their inherent artistic conception.
Take the Jian clan's Formless Sword Art and Unseen Sword Art, for example: Jian Qingtian had cultivated both to the tenth stage and beyond, yet he still could not unleash their true Profound Rank power, for he had not grasped their conception.
Similarly, Wei Ying's Nine Skies-Soaring Swords remained incomplete without its true conception; had he mastered it, Gao Han would not have withstood even the third strike.
The third form, Three Slays, Ten Thousand Perish, could annihilate an army of ten thousand when wielded to its full conception—a power Gao Han could never have defended against.
Martial techniques required no such conception. Once mastered, they could be wielded at will; their strength depended solely on true essence, momentum, and artistic conception.
Gao Han's Phantom Stride and Seven-Sword Art were of this kind—no conception needed, only mastery of form.
The Profound Shield was just such a technique. By circulating true essence along a specific pathway, one could manifest a shield of pure energy.
Upon mastering the first layer, a shield would form at the palm, impossibly sturdy, its structure forged by the unique circulation of energy.
A shield sustained by one unit of true essence would require four times that power to shatter.
And when broken, the fragmented energy would strike back at the attacker as a final defense.
The technique came at a cost, however: maintaining the shield consumed true essence continuously, draining it until the technique was released.
Gao Han set the manual down and extended his right hand, circulating his true essence according to the technique. Layers of ice formed at his palm, only to vanish, then reshape and fade again. He tested each circulation method repeatedly; their disappearance signaled a flawed path.
Luckily, he was within the tomb. Outside, the ambient spiritual energy would never have sustained such wasteful practice.
Here, he absorbed frost endlessly to replenish his strength, keeping his true essence at its peak.
Three shichen later, Gao Han's eyes snapped open.
Crack.
With a crisp sound, a crystal-clear shield materialized before his right hand. Square-shaped, it measured one meter on each side and twenty centimeters thick, solid and imposing to behold. Connected to his palm, it moved fluidly with his hand.
Gao Han nodded in satisfaction, then cut off the flow of true essence. The shield dissolved into thin air.
The Profound Shield was mastered. Now he would turn to the deeper layers of the art.
At that moment, Gao Han's physical frame tensed, then expanded violently, swelling his gaunt figure to nearly twice its width.
A surge of violent power burst outward in a shockwave, pushing the frost twenty centimeters from his body—no farther, for the surrounding cold was so extreme that the air itself had condensed.
His body then shrank back to its slender form.
Gao Han's physical strength had successfully broken through to the First Layer of True Essence.