The Frozen Heart and the Last Hour
"Move, now!"
The moment the Life and Death Venerable roared, the world turned upside down.
An explosive demonic energy burst from that aged frame, so violent it defied belief.
Tucking Yun Cheon under his arm like a sack of grain, the old man kicked open the iron door of the Inner Library and launched himself out.
BOOM—!
The massive iron door peeled away, bent like a stick of taffy.
The long corridor of the Inner Library rushed backward in a blink.
This was no mere sprint.
His feet struck empty air before they could ever touch the ground — a supreme movement art, the pinnacle of lightness skill.
The Life and Death Venerable… his talents were never confined to medicine!
The speed tore the wind itself apart; breathing alone was a struggle. And yet even in the teeth of that gale, Yun Cheon's mind remained coldly methodical, replaying the situation in perfect order.
Qi and blood reversed their flow in the middle of the Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique…
It had been impossible from the start to govern the Nine Yin Blocked Meridians through breathwork alone. The technique was nothing more than a temporary canal cut into the base of a dam. When water poured in beyond what a small channel could carry, the dam was always destined to burst.
THUD!
Before the thought could even finish, the Life and Death Venerable landed in the courtyard of the Demonic Physician Hall.
The moment they crossed its threshold, the interior hit them with a chill deeper than a midwinter mountain of snow. Frost had bloomed white across the door handles, the window frames — every surface.
"Ughh… nngh…."
Seol Yeong lay stretched across the center of the room, and her condition was wretched. Her lips had died a bruised blue, and white frost clung to her eyelashes. The yin-cold energy boiling up from within her body was freezing the very air around her.
"Damn it all! Neither my needles nor my arts can hold it back! Her energy has clotted into a mass and is crushing her heart!"
Even the great Life and Death Venerable was screaming, his hands shaking. A rampage that could not be stopped by pouring out the whole of his medical skill — this was no longer a disease. It was a calamity.
"Wasn't it you who devised that Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique? Then do something with it!"
The old man shoved Yun Cheon to her side. Yun Cheon staggered upright and took Seol Yeong's wrist. The instant their skin met, an icy sting shot up from his fingertips.
…Too late.
Yun Cheon's brow narrowed. He didn't even need to take her pulse. The yin energy had already seized complete mastery over her heart meridian. Every time her heart beat, what spread through her body was not the warmth of life but cold, creeping death.
This is no stage the Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique can manage.
The dam had already burst. If he forced the breathing technique now, what life remained in her would simply be swept away and consumed by the yin energy. The Life and Death Venerable had to know that too. And yet he had brought Yun Cheon here anyway.
A drowning man clutching at straws.
The dignity of a Venerable who had once commanded the world was nowhere to be found. There stood only an old man, helpless before his dying granddaughter.
And if Seol Yeong dies?
The Life and Death Venerable would lose his will to live. He would abandon medicine forever. With that temper of his, madness might swallow him whole — he might curse the boy who taught him the breathing technique and drag him down as a companion in death. And even if it never came to that, if she died, the path to curing Yun Cheon's own severed meridians would grow impossibly distant.
In the end, the answer was simple.
Only if she lives can I live.
Therefore—
I must.
Yun Cheon made his decision. This was no time to weigh probabilities. He had to forge a method, even if he had to carve one out of nothing.
"Her heart meridian is freezing over. Even my primal energy can only suppress it for a single shijin at most."
At Yun Cheon's cold pronouncement, the color drained from the Life and Death Venerable's face until it was the grey of grave earth.
"One shijin…! That is all you can promise?!"
"We need a countermeasure within that time. Simply pinning the energy down will not suffice. We need a divine elixir — something that can neutralize the yin and fan the embers of her life force."
"Where in the world would you find such an elixir within one shijin!"
Urgency poured off the old man's body in waves of killing intent. And then Yun Cheon's eyes flashed. A gift from Yu Ha — one he had almost forgotten amid the dazzling fruits of their joint research.
"Venerable! The Hollow Azure Stone Marrow the Sun Moon Merchant Guild has been transporting to this place — by now it should be near the Mad Path Pavilion!"
"The Hollow Azure Stone Marrow! Yes — if it's that…"
"It is the only key that can turn this situation around!"
Yun Cheon locked eyes with the Venerable and shouted. "I will stake my life on holding her lifeline. You are faster than anyone in this hall — hurry, and bring back the Hollow Azure Stone Marrow!"
The Life and Death Venerable swept his gaze over Yun Cheon. Even his inner power, refined to the Absolute Peak, had failed to halt the girl's rampage. A boy with no inner power at all, intending to endure the chill of the Nine Yin Blocked Meridians for a full shijin? It was nothing short of suicide.
And yet not a thread of hesitation lingered in Yun Cheon's eyes.
This boy… he means it.
The old man asked nothing further. Even a moment of doubt would have been a luxury.
"Hold on! I will return with it — I swear it!"
CRASH!
The Life and Death Venerable kicked off the ground and tore straight through the roof of the Demonic Physician Hall. Watching the old man's back vanish in a single streak of light, Yun Cheon let out a hollow laugh.
"Fast. Genuinely fast."
Then he turned back to Seol Yeong, locked in her death-struggle, and the last two of them were all that remained.
I said one shijin — but even that is beyond certain.
Still, something had to be done.
Yun Cheon pressed his palm flat against her back. Cold qi came slithering up his hand and into his body.
So this is what they mean when they say the cold reaches the bone.
He clenched his teeth. A treacherous tightrope walk, wagered against his own life, had begun.
In the forest near the Mad Path Pavilion, a procession stood in ranks beneath the fluttering banner of the Sun Moon Escort Bureau, blade of the Sun Moon Merchant Guild, one of the Ten Great Merchant Alliances of the Central Plains.
RUMBLE—!
Thunder cracked across a cloudless sky. And with it, a bolt of calamity came crashing down.
BOOM—!
Emerging through the swirling dust, the Life and Death Venerable looked like something straight out of the underworld.
"…Are you the escorts of the Sun Moon Escort Bureau bound for the Mad Path Pavilion?"
The escorts staggered backward in terror before the savage killing intent rolling off him. Then two shadows — one in white, one in black — moved to bar the Venerable's path.
An elder robed in white, an elder robed in black. The twin pillars that guarded the Sun Moon Escort Bureau.
"This humble one is called Wol No. Might I ask what business you have, honored one?"
"Il No, at your service. Perhaps… you are the Life and Death Venerable of our own cult?"
The Sun Moon Twin Elders. That these two had personally accompanied the shipment was, in itself, a measure of the cargo's worth.
"The Twin Elders, is it? I've found exactly the right people."
The Venerable's eyes flashed. "This is a matter of seconds. Hand over the Hollow Azure Stone Marrow — now."
The Hollow Azure Stone Marrow — a divine elixir whose very name could shake the Central Plains. The escorts clearly had never known what they were carrying; their faces went slack with confusion. Only the Twin Elders answered with unwavering resolve.
"Why would a Venerable of the Cult seek to rob the cargo of the Sun Moon Escort Bureau?"
"Venerable or not, this is a breach of all propriety."
The Twin Elders drew their weapons from their robes in perfect unison.
SHINK—!
Crescent-bladed hidden weapons, curved and keen — the Sun Moon Twin Wheels.
"All escorts! To arms!"
The convoy chief and his men drew their blades as one.
CLANG—!
Killing intent stretched taut across the entire forest road.
The Life and Death Venerable bit his lip.
There's no time.
At this very moment, that girl's heart was freezing solid.
Just when I thought I'd found the answer—!
Two masters above the Absolute Peak, the Sun Moon Twin Elders — plus three convoy chiefs of the same tier. It was, after all, an escort worthy of the finest elixir in the world.
Would killing them all and taking it be faster?
If he steeled himself, he could punch through. But time was the problem. This was a contest measured in breaths, in seconds.
A sinister gleam kindled in the Venerable's eyes. Between the fingers of a hand that had slipped into his robe and out again, dozens of Life-Death Needles revealed themselves.
Even the breath to argue would be wasted!
It was the instant the Venerable, resolved to cut his way through, gathered himself to launch —
"Now, now — perhaps we might all calm ourselves, Venerable."
A languid, low voice parted the murderous standoff.
Creeeak.
At the rear of the procession, the door of an ornate carriage swung open. A youth in black martial robes, dark as ebony, stepped out, folding his fan with a snap. Even on the razor's edge of instant bloodshed, a leisurely smile played at the corner of his mouth.
"I hadn't expected you to come in person. It seems the situation on your end is rather more desperate than I anticipated."
The Young Pavilion Master of the Sun Moon Merchant Guild — Yu Ha.
While the Life and Death Venerable was away, matters inside the stone chamber had marched from bad to worse.
"Khh…!"
A clump of dark blood rose and was swallowed back down Yun Cheon's throat. It was the limit.
The yin-cold energy flowing over from Seol Yeong was no mere chill. It was death itself — an energy that brought all living activity to a halt.
Damn it… this is more vicious than I thought.
The cold traced his blood vessels, freezing his organs one by one. The time a body without inner power could endure had long since passed.
My consciousness… is dimming.
He forcibly stoked his fading primal energy with the Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique, and using the principles of governing yin energy, he lured the chill that coiled through Seol Yeong's body into his own.
I've done everything I can…
The Heaven and Earth Moving Art was a profound method that sought the harmony of yin and yang. But even it fell short of shouldering the yin-cold energy of the Nine Yin Blocked Meridians.
…So this is as far as I can go from the outside.
The quantity of yin-cold energy his bare body had absorbed had long since blown past lethal dose. And still Seol Yeong had not stirred, as motionless as a statue carved of ice.
Whether she wakes or not… is up to her now.
Gripping the last fraying thread of his consciousness, Yun Cheon squeezed out his final strength and shouted to her.
"Seol Yeong! Wake up!"
A voice like thunder, calling her consciousness from somewhere far away…
"Wake up!"
A prison of frozen ice. Darkness that seemed it would last forever.
Someone… is calling me.
She saw it — a vision of the unyielding ice walls that entombed her splitting in half before someone's desperate cry. And through that fissure, pouring in: a breath of life, warm and utterly relentless.
"Haah!"
Seol Yeong's eyes flew open as she gasped in a ragged breath. The first thing she registered was Yun Cheon, palm still pressed to her back, trembling like an aspen leaf. He had taken her pain upon himself in her stead.
With an empty body — one that had never even learned the breathing method for commanding cold qi.
"…Benefactor!"
She screamed and tried to shove him away. A hideous cold leapt across the contact — cold enough to sear her palm fast to his skin.
"Benefactor, take your hands off me! Stop trying to absorb my yin-cold energy by force! If you keep this up, you really will die!"
But Yun Cheon only shook his head and held on. No — it seemed he no longer had even the strength left to pull his hand away.
"First… gather the rampaging energy inside your own body."
His lips had gone blue, quivering. "If you let go now… the energy flowing back from me will strike your heart again."
"What does that matter?! You're dying in my place right now!"
The boy before her had shouldered her agony without a moment's hesitation, when his own life hung in the balance. And the price was that he was dying.
"If you cannot control the yin-cold energy, the two of us both die. So… quickly."
Yun Cheon's head drooped with a thud. He was on the very verge of losing consciousness.
Seol Yeong's eyes wavered — then hardened into iron resolve.
I have to save him!
And to do that, there was only one thing she needed to do: bring this cursed, rampaging yin-cold energy back under her own control.
I won't… be tossed around by it ever again.
Seol Yeong closed her eyes and turned her gaze inward — into the storm of savage cold that would once have sent her fleeing in terror.
Come back to me.
It was a command, and at the same time a desperate plea. Her will flowed into Yun Cheon's body and seized the rampaging yin-cold energy by the throat.
Ice-Binding Return to Origin.
A technique that forcibly recalled scattered energy and sealed it within the dantian. Done properly, it should have come with the agony of every blood vessel in the body tearing open.
But she had no eyes for pain.
Compared to what the Benefactor endured… something like this is nothing!
The loathsome terror that had dogged her since childhood. In this moment, for the first time, the girl buried beneath that fear resolved to swallow pain — not for herself, but for another. It was less an enlightenment than a resolution staked on her life.
GRUUMMM!
A miracle occurred. Like an ebbing tide, the rampaging yin-cold energy began streaming back into Seol Yeong's dantian without resistance.
And yet — something was different.
…This feeling?
Before, it had felt like cramming energy into her dantian by force. This was nothing like that. The fine auxiliary channels the Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique had carved open, the primal energy he had stoked for her — and the pressure, diminished by the burden Yun Cheon had thrown his body into bearing. Thanks to all of it, the energy of the Ice Soul Divine Art began to pierce fine meridian paths it had never before been able to reach, circulating where it had always been barred.
This was no regression into her tormented past. This was a step forward.
MMMM—
…The energy is under my control. No — my attainment of the Ice Soul Divine Art has actually risen?
A chill, crystalline blue light radiated from every inch of her body. The sickly girl who had once trembled before her own fear was gone; in her place stood an heir of the Ice Soul, sovereign of the cold. An unexpected flowering, born in the depths of crisis. Seol Yeong clenched the overflowing power in her fists.
Now — it was her turn to repay a debt.
Seol Yeong fixed her glacier-blue eyes, glowing with cold light, on the boy hovering between life and death.
"Hold on, Benefactor. This time, I will be the one to save you."
The yin-cold energy that had already burrowed deep into Yun Cheon's core could not be recalled by her strength alone. Those energies had entangled themselves with his qi and blood vessels as though his body were a new nest they meant to claim.
If this goes on, his heart meridian will freeze over forever.
There was only one way. Yun Cheon himself would have to learn to govern that energy.
The Benefactor has no vessel built for commanding yin energy. Which means…
She made her decision. The Ice Soul Divine Art — the absolute secret art of her lineage. Its transmission to outsiders was strictly forbidden. But this was no time to weigh rules.
"Benefactor, can you hear me?"
Seol Yeong pressed her palm to his chest and pushed her inner energy into him as she shouted. "I am about to recite the oral formula of my family's secret legacy — the Ice Soul Divine Art!"
"…!"
"You must use it to govern the yin energy! If you do not, you will die!"
Yun Cheon's hazy eyes turned toward her. Her eyes were resolute — the will to shatter even her clan's gravest taboo if it would keep him alive.
"The Ice Heart becomes the camp; the cold qi takes form…."
⟨ Ice Soul Divine Art — Oral Formula ⟩
Seol Yeong's crystalline voice resounded through Yun Cheon's fading mind. It was the one rope thrown to a man standing at death's threshold.
Return of the Cloud Dragon
Author | Autumn Frost (Chusang)
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
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