Elder Zhao blinked in confusion, his concentration broken. "What? But the traitor—"

"That man has arrived at the mountain!" Chen Wuxian's voice carried naked fear. "The Emperor—he's already broken through the outer defenses! The Sect Master's orders are to withdraw all personnel immediately!"

Understanding dawned in Zhao's eyes, followed quickly by relief. He nodded sharply, his flying sword rising beneath his feet. "Understood. The trap is set?"

"Everything is in position," Chen confirmed, his own sword materializing as he prepared to flee. "Let the beast walk into the web we've prepared."

Feng felt icy crystals form in her blood as she processed their exchange.

'Trap.' They had lured Tianlong away from her, away from Yue, away from any support, and into some kind of prepared ambush.

Both elders shot skyward, their retreat so swift that even her enhanced cultivation struggled to track them.

But they didn't leave her unoccupied.

The mountainside erupted with movement as hundreds of cultivators emerged from concealment—Foundation Establishment disciples mixed with Core Formation experts, all of them expendable in the sect's calculations.

They weren't meant to defeat her; they were meant to delay her, to keep her busy while their trap sprung elsewhere.

"Kill the ice whore!" someone screamed from the crowd. "For the sect's honor!"

"Traitor bitch!" another voice added. "Die for your betrayal!"

The crude insults might have stung once, back when she still cared about the sect's opinion of her worth.

Now they simply confirmed what she'd always suspected—that to these people, she would never be more than her gender and her perceived moral failings.

Feng's aura exploded outward as her control finally slipped, rage and protective instinct combining into something that made the very air scream with cold.

The Absolute Zero Mandala expanded beyond its previous limits, thousands of ice crystals becoming millions, each one seeking targets with lethal precision.

The slaughter was methodical and terrible.

Foundation Establishment disciples simply froze solid where they stood, their cultivation bases too weak to resist her enhanced power.

Core Formation experts lasted longer, managing to activate defensive techniques before the cold claimed them, but the end result was the same.

She moved through them like winter personified, her curves flowing with deadly grace as she danced between their attacks.

Every gesture spawned new crystals, every breath released clouds of killing frost, and every step left flowers of ice that bloomed with razor petals.

"Monster!" gasped a dying disciple as Feng's hand pierced his chest, flash-freezing his heart. "You've become a monster!"

"No," she replied calmly, withdrawing her hand and watching him topple. "I've become what I always could have been if your sect hadn't been so determined to keep women weak."

The battle raged for twenty minutes, hundreds of lives snuffed out with clinical precision.

Feng's enhanced cultivation made her effectively untouchable, but the sheer number of opponents forced her to expend considerable energy maintaining her defensive patterns while eliminating threats.

When the last attacker fell, she stood alone in a field of ice sculptures, her breathing slightly labored, frost patterns decorating her torn robes.

The silence was profound, broken only by the soft crystalline chiming of settling ice.

She was about to take flight toward Tianlong's location when a weak cough drew her attention.

One of the Core Formation elders—barely alive, his lower body encased in killing ice—was staring up at her with eyes that gleamed with malicious satisfaction.

"Too... too late," he wheezed, blood bubbling from his lips. "That bastard... will die soon. Our elders... they've prepared something... something he'll never escape."

Feng stood beside him, her pale eyes narrowing. Even she knew he was trying to buy some more time by keeping her here, which, although she had seen through, she did not want to just leave, as she had complete faith in her husband that he would be able to hold them off for some more time—long enough for her to know exactly what trap they had set up.

So she asked, "What kind of trap?"

The dying man's laugh was wet and horrible. "You think... anyone could touch him in open combat? We know he's stronger... than any one of us combined. But strength means nothing... when you're caught in the right formation."

Ice crystals began forming around Feng's clenched fists as understanding dawned. It appeared that these people were already aware of his strength, yet until now they had acted as if they were not.

This clearly showed their crab mentality, where they wanted to bring him down just because they could not achieve what he did. "What formation?"

"The Eternal Binding Array," he whispered, his eyes glazing over. "Ancient... Nascent Soul level powerhouses would have to sacrifice, but it will capture him... and his precious whores... transport you all to something... something that makes our sect look like children..."

Feng's hand shot out, grasping his throat with desperate urgency, simply because she knew that name. Given how many books she had read and studied throughout her life, it would have been illogical for her to have never heard of it. And especially with the fact that it was costing the lives of Nascent Soul level elders, it was clear that this thing was huge.

Moreover, the mention of something that could make immortal sects appear like children indicated that there was definitely some danger here. "What something? Answer me!"

But the elder's smile only widened, blood flowing freely now as he saw the sun slowly rising on the horizon. Having already kept this woman engaged in conversation for more than an hour, he felt that maybe he could keep her here for longer as he revealed, "The Frost Wyrm Empress... has taken an interest... in your emperor's breeding potential. She'll enjoy... breaking you all... one by one..."

Feng's grip tightened, ice flowing through her fingers, but the man was already gone, his final breath escaping with that horrible, satisfied smile still on his lips.

For a moment, she blinked, her eyes steady in trance standing there in the field of her own creation, processing the magnitude of what she'd learned.

Not just a trap, but a trap set by something that made the Immortal Sect look like insects.

Something ancient enough to casually gift binding formations that could capture Great Vehicle realm cultivators.

'The Frost Wyrm Empress.' The name resonated in her memory from forbidden texts she'd studied during her centuries of research.

A legendary beast from the early days of the realm, supposedly sealed away by powers beyond mortal comprehension.

And now it wanted her husband. Wanted him for breeding, which meant...

Feng rose to her feet, her aura blazing with protective fury that turned the air itself to visible frost.

She had perhaps minutes before whatever trap they had prepared would spring, minutes to reach Tianlong and warn him before something ancient and terrible could claim them all.

Ice crystals formed beneath her feet as she prepared to launch herself skyward at maximum speed.

Her body was already pushing qi through her meridians at dangerous levels, her cultivation base straining under the demands she was about to place on it.

But as she crouched to leap, one last detail from the dying elder's confession made her freeze.

'Transport you all.'

Not just Tianlong. All of them. Which meant whatever formation they had prepared, it was designed to capture bonded partners as well.

Her hand went instinctively to her lower belly, where the accelerated pregnancy was still in its earliest stages.

If this Frost Wyrm Empress succeeded in her capture, if she truly intended to use Tianlong for breeding purposes...

"Over my frozen corpse," Feng snarled, her voice carrying enough killing intent to shatter stone.

She exploded skyward, ice trailing behind her like the wings of some avenging angel, racing toward whatever trap awaited her husband with the fury of winter itself howling in her wake.

Behind her, the field of ice sculptures began to crack and splinter, the residual energy of her rage too intense for even her own constructs to contain.

By the time she disappeared over the horizon, nothing remained but a crater of superheated glass where the mountain had once stood.

'I need to reach—' She was just thinking before two bodies blackened as if fried hurled from both of her sides, causing her to stop and bring her guard up.

Before the collision of those two dead bodies could make her snap, she turned only to see the elders who had left a few moments ago completely fried while slumped on the mountains, their eyes widened.

They had been killed.

And now that she focused her attention on the land beneath, she saw devastation.

Feng's enhanced Soul Formation senses took in the scope of destruction as she crested the final ridge, her ice-crystal wings dissolving behind her as she touched down on what had once been solid mountain stone.

Now it looked like the aftermath of a cosmic-level fight—massive craters gouged into the earth, spider-web patterns of shattered rock radiating outward like someone had dropped a star from heaven itself.

Bodies lay scattered across the broken landscape. Hundreds of them.

White-robed Immortal Sect disciples frozen in their final moments of terror, their faces locked in expressions of disbelief that someone could wield such overwhelming power.

The air still shimmered with residual qi, so dense it made breathing feel like swallowing lightning.

And there, in the center of it all, stood her husband.

Tianlong hovered twenty feet above the largest crater, his black robes rippling in winds that obeyed his will rather than nature's laws.

His enhanced physique was unmarked by battle—not even a speck of dust marred his perfect form.

In his right hand, he held the throat of a man in elaborate sect master robes, the corpse dangling like a broken puppet.

"So, parasite," his voice carried across the devastated battlefield with casual contempt, "is this all you had?"

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