Cold.
An endless, soul-freezing cold, as if even her spirit was being sealed in ice.
Su Qianqian’s consciousness had sunk into a chaotic darkness, like she had fallen into a frozen abyss beneath the sea.
Every attempt to struggle only brought sharper cold and piercing pain, like needles stabbing into her.
Her thoughts turned like rusted gears, grinding with difficulty, leaving behind only shattered echoes—
The roar of an explosion, Lin Chen’s agonized howl, the wildly spreading frost, and the devastating ice-blue storm that had surged back along the mental threads…
Was she dead?
Or had she, like this cold storage, become an eternal ice sculpture?
“Drip…”
A faint yet unnervingly clear sound, like a pebble dropped into stagnant water, shattered the frozen stillness of her consciousness.
Was it water?
Or… blood?
Su Qianqian’s heavy eyelids trembled with extreme difficulty.
A stabbing chill pierced her exposed eyes like steel needles, making her flinch instantly.
Her vision was filled with blurred, swaying pale light, accompanied by fine cracking sounds like shattering glass.
Cold…
So cold…
She struggled to move her eyes, trying to focus.
Above her was the ceiling of the cold storage, covered in thick frost, resembling a crystal palace.
The dim yellow light refracted through the ice, casting a ghostly, unreal glow.
Fine ice crystals floated in the air. Every breath she took carried a tearing chill and the grinding pain of icy particles scraping her lungs.
She wasn’t dead.
But she wasn’t far from freezing to death either.
Her body was stiff and numb. She could barely feel her limbs—only the bone-deep cold and a dull, nearly paralyzing ache remained.
Explosion… hospital… Lin Chen!
The thought struck like lightning, splitting through the haze as Su Qianqian suddenly struggled to rise!
Her body creaked like a rusted machine, producing grating sounds as the thick frost covering her fell away in flakes.
Ignoring everything, she twisted her head toward where Lin Chen had been—
And then she froze completely.
The sight before her made her suck in a breath of icy air, her lungs aching sharply.
Lin Chen… was gone.
No—he wasn’t gone.
He was still there.
But… he had been completely “sealed.”
In place of where he had been lying stood a massive, irregular ice-blue crystal, like a miniature iceberg, radiating terrifying cold.
Inside the crystal, a faint silhouette of a curled human figure could be seen—
It was Lin Chen.
He remained in a hunched, struggling posture, the pain on his face frozen into eternity. His eyes were tightly shut, encased in thick ice like an insect trapped in amber.
Ice-blue light flowed within the crystal, emitting a heart-palpitating, inhuman energy fluctuation.
The ground around him, the stacked cardboard boxes—even the air—had been frozen into a thicker, harder layer of ice, fused together with the massive crystal.
The temperature deep within the cold storage had dropped to a horrifying level, as if even time itself had been frozen.
Frozen.
Completely frozen.
That out-of-control frost power—caught in the brutal tug-of-war between the ice-blue storm within his body and the black threads—combined with the terrifying shockwave of the explosion, had ultimately backfired, turning him into the core of this frozen hell.
“No…” Su Qianqian murmured hoarsely, her voice like sand scraping against stone.
Overwhelming grief and despair drowned her instantly.
She tried desperately to crawl toward him, but her body refused to obey.
She could only scrape futilely against the frozen metal grid beneath her, leaving behind a streak of blood on the ice—her palms had been cut by ice shards during her earlier struggle.
At that moment, that familiar, cool mental energy—like a stream awakening after hibernation—began to surge uncontrollably from the depths of her consciousness.
This time, there was no external malicious stimulation, yet it felt unusually… clear.
It was as if the explosion and the backlash of Lin Chen’s rampaging energy had accidentally cleared some kind of blockage.
Subconsciously, she gathered every last shred of her will. With immense grief and a sliver of hope, she cautiously “reached” toward the iceberg that sealed Lin Chen.
This time, what she “perceived” was clearer—and crueler.
Inside the ice-blue crystal, it was not lifeless.
That destructive tug-of-war was still ongoing, merely frozen at the peak of its eruption.
The black threads—alive, writhing, and multiplying, representing the infection—and the violent, raging ice-blue storm that represented Lin Chen’s core power were like two ancient beasts trapped in amber, still engaged in a silent yet brutal struggle within the crystal.
Each invisible collision caused the ice-blue light inside the crystal to flicker violently, releasing even more intense cold.
What alarmed Su Qianqian even more was those black threads…
They seemed to be slowly, stubbornly…
Adapting to this extreme cold.
They had not been completely destroyed by the ice-blue storm.
Instead, like black moss, they took root more secretly and spread slowly in the gaps of the storm, within the frozen cells and tissues.
They were feeding on Lin Chen’s frozen life force.
And also feeding on…
The energy radiating from the ice-blue storm.
As if they had found a new host.
The infection… was evolving.
It was using Lin Chen’s own ability against him.
In this tug-of-war, the black threads were gradually gaining the upper hand in a bizarre way.
Once they fully adapted to and took control of this frost power…
The consequences would be unimaginable.
“No… this can’t happen…”
Su Qianqian cried out in despair within her mind.
She could “feel” a faint, extremely weak fluctuation from deep within Lin Chen’s frozen consciousness—like a drowning person struggling in agony.
He was still there!
His consciousness was still trapped in that purgatory of ice and darkness!
What could she do?
What was she capable of?
Her Mental Interference was useless against this level of confrontation!
Purification!
The word flashed through her chaotic mind like lightning.
Like Cai Wenji’s “Song of Forgetting Sorrows” in the game?
Dispelling negative status effects?
Eliminating… the virus?
The idea was absurd and bold.
But it was the only possibility she could think of.
Her mental power seemed capable of influencing the emotions and thoughts of living beings…
So could she…
“Influence”—or even “erase”—those parasitic black infections?
There was no time to hesitate!
Su Qianqian closed her eyes again, suppressing all fear, grief, and despair, leaving behind only one pure, unwavering thought—
Purify!
Dispel those black things!
Save him!