A geyser of dark-blue Primordial Chaos Frost roared up from the fractured stone piers beneath the bridge.
The freezing mist carried the dead chill of the outer void. Before Old Keeper Cang could pull back from the central support column, jagged icicles of black-blue frost bit into his hemp boots and crawled rapidly up his shins.
Up in the tollhouse courtyard, Overseer Lord Wuji scrambled behind a bronze shield-screen alongside his frost-array master, Elder Han.
“Freeze him solid, Elder Han!” Wuji shrieked, wiping blood from his chin with a torn golden sleeve. “That old dog’s meridians were already drained for a hundred thousand years! Even if that lower-realm boy healed his flesh, one breath of Primordial Chaos Frost will petrify his dantian into dead stone!”
Elder Han—a gaunt old cultivator in dark-blue robes with a -58/100 halo—formed a double-handed seal and poured his qi into the twelve detonated pier runes.
“The Frost-Vein Array is linked directly to the Chaos Rift below the bridge!” Elder Han cackled, frost rime forming on his thin eyebrows. “Not even a Quasi-Sovereign can digest primordial zero-kelvin frost on an empty marrow! Watch his spine snap!”
Down at the cracked pier, Old Keeper Cang planted both feet against the buckling masonry and locked his arms around the central pillar to keep the upper span from tilting.
