The sound that followed Lin Xiao’s finger-snap didn’t look like the violent roar of an avalanche or the bone-shaking crack of thunder.
It was a delicate, crystal-clear whisper.
Chime-clink...
Across five leagues of open tundra, it sounded as though ten million fragile glass bells had been lightly tapped by an invisible breeze. In that singular heartbeat, the hyper-dense, soaked Yin-water moisture adhering to every metal surface, seasoned ash-wood wooden handle, and braided sinew string underwent an instant heat-powered phase shift.
The sapphire mist didn’t merely freeze into ordinary winter frost. It crystal-hardened into a marvelous form of matter that existed nowhere else in the nine heavens: Lin Xiao’s Frictionless Crystal Ice.
Derived from his deep integration of the Ancient Continental Aquifer and his innate non-Newtonian fluid physiology, this specialized ice possessed unique, miraculous properties. It wasn’t rough, frost-bitten ice that crusted into sharp, brittle needles. It was a dense, mirror-polished, perfectly isotropic sapphire crystal with a multiplier of friction exactly tuned by the Omniscient Dao Spirit to zero point zero one.
Also, its internal atom-deep holding power gave it a pulling strength exceeding four thousand five hundred tons of pressure. Tougher than refined star-iron. But fully smooth to the touch, resembling molten diamond that had been polished with spirit oil.
