SHING—CRACKLE!
The instant Empress Luo Qingxue’s icy phoenix eyes snapped open on the Ten-Thousand-Year Frost Pillar, the air inside the Abyssal Frost Core vibrated with the terrifying prelude of a Star-Realm self-detonation!
Because her consciousness was still emerging from ten years of dark isolation and Warden Tianfa’s [Widow & Orphan Nightmare Illusion], her vision was blurred by tears of blood-frost. She hadn’t yet focused on the warm bluestone path below or the steaming brass hotpot cart.
All her grieving, furious Empress heart knew was the vow she had repeated to herself three thousand six hundred and fifty times in the dark:
Never let Warden Tianfa refine my body into a puppet to harm Changsheng and Nian’er! Better to shatter my own Rank 8 Ice-Sword Core into ten million pieces than take a single step against my family!
“Tianfa...” Luo Qingxue’s voice was hoarse and wintry after ten years of silence. Yet It carried the lethal, unyielding majesty of the Nine Heavens’ #1 Sword Empress as fine silver frost-cracks began to appear at the corners of her collarbones.
“You want my Empress Sword Core? Come and collect the ashes—”
“Careful, Changsheng!” Grandpa Yao shouted from the base of the steps, his white beard flying back as the violent Rank 8 suicidal sword pressure swept outward like a hurricane of razor blades. “Her Ice-Phoenix Core is already eighty percent primed to detonate! Any normal cultivator who steps within ten feet of that sword pressure will be sliced into ribbons!”
