Beneath the blossoming branches of the courtyard peach tree, Empress Luo Qingxue looked at the spinning golden-and-silver hologram of the [Yin-Yang Twin Hearth-Galaxy Seed] and then into Gu Changsheng’s warm dark eyes.
For any other pair of Rank 8 Peak cultivators in the cosmos, attempting to fuse two diametrically opposed extreme attributes. Gu Changsheng’s blazing Solar-Furnace Sovereign Fire and Luo Qingxue’s absolute-zero Extreme Frost-Moon Sword Core—at the exact moment of a Rank 9 Galactic breakthrough would have been considered suicidal madness.
According to every alchemical treatise in the Inner Spiral Galaxy, fire and ice of that magnitude collided with a ninety-nine percent probability of triggering a Yin-Yang Annihilation Detonation. This shattered both cultivators’ dantians into frozen cinders before a single star could form.
Yet as Luo Qingxue sat across from her husband on the woven straw cushion, there was not a spark of hesitation in her clear silver eyes.
Instead, she raised her free hand to her coiled silver-black hair and gently slid out her most treasured personal keepsake:
[Luo Qingxue’s Frost-Plum Wedding Hairpin]—a simple, hand-polished wooden hairpin carved from a frost-pine branch that Gu Changsheng had whittled for her. A kitchen paring knife back in Frost-Pine Town to keep her hair out of the noodle steam.
