Li Yun glanced at the two halves of the corpse.
"It’s finally over."
For months, this man had kept himself hidden. He had deceived everyone around him, studied Li Yun, and waited patiently for his chance. Now he was dead.
Li Yun turned to leave, and then he stopped. Something was wrong.
A dull thump came from behind him. Li Yun frowned, and a second thump followed. He turned around.
Mo Yuanxiu’s corpse was moving. The two halves were not regenerating, and they were not joining back together either. The blood around them, however, had stopped spreading and had begun to flow backward toward the corpse.
Li Yun’s expression changed.
"What is this?"
Black patterns appeared under the dead man’s skin. The severed flesh began to swell, and both halves shook violently. Then laughter came out.
"He..."
Li Yun’s pupils shrank.
"Hehehe..."
Mo Yuanxiu was dead beyond any doubt. His body had been cut in half, and Li Yun could sense no life left in it. Yet laughter was coming from the corpse.
"Li Yun..." The voice was distorted and almost inhuman. "You really are... the perfect vessel."
Li Yun raised his sword immediately, but before he could strike, Mo Yuanxiu’s corpse exploded with a boom.
No ordinary flesh or blood sprayed out. Darkness burst forth instead. An enormous black mass expanded from the corpse and covered hundreds of feet almost instantly.
Li Yun’s expression changed. A terrifying devouring force filled the area, and it was far stronger than anything Mo Yuanxiu had shown while he was alive. Snow was ripped from the ground, chunks of ice rose into the air, and rocks were dragged across the valley.
Even spiritual energy rushed toward the darkness. A gigantic vortex had formed on the spot where Mo Yuanxiu had died.
Li Yun reacted at once and retreated, but the suction had erupted too quickly. The ice under his feet shattered, and he was dragged several steps toward the darkness.
He drove the Profound Origin Sword into the frozen ground, and the blade carved a deep trench through the ice as the vortex kept pulling him closer.
Li Yun circulated his chaos qi, but the pull only kept getting stronger. The vortex expanded once more, and its suction multiplied.
’What exactly did he prepare?’
Only now did Li Yun understand. Mo Yuanxiu had prepared one last method that would activate when he died. Perhaps he had always known that trying to seize Li Yun’s body might fail, so he had set a final trap.
If he managed to subdue Li Yun, he would take his body. If Li Yun killed him, his death would set off this devouring vortex. Either way, Li Yun was meant to be the target.
The frozen ground under Li Yun finally broke apart completely, and he was pulled toward the darkness. He tried to gather his Sword Intents again, but the previous attack had used up too much of his power, and the suction caught him before he could fully call on them.
The darkness swallowed his legs, then his waist, and then his chest. In the final instant, Li Yun saw both halves of Mo Yuanxiu’s corpse dissolve completely into the black vortex. After that, everything went dark, and Li Yun was gone.
Right afterward, the vortex began to contract. It shrank from hundreds of feet wide to dozens, and then to only a few feet. Finally, the enormous darkness collapsed into a single black point, which vanished with a soft pop.
Silence returned to the frozen valley. Mo Yuanxiu was gone, and so was Li Yun. Nothing was left to show what had happened there except the shattered ice and one enormous sword scar stretching across the frozen landscape.
It was the mark left by the first time Li Yun had released all five of his Xiantian Stage Intents together.
...
Several days passed, and the month-long Frostbound Hunting Trial finally came to an end.
The Voidpiercer Warship appeared on the horizon and quickly descended toward the designated gathering point, with Elder Mu Cang standing at the bow. Hundreds of surviving participants had already gathered below.
The scale of the losses was obvious at a glance. Nearly three hundred members of the Celestial Prodigy Camp had died during the month-long trial, and only around five hundred remained. It was a horrifying casualty rate, yet Elder Mu Cang did not look surprised. The Frostbound Hunting Trial had always been meant as a brutal selection.
Those who could not survive were eliminated for good, and those who returned would become the true elites.
Elder Mu Cang looked over the crowd, and his expression suddenly changed.
"Li Yun isn’t here?"
Several cultivators nearby reacted.
"Li Yun didn’t come back?"
Talk spread through the crowd at once. Li Yun had already defeated Han Juefeng back when he was at the 6th level of Heavenly Core Realm.
And most believed that when Li Yun would breakthrough to the Spirit Manifestation Realm, he would be unstoppable, and many had believed he would shine brilliantly in this trial. Yet everyone else had gathered, and Li Yun was missing. A disturbing possibility came to many minds, though few dared to say it aloud at first.
"We’ll wait a little longer."
Elder Mu Cang felt uneasy. He remembered how highly Elder Qing thought of Li Yun. Normally, the rules were clear, and once the collection period ended, anyone who had not arrived would simply be left behind. This time, however, Elder Mu Cang hesitated.
They waited for another hour. A few late cultivators eventually showed up, but Li Yun was not among them.
Someone finally said it.
"It looks like Li Yun really did die."
That one sentence opened the floodgates.
"He still hasn’t shown up. What other explanation is there?"
"Who would have expected this? He rose so fast in the Celestial Prodigy Camp, only to die in the Frostbound Heavenly Range."
Someone sneered. "Maybe he was only impressive in controlled fights. When the real life-and-death killing started, he couldn’t survive."
"Maybe that so-called peerless genius was just a flower raised in a greenhouse."
Several people nodded. Geniuses like that did exist. They had exceptional talent, learned martial techniques quickly, and looked unbeatable in ordinary sparring. Yet when they were placed on a real battlefield where hesitation meant death, their performance fell apart.
Some cultivators who could normally show ten parts of their strength managed only five under true killing pressure, and others did even worse. A number of people assumed that Li Yun had been that kind of genius.
"Enough," Elder Mu Cang said, and his expression darkened. "Stop talking."
The chatter ended immediately.
Elder Mu Cang knew more than these people did. He knew exactly how much Elder Qing valued Li Yun, and he found it hard to believe that someone Elder Qing regarded so highly would die so easily.
"We’ll stay here for another three days," he said, in a tone that allowed no argument.
The participants exchanged surprised looks, but nobody dared to object.

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