Today was Bingying’s thirteenth birthday.
The village lay gently blanketed beneath thick snow. Crystalline icicles hung from the eaves, glittering with a dreamlike blue radiance beneath the rising sun.
According to the thousand-year-old tradition of the Iceborn clan, today was the day she would awaken the power of the Ice Soul.
Her family had placed great hopes in her. From an early age, she had displayed an extraordinary talent for controlling ice and snow. Even as an infant, her cries had caused frost to form across the window lattice. The first time she reached out to catch snow, the flakes had actually condensed into delicate hexagonal ice crystals in her palm.
Over the years, she had learned to make snowflakes dance through the air without any instruction, and could make icicles bloom from the ground… She was the greatest genius the village had ever seen.
If nothing went wrong, she would follow the Guide to Frost City. Once she awakened her powers, she would become an honored Ice Soul Mage and bring glory to the village.
Bingying lowered her head and gazed at her crystal-clear hands. She gently clenched her fists, encouraging herself as she felt the power of ice and snow within her. Her chest rose and fell ever so slightly, and the crystalline heart visible through her translucent skin beat faster with anticipation.
“The Guide has arrived!”
“Bingying, come out quickly!”
Bingying passed through the crowd and arrived before the Guide.
The Guide was a powerful Ice Soul Mage as well. Would she one day become a Guide too, serving the Queen? Bingying wondered excitedly.
The Guide was a very tall man clad in an ice-blue robe and carrying a staff. He stood solemnly in the village square with his eyes closed. Sunlight passed through his body, casting a blue shadow onto the ground.
Yet no one in the village was afraid of him. Many people gathered around him, their eyes filled with admiration and envy.
Only after Bingying approached did he slowly open his eyes. His pupils were like the purest glaciers, deep and imposing.
“Come here, little one.”
Bingying nervously stepped before the Guide. He extended one finger and lightly touched it to her forehead.
Bingying felt a strange energy surge into her body. Even her body, forged from ice, seemed to glow faintly, as though every inch of her icy skin and jade-like bones were rejoicing. The snow beneath her feet began to swirl soundlessly, condensing into exquisite patterns of ice flowers. Gasps of amazement rose from the villagers all around them.
“You truly are a gifted child.” A smile slowly spread across the Guide’s lips. He extended a hand covered in frost-like markings toward the girl. “Are you willing to join us, fight against evil, and protect the Queen’s subjects?”
“I am!”
Bingying nodded excitedly. The Guide had truly acknowledged her!
“Then let’s go. We’re heading to Frost City. Go say farewell to your parents… By the next time you can return on your own, you’ll already be an Ice Soul Mage like me.”
“Mm! I already said goodbye to my parents before I came out, Sir Guide! My luggage is packed too. I’m ready to leave at any time!”
The Guide gave a helpless laugh. “What an impatient little girl.”
He raised his staff, and wind and snow gathered before him. In moments, a gigantic snow wolf appeared before the crowd.
“It’s Snow Manipulation!”
“How impressive!”
The villagers gazed on enviously.
Just as the Guide was about to lift Bingying onto the snow wolf, a villager came sprinting back from outside the village in a panic.
“It’s terrible! A monster! There’s a monster! A terrifying monster appeared out of nowhere on the northern snowfields! Everyone, run!”
The Guide paused slightly, halting his movement.
He would never stand by and do nothing.
“What’s there to fear? The Guide is here in the village today!” one villager said with a light laugh.
“That’s right. The Guide can surely deal with the monster in an instant,” another villager said confidently.
The Guide served the Queen directly. What monster could possibly be his match?
“But you should still go to safety,” the Guide said, frowning. “Combat is an extremely dangerous matter.”
“Don’t say that, Sir Guide… With you here, nothing could possibly go wrong.”
“We’ve never seen an Ice Soul Mage in battle before. Let us broaden our horizons.”
“That’s right. We’ll stay far away and protect ourselves.”
Faced with the villagers’ eager gazes, the Guide sighed and said nothing more.
Surrounded and led by the villagers, the Guide soon discovered the monster.
It had crimson skin and bulging, sinewy muscles. Every step it took caused the snow beneath its feet to melt. That splash of red was striking against the white snowfield, completely out of place in this world of ice and snow.
However, it was not particularly large—perhaps only two meters tall—and should have been easy enough to deal with. The Guide felt slightly reassured. In this world, most magical beasts grew stronger as their size increased.
“My heavens, what a hideous, frightening creature!”
“It’s so ugly!”
“Sir Guide, hurry up and kill it!”
The monster was already very close to the village, posing a serious threat.
The Guide pointed his frost staff at the creature and began gathering wind and snow.
One icy spear after another appeared in the air… In any world, a piercing projectile was always one of the most basic offensive spells.
But in the very next moment, the monster vanished from his sight.
The Guide suddenly lost track of his target, while the ice spears continued to form aimlessly in the air.
“Roar—!”
A gaping maw suddenly appeared before the Guide.
“How is this possible…?”
The Guide’s pupils contracted. Then his vision plunged into darkness.
The villagers stared blankly as the monster swallowed the Guide’s head in a single bite. Accompanied by the teeth-grinding sound of shattering ice, the towering Ice Soul Mage burst into a skyful of crystals, like a sudden avalanche.
“Run!”
Someone shouted, and only then did the villagers begin fleeing in every direction for their lives.
The monster seemed drawn to the commotion. In an instant, it transformed into a red blur and charged into the crowd, running amok.
“Ah!”
“Help! Somebody help me!”
Even the Guide had died at the monster’s hands. Ordinary villagers had no hope of resisting it.
Bingying did not dare look back. She ran toward the village in terror, while the sharp crack of shattering ice and the villagers’ screams echoed around her.
Why? Why had things turned out like this?
Today was supposed to be the day she left for Frost City. She was supposed to begin a new life there, become an Ice Soul Mage, and make her parents proud…
Was this all a nightmare? Where had that monster come from?
Before long, the screams around her gradually weakened, then vanished altogether. The only sound left was the monster chewing on crystalline ice.
No one noticed that amid the harsh crunching, its crimson body was slowly swelling.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
