The Solitary Reflection Pavilion sat atop the western cliff, overlooking a mist-filled gorge where only wind howled. Inside, the austere, frost-scented room held only a stone bed and low table. Lin Tian shut the door, finally alone. He exhaled, feeling the day’s weight. If the gravity hall tested his foundation, this silence challenged his resolve.
Three days. The thought tightened his gut. In three days, they would steal her. Under the guise of the Contest of Resonance, Mu Chen and the elders intended to sever his bond with Xueya to claim her pure bloodline for their faction.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Sitting on the stone bed, Lin Tian ignored the creeping chill. He focused on the icy thread connecting his core to Bai Xueya. The link pulsed, though it felt dangerously thin.
She was trapped, treated as a re resource by the Frostheart elders. He couldn’t visit; guards and rivals waited for any excuse to disqualify him. He needed another way to reach her. He had to act.
Xueya had taught him the Frostwing ssenger, a technique for condensing one’s will into a spiritual construct to traverse their bond. Though taxing, it was their lifeline.
Lin Tian closed his eyes, focusing on the icy thread in his mind. He channeled his will into the mory of her instructions, shaping a bird of frost and intent. With a flicker, a fragile, glowing construct shimred into existence.
Go to her.
He released it, and his consciousness surged forward. The stone pavilion vanished, replaced by an expanse of white mist—their shared ntal space.
Bai Xueya stood before him, her form shimring like water. She looked worn; her robes seed leaden, and she trembled with a persistent, bone-deep cold. Her eyes widened, relief rushing through the bond.
"Tian," she whispered.
He approached, his hand hovering near her cheek. He traced the distress radiating from her—a chill far removed from her natural Ice Phoenix affinity.
"What have they done to you?"
She attempted a brittle smile. "The usual tasks. Monitoring. Duty lectures. And the elixirs—the Frozen Jade Elixirs. They started two days ago."
The na struck him like a blow. He knew them from restricted texts: rare brews of thousand-year heart-ice and sacred jade dust. Their purpose was to scour a cultivator’s ridians, burning away all impurities to force a bloodline to its most potent, unstable extre.
They were also notoriously, brutally dangerous. The process was akin to rubbing a raw nerve with sandpaper. It purified through agony.
"They’re preparing you for him," Lin Tian said, the words tasting like ash. "For Mu Chen’s Frozen Jade Body. They want your bloodline to resonate with his perfectly, with no... interference."
With no trace of , he didn’t say. They both heard it anyway.
Xueya’s nod was sharp. "The head elder calls the elixir an honor. It feels like swallowing glass; the cold crystallizes within my ridians, cutting whenever I cycle qi. My body tries to expel the toxicity, but the elixir traps it all inside."
Lin Tian’s mind raced. His Bonded Feedback was a two-way channel. He could send energy back, tempered by his own unique Ice Fla Qi—a paradox of glacial cold and forging fire. Could he burn the toxicity away?
"Open your spiritual sense to ," he urged softly. "Completely."
Xueya t his gaze. She trusted him with her soul. Closing her eyes, she let her consciousness unfold like a flower. Lin Tian entered her, following their bond.
The state of her ridians chilled his fury to ice. Her once graceful channels were choked with jagged, dark green sludge—toxic elixir residue. It clung like gri, hindering her pure qi and fracturing her ridians from within. Her Ice Phoenix essence flickered at her core, a brilliant blue-white light gasping for air amidst the filth they had forced upon her.
"It’s worse than I thought," he murmured, his voice tight.
"Can you...?" Xueya’s thought was barely a whisper, frayed with pain and hope.
"I’m going to try."
He focused on the Bonded Feedback function. In his mind’s eye, he called up the System’s interface, a transparent overlay in this spiritual realm. He selected the channel to Xueya, but instead of drawing energy, he reversed the flow. He pictured his own dantian, where the Ice Fla Qi swirled in a perfect, balanced vortex. He took hold of the fla aspect—not the wild, consuming fire of Su Lan, but his own tempered, precise, and purifying heat.
He began to push it down the bond.
In the ntal space, a thread of golden light, thin as a spider’s silk but blazing with intensity, extended from his chest to hers. It touched the center of her being, where the corruption was thickest.
At first, nothing happened. Then, a hiss, like water dropped on a hot stove.
Where the golden light touched the dark green sludge, it didn’t lt it. It ignited it. The impurities burned with a cold, sizzling fla, turning from sticky tar into fine, gray ash. The ash had no substance, no weight. As Xueya’s natural ice qi flowed again, it simply swept the ash away, dissolving it into nothingness.
Xueya gasped. Her projection shuddered violently. It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was a sensation of intense, overwhelming heat scouring through her frozen channels, a feeling so alien to her icy physiology that it was shocking. But beneath the shock was a profound, deepening relief. The grinding, cutting pressure in her ridians began to ease.
"Hold on," Lin Tian urged, his own concentration iron-clad. He was a surgeon wielding a laser. The fla was delicate work. Too much, and he could damage her pristine ice ridians. Too little, and he wouldn’t clear the deepest blockages. He guided the thread of purifying fire, following the pathways of her qi, seeking out every pocket of clinging corruption.
He burned through the clog in her left arm ridian. He scoured the buildup near her heart. He purified the sluggish channels leading to her dantian. As he worked, he could feel her. Feel her pain receding, replaced by a weary, grateful warmth. Feel her spirit, which had been bowed under the weight, slowly beginning to straighten.
The process was exhausting. Channeling such precise energy across a spiritual link drained him, not of qi, but of will. Sweat beaded on his physical brow back in the pavilion. But he didn’t stop.
Finally, he reached the last major deposit, a thick knot of toxicity near the base of her spine. He focused the fla into a needle point and pierced it. The dark mass erupted into silent fla and vanished.
A wave of pure, crystalline ice qi exploded through Xueya’s system, unimpeded for the first ti in days. It was her power, her birthright, flowing freely. In the ntal space, her form blazed with a soft, blue-white luminescence. The dark circles under her eyes faded. The tremors stopped. She stood taller, the weight gone from her shoulders.
She opened her eyes. They were clear again, sharp and bright as winter stars. She looked at him, and the gratitude in her gaze was a tangible force.
"It’s... gone," she breathed. "The pressure, the pain. It’s all gone."
Lin Tian let the flow of energy cease. The golden thread retracted back into him. He felt a deep, satisfying fatigue, but also a powerful surge of connection. The bond between them, which had been strained and thin, now felt like a cable of forged steel. It humd with shared power and perfect understanding.
A notification from the System appeared in the corner of his awareness, even here.
[ Bonded Feedback Purification Complete. ]
[ Toxic Impurities from ’Frozen Jade Elixir’ expelled. ]
[ Partner ’Bai Xueya’ ridians cleansed, cultivation stability restored. ]
[ Spiritual Resonance with Partner ’Bai Xueya’ has increased. ]
[ Link Synergy: 90% ]
He let the notification fade. The number was just a confirmation of what he already felt. The link was stronger than ever.
"Ninety percent," he said aloud.
Xueya reached out. In this space, their hands could almost touch. She smiled, a real smile this ti, tired but radiant. "They wanted to weaken what we have. To make pure for him. They only made us stronger."
"They don’t understand the bond," Lin Tian said, his voice firm. "They think it’s a transaction. A transfer of power. They don’t see that it’s..." He searched for the word. "Reinforcent. What I take, I give back. What hurts you, I can heal."
"And what they try to force on , you can burn away," Xueya finished. She looked around the white mist, a hint of her old, cool deanor returning. "We cannot stay long. The elders will notice the shift in my energy. They will investigate."
"Let them," Lin Tian said, a hard edge in his voice. "Let them see that their elixirs failed. Let them see that you’re stronger with than you ever were with their poisons."
"They will only push harder," she warned, but there was no fear in her tone. Only resolve.
"Then I will push back," he promised. "In three days, in the Contest of Resonance, I will show them exactly what this bond is worth."
Their ti was up. He could feel the strain of maintaining the projection, the distant pull of his physical body in the stone pavilion.
"Be careful," Xueya said, her form beginning to grow faint, dissolving back into the mist. "Mu Chen is not like the outer disciples. He is the real thing."
"So am I," Lin Tian said.
Her image smiled one last ti, and then she was gone. The white mist space unraveled around him, and his consciousness snapped back into his body with a soft, ntal thud.
He opened his eyes. He was back on the stone bed, in the cold, silent Solitary Reflection Pavilion. The wind still howled outside. But inside, he was warm. The bond in his mind glowed with a steady, potent light, a connection solidified at ninety percent.
He had seen her pain, and he had healed it. The elders had tried to poison their bond, and they had only tempered it.
Lin Tian lay back on the hard stone, staring at the dark ceiling. Exhaustion tugged at him, but his mind was clear, his will sharp as a honed blade.
In three days, he would face Mu Chen. He would face the entire Azure Snow Sect’s tradition and expectation.
And he would show them all what happened when a man fought not just for power, but for the woman he loved.
End of Chapter 98
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