Dominion’s End Volume 3 Chapter 6

Dominion's End Volume 3: Ice-Bound Splendor and Majesty

Original novel in Chinese by: 御 我 (Yu Wo)

Chapter 6: The Control Room—translated by Elkin (proofread by Trespa.s.serby; C/E edited by lucathia)

Bang bang bang!

I pushed the muzzle away with a hand. My devoted servant really did fire on me—if I had been just the slightest bit slower, the bullets would have lodged themselves in my brain, not even giving me the chance to turn into an aberrant!

Almost dying in the most random manner p.i.s.sed me off to no end. I threw a punch at him, then started slapping his face non-stop!

Blackie originally moved to stop me, but when he saw that I was just slapping him, he fell into an awkward silence.

After a dozen consecutive slaps, I finally stopped when I'd slapped the wits out of him. I raged, "Wake up, Chen Yanqing! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! How the h.e.l.l are you gonna make it up to me if you damage this precious face of mine?!"

In that moment, everyone turned their eyes onto the "precious face."

Chen Yanqing was also staring at the "precious face" in a daze. Suddenly, he snapped out of it and shouted, "Xiao Yu? Why are you here? Did you get caught?"

I immediately grabbed his head in one hand, hauled him up, and even started radiating icy energies. I growled, "'Caught,' my a.s.s! Is this cold enough to wake you up?!"

Then, I threw Chen Yanqing onto the floor. He spat out one mouthful of ice, then another, wiped his face, and said, "I feel like I'm still dreaming."

That was what he was saying, but he looked fully awake.

"What about the others? Quick, tell me everything that's happened since you guys came in here, or your comrades are all gonna die!"

Chen Yanqing glanced at Blackie, but he didn't ask any questions and just told us outright, "We split into two groups for the rescue. Ah Nuo was the leader taking us to the control center, while the Lieutenant and Guo Hong went the other way. But we kept meeting monsters along the way and a lot of us got injured or died. We wanted to turn back, but they cut off our retreat route, so we had no choice but to press forward. By the time we got here, we were down to half our men. Before I pa.s.sed out, Ah Nuo was still alive, but I don't know what happened after that."

He had explained it quite clearly. No wonder Blackie said "even Ah Qing will do"—he was able to stay calm despite being covered in his comrades' blood and flesh, and being afflicted with red eyes, shaking hands, and even frozen ends of his hair. I'd underestimated him.

"From the sounds of it, Thirteen has probably taken over the control center." Jiang Xiaotian frowned as he said, "We didn't encounter any aberrants along the way, so they probably want us to walk straight into their jaws."

"They're that intelligent?" This was surprising. How could aberrants in this era be so smart? What the h.e.l.l did the MORC do?! I asked quickly, "Ah Qing, did you encounter any aberrants who could speak?"

Ah Qing shook his head. "Nope, they didn't look too different from the monsters outside. They jump at us the moment they see us like we're food, unless we use heavy firepower to force them back. But there must be some monster at the top commanding them. When they launched a coordinated attack, Ah Nuo sensed that there was something wrong and wanted to retreat and regroup with the Lieutenant. But by then, it was too late. All our routes of retreat had been blocked off. There's no way this would have happened without a leader."

I had an idea of what was going on. The experiments had probably evolved a bit faster than regular aberrants and had not recovered their minds. What kind of human mind would gobble up other humans as food?!

But Thirteen was an exception—leaders.h.i.+p didn't just require intelligence but also experience. So perhaps he really did possess a human's mind, but the research center hadn't treated him as anything special. He was probably a unique case rather than the MORC having found a way to let the aberrants regain their minds.

Blackie asked uneasily, "Ah Qing, should we go find Ah Nuo or go back for the Lieutenant?"

Chen Yanqing asked, "How long has it been since we came in as reinforcements?"

Blackie glanced at his watch and immediately reported, "Forty minutes."

"Just forty minutes…" A look of pain flashed across Chen Yanqing's face, but he shook his head and calmed himself down before speaking anxiously, "We arrived here at approximately the twenty-five minute mark. At the time, Ah Nuo was leading the team at full speed to break through. I was watching the back, and I was sent flying and knocked out before I even noticed the attack. Not much time has pa.s.sed since, so we still have a chance of catching up to the team!"

Hearing that, I looked down at Jiang Xiaotian. He had just been clamoring to go to the control center to kill Thirteen, so if Ah Qing was proposing to go after Ah Nuo's team, Jiang Xiaotian might object.

Jiang Xiaotian spoke coolly, "If Thirteen was in the control center and he could command the aberrants, do you think we have a choice in where to go?"

Everyone's expressions drained.

I shook my head, saying, "Maybe we do, since Thirteen might not care where we're heading. There are just a handful of us here, so we're too few compared to the other teams. If you had the choice to dig into prime rib, would you even care about a little bit of spaghetti mince?"

This wasn't yet the time when the elites could take on ten thousand enemies by themselves. Right now, fights were still determined by numbers and firepower, so Thirteen's human mind probably wouldn't consider us to be strong. Sigh, though I probably really wasn't as strong as the platoon led by the Lieutenant, so he wasn't exactly wrong.

Jiang Xiaotian pondered for a moment then nodded and said, "You're probably right. At the early stages of the apocalypse, if I spotted a large group of aberrants, I probably would ignore the few that were scattered around. Numbers are more important than individual ability right now."

Dàgē, please don't compare humans and aberrants!

"You…?" Chen Yanqing stared at Jiang Xiaotian and me in bewilderment.

"Lead the way." I said calmly, "Let's catch up to Ah Nuo's team."

He seemed to find the situation highly suspect, but he still swallowed back his suspicions and gestured in a direction with his gun, saying, "This way." Then, he quickly walked to the front and ordered without turning his head, "Blackie, you take the rear guard. You must pay close attention."

"I'll take the back," I immediately cut in. If Blackie were at the very back, not only would he fail to give us any warning, we might lose him without noticing.

At that, Chen Yanqing stopped abruptly and turned to look at me.

Blackie hastily explained, "Xiao Yu's very strong. He's got good marksmans.h.i.+p, good moves, and a weird ice ability. He was the one who saved us out there."

Chen Yanqing hesitated before nodding and continuing to lead the way. His EQ really was quite extraordinary—elite troops really were a completely different animal from the leftover soldiers.

We quick marched some distance—Chen Yanqing was going very fast, probably due to his concern for the safety of his brothers. The exception was when we encountered the occasional turn in the path or a half ruined room, which forced him to stop to do a quick check for any dangers before continuing. That Wu Yaojin probably wouldn't be able to catch up with us at this pace.

On the way, we spotted quite a number of corpses that were missing parts again. Although Ah Nuo's team looked to be in an exceedingly bad situation, making the two soldiers' complexions grow worse and worse, we thankfully didn't see Ah Nuo at all. If not, these two would probably fall into pieces and not be able to push on anymore.

Blackie's expression suddenly changed, and he shouted, "Ah Qing, if we go any further, then we'll pa.s.s through the control center. Why would you guys pick this route?"

"We didn't have a choice!" Chen Yanqing raged, "They were chasing us from behind, so we had to press on even if it was a trap!"

I glanced at Jiang Xiaotian. No wonder he hadn't objected to following Ah Nuo—he had probably known this from the start.

Turning the corner, we would be about to arrive at the control center. Chen Yanqing came to an abrupt halt, his expression a mixture of anger and anxiety. Then, after taking in a deep breath, he looked at Blackie and asked, "Are you ready?"

Instead, Blackie looked at me. It was only when I nodded at him that he responded, "Yes."

Chen Yanqing looked at Jiang Xiaotian. His face twitched and he gave in, saying, "Then prepare yourselves for all possibilities."

He lifted his gun and turned sharply, but in the next moment, he recoiled and fell back a huge distance, smacking face first into the ground.

I rushed forward, pus.h.i.+ng aside the shocked Blackie, to see on Chen Yanqing's face a large… spider? On first glance, it looked like a spider, but on closer inspection, I noticed that the round body was glistening and full of fluids. It looked more like a marine creature, large enough to cover his face, and two long, slender tentacles were firmly locked around the back of his head. No matter how much Chen Yangqing clawed at it, he couldn't get it off.

I quickly knelt down, wanting to help, but the moment I touched Chen Yanqing, he started, sat up, and scrambled backwards desperately.

"Don’t move, it's me."

He seemed like he was still able to hear, and he no longer moved back. Although he was twitching like crazy, he tried his best to keep still.

I grabbed at the thing with my hand, but I couldn't get a grip on the slick, slimy surface. Its many legs made it look like a spider, but its skin was like a marine creature's. Fire was probably a pretty good choice against it, but the slightest slip up and Chen Yanqing would never be able to show his face to the public again.

"Hang on, it might be a bit cold."

I cautiously froze that monstrous thing and knocked off those long tentacles first. Just as I was about to take a closer look at the gap between the thing and Chen Yanqing's face to avoid ripping off his skin along with it, he couldn't wait any longer. He tore the thing off, spat out something long and soft, took a deep breath, and then started throwing up.

"It really is a spider." I inspected the thing. It was probably a spider-based aberrant, except its skin seemed closer to a marine animal's like a sea cuc.u.mber. If an average person got tangled up with this thing on their faces, they were probably a goner.

Judging from Chen Yanqing's expression, I could tell he was being suffocated just now. The time frame for saving someone like that was just a few minutes, but this thing was wrapped very tightly around his head and the tentacles were pretty tough as well. So if you had to get it off within a few minutes, you had to already be lying down on a surgery table, or happen to have a tier two ice user next to you. d.a.m.n, Chen Yanqing, you're a h.e.l.luva lucky guy!

"S-save them, quick…" Chen Yanqing was coughing so hard that his face had turned red, but he still forced himself to gesture at the bend in the corridor.

I balked and quickly turned the corner. Before my eyes was a scene of whiteness—the entire corridor was covered in wet and slippery spider webs. Many soldiers were trapped by the white threads, strung up in mid-air and immobilized. Every single one of them had a mollusk spider on their face.

Give up on those who aren't moving anymore, those whose limbs are still twitching take second priority, and target those who struggle the most first. I reached out to grab a spider, froze it, then yanked the whole thing off. I quickly pulled them off one after the other, and I ended up plucking off the ones even from the guys who weren't moving at all, in hopes that they could still be revived …

"Blackie, Ah Qing, help…"

After plucking the eighth one, I looked back to see the blue and purple faces of the soldiers. The ones who had been twitching had probably moved as a result of the spiders on their faces rather than their own volition. But I remembered there was one that had been struggling hard…

Looking over them, I didn't see a single living person, and I doubted my memory for a moment.

Blackie and Chen Yanqing's faces had turned sheet white as they gazed at their comrades who had met an unnatural end to life hanging in mid-air. This was obviously too much for them and they stood there in a daze, staring at their comrades who had died tragically.

I scanned over the bodies but didn't see Ah Nuo. Obviously not everyone was here, which was a good thing. As long as there were people to save, Chen Yanqing and Blackie would be able to get a grip on themselves.

Before I could speak, Chen Yanqing suddenly rushed up and said anxiously, "Xiao Yu, help me take him down. He just moved—I saw!"

Oh? The one who struggled the most? I looked over and blanched.

"Ah Qing, run!"

The body behind him exploded, and sticky, smooth tentacles stretched out, about to wrap Chen Yangqing from head to toe. I hastily threw out two ice knives, using the freezing energy to stop that thing's movements for a moment, then gliding right to Chen Yanqing and dragging him to the ground.

Having saved him, I swung upwards with all my strength and cut off one tentacle of the spider. This was rather surprising—I'd originally thought I'd be able to cut through three with that force, but I ended up only cutting one. There was a slight sense of recoil as well, and if I hadn't frozen that bit of its flesh, I might even have failed to cut anything at all. Come to think of it, this thing wasn't just hard, it was tough—much tougher than the spider that had covered people's faces.

In terms of height, this thing's body didn't reach a person's waist, but it was as long as a person was tall. The entire thing looked enormous, and I had no idea how on earth it had fit into a person's body just now. No wonder the body had twitched so violently.

"Shuyu, deal with it ASAP!" Jiang Xiaotian hollered, "There's more incoming!"

My heart chilled and I immediately stabbed a knife at the spider's head. At the same time, this fellow's tentacle stabbed at my face, the slimy, soft tentacle moving so quickly that it whipped up a gust—it was clearly not as harmless as it looked. Unfortunately for it, I grabbed onto the tentacle and foiled its attack. If it were someone else, they probably wouldn't have been able to stop it because it was too slippery, but freezing would turn even the slipperiest of things into a popsicle… Wait, isn't the diameter and length just perfect?

After stabbing the knife into the spider's brains, I leaped back, drawing on the tentacle in my hand until it was taut. Then, I turned my ice ability to the max, freezing it from the tentacle tip right to the body. Then, I moved forward and chopped it, creating one fine ice staff. One end was even sharp, so I could just about use it as an ice spear!

Although I didn't have time to strengthen it with diamond ice, the spider's tentacle was originally hard and tough, and my ice powers helped to hold it in a staff shape, so it was pa.s.sable as a weapon.

The moment the ice spear was created, Jiang Xiaotian's words came true. A huge bunch of spiders rained down from above, both large and small. I just barely caught sight of them before I heard the crack of gunfire. Chen Yanqing was shooting, firstly sweeping a hail of bullets across the ceiling, then once Blackie snapped out of it and followed suit, he switched to targeted shooting, bullet by bullet. Amazingly, every bullet hit a spider's head—at most, only two bullets were needed to burst apart a small spider.

The big spiders, however, were much trickier to handle. Their tough head carapace served them well, making it hard for the bullets to penetrate. Most bullets were deflected, but toughness was easier for me to deal with than hardness. Right now, my ice spear and ice knives weren't hard enough, so I couldn't go toe-to-toe with them on hardness. But if these bouncing spiders were frozen, they wouldn't be able to bounce now, would they?

Just as I was able to start a ma.s.sacre from the one closest to me, Jiang Xiaotian's clear voice of a child said, "Shuyu, freeze them all and let those two clean them up with their guns."

Will it really work? Freezing a wide area wasn't a problem, but these weren't pieces of sas.h.i.+mi, rather really robust aberrants. Freezing them right to the core wasn't easy. After a moment's hesitation, I remembered that I had leveled up to tier two and I immediately wanted to try it out.

One large spider leaped right before my eyes. I swung my staff at it, using plenty of force, and smashed it to one side. But it immediately got back up, not showing any signs of heavy damage—it was evident that these types of attack were useless against it.

I batted the big spider far away, retreated behind Chen Yanqing and Blackie, and said, "Keep shooting. I need a few seconds."

Chen Yanqing replied, "We can't hold them back for long. We don't have enough ammo."

Most of the time he was point shooting, but when there were too many spiders swarming over at once, he would switch back to strafe fire. He was going through his ammo a bit slower than Blackie, but still at a very quick rate.

I pa.s.sed the two guns from Jin Feng to Jiang Xiaotian to prevent him from being forced to use his abilities and getting himself sick again.

As the sound of gunfire thundered around me, I gathered up my ice abilities. The air around me crackled. Occasionally, ice would crystallize out of nowhere and hang in the air, floating and trembling. At my feet, thin layers of ice started forming on the ground. There wasn't enough moisture here…

I froze suddenly. Moisture? That's right, if there's no water, how can I create ice? If I can crystallize the water in the air, doesn't this mean I can control water?

"Shuyu, concentrate!" Jiang Xiaotian shouted, firing at the same time. The sight of a small child wielding a large gun made one want to frown and pluck the gun from his hands.

Not allowing my mind to wander, I tucked this thought at the back of my mind and focused on the extreme. This was much easier than I had expected, and if I hadn't s.p.a.ced out, I would have gathered enough already. If I were more practiced, I wouldn't need to specially acc.u.mulate the power, but just use it directly.

"I-it's cold…" Blackie was shaking so badly that he couldn't speak properly.

"Xiao Yu, are you done?" Chen Yanqing's legs were quaking as he said, "My hands are so cold that I won't be able to shoot soon."

I took in a deep breath then said, "Out of my way!"

The two of them immediately backed away on either side of me, breathing sighs of relief. But before they had finished exhaling, a blast of icy air shot out from between them. Their breaths turned into puffs of whiteness, and they looked like they were somewhere in the middle of deep winter.

Then again, this wasn't wrong. The entire corridor was freezing over. From the floor, it extended up the walls. The spiders didn't care about it at first, but as the icy air coiled around their tentacles, they started realizing that something was off. But by then, a few of them were already stuck fast to the ground and couldn't move, and for those that were able to jump into the air in time, the cold didn't let them go and followed after.

At the end of this, the entire corridor had turned into an ice tunnel, frozen solid with many spiders. They almost looked like ice sculptures. I didn't think I'd be able to pull it off so easily—or perhaps I really was stronger that I'd thought I was?

The two soldiers gaped at the scene in front of them and turned back to look at me, a hint of fear in their eyes.

I said irritably, "Why are you still looking at me? If you don't hurry up, we'll be in deep s.h.i.+t once they defrost. I can't pull this off again!"

This wasn't exactly true—I could probably do it at least one more time, but right now I needed to get rid of their fear of me first.

As expected, the moment I said that, their terror of me subsided significantly. Blackie in particular started staring at me with wors.h.i.+pful eyes, making me struggle to suppress the glee in my heart. I had to remember that Thirteen in this time period was already able to overturn a whole research center, so I had nothing to be proud of!

"Deal with the large ones first. Hit their heads—don't waste your bullets doing strafing shots, use point shooting!"

Blackie put on a mournful face as he said, "I'm not Ah Qing."

"I'll handle it." Chen Yanqing started point shooting without the slightest bit of hesitation, and every bullet of his. .h.i.t its mark. His marksmans.h.i.+p really was quite something, so even if his special ability was terrible, I wouldn't miss out on taking him with me.

I took back the guns from Jiang Xiaotian's hands. Seeing how quickly Chen Yanqing was dealing with the spiders and how none of the spiders showed any sign of regaining their mobility any time soon, I didn't fire alongside him. The two guns from Jin Feng packed a punch and I didn't want to waste them. There was also a limited number of bullets in my backpack—anyone would guess that these bullets had a trick or two added to them, so if we switched to normal bullets, the guns wouldn't be that powerful. In the worst case scenario, the guns wouldn't work once we changed bullets.

"They're all dead." Chen Yanqing turned to look at me. For some reason, he had a grim expression stretched across his face as he said, "Can we go?"

Just as I was about to ask why he was making that face, I heard Blackie yell,

"I-it's f.u.c.king freezing!" He hugged himself with both arms and chattered, "Let's go to the control center, go find Ah Nuo, go find the Lieutenant, just go somewhere. Let's go. I-it's too f.u.c.king cold here."

So Chen Yanqing's face wasn't grim, but just frozen.

"Let's go now." I nodded with some embarra.s.sment. This was one of the weaknesses of ice abilities—before everyone evolved to be tough enough, these low temperatures affected even my allies standing next to me. If it were just freezing a small area, it wasn't a big deal, but when I seal off a large area with ice like this, Chen Yanqing and Blackie would probably get so cold that their trigger fingers would fall off.

"Let's go to the control center. It should be close by." Jiang Xiaotian looked over his shoulder and said, "This guy should know. Go ask him."

It was only then that I realized Wu Yaojin was behind us. He was staring at me with his eyes wide open and on the verge of sparkling. If he had the choice, I had no doubt that he would stick me in a gla.s.s cylinder and thoroughly research me.

Seeing his expression p.i.s.sed me off, and just as I was about to throw out a question in an icy tone and scare him while I was at it, his eyes widened even further, and he let out a scream.

Gun shots and a loud roar rang out almost simultaneously. I looked back to see that the world had changed completely. A single silhouette stood, proud and alone—it looked normal, and it was only after taking a closer look that you'd notice that thick tail that trailed onto the floor, sweeping from one side to another every so often.

It was standing on a person, and because that person was being pressed full-bodied against the icy floor, he was starting to freeze over. Even if he hadn't been crushed to death under that foot, just lying on this arctic coldness was enough to half-kill him. But the man didn't show the slightest sign of a struggle, so in all likelihood, he was already…

I swayed, not quite able to react to the scene before me—then the memories of the apocalypse chose this moment to come rus.h.i.+ng at me.

Yes, this was how it was during the apocalypse. Human life was completely worthless—a person who was talking and walking next to me one second would easily turn into a b.l.o.o.d.y corpse in the next, and their deaths would take all sorts of terrifying forms.

So even if we were on the same team and relied on each other for survival, we didn't have much interest in each other and didn't even bother chatting much. Who knew whether they'd still be around after a night's rest? Not talking to them at all would at least spare me that little bit of pain.

As the body count mounted, I had become completely numb. Aside from the people close to me, the lives and deaths of other people didn't trigger much feeling in me anymore. Even if the people dearest to me died, I'd often have to flee in a panic without even having the time to shed tears.

By the time the fleeing was over, I didn't have the slightest bit of energy left in me to mourn. After all, I was already lucky to be alive. Yes, this was the apocalypse, where even grief was a luxury most couldn't afford.

"Blackie!"

Chen Yanqing gave a heartbroken wail and sprayed bullets from his gun like they were free. But the opponent was ready for this and yanked down the frozen spider corpses stuck to the ceiling to block the bullets. In the next moment, a large number of aberrants dashed out from both sides of the opponent—it was obvious that they were bullet-proof just by looking at their exteriors.

To one side was the door to the control room. It had been completely covered by the spider webs, so we had completely failed to notice it, and that was probably intentional on the enemy's part.

Jiang Xiaotian yanked at Chen Yanqing as he retreated behind me. Although he looked like a three-year old kid, his strength was a different matter. Chen Yanqing was dragged effortlessly away by him as he went a little nuts. Being dragged like this, he fell onto his b.u.t.t at my feet, causing the muzzle to arc upwards, all the while spitting out bullets.

Chen Yanqing struggled to get back up but I held him down by pressing down on his shoulder. He lifted his eyes to glare at me, his gaze as crazed as a beast's. I stared back at him steadily, not shying away from the eye contact. Then, I gripped his shoulder hard before giving him a pat.

Chen Yanqing's face collapsed, his head dropped, and he choked softly.

"Thirteen," Jiang Xiaotian grated through ground teeth.

Hearing this name, I couldn't help but give a sigh of admiration. This was a monumental moment in history where the human elite was going up against an aberrant elite. That said, one had reverted to childhood and looked like a three year-old, while the other had only just started evolving and currently looked like an overworked office worker. Honestly, neither of them felt awe-inspiring or intimidating—even the big spiders looked scarier than them.

The guy in front of us looked even more dubious than he had looked in the filed photo. Seriously, this is the aberrant elite that decimated an entire continent? Are you f.u.c.king kidding me?

"So it really was Thirteen?" Wu Yaojin murmured, somewhat in disbelief. Right now, I completely understood where he was coming from. Thirteen's appearance was simply too deceiving.

"You are…" Thirteen didn't move to attack and looked at the ice around us in confusion, then at me. He asked uncomprehendingly, "Them? Us?"

He possessed an extremely high intellect, to the point of being able to speak—albeit he was not completely normal. It was obvious that my ice abilities had befuddled him about whether I was friend or foe, but on this point, even humans would have their doubts. After all, we had a talking aberrant right in front of us, so it wouldn't be strange if people thought I was an aberrant as well. Right now, humans didn't know much about special abilities.

Pretending to be one of these aberrants then attacking when they were unsuspecting was certainly a good way of going about things. Unfortunately, I had Chen Yanqing and Wu Yaojin next to me. I couldn't care less about the latter, but I was determined to keep the former!

Looking away for a moment lost me Blackie, so how could I possibly bear to lose Ah Qing as well? Right now, I wasn't the Guan Weijun who was used to death. Jiang Shuyu wouldn't ever want to get used to losing people close to him!

"Get off Blackie's body!" I raged, "Or else I'm going to send you meet to your spider friends!"

Chen Yanqing stood up. The craziness had pa.s.sed, replaced by the searing fires of wrath.

Thirteen's expression darkened and he said coolly, "You're 'them.'"

The moment he said that, two aberrants that looked like bears in armor opened their jaws, but instead let out sounds that did not sound the slightest bit bear-like. They sounded like a leaking balloon, except much louder, hurting my ears.

"Watch out, those two have very tough skins." Wu Yaojin whispered from behind, "Even their eyelids are tough. They have nict.i.tating membranes, which means their inner eyelid is translucent and they can keep them shut even in combat. Although they're not as hard as the outer eyelid, they can block a bullet or two, no problem."

The h.e.l.l, is it possible to make something even more dangerous than them? Although these two looked like bears, on closer inspection, they had a human form. Their legs were too long and they spent more time standing on their feet than on all fours. They were probably aberrants transformed from humans rather than aberrants transformed from animals. If they're weaponized down to their eyelids, how on earth am I supposed to defeat them?!

Within this small window of opportunity, I'd only had the time to secretly compress two layers of diamond ice onto the spear. Trying to brute force my way through their defenses was impossible. If we dragged out the conversation, I might be able to layer on more diamond ice, but I simply couldn't take it when I saw him stepping on Blackie!

You G.o.dd.a.m.n motherf.u.c.ker, how dare you continue to stand on him?! I'm gonna cut off all two… all three! of your legs and tail.

Suddenly, I felt energy pulse next to me. I was so terrified that I whipped my head around, worried that I'd lost Ah Qing without noticing. But I saw Chen Yanqing's face—it was obvious that he had become so cold that he'd turned blue. I pushed at him and said, "Go to the back. Don't get so cold that you can't shoot."

Chen Yanqing looked extremely unwilling, but when he heard "can't shoot," he obediently retreated to Wu Yaojin's side. That little rascal had backed away at least a dozen steps long ago.

Having dealt with Chen Yanqing, I then shot a hard look at Jiang Xiaotian and told him sternly in a soft voice, "Don't use your abilities!"

Layers of ice drifted around Jiang Xiaotian's body as he emitted at least the same amount of energy as I was. This was what made Chen Yanqing so cold that he turned blue.

"I'll kill him!"

No wonder Jiang Xiaotian never even considered whether his younger brother could deal with Thirteen or whether it would be dangerous. He'd been planning to do it himself all along, to avenge Xiao Sha from the other world. It was clear that the Ice Emperor didn't care about his own body's condition.

I took in a deep breath.

"Let me do it."