Every mutant sea beast throughout Haicheng halted where it stood. A pressure that seemed to come from the soul itself pressed down on their bodies. Uncountable creatures trembled uncontrollably, terror flooding their pupils.
"Aiii—!"
Before they could react, an equally terrifying aura followed on its heels. In the sky, a gorgeous ice-blue silhouette swept past, and the temperature over Haicheng visibly began to drop.
"Crack!"
"Crack!"
"…"
On the ground, waves of ice-blue radiance surged.
In an instant, countless spires of frost reared up. The mutant sea beasts crowding the streets were frozen into ice sculptures in a single breath—without even the power to resist.
"This is…"
"Chris Frost is here."
Feeling that absolute chill, Skyler Quinn couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth.
His flames were too destructive to use on a large scale. If he did, the survivors would be just as likely to die in his fire as the mutant beasts.
But Chris Frost's ability had no such flaw.
As long as you didn't shatter the ice sculptures she created, the lives within would not die; they would only fall into a sleep.
And because Chris could freely lift her own power, there was no need to worry about injuring the surviving civilians.
"From here on, leave this to me."
Chris Frost stood upon a vast, sacred, ice-blue phoenix and spoke in an even tone.
"Aiii—!"
With a clear, ringing cry, the Extreme Ice Phoenix beneath her unfurled its wings. Boundless cold swept across all of Haicheng.
Where it passed, whether high-rise buildings or mutant sea beasts—or even Haicheng's survivors—everything became ice sculptures in the span of a heartbeat. A small number struggled for a moment, but in the end they still could not escape the fate of being frozen.
A dozen minutes later, the entire city had become a world of ice. From the sky looking down, it was like an enormous ice-blue gem—
Resplendent and sacred.
"Bang!"
As the last sector fell under the veil of frost, the Extreme Ice Phoenix beneath Chris shattered outright, becoming a scattering of glowing motes. Chris herself went pale and dropped out of the sky—
But she never reached the ground. A soft body caught her.
"You—why push yourself this hard?"
"Do you even know how big Haicheng is?"
"Even with a second awakening plus an Imperial Relic, there's no way you can freeze the whole city!"
"And those pills may restore stamina and spiritual energy, but you can't just gobble them like that."
"You couldn't wait for me?"
Firewing looked down at Chris Frost in her arms, helpless and exasperated. Freezing the entire city of Haicheng—and indiscriminately, freezing everything!
Do you take yourself for the goddess of ice?
If not for her second awakening, the aid of an Imperial Relic, and those recovery pills, it would have been flat-out impossible.
"This is the fastest way."
In Firewing's embrace, Chris answered in a level voice.
She could have slowed her pace and frozen one area after another, but that would be far too slow; more people would die in the meantime.
Better not to overthink it: freeze everything now, then selectively unseal the survivors later.
All it cost her was some spiritual energy and physical strength—nothing more.
"How long were you watching?"
As if something had occurred to her, Chris frowned up at Firewing.
Her strength was comparable to Firewing's—Skyler Quinn was the strongest of the three, and with the Lightshadow Steed's speed he had arrived half an hour earlier than either of them.
But between her and Firewing there shouldn't have been any gap.
Even if she was confident she'd arrive a bit before Firewing, it couldn't be by a full ten-plus minutes.
Besides, the distance from Vantora City to Haicheng was shorter than the distance from Tianhai to Haicheng.
And Firewing had happened to catch her precisely when her spiritual energy dispersed.
"Less than ten minutes."
Firewing answered honestly.
"When I got here you'd already frozen half the city, so I wanted to see if you could really freeze all of it."
"I've got to admit—you're a real badass."
"And those pills taste awful. I'm amazed you can choke them down."
At least on that point, Firewing was genuinely impressed.
Since the day they'd gotten those pills, she refused to take any except the ones that sped cultivation or heightened the five senses.
They were just too foul.
On par with the taste of the Burn-Burn Fruit.
"If you were me, you'd have done the same."
Chris said it lightly.
She knew Firewing's temperament. For all her griping about how the pills tasted, if she were in Chris's place, she would have done exactly this.
Meanwhile, as Chris and Firewing were talking—outside Haicheng—
The military and Transcendents who had come from nearby cities to render aid stared at the city now blanketed in frost, their eyes flickering.
This didn't quite match the intel they'd been given…
"Orders received: the crisis in Haicheng is temporarily neutralized. All living beings have been frozen into a sleep state by Comrade Chris Frost's power."
"Now—some of you go build a city wall and get the defensive installations in place."
"Another group will conduct reconnaissance—enter Haicheng and sweep for any stragglers that slipped through."
"The rest stand by for Comrade Skyler Quinn. He'll be arriving shortly with a portion of the survivors he rescued. We need to transfer them to the safe zone."
Not even a minute after the voice fell silent, Skyler and his group emerged from Haicheng.
"They're yours."
"Yes, sir!"
Skyler didn't linger to talk. Although Chris Frost had sealed Haicheng in ice, that didn't mean the crisis was truly over.
Compared to the mutant sea beasts that weren't individually powerful but were terrifying in number, the great black shape in the footage—the one that had broken through Haicheng's defenses—was the thing that most demanded their attention.
The soldiers and Bureau personnel could only sigh when they saw the blood caked on the survivors—and how some were even missing parts of their bodies.
Who could have thought that in the span of a single night, the calm, peaceful Haicheng would fall to this?
There was, admittedly, one exception who seemed completely untouched.
They simply chalked Ye Changtian up to luck—he must have avoided any encounter with the mutant beasts.
"Roar!!!"
In the depths of the sea, a huge figure lashed its tentacles again and again. As if it had sensed something amusing, excitement rippled through its golden eyes.
It heaved its bulk and sped toward Haicheng.
At that moment, Skyler, Firewing, and Chris seemed to feel something as well. Their eyes grew heavy.
"That thing… is coming."
Skyler looked toward the open sea, his voice turning grave.
"This aura is disgusting. It feels like a natural enemy."
"No way—I have to kill it today, or I'll go mad."
Firewing landed beside Skyler with Chris in her arms, agitation undercutting her voice.
She didn't know why, but instinct screamed that the aura was vile and nauseating, and in her chest a wordless need surged—an urge to annihilate it.
(End of this chapter)