Admittedly, this reckless, saturated freezing did indeed slow down Unohana Retsu's offensive.
The crisp sounds of "Shunpo" rang out one after another.
Her figure turned into a white afterimage, but she could never completely shake off the cold that clung to her like a maggot on a bone.
Ice pillars crisscrossed, the chill biting.
Unohana Retsu dodged upward, stepping on the ice layers, her figure constantly rising until she had retreated a hundred meters into the sky.
Under Loki's frantic exertion, driven by a desire for mutual destruction, the cold currents from all directions finally converged in the air, completely sealing off all her paths of retreat.
"Crack!"
With a crisp sound, Unohana Retsu, unable to dodge in time, was instantly swallowed by the frigid ice currents.
The thick ice spread at an alarming speed, freezing her along with her Zanpakutō inside a massive, translucent ice crystal.
"Ha... Hahahaha! I won! You monster!"
Loki collapsed onto his knees on the ice as if drained of all strength, gasping for air that was filled with ice shards.
He looked up at the ice sculpture trapping Unohana Retsu in mid-air, his face filled with irrepressible ecstasy.
However, in his ecstasy, he failed to notice that Minazuki... had not been released at all.
At this moment, if someone were to look down from high above...
...they would see that starting from the landmark Stark Tower and stretching all the way to Central Station—this core district that was once the most prosperous and expensive in all of New York—not a single trace of a flat street could be found as far as the eye could see.
Hideous ice peaks, dozens or even a hundred meters high, looked like a tsunami frozen at its most turbulent moment, tearing through the asphalt and piercing the surrounding steel skyscrapers, as if forcibly dragging the entire area back to the Ice Age.
Even the towering Stark Tower had the bottom fifty meters of its main structure frozen in solid ice.
Mist rose, and even the refracted sunlight carried a bone-chilling coldness.
This place had already turned into an absolute forbidden zone where no living creature dared to set foot.
Until—
"Tap, tap, tap..."
A series of crisp, composed footsteps rang out abruptly.
A pair of pure white, knee-high heeled leather boots stepped onto the smooth ice with unhurried grace.
Loki, still in the throes of ecstasy, suddenly shuddered.
Before he could even turn around, a bone-chilling dread instantly crawled up his spine.
"Crack... crack..."
Strange noises suddenly erupted from the originally silent, crimson glaciers around them.
Loki hurriedly looked down, and the sight before him left him dumbfounded. The ice spikes he had summoned with his own hands were now eerily turning around, like living things with a consciousness of their own, all pointing in unison at him, their creator!
"What... what's going on?!"
Loki was pale with shock; this was the bloodline power derived from the Frost Giants!
The female monster had clearly been frozen, and there shouldn't have been a third person in this deadly forbidden zone.
Why was his own power turning around to attack him?!
"Whoosh!"
Before he had any time to think, two sharp crimson ice spears were already mercilessly thrusting toward his face!
Loki rolled on the ground in a panic, narrowly avoiding a fatal blow at the last possible second.
He scrambled backward, his heart filled with a mixture of shock and fury.
Refusing to believe it, he frantically squeezed every bit of magic from his body and slammed his hands onto the ice, trying to summon a new row of ice walls to block the pursuit.
"Rise for me!!"
The ice did indeed rise as he wished, but the moment it formed, the wall that was supposed to protect him split right down the middle, instantly transforming into dozens of sharp ice swords that turned their points toward him and shot forward!
What the hell?!
Loki was now completely dumbfounded.
Not only had the old ice betrayed him, but even the new ice he summoned was completely out of his control. The Frost Giant power in his blood seemed to have become a marionette in someone else's hands, turning back to take his life.
Loki retreated and dodged in a panic, looking around frantically to find the "ghost" controlling everything from the shadows.
Finally, his gaze pierced through layers of ice curtains and froze a hundred meters away.
Beside the massive ice sculpture sealing Unohana Retsu...
...an unfamiliar blue-haired woman was standing there quietly, though he didn't know when she had arrived.
Loki's pupils suddenly constricted to the size of pinheads.
His intuition told him that this woman was the culprit responsible for everything spiraling out of control!
It could only be said that since coming to Midgard, the species known as women had given Loki severe PTSD.
A trace of ruthlessness flashed in Loki's eyes. No longer using frost magic, he drew a sharp dagger from his waist and flicked his wrist, preparing to throw it.
No matter who it is, just kill them first!
A hundred meters away.
The woman in the pure white military uniform slightly raised her ice-blue eyes, her gaze as indifferent as if she were looking at a corpse.
She raised her hands, her slender fingers forming a strange triangular seal in front of her chest.
Parting her vermilion lips, she softly muttered something.
The next second—
"Swish!"
A white light suddenly flashed before Loki's eyes, so fast that even a god's eyes couldn't track it.
Loki was still in the pose of throwing the dagger; the blade hadn't even had time to leave his palm.
A piercing pain suddenly erupted from his right arm.
"Thud."
Accompanied by the dull sound of something falling.
Along with the dagger, his right arm had actually been severed at the elbow, falling straight onto the ice.
Loki's pupils trembled violently, and his brain stalled on the spot.
Because the woman who had clearly been a hundred meters away just a second ago was now standing beside him without any warning!
There was no trajectory of movement, not even a trace of the surrounding wind and snow being disturbed.
It was as if... even time had been frozen the moment she drew her sword.
The pain finally broke through the neural reflex arc, and Loki opened his mouth wide, a shrill scream about to burst from his throat.
But the woman gave him no chance to make any sound at all.
"Crack—!"
The already-rebellious ice instantly surged up, and before Loki's scream could escape his throat, it froze his two-meter-tall burly frame, his expression twisted in pain, and the severed arm on the ground into a brand-new ice coffin.
In the blink of an eye, the dignified God of Mischief of Asgard was humiliatingly turned into a piece of "frozen pork" that couldn't move...
Insta-kill!
The wind and snow gradually subsided.
The woman turned slightly, her long, beautiful legs encased in knee-high white boots making a crisp sound on the ice.
She casually performed a clean sword flourish, her long rapier drawing an elegant arc in the air as it shook off all the blue Frost Giant blood from its blade.
"Clang—"
The blade returned to its scabbard.
Only then did her full appearance slowly reveal itself amidst Manhattan's falling snow.
It was a tall young woman.
She wore a well-tailored white military uniform that perfectly outlined her breathtakingly curvaceous body.
Beneath her military cap, long light-blue hair reached down to her waist, fluttering wildly in the cold wind.
Her features were exquisite and cold, with an arrogance in her brow that was hard for ordinary people to look at directly. But the most striking thing was the strange and charming black mark in the center of her snowy-white chest—
It was a symmetrical, pitch-black emblem with sharp barbs, resembling thorns and demon wings.
Yes, Su Modie's newly acquired S-Rank incarnation was none other than the Empire's strongest female general, the wielder of the Ice Teigu "Demon's Extract"—Esdeath!
[Image]
Esdeath
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