“Ugh… Holy Light… what a disgusting aura,” Skanloven hissed in a low, raspy voice, his face contorted in blatant revulsion.
Daina’s aura surged steadily.
The golden radiance, thick with divine presence, seemed to momentarily overpower Skanloven.
Her long blonde hair fluttered through the gaps in her armor, giving her a valiant and heroic appearance.
“Skanloven! Do you still remember that you were once a member of the Royal Guard Knights?”
Anger flared uncontrollably in Daina’s heart at his words.
She pointed the tip of her Knight’s Spear at Skanloven and bellowed her rebuke.
“Tsk… so much nonsense!”
Skanloven’s lips curled into a disdainful sneer.
He crouched down and thrust both hands directly into the ground.
One after another, massive, gelatinous hands made of white slime erupted from beneath the surface, lunging straight toward Daina and the nearly unconscious Yun Fei behind her.
Seeing this, Daina decisively stepped in front of Yun Fei.
She slammed her Knight’s Spear into the ground, and a shield of pure golden light manifested before them, blocking the onslaught of the milky-white slime hands.
When the slime hands collided with the shield, they didn’t bounce back like solid objects.
Instead, they disintegrated upon impact, splashing and sticking to the shield until they completely obscured her vision.
“Cough… be careful…”
At this sight, Yun Fei ignored the pain racking her body and called out a warning, but she was a second too late.
“What?!”
Daina’s face filled with shock, but it was too late to react.
“Hahaha! Knight Captain Daina, how long has it been since you last moved? Your reactions haven’t just dulled a little, have they — ?”
Skanloven’s arrogant, mocking voice rang out.
Immediately after, Daina saw her shield shattered by brute force.
From amidst the flying shards, a pair of sharp claws lunged through.
*Squelch!*
The claws bypassed Daina’s armor as if it were nothing, piercing deep into her abdomen like a knife through bean curd.
In an instant, her midsection was stained crimson.
*Squelch!*
Another sound echoed as Skanloven ripped his claws out, spraying droplets of blood across his pale face.
“Ngh…”
The force of the withdrawal jerked Daina forward, forcing her onto one knee.
“Heh… hahahaha! This is the last time I will call you Commander, Daina. Do you see it? Can you feel it? This is the boundless power my Lord has bestowed upon me!”
Skanloven covered his face with one hand and laughed toward the sky.
With his other hand, he brushed aside the armor protecting Daina’s face, revealing her fair yet determined features.
The claws had left several bloody gashes on her face, but Daina didn’t care.
She simply stared fixedly at Skanloven, her back ramrod straight, shielding Yun Fei firmly behind her.
“Daina, out of respect for our past relationship as my superior, I will give you a chance. Accept my Lord’s power and embrace a brand-new world! Become the blade that conquers 10,000 worlds for my Lord! What do you say?”
“Eat… shit!”
Daina spat out a mouthful of blood, spraying it directly onto Skanloven’s face.
“You… what are you doing! You’re crazy! You’ll die!”
Skanloven was startled by Daina’s sudden outburst.
His eyes widened as he felt her aura explode with a scorching golden light, as intense as a blazing sun.
“No! I won’t let you die! You can’t self-destruct!”
By the time he realized what Daina intended to do, it was too late.
Skanloven tried to interrupt her, but his efforts were futile.
Daina transformed into a raging fireball and collided head-on with Skanloven.
A violent explosion thundered, and an ice wall nearby came crashing down.
Yun Fei’s half-lidded eyes trembled.
An inexplicable emotion welled up from the depths of her heart, making the corners of her eyes sting with bitterness.
“Daina…”
Yun Fei leaned against the wall of the ice coffin, shakily pulling herself up from the ground as she looked in the direction the two had flown.
Even though she and Daina had only been together for a short time, the loyalty and resolve shown in that final explosion left a deep impression on Yun Fei’s heart.
‘To be so loyal to her master… it’s truly astonishing.’
Yun Fei looked through the ice coffin at the person lying inside — someone whose face was nearly identical to hers — and sighed softly.
‘If only I had such loyal subordinates.’
As Yun Fei murmured to herself, a cough sounded from within the thick smoke of the explosion.
*Cough, cough…*
It was a deep, masculine voice.
Surprised, Yun Fei quickly turned her head, warily watching the figure emerging from the dissipating smoke.
It was Skanloven.
His clothes were currently in tatters, riddled with holes scorched by fire.
His voice no longer sounded as it had before; it actually carried a rare trace of emotion.
“Dead… Daina… is dead… there’s nothing left.”
Skanloven walked out from the smoke, his tone dripping with absolute despair.
Before Yun Fei could process her confusion, Skanloven lifted his bloodshot eyes and glared death at her.
“It’s all because of you! Istana! Do you have any idea how much effort I put into saving her life during that battle! And yet… the result is still… die! Just die! If it weren’t for you, she never would have gone to war, and things never would have ended up like this!”
Skanloven’s roar echoed through the entire palace, causing the structure to shake.
Numerous icicles fell from the ceiling, shattering like frozen flowers upon hitting the floor.
Skanloven charged like a madman.
This time, he truly seemed to have lost his mind.
Previously, he had maintained some semblance of reason, but now he was nothing more than a mindless lunatic.
Panic flashed across Yun Fei’s face.
She tried to move to dodge, but to her horror, the blood on her body had already dried, gluing her firmly to the ice coffin.
Between the blood loss and her lack of strength, she couldn’t break free.
‘Is this where it ends?’
Undeniably, this was the greatest crisis Yun Fei had ever faced.
Yun Fei felt her vision blur.
It was as if her life were flashing before her eyes.
Her short 20-some years of memories were compressed into a few seconds, finally settling on the image she had seen in the Illusion Realm — Mu Lingxi, holding an umbrella and waiting under a peach tree…
1 second… 2 seconds… 3 seconds…
The expected impact never came.
Yun Fei opened her eyes and looked around, only to find Skanloven frozen in mid-charge.
His voice, expression, and movements were all suspended in time, causing Yun Fei to snap out of her daze.
Just then, Yun Fei felt someone tap her shoulder.
The touch was icy cold.
Turning her head, Yun Fei’s mouth fell open.
Her lips trembled, but her injuries prevented her from speaking a single word.
However, her expression alone conveyed her utter shock.
What she saw was the person who was supposed to be inside the ice coffin — essentially another version of herself.
She was sitting on the edge of the coffin, and the space inside was now empty.
Clearly, the woman before her was the one who had been lying within.
She swung her legs slightly, hopped down from the coffin, and stood in front of Yun Fei.
She was half a head taller than the current Yun Fei.
At some point, she had changed clothes, now wearing a long, ice-silk dress that outlined her graceful figure.
The woman leaned forward with a subtle, enchanting smile and tapped Yun Fei’s forehead with a cold finger.
“It’s been a long time… oh, no, I suppose this is our first meeting — “
Yun Fei’s eyes widened in shock, but the stinging pain in her throat still prevented her from uttering even a single syllable.
“It’s exactly what you’re thinking. I am the person Skanloven keeps shouting about. I’m sorry you had to suffer.”
“I know you have many questions, but there are some things that even I, a mere Phantom of a dead person, do not know.”
As she spoke, she looked toward Skanloven with a worried expression.
“However… with my current power, I can only trap Skanloven for a short time. We can’t stay here any longer. I’ll teleport you to the Snowy Plain outside first.”
With that, Istana looked down at Skanloven and let out a faint sigh. “Let’s go.”
Then, in a flash of icy blue light, Yun Fei and Istana vanished from the palace.
The two reappeared somewhere on the frozen plains, but Istana’s form was visibly more translucent.
“Sigh… is my Phantom form already reaching its limit?”
Istana sighed helplessly. She then turned her gaze toward Yun Fei, who was slumped on the ground from exhaustion.
More accurately, her gaze was fixed on the faintly glowing runes of the Corroding Ice Curse on Yun Fei’s back.
“Ah… this thing looks familiar. I think I had one of these before I died… oh, well, I can’t remember clearly. But it doesn’t matter. It’ll work fine as a storage medium, and that’s enough.”
Istana crouched down, an icy blue light flickering on her fingertips.
“Bear with it — it’ll hurt a bit, but it’s necessary — “
As she spoke, she pressed her finger against Yun Fei’s back.
Waves of intense pain surged through Yun Fei’s nerves as Istana’s finger traced across her skin.
Yun Fei instinctively clenched her fists, grabbing a handful of snow and squeezing it tightly.
Unbeknownst to Yun Fei, the ice energy within her body that had been rivaling the Nether Realm Purple Fire was being guided by an unknown force toward her back.
The Nether Realm Purple Fire finally took dominant control of her body.
Meanwhile, as the ice-attribute Demonic Power poured in, the runes of the Corroding Ice Curse shone with a brilliant radiance against the night sky of the Snowy Plain.
Istana’s body gradually faded, turning into particles that flowed into the ice curse on Yun Fei’s back.
The light dissipated, and the night returned to silence.
At some point, Yun Fei’s fists had relaxed.
The recent agony had caused her muscles to tremble violently.
Her wounds, which had finally begun to scab over, were torn open again, and fresh blood trickled slowly from them.
Feeling the extent of her injuries, Yun Fei couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.
Her Demonic Power was slowly recovering.
Although she had lost quite a bit of blood, it wasn’t life-threatening yet.
Her blood-soaked appearance was just gruesome and terrifying.
If someone were to pass by right now, they would surely mistake her for a corpse.
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