The possibility that it was the Nine Evil Sword Lord was truly very small. If he genuinely wanted to track Wang Yu down, his first target would be Tianbao City, and his second would be Jade Spirit.

He would not violate common sense by locking onto the Endless Ice Plains.

Much less would he lay traps along this ancient route that Cold Blood Peak had already scouted out.

That left only one possibility.

The Ice Clan.

And the branch of the Ice Clan stationed at the Ancient Demon Sealed Ground had maintained friendly relations with Cold Blood Peak for generations. Blocking the road without harming anyone clearly showed they had no intention of becoming enemies of the Blood Reversal Sect.

“Are they trying to buy time?”

The thought surfaced abruptly in his mind.

He then recalled the mixed-blood human specimen he had encountered while killing robbery cultivators at Blackbone Mountain. Thinking carefully, the human ancestors of this world had made all sorts of attempts in order to break free from their cage.

Would the Ice Clan not have done the same?

Obviously impossible.

Mixed blood was only the first step to leaving the ice plains. If their ancient history had not been lost, then they should understand their own past very clearly.

They had once been rulers of the Ice Prison Realm.

Looking toward the future, their true enemies were also outsiders from beyond the heavens. Cooperation would be an excellent direction for planning.

Moreover, these mixed-blood individuals looked no different from humans.

Only when struck by fatal extreme cold would that special ice-crystal Qi sea suddenly activate to save their lives.

By the logic of inheritance and lineage, the probability of slipping into Cold Blood Peak was extremely high.

Wang Yu rubbed his chin, silently thinking.

Yushu saw his expression and did not interrupt, falling into thought as well. It was not that he had failed to notice something strange, but his mind had been consumed by the matter of Song Yun.

There had been only a single thought in his head.

He had to break through his realm.

He treated every obstacle encountered along the way as a trial.

But after Wang Yu raised the question, his head cooled down quite a bit.

“...Fellow Daoist Ice Demon, why are you asking about this?”

“Oh.”

Wang Yu came back to himself.

“I am also heading to the Ancient Demon Sealed Ground. That region is saturated with demonic qi, making it more suitable for Nascent Soul cultivation.”

As he spoke, he deliberately let his divine sense display fourth-rank intensity.

He did this not only to deter Yushu, but also because he did not want to reveal something as critical as condensing a Nascent Soul to anyone else. Otherwise, would he not be reminding the other party that he possessed Nascent Soul spiritual items?

That would only tempt them into taking reckless risks, and that was hardly desirable.

Better to intimidate early. Using cultivation as an excuse was also perfectly reasonable.

Only, the other party was so startled that he stumbled back repeatedly, his wariness deepening even further. In the Crimson Kite Demonic Domain, there was no such thing as a Nascent Soul cultivator calling a Core Formation junior “Fellow Daoist”, yet Wang Yu did not care at all.

“If Fellow Daoist has the fortune to leave this ice plains, you may inquire about this lord’s name then. Farewell.”

He sincerely hoped the other party could succeed in condensing a Nascent Soul. Saying this was his way of expressing goodwill, but that was all.

One respected another’s fate. Success or failure depended entirely on the person himself.

And after learning from Yushu that the Ice Clan had set up checkpoints to obstruct the road, Wang Yu decided to speed up.

If they were deliberately delaying time and refusing to let human cultivators approach the Ancient Demon Sealed Ground, then he would naturally accelerate and find out what the Ice Clan was plotting.

In addition, as long as he drew near the sealing region, the concentration of demonic qi should rise significantly. He could linger nearby and collect it. There was no need to enter the sealed ground itself.

Shearing wool off an Ancient Demon was unimaginably dangerous.

Even pioneers like the Cold Blood Mountain Lord and the Heavenly Frost Demon Lord only collected frost demonic qi along the outer perimeter. For this, Wang Yu had originally prepared a set of formation flags.

But now, using depleted supreme-grade spirit stones was actually more suitable.

These were natural containers. As long as he filled even a single one completely, it would be enough for him to condense a Nascent Soul. After the demonic qi inside was consumed, it would not affect the spirit stone’s ability to recover.

At times, major demonic sects would also travel to the Ancient Demon Sealed Ground to collect portions of demonic qi aligned with different paths, seal it away, and leave it for later generations or for realm breakthroughs.

In theory, when condensing a demonic-path Nascent Soul, absorbing demonic qi that matched one’s cultivation technique was essentially equivalent to opening a new source of power.

It granted a cultivator the ability to absorb and refine demonic qi.

It was similar to how, when entering the Dao, a cultivator had to sit in meditation, sense spiritual energy, and refine spiritual energy. This was a necessary process for stepping through the gate of the demonic path. After that, cultivation no longer required that specific demonic qi.

Because the seed had already been planted, and what remained was conversion.

Pure spiritual qi and demonic qi of other attributes could all be converted into demonic essence. And in the Ice Prison Realm, since there were so many sealed ancient demons, the breath exchanged by all living beings already contained an extremely faint trace of demonic qi.

Of course, absorbing demonic qi of the corresponding attribute would greatly increase cultivation speed, but it also carried the risk of losing control. At most, one would only use a small amount during a realm breakthrough.

This was also another special currency used internally among Nascent Soul demonic cultivators. It was made by filling empty supreme-grade spirit stones. If Wang Yu were to fully charge the three empty supreme-grade spirit stones in his possession, they could be called Frozen Demonic Spirit Stones.

The moment others heard that name, they would immediately understand what it meant.

However, most Nascent Soul demonic cultivators still used supreme-grade spirit stones for cultivation. The demonic essence converted this way was easier to control, and such cultivators often had the backing of one or more massive fourth-rank spirit veins.

As he organized all this information in his mind,

Wang Yu realized that with his Innate Demonic Embryo constitution, the standard daily cultivation cycle that ordinary Nascent Soul cultivators could maintain with ten supreme-grade spirit stones was nowhere near enough for him. He needed at least fifty.

This was naturally because aptitude at the level of a Spiritual Body still provided a major boost during Nascent Soul cultivation, and it could even help when breaking through into Spirit Transformation.

Only at that point would the spiritual body’s advantages gradually begin to slow.

He needed more supreme-grade spirit stones, yet these things almost never appeared on the market. The only two times he had seen them were at massive fourth-rank auctions.

And this was in the Crimson Kite Demonic Domain. If it were over by Taihu, he did not even dare imagine how brutally competitive it would be.

Several days later, traveling at full speed with the Aurora Escape Technique, Wang Yu drew closer and closer to the Ancient Demon Sealed Ground. Along the way, he discovered large numbers of Ice Clan colossal beasts. They truly were sealing the entrance.

To avoid being discovered, he chose to detour.

And the Ice Transformation secret art was, on the Endless Ice Plains, practically the most perfect concealment technique. It made him indistinguishable from the ordinary chunks of ice scattered everywhere, completely devoid of any aura.

With a slight detour, he could pass through safely.

Thus, half a month later.

Rows upon rows of ice-sculpted buildings entered his view. At the center stood an unimaginably massive ice phoenix statue. He had finally arrived at the Ice Clan tribe responsible for guarding the sealing ground.

Most Ice Clan buildings were enormous, crude and primitive in style, all constructed from solid ice.

He saw a simple ice hall where the entrance alone was dozens of meters tall, likely designed with the massive beast-form tribesmen in mind.

But the Ice Clan were more often in humanoid form.

Thus, there were also structures crafted with exquisite detail. Within them, one could even see architectural styles from various human regions. This tribe’s population was not particularly thriving, only numbering in the tens of thousands.

All sorts of bizarre ice sculptures moved about within.

That was right.

In Wang Yu’s eyes, the Ice Clan were essentially no different from ice sculptures. Their entire bodies were formed of ice crystals. Some had four arms. Some had beast heads with human bodies, or human heads with beast bodies. Some resembled mammoths. Others looked like gorillas.

They felt as if they had been carved by hand.

Wang Yu could not help but wonder how such beings could possibly produce mixed-blood offspring with humans. Did they even have a concept of reproduction? Or could they… release seed? Become pregnant?

Unfortunately, the black stone tablet only described the concept of the Ice Clan and did not include any corresponding spiritual energy phantom imprints. Even the ancient records of Cold Blood Peak were an older version.

They did say the Ice Clan were as beautiful as ice crystals.

But he truly had not expected it to be such a literal description. All he could say was that the world was vast beyond belief, and nothing was impossible.

Strictly speaking, this was Wang Yu’s first time seeing a non-human race. The Ice Clan were also the oldest intelligent species in the Ice Prison Realm.

Considering how little he understood about them, he did not rashly approach. Instead, he searched for a method to bypass this settlement. As “gatekeepers”, they would not live directly above the sealing ground itself.

That would be far too dangerous, so they instead blocked off the key entrances leading into it. According to the sect’s ancient records, the Frost Demon should be sealed atop a solitary peak.

Yet Wang Yu did not see such an obvious landmark.

“Is it being concealed by a formation or some similar method…”

He began moving around the settlement’s perimeter. Normally, if he revealed his identity as a Cold Blood Peak cultivator, he would be able to enter the settlement openly and sense the Frozen Demonic Qi from within.

After all, the two sides had maintained an allied relationship of mutual friendship for generations.

Wang Yu considered that the Ice Clan might be doing something they did not want revealed, and he also did not want to expose his identity too early. So he continued circling the settlement, trying to directly sense the density of Frost Demonic qi in order to determine the direction of the sealing ground.

This method was fairly effective.

After only about half a day, Wang Yu discovered something unusual.

“So this is Frost Demonic qi?”

At that moment, a wisp of blue-black Frost Demonic qi swirled around his fingertip. Its appearance was almost identical to his mana, yet its quality was on a completely different level.

With the same amount of mana, if he used it to drive the Ice Sword Technique, he could reach at most a fifteen-meter scale. But if he used Frost Demonic qi, splitting mountains and severing rivers would likely be effortless.

The tyrannical power of demonic essence absolutely boosted a cultivator’s destructive output by a huge margin. The might of their divine abilities would surge explosively, and even casual aftershocks could reach city-destroying levels.

As for what kind of level could be reached with a full-power strike, Wang Yu had never seen it before, but it was certainly stronger than the Yellow Springs Earth Resentment Puppet.

After injecting this wisp of Frost Demonic Qi into a supreme-grade spirit stone, its fluctuations immediately stabilized. His gaze then shifted toward the rear of the Ice Clan settlement.

The Frost Demonic Qi over there seemed even more concentrated.

As for forcibly barging into this Ice Clan settlement, he personally had no desire to do so. Throughout the generations, the successive masters of Cold Blood Mountain had always chosen to befriend them rather than take them over.

There had to be a reason for that.

Under no circumstances could he ignore the rules left behind by his predecessors. Some of those rules had been tested with lives, and from them one could also infer certain pieces of information in reverse.

As he gradually moved farther away, within the Ice Clan settlement, inside a tall tower near the Ice Phoenix statue, three pale-skinned cultivators with silver hair and blue eyes exchanged a look.

“The mana aura cultivated from the Ice Soul Holy Demonic Scripture. He went toward the sealed ground.”

“Don’t bother with him. He’s definitely a Cold Blood Peak cultivator.”

“But… he must have noticed something. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have chosen to avoid our tribe.”

The one in the lead narrowed his eyes. The aura he released had clearly reached late-stage Nascent Soul. After thinking for a moment, he spoke.

“This man’s life aura is very young. He should be a genius from Cold Blood Peak. He cannot die here. We cannot become enemies with the Blood Reversal Sect.

“Besides, the arrangement of those Giant Ice Beasts along the way was so crude that he can probably guess we were trying to stall for time. Our goal is nothing more than borrowing a bit of Frost Demonic Qi to condense a Nascent Soul.”

“That’s right, Great Priest. Since he had no intention of sneaking in to investigate, it’s obvious he doesn’t want to get involved. He won’t affect our grand plan. Why create complications?”

The voice of agreement came from a man who looked youthful. His cultivation was somewhat weaker, yet he had still reached the sixth layer of the Nascent Soul realm, so he was far from ordinary.

These three were the strongest experts of the “Gatekeeper Tribe.”

In the beginning, the Ice Clan did not know how to cultivate. The arrival of the human race was both calamity and blessing. In the most ancient era, some cultivators saw that they possessed spirituality and thus taught them cultivation methods.

They then enslaved them and used them as tools.

More commonly, they were made into jailers, tasked with guarding the sealing ground on their behalf. Later, however, heaven and earth underwent drastic change, and the ice plains retreated until only this small patch beneath their feet remained.

Of those who still guarded the gate, only this single branch was left.

Yet their cultivation methods, passed down and improved through successive generations, continued to evolve. After the fall of the Ancient Immortal Dynasty and the rise of the demon race, the Ice Clan finally reached its peak in the era of Ice Phoenix.

In fact, according to Yan Ling’s intelligence, and according to the common consensus of the world, everyone believed Ice Phoenix was the Holy Lord of the demon race.

The reason was simple. The Ice Clan’s appearance was far too deceptive. Their bodies looked like solid ice crystal, glittering brilliantly whenever light struck them. It was nearly impossible to mistake them.

But as the Ice Clan cultivated the Nascent Soul Great Dao, once they broke through to fourth-rank, their ice-sculpture-like bodies would transform into human form, evolving toward a physique more suitable for cultivation. This was the same principle behind fourth-rank demon kings taking human form.

As for why it was so, opinions varied widely.

Ice Phoenix was the first of the Ice Clan to break through to the Nascent Soul realm. It disguised itself as a member of the demon race, taking advantage of the opportunity to seize resources across the world, and secretly expanding the Ice Clan’s strength.

In the end, even leaving behind the Holy Lord Heavenly Palace Treasury was not enough. It also established seven hundred and twenty legacy holy temples halls across the Endless Ice Plains, nearly all of them prepared for the Ice Clan.

Unfortunately, these descendants failed to live up to expectations.

Most of the holy tokens fell into the hands of the demon race. The legacy tokens scattered throughout the world, with the majority now held by the human race.

These secrets were known only to their branch of the Ice Clan, the one with an orderly and intact lineage. They were completely different from the wild tribes outside.

Lost in thought, the Great Priest suddenly spoke.

“Continue. Only by imitating the deeds of our ancestor can we have a chance to win. In the past, the world belonged to the demon race. Now, the world belongs to the human race.”

“Understood.”

“Yes!”

All around the three of them were naked human female cultivators. Their eyes were unfocused and hazy, clearly controlled by a spell technique.

Before breaking through to third-rank, the Ice Clan had an extremely peculiar method of reproduction. It relied on the clan’s carving, along with the gradual corrosion and infusion of their aura over time.

Only after some unknown day would true intelligence awaken.

It was somewhat like a block of ice becoming sentient, and the difficulty was extraordinarily high.

For that reason, the Ice Clan’s numbers had always been small. Only after they came into contact with cultivation methods, and later broke through to fourth-rank and gained the ability to take human form, developing reproductive organs, did the plan to imitate their ancestor Ice Phoenix and steal the demon race’s fruits naturally take shape.

The two younger Nascent Soul Ice Clan members, enduring nausea and exhaustion, seeded frantically. The Great Priest walked to the very center of the ice tower, where a pregnant woman with a swollen belly lay.

She was clearly a special individual.

The Great Priest cast a spell, drawing out his own heartblood and infusing it into the pregnant female cultivator’s body, silently nourishing the Ice Clan’s Child of Hope.

Judging by the time, it would take only a few more years before the birth could proceed smoothly.

He truly did not want to create complications at a time like this.

Therefore, as long as Wang Yu had no intention of investigating the Ice Clan’s internal situation, he was willing to maintain peace. Better safe than sorry, because he did not understand Wang Yu at all.

He had no spies in the outside world.

Low-level Ice Clan members could not leave the ice plains. As for high-level Ice Clan members like them who had taken human form, while they could leave the ice plains, they could not remain away for long.

If they stayed too long, their origin would slowly leak away.

According to the information left behind by Ancestor Ice Phoenix, it was because the rules of heaven and earth were different. They could only live beneath the protection of the primal laws of the Ice Prison Realm.

Born from it, and bound by it.