Chapter 576: The Real and the Fake Ice Skin
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
As more and more time elapsed, the chilled air within Han Sen was becoming stronger and stronger. His cells were moving, but it felt as if they were turning into crystals.
At the same time, the Dongxue Sutra started running, and a strange feeling compelled Han Sen to stop his practice of Ice Skin.
Han Sen’s face looked ghastly. He was excited to try to combine the frost air with his own cells and unlock his first gene lock. But not after he started the Dongxue Sutra.
"Could it be that these two skills contradict each other?" Han Sen was a little annoyed. If these two skills could not co-exist together, it ran the possibility of them frying his mind and turning him crazy.
The silver fox watched Han Sen wake up, and when he did, it ran towards his legs to rub against them. His foul mood made him push the silver fox away in irritation.
Seeing the silver fox’s pitiable face, Han Sen’s heart was given a shock. He pulled out a small mirror that had been prepared for beetle night. Looking at himself in the reflection, he did not notice anything strange.
When Han Sen cast Ice Skin, he felt the chill rise. Although it wasn’t as scary as Xue Yi Kuang’s, it still made some water turn into ice. If this was normal, Han Sen would be glad, but when he looked at himself in the mirror again, he saw cold sweat dotting his forehead. He could clearly see in the mirror how his eyes were starting to turn a faint shade of red. While it wasn’t stark and obvious to see, a good look would reveal the encroaching color.
Han Sen thought that his eyes were starting to look like those of the Xue family; cold, callous, and cruel.
"Oh my days! What the hell is this skill? This is not right. Normally, I would never kick silver fox away, and I wouldn’t be so moody. Can that crappy Ice Skin really change someone’s personality?" The more Han Sen thought about it, the more annoyed he got. He thought about breaking the mirror, and he started to fear something had truly gone wrong with him.
He immediately cancelled his training of Ice Skin and cast the Dongxue Sutra. He retreated into a state of meditation, which woke up his cells and generated a sweet, pleasing fragrance.
The frosty air was chased out by the pleasant smell, out and away from his cells. This generated a white fog around Han Sen.
He was a beginner of the Dongxue Sutra and he had yet to complete the first tier. It could not rival Ice Skin, and that was proven with the entire hour it took to expunge the frosty power that had gathered inside his body.
Han Sen continued to sit on the snow, and he repeatedly cast Dongxue Sutra. The silver fox was sitting down near Han Sen as well, surveying the area with serious vigilance. He didn’t move an inch.
The sky became clogged with dreary clouds, and a blizzard began to form all around. Han Sen was soon buried in the snow, and it wasn’t long until he represented the image of a snowman.
The body of the silver fox supported no snow, however. It just maintained its position, awaiting its master’s next move.
It snowed all day and all night and still, neither Han Sen nor the silver fox moved. The snow on Han Sen turned to ice, releasing frosted air beneath the sun.
"Whoa! That is a beautiful little fox." Not too far from them, the voice of a woman sounded.
"Liu Qing, don’t be fooled by its appearance! No matter how cute a creature may look, it is most likely a cruel and despicable monster on the inside. I have never seen a creature such as this before and therefore, more than ever, we should be careful!" A man’s voice followed.
A man and woman trudged through the field of snow, inching closer and closer in the direction of the silver fox.
The woman noticed the silver fox didn’t move a single inch, and it continued to just sit there. Next to it was a snowman. With unexpected surprise, she said, "Oh, and there is a snowman! The little fox keeps looking at it. Do you think maybe that it built the snowman?"
"Your imagination knows no bounds. Tell me, how might a fox build a snowman? Obviously, that has to be the creation of someone else here. But I will admit that it is a bit strange. Why would the fox just sit there and not move?" The man was becoming more curious, as well.
"Let me go check it out. Perhaps it is frozen." The woman secretly wanted to touch the fox.
The man quickly pulled her back, saying, "Careful! That thing could be luring us closer, for all we know! It could be a trap. We should just run up there and smack it with our swords; problem solved, danger averted."
After this, he summoned a beast soul sword and started running towards the silver fox, waving the sword as he went. When the man brought his sword down to strike his target, he hit nothing. The snowman next to the silver fox moved.
An icy hand reached out, using its middle finger and index finger to stop the fall of the blade.
The only noise that sounded was a quick katcha, and the blade of the beast soul sword was cleanly cut in two by those two fingers.
The man and woman were shocked, and so they quickly retreated. Then, they saw the snowman begin to crumble. A human shadow emerged, grabbed the fox, and ran off. Within two seconds, they had completely disappeared.
"It’s a fox fairy!" the woman screamed.
"What fox fairy? That was just a humanoid creature," the man said, with his face depleted of color.
They hadn’t seen Han Sen’s face clearly, only the shape and shadow of a man grabbing the fox and running off.
"Yeah, a fox fairy that shapeshifted into a human." The woman could not escape her belief of it being a fox fairy.
Regardless, the man and woman did not believe what they had seen was a human. But who could blame them? Why would any man be buried under snowfall and remain like a snowman, only to emerge, grab a fox, and quickly sprint away without leaving a single footprint? Ordinary humans wouldn’t do such a thing!
Quickly, a rumor spread that a humanoid fox fairy creature lived out on the ice fields. A lot of strong people began looking for it, but to no avail.
Han Sen, meanwhile, had returned to the Crystal Palace with the silver fox. He tried running Ice Skin again, ue to having now removed the frosty power he had absorbed from Xue Yi Kuang. Using it now, his body no longer felt chilled, and he instead became nice and cool.
As he was running the skill, he looked into his mirror carefully. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, his tension finally eased.
But now, despite the lack of frosty air, the Ice Skin still felt different than it did before. While it was running, his brain felt chilled. His mind and perception, however, became sharper.
The longer he ran the Ice Skin, the more calm he felt. It seemed as if nothing could affect his emotions right now.
"This is strange. There must be something wrong. The Xue family’s Ice Skin must have some sort of problem." This made Han Sen remember the speech Xue Yi Yang gave at the exchange event, which pertained to another skill called Ice Heart. It was a Qi Gong that was supposed to calm your emotions and put them to rest. People said that everyone in the Xue family had learnt Ice Heart.
But every Xue family member Han Sen had met possessed an angry personality, and this made him think that this Ice Heart had a problem.