Chapter 108: The Cold Moon Cave and Lingering Resentment

After completing all of this, Han Shuang continued to pull Shen Zhaoqing deeper into the underground.

After an unknown duration of walking, an open space finally appeared below them.

It was a cavern resembling a subterranean abyss. At its center lay a bottomless cold pool, its water an eerie, inky black, emanating a bone-chilling cold that made one’s heart tremble.

Around the cavern, numerous stone chambers of varying sizes had been carved into the walls. Each chamber’s entrance was sealed by thick, cold iron chains, heavily inscribed with restrictive formations.

The silence here was terrifying.

Occasionally, a ‘gurgle’ would emanate from a surfacing bubble.

From the depths of the sealed stone chambers, faint, suppressed whimpers could be vaguely heard.

Han Shuang led Shen Zhaoqing directly towards one of the most secluded and heavily restricted stone chambers.

“Clink, clank—”

She skillfully unfastened several chains at the entrance and pushed open the massive door, forged from a single block of profound iron. A more potent blend of medicinal and decaying scents, along with a chilling cold, surged from within.

The stone chamber was devoid of furniture, containing only a stone bed carved from ice and a pile of long-withered dry grass in a corner.

The four walls were covered in dense spirit-suppressing runes, ensuring that anyone confined within could not harness even a trace of spiritual energy.

“Get in.”

Han Shuang shoved Shen Zhaoqing inside.

Shen Zhaoqing stumbled, collapsing onto the frigid ground with a muffled thud.

Han Shuang cast a cold glance at her, her eyes devoid of any pity.

“Stay put, and don’t try any tricks,” she warned. “No one can save you in here.”

“Clang—!”

The heavy profound iron door slammed shut with a resounding crash.

“Clink, clank…”

The sound of the chains locking echoed piercingly through the empty, desolate cavern.

Inside the stone chamber, absolute darkness and silence instantly descended.

Shen Zhaoqing lay motionless on the icy ground, as if she had truly become an insensate corpse.

In the darkness, an unknown amount of time passed.

In the adjacent stone chamber, a silver-haired girl, curled in a corner and bound by chains, slowly lifted her head. Her moon-white, almost transparent eyes peered through a tiny, imperceptible crack in the stone wall, observing the ‘newcomer’ who had just been locked in.

Her nostrils subtly flared.

A warm, faintly wine-scented aroma, one she had never encountered before, drifted in wisps from next door.

It seeped into her nasal cavity, flowing into her long-parched limbs and bones.

It was the scent of ‘vitality’.

The profound iron door slammed shut, and the heavy clatter of chains reverberated through the desolate cavern.

“Clang!”

The final resounding crash fell, plunging the stone chamber into absolute darkness and silence.

It was pitch black; one couldn’t see their own hand.

The cold, like an invisible serpent, burrowed into her bones from all directions, seemingly freezing even her breath.

This was the Cold Moon Cave.

Shen Zhaoqing had been roughly pushed to the ground, lying motionless on the floor carved from ten-thousand-year profound ice. Her white gauze dress almost merged with the ground in the darkness, only her cascading black hair spread out, proving that a living being, not an ice sculpture, lay there.

Her consciousness drifted in an boundless sea of nothingness.

There was no joy or sorrow, no pain or itch.

She couldn’t even bother to ponder ultimate philosophical questions like ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Where am I?’. Her brain felt as if it had been formatted and then equipped with a bare-bones standby system, operating at minimal power, simply aiming to ‘just live’.

She was irrelevant to the world.

And the world, too, was irrelevant to her.

Outside the door, Han Shuang did not leave immediately.

With a cold expression, she stood before the door, rapidly forming hand seals. Ice-blue runes flew from her fingertips, imprinting themselves onto the profound iron wall, intertwining with the existing restrictions to form a Heaven-Earth Net.

This was a derivative restrictive art from her unique `Profound Ice Soul-Suppressing Thorn`, specifically designed to lock down the divine soul.

With this double assurance, it was foolproof.

Having completed all this, she peered inside through a palm-sized window on the door.

In the darkness, the figure remained in the position she had been shoved into, utterly still, like a carelessly discarded bag of refuse.

Han Shuang’s lips curled into a cold, indifferent arc.

A Dao Source Body?

A peerless panacea?

To her, it was merely a fragile glass artifact requiring careful handling.

Compared to sturdy, stable ten-thousand-year-old ores that could be used even if a piece broke off, or the highly toxic, vibrant, self-preserving exotic flowers of the demonic domain, such a ‘perishable’ item was simply too delicate, too useless.

She couldn’t comprehend why the Princess valued it so highly, nor could she understand why Bai Zhileng would expend her precious century of lifespan for such an ‘object’.

Lifespan—what a precious commodity.

Especially for someone like her, who lived every day on the edge of a blade.

Han Shuang unconsciously pressed her right cheek. A faint, cyan, lightning-shaped meridian shimmered beneath her skin; the reconstructed spiritual root shrieked incessantly within her.

It was the unwilling resentment of her unfortunate senior sister, whose spiritual root and lifespan she had stolen, perfectly fused with her artificially implanted ice-elemental mutated spiritual root, forming a unique power.

This power had allowed her to ascend from a crippled waste, whose spiritual roots were destroyed, to the Soul Transformation Realm within mere decades, becoming Penglai’s sharpest blade.

The cost, however, was that her body was constantly eroded by resentment. It was a dull ache, deep in her bone marrow, like ten thousand ants gnawing at her meridians, or a red-hot iron poker ceaselessly stirring in her brain.

She had long grown accustomed to this pain.

The pain kept her sober, made her ruthless, and caused her to disdain all ‘weak’ emotions.

Tenderness? Sympathy?

Those were luxuries belonging to favored daughters of heaven like Bai Zhileng.

Born into the clouds, with innate spiritual roots and showered with affection, she naturally had the right to pity others.

Han Shuang, however, was a feral dog that had crawled out of mud and gore. To survive, she had to be more ruthless than anyone else—to herself and to others.

Thus, it was no surprise that she envied Bai Zhileng.

She envied her talent, her purity, and even more, her foolish ‘womanly kindness’.

Now, the ‘source’ that had made Bai Zhileng foolish was right before her.

Han Shuang’s gaze grew even colder. She had to guard this ‘object’ meticulously, ensuring it was delivered into the Longevity Cauldron in its most perfect state.

This was the Palace Master’s trust in her.

She would prove to the Palace Master that she was far more useful than that good-for-nothing Bai Zhileng.

Speaking of resentment erosion… Han Shuang paused, her brows furrowed tightly.

The persistent, bone-deep stinging pain that had plagued her meridians for years, like a maggot clinging to bone, seemed to have… lessened a little?

A mere illusion?

Han Shuang closed her eyes, sensing carefully.

No mistake.

Though still painful, compared to the previous hellish mode, it was at most a difficult mode now.

What was happening?

Had the ‘Clear Heart Pill’ she took during her patrol finally taken effect? No, that stuff was like candy to her, purely for psychological comfort.

Han Shuang abruptly opened her eyes, her sharp gaze, like that of a hawk, once again locked onto the stone chamber.

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