The ridge trembled beneath his feet.
Snow slid from stone. Birds, if any had dared to live this high, had already fled. The world did not welcome what was waking. It simply endured it.
Below, the ravine split open.
Twelve curved tusks, each the size of an ox-cart, rose from beneath sheets of frost and buried bones. The Spirit Mammoth emerged like a fortress breaking from its prison of ice. Its fur was white-gold, its eyes glowed with stormlight, and each breath it exhaled sent clouds of frost spiraling across the mountain.
Jian Wuxin—no, Shen Mo, now reclaimed—took a step forward.
He had no sword.
No Qi-enhanced armor. No talismans. No sect behind him.
Just one branch, hardened by his will and straining under the pressure of a sword technique that should not exist in this world.
He whispered to it.
"Try not to break too soon."
And leapt.
—
The Mammoth struck first.
Its trunk slammed down like a hammer carved from a mountain's heart. Shen Mo slipped past it, Qi spiraling through his limbs as he rebounded off a broken fang lodged in the cliffside.
He dashed up the beast's flank, deflecting a swat of its massive leg with the branch, which splintered under the impact but held shape long enough for him to pivot and slash.
The cut was shallow.
Barely a wound.
But it was Qi-precise—it didn't slice flesh. It severed energy flow, temporarily paralyzing the spiritual veins in the mammoth's left shoulder.
The beast screamed.
Its voice rolled through the air like the mourning of mountains.
And watching from a distance, unseen, a pair of eyes widened.
—
She had not meant to come here.
She had been hiding for weeks, high on the cliffs, feeding on leftover Qi from the dying spirit plants and half-dead beasts. She was small. Weak. Barely formed.
A Spirit Girl—the embryonic will of a long-dead forest, coalesced into consciousness by chance and suffering.
She had no name.
No form but the one she'd stitched together from memory and fear.
Her body was pale like moonlight on water. Ethereal, but distinctly human now. She had once glimpsed noble ladies from the floating sects and formed herself in likeness—slender waist, long legs, delicate fingers, lips like red-petaled glass. It was not vanity. It was survival. Beauty, even to beasts, could delay death.
She watched Shen Mo fight.
And for the first time in her short, half-existent life...
She felt awe.
—
The fight ended with silence.
Not with sound.
With one final leap, Shen Mo spun mid-air, channeled the last of his circulating Qi into the branch, and struck beneath the mammoth's jaw, precisely where its core was closest to the surface.
A single point strike, refined through instinct and memory.
The branch shattered.
The Qi detonated inside the wound like a silent scream.
The Mammoth fell.
Its heart stopped. Its soul froze mid-rebirth. Its twelve tusks snapped into dust on impact.
Shen Mo dropped beside the corpse.
Bleeding from every joint. Meridians howling.
But victorious.
He walked to the beast's chest and placed his hand upon it.
From the cooling body, he pulled the core.
It pulsed with light—dense, heavy, ancient. The energy inside was more than enough to push him to the early Core Formation Realm. He could feel the way his body trembled around it, begging to absorb it.
He turned his head.
And looked directly at the girl.
She flinched.
Not because she was seen.
But because she had never felt known.
"Come," he said, voice like gravel and ice.
She stepped forward. Cautiously.
"You're starving," he added.
She nodded. Barely visible. Her body flickered. Spirit bodies—especially ones without names—were fragile. Even now, she could barely hold her shape.
He held out the core.
She stared at it. Then at him. Disbelieving.
"You'll die," she whispered.
He shrugged. "I've already died."
"…Why me?"
He didn't answer. Only pressed the core into her hands.
And stepped back.
She hesitated.
Then, as if a dam broke inside her, she consumed it.
The light engulfed her.
—
The transformation was not gentle.
Her scream shattered nearby icicles. Her skin cracked and reformed, reshaped by the weight of the spirit beast's essence.
Wings of frost bloomed from her back for a moment before retracting into her spine.
A crest appeared across her forehead—an ancient glyph meaning silent dominion.
Her hair, once thin and brittle, flowed like silk caught in winter wind. Her spirit body solidified. She was no longer fog pretending to be flesh.
She was alive.
She dropped to one knee.
Panting.
Shaking.
"Name me," she said.
It wasn't a request.
It was instinct.
In spirit law, the one who gives a name to an unnamed soul defines its path.
He looked down at her. She stared up, glowing faintly with newly awakened power, tears running down her cheeks—not from pain.
But because she'd never been claimed.
He didn't hesitate.
"Your name is Frostveil."
She trembled.
And smiled.
"A good name," she whispered.
She stood, now tall and stunning—her presence radiating with untamed Yin Qi and cold authority, clad in spirit silk her own body now generated. Her form was breathtaking. Not for its curves or beauty, but because it felt divine, yet bound to him.
"Frostveil…" she repeated softly.
Then bowed. Not out of submission.
But devotion.
"You saved me. You gave me meaning. That is a kind of sword."
He turned away.
"Don't follow me unless you can keep up."
She followed.
—
Thus the world whispered of a man with no sect and a companion no one could trace.
And somewhere, in the lower heavens, an ancient spirit lord awoke sensing Frostveil's rebirth—and trembled.