chapter nine

Chapter 9: The Frozen Exile

The glacier's collapse echoed for miles, a thunderous requiem for an empire of lies. Smoke and frost still lingered in the valley, curling around broken spires and shattered symbols. I stood on the cliffside, overlooking what remained of the Northern Ice Sect—now nothing more than ruin carved into mountain bone.

But peace never lasts long when you're the spark that set a legacy ablaze.

"They'll come for you," Liu Feng said beside me, voice like flint.

"I know."

I could feel it already—cultivator factions stirring in the distance. Eyes turning northward. The weight of ancient bloodlines shifting like tectonic plates. Word would spread fast: the Frostbear awakened, the Heart shattered, and the Sect Master

Gone? No.

Escaped.

Wanted by Heaven and Earth

Two days later, bounty scrolls fluttered across the provinces. My face—sharpened with frost, eyes faintly glowing—stared back from every town gate and market wall.

"Frostbear Aberrant: Class Crimson Threat."

Reward: Ascension-Grade Artifacts.

"They made you a Class Crimson," Liang said with a bitter chuckle. "Same as demon kings and fallen immortals."

"A bit dramatic."

"You shattered the holy glacier and unsealed an ancestral force."

"...Fair."

He handed me a new cloak—charcoal gray, embroidered with subtle frost-glyphs.

"You need to disappear. Head west. Beyond the Cloudvein Mountains. There's a place where outcasts gather. No loyalty to sects. No chains. They call it the Iron Monastery."

Liu Feng stepped forward, tightening the wrappings around his sword. "I'll come."

"Thought you hated me."

"I did. Then I saw you punch a Sect Master into a glacier."

We shared a grin.

Liang frowned. "Don't take this lightly. The Monastery isn't salvation. It's challenge. Every exile there has blood on their hands—and teeth in your back if you let them."

"Good," I said. "Let them try."

Pilgrimage Through Ice and Shadow

The journey west was brutal. The Heart's destruction had unbalanced more than just spiritual flows—the land itself was angry. Blizzards struck without warning. Wraith beasts born of corrupted Qi stalked the paths.

But with each step, I grew stronger.

The Frostbear memories no longer came as pain—they came as instinct. Battle formations. Ice-forging techniques. Survival patterns mapped into muscle.

Liu Feng and I fought side by side more than once. A pack of Cryo-Wolves ambushed us near a frozen gorge—Feng's blade sang, precise and economical, while I tore through ice-flesh like paper.

After the last wolf fell, he glanced at me.

"You fight like a goddamn avalanche."

"You swing like you're in love with your sword."

He actually laughed. "Maybe I am. It's never lied to me."

I paused. "Have you?"

The air grew quiet. He didn't answer.

Three weeks later, we saw it: a black fortress carved into a mountain's heart, surrounded by wind-warped statues of fallen saints and warlords.

The Iron Monastery.

The snow howled like a starving beast as we crested the final ridge. For hours, the storm had clawed at my face, howling louder the closer we got—like the mountain was warning me to turn back. Maybe I should have. But then I saw it.

The Iron Monastery wasn't built.

It was buried.

Half-sunken into the mountainside, like a fossil of some dead god's prison. No banners, no welcoming torches—just towering black stone walls, etched with runes that pulsed faintly like a dying heartbeat. The walls rose so high they seemed to lean over us, heavy with judgment.

The gate stood open. No guards. No greeting. Just two statues—warriors in chains, faces half-eroded by wind and time. Their mouths were sewn shut with metal wire. I stepped between them and felt a pulse in the air, like I'd crossed a boundary not meant to be breached.

As we approached, the wind carried chanting—low, resonant, and devoid of warmth. Dozens of figures stood on the outer terraces, each one cloaked in iron-grey and scarred by the world.

An armoured woman stepped forward. Her presence was immense—cultivation heavy enough to bend the snow around her.

"Name yourself."

I met her gaze. "Frostbear. Exile."

She studied me, then nodded once. "Then enter. But know this: here, strength is truth. Weakness is a death sentence."

I stepped past her, Liu Feng behind me.

A voice whispered in my mind, not ancestral this time, but my own:

Survive. Learn. Rise.

Initiation of the Broken Flame

The monastery did not accept words. It demanded proof.

We were led into an arena of obsidian and frost-steel. Around us, other exiles watched from the shadows—rogue cultivators, spirit beasts in human form, blade monks with auras like volcanoes.

"To join, you must survive five opponents," the iron woman declared. "No rest. No mercy."

My claws clenched. "Who's first?"

A figure leapt down—a former war-priest, armoured in bone and wielding twin burning hooks.

He attacked without warning.

I dodged, barely, and activated Glacial Rend. The arena buckled, spikes shooting upward, forcing him to leap. I met him midair—

[Firstborn Apex – Partial Sync Activated]

and slammed him into the wall.

One down.

The second was a blindfolded assassin who moved like shadow and mist. I closed my eyes. Let instincts guide me. Listened with my soul. When she struck, I was already behind her.

Two down.

The third was a brute infused with corrupted magma-Qi. His strength was unmatched—but he lacked control. I baited him into overextending, then shattered the ground beneath us, sending him into a pit of his own making.

Three down.

My body screamed. Cuts. Bruises. Bones strained near breaking. Still I stood.

The fourth was a child.

Or so she appeared.

She moved like lightning, her strikes surgically precise. She spoke only once

"Prove you're not a monster."

So I didn't kill her. I disarmed her. Knocked her out.

Four down.

The fifth… was Liu Feng.

He stepped forward, face unreadable.

"You knew?" I asked.

"I asked. They agreed. It's the only way to prove you're more than a beast."

I wanted to refuse. But the ancestors stirred.

"The strongest of us faced kin. That is the trial of trust and fury."

We fought.

Not like friends. Not like rivals.

Like forces of nature.

Steel against ice. Will against instinct. Our Qi shattered the arena's edge. The crowd roared in silence.

In the end, I stood over him, claws inches from his neck.

He smiled. "Still in there,

The iron woman approached. "You've earned a name here."

"I already have one."

"Not the one the world gave you. The one you become. Choose."

I thought of the glacier. The Frostbear. The betrayal. The future.

"Call me Wyrmfreeze."

She nodded. "Then welcome, Wyrmfreeze, to the edge of the world. Let's sharpen you into a storm."

Meanwhile... In the Far North

The ruined spire crackled with dark Qi. Ice floated mid-air. A soul fragment pulsed—coalescing.

The Sect Master, or what remained of him, floated within a black cocoon of stolen energy. New sigils carved themselves into his flesh.

"They think it over," he whispered. "But I have their bones. I have time."

His eyes opened—now bearing a second iris.

And in the farthest prison beneath the world, something answered.