The Ice Crystal Slay Bow

After discovering that Mu Ningxue was shielded by some strange magic, the Enchantment Spider immediately abandoned its attack on her and spat a mouthful of venom straight toward Mo Fan.

Mo Fan lurched back in alarm. Unlike Mu Ningxue, he had no Shield Enchanted Gear lavish enough to protect his entire body. With whatever time remained on his Blood Beast Boots, he turned and ran.

Racing against a downpour of venom — *exhilarating* didn't begin to cover it.

When it became clear he couldn't outrun the spreading poison rain, Mo Fan simply dissolved into a coil of black shadow and plunged swiftly into the surrounding darkness.

He was already far from Mu Ningxue by then. She couldn't have seen him use the Shadow Element skill — he was fairly sure of that.

The venom pattered down. Everywhere it touched, black pustules erupted and ate rapidly through the surface. An errant drop caught the side of Mo Fan's foot — the edge of his shoe dissolved on contact. Fortunately, his reflexes were sharp enough to kick it off in time; if the venom had eaten through to his bare skin, he'd likely be looking at a hole straight through his foot.

Healing Element magic could close wounds quickly, but it was hardly infallible. Toxic substances like this had a way of blunting its restorative power.

Standing on one bare foot, Mo Fan seethed. He shot a glance toward Mu Ningxue's position and called out, "Pin it with Ice Lock — I'm going to hit it hard!"

The crimson tinge had nearly faded from Mu Ningxue's brow. At his words, she began tracing a Star Chart with swift, precise movements.

A complete Ice Element Star Chart took shape beneath her feet. Countless threads of fine frost crystallized in the air around her, their outlines hinting at long, winding chains.

The frost thickened faster and faster. The form of the chains solidified entirely, crisscrossing the space around Mu Ningxue and chiming with a crisp, clear sound as they knocked together.

"Go!"

She thrust both hands forward. Every Ice Lock surged across the corroded expanse before her.

The first Bedrock Ice chain shot straight at the Enchantment Spider. The spider reacted instantly — its razor-edged claws snapped up and slashed through the chain, shearing it cleanly into several pieces.

"Again!"

Mu Ningxue sent the remaining chains in from different angles. Any other creature would have had no choice but to flee from those frost-hardened links, but this Enchantment Spider had eight limbs and stood its ground, hacking apart every chain that dared approach.

"Rise!" Suddenly, Mu Ningxue's finger flicked upward.

Without any warning, a chain of Ice Lock erupted through a crack in the ground below. The frost links wound around two of the Enchantment Spider's hind legs in a flash, coiling tight loop after loop — giving it no chance to slash free.

"That's it!"

Mo Fan shouted and triggered the Star Chart he had already prepared. A resplendent expanse of purple-black blazed to life beneath him, brimming with the most destructive force the elemental Domain could offer.

"Qianjun — Thunderbolt — Overhead Strike!"

He had not used Yaksha. Yaksha performed better against multiple scattered targets; Thunderbolt: Overhead Strike concentrated everything into a single point — one bolt falling in a perfectly straight line, without a trace of flourish, and all the harder to escape for it.

When the thunder-cloud materialized directly over the Enchantment Spider's head, the creature sensed something was wrong. But its hind legs were bound tight in Mu Ningxue's Ice Locks, and there was no breaking free in time.

The Thunderbolt struck without mercy. That purple-black pillar split through the pitch-black night in a way that seized the heart — a blaze of lightning, brilliant and gone in an instant, followed by the rolling, crushing weight of pure annihilation. Thunderbolt already carried enough force on its own to reduce flesh to a spray of blood droplets, and Qianjun's amplification layered a bone-rattling shockwave on top of that. With the already devastating single-target power of Thunderbolt doubled in magnitude, the full impact came crashing down on the Enchantment Spider's skull — and punched a ragged, charred hole clean through the top of its head.

The crater was scorched black. Blood sprayed outward. Brain matter splattered across the ground in every direction. The Enchantment Spider's body — half the width of a room — crashed to the floor, sending a cloud of dust billowing upward.

**SKREEEE——!!**

The Enchantment Spider let out a piercing shriek. That single Thunderbolt had driven it nearly mad with pain, and the hole blasted through its skull would take enormous amounts of feeding before it could ever heal.

Row upon row of terrible eyes fixed on the wretched human. The Enchantment Spider bore the agony and hauled itself back to its feet, wrenching the Ice Lock chains apart through sheer brute force.

"It's still standing?!" Mo Fan stared, incredulous.

Normally, a clean hit from his Thunderbolt would leave even a Battle-General-class creature half-dead. Under Qianjun's doubled power, one strike should have been an instant kill.

The Enchantment Spider's constitution was utterly obscene. It had survived *that*?

Mo Fan retreated rapidly. The creature's rage had crossed into something unhinged, and he could feel it radiating off the beast like heat.

"Ice Crystal Slay Bow!"

Nearby, Mu Ningxue saw Mo Fan in danger and held nothing back.

She extended her right hand and awakened the mark sealed within her soul.

Ice crystal dust swirled up around her, forming a vortex — spinning, gathering — before rapidly coalescing into a tall, exquisite crystal longbow standing upright before her. It was breathtaking: an arc of frost crystal that nearly swept the ground, like a crane spreading its wings to take flight into the heavens. Every inch of the bow was formed of glacial crystal, elegant beyond measure and radiating the killing chill of deep winter.

Mu Ningxue gripped the stunning bow. In the air before her, crystalline dust began sculpting an arrow.

First the tip took shape — sharp, tapered to a lethal point. Then the long, straight shaft materialized, condensed entirely from crystalline dust. Finally, the fletching appeared from nothing, resting between Mu Ningxue's index and middle fingers in a full draw.

Her silver hair had been still at first, cascading past her slender waist, half-draped over the graceful curve of her hip. But when her fingertips released — when that ice crystal arrow shrieked into existence and tore through the air — those silver tresses erupted into an otherworldly, breathtaking dance: sweeping across her chest, grazing the line of her cheek, tumbling loose in wild disarray to bare the pale, elegant length of her neck…

The arrow screamed forward. Not a single degree of arc.

A massive swell of glacial cold erupted into a sudden blizzard chasing in the wake of the arrow's tail — a sight that stole the breath.

The ice crystal arrow found its mark on the maddened Enchantment Spider's body. Mo Fan had expected a piercing strike — but in the very moment of impact, the crystal detonated outward. Using the arrow's entry point as the epicenter, everything within reach froze solid in the span of a single blink.

The ring of freezing expanded in a burst. The ice crystal's spread was breathtaking in its speed. The Enchantment Spider had already raised four of its legs — clearly about to unleash something catastrophic — but it never had the chance to bring them down. Ice crystal encased its entire body, sealing over the charred crater in its skull, locking its half-raised limbs exactly where they hung.

Frozen. Mid-motion. Utterly still.