Geom Mugeuk walked behind the Ice Palace Lord.
Naturally, he had assumed the Ice Palace Treasury would be outside the palace. Somewhere deep in the Northern Sea, somewhere amid snowstorm-lashed mountains, in a place so cold it would freeze the heart.
But the Ice Palace Lord led Geom Mugeuk deep into the interior of the Northern Sea Ice Palace.
“This is the first time I have shown it to an outsider.”
“It is an honor, Palace Lord.”
“It is my repayment for saving this palace.”
After passing through a series of gates guarded by the Ice Palace’s elite warriors, they came upon a frozen lake.
“From this point on, step exactly where I step and follow me.”
Geom Mugeuk could tell. A formation had been laid over this lake that appeared ordinary at first glance.
The terrifying thing about this formation was its unexpectedness.
He had never once experienced a formation laid over a frozen lake. While everyone’s mind was occupied with the tension of whether the ice beneath their feet might break, the true danger would devour them from somewhere else entirely.
Geom Mugeuk stepped precisely where the Ice Palace Lord had stepped and followed behind her.
What would happen if he failed to find the Gate of Life? Would the ice break and send him sinking into the freezing lake? Or would he be forced to wander forever across the surface of this lake?
The Ice Palace Lord, who had been walking in silence, abruptly asked,
“That child named Ian—is he of a demon practitioner’s bloodline?”
“No. He was entrusted to our cult when he was very young.”
The Ice Palace Lord continued walking in silence. Somehow, her back looked as though there was something she wanted to say.
“But why do you ask?”
Whether in appearance or temperament, Ian was no ordinary person, but knowing the Ice Palace Lord’s nature, Geom Mugeuk had not expected her to take such an interest.
“No reason. The thought simply occurred to me. Watch your step.”
Once again, the Ice Palace Lord diligently stepped along the Gate of Life and crossed the lake.
When they passed through the formation, a valley appeared. It was a narrow path between cliffs, one that would be filled if three or four adults stood shoulder to shoulder.
Whoooosh.
The wind was cold from the very entrance. Not merely chilly—truly cold.
This was the true path to the Ice Palace Treasury.
“It suddenly grew cold.”
At Geom Mugeuk’s words, a strange smile formed at the corners of the Ice Palace Lord’s mouth.
“The cold has yet to even begin.”
The Ice Palace Lord was slightly excited at the thought of letting the young cult lord taste the cold. Saving the Ice Palace was one thing, but since he had stubbornly insisted on going somewhere no one without the Extreme Cold Physique could reach, she intended to show him the fierce cold winds of the Northern Sea.
“Now, let us go.”
This time, the Ice Palace Lord did not walk ahead. She walked side by side with Geom Mugeuk. She had to observe his condition as they went. Regardless of whether he was an expert or not, one wrong move could kill him.
Truly, it grew colder with every single step.
“Do not force yourself to endure too much.”
“It is still bearable.”
If ever there was a time to say one’s lungs were freezing solid, this was it. It was not cold because a biting wind was blowing. It felt as though they were approaching a place where ultimate cold existed. One step forward brought them into a colder space, and the next step into a space colder still. The change was immediate and drastic.
Shiiiiii.
There was no wind blowing, yet a strange sound arose.
“Are you all right?”
From the halfway point onward, the Ice Palace Lord checked Geom Mugeuk’s condition with every step.
But Geom Mugeuk was perfectly fine. He did feel the cold, but it did not affect his body or turn into pain.
The Ice Palace Lord worried that Geom Mugeuk might freeze while standing upright.
But Geom Mugeuk walked just fine. If anything, he strode more vigorously than she did.
Shiiiiiiii.
Though no wind blew, the farther they walked, the louder that strange sound became.
The farther they went, the more astonished the Ice Palace Lord became. If he did not possess the Extreme Cold Physique, then this meant there existed some other demonic art capable of withstanding this cold.
‘Could such a demonic art truly exist?’
The farther they went, the more severe the cold became.
This was not the sort of cold that instantly froze water exposed to the air. It was cold that surpassed common sense and the limits of the human body.
Neither Geom Mugeuk, who had consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit, nor the Ice Palace Lord, who endured it with her unique internal energy, was in any state to hold a conversation. That was how tremendous the cold of that place was.
At last, the two arrived at the end of the path.
There stood a massive block of ice. No, it was a gigantic wall of ice.
It was not ordinary ice. As if it were the origin of all the cold in the world, its chill was beyond description.
In other words, the two of them had walked toward the source of the world’s cold.
And astonishingly, there was a door in that ice wall.
The fact that someone had thought to carve a hole into this place and create a space within it was astonishing in itself.
The Ice Palace Lord opened the door and went inside. Geom Mugeuk followed behind her.
The moment the Ice Palace Lord closed the door, silence descended.
The strange sound that had been ringing in their ears vanished completely, and at the same time, that insane cold disappeared as if it had been a lie.
Inside, it was not even that cold. It felt as though they had entered a house made of ice. He even had the premonition that the closer they moved toward the center, the more the cold would subside.
They could now converse, but the Ice Palace Lord stared at Geom Mugeuk in silence for quite some time. At last, she confirmed once more.
“Do you have the Extreme Cold Physique and have been deceiving me?”
“I will say it again: I do not have the Extreme Cold Physique.”
“Then do you possess a demonic art that allows you to withstand cold?”
“No. I doubt any demonic art of our cult could endure this cold.”
For a moment, she even had such a thought. Could the young cult lord know the secret martial art passed down only to the lord of the Ice Palace?
“There is one method by which one can endure any cold, is there not? The legend handed down in the Northern Sea.”
The Ice Palace Lord, who had been blank for a moment, recalled one thing.
“Surely not. You?”
Geom Mugeuk told her honestly. He did not want to make some vague excuse and leave an unpleasant doubt in her heart.
“Yes. I consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit.”
Geom Mugeuk confirmed just how large the Ice Palace Lord’s eyes could become when she opened them as wide as possible.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit was a legendary elixir handed down like a myth.
It was the pinnacle of all elixirs that strengthened one against cold, and it allowed one to comfortably accept not only cold itself, but any energy of an icy attribute.
“The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit truly existed?”
Even the Ice Palace Lord had regarded it as a legendary elixir. A mystery that existed, yet did not exist.
“I was fortunate enough to encounter an opportunity.”
The Ice Palace Lord firmly shook her head.
“The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit is not something one can obtain through luck alone.”
If it were, then that spiritual fruit would not have been passed down as a legend.
The person who obtained it was the young cult lord of the Demon Cult?
And that young cult lord had saved the Ice Palace. Was this a coincidence? The mastermind behind the incident had aimed for the Ice Palace Treasury, and now she had come here together with the young cult lord who had eliminated that mastermind. Was all of this merely coincidence?
Or were they standing face to face like this within the flow of inevitable fate?
“Let us go in.”
They slowly walked down a corridor made of ice. At the end of that corridor was a large space, and that was the Ice Palace Treasury.
The walls, the ceiling, the floor, and even the display cases—everything visible was made of ice.
This place was different from other treasuries. Astonishingly, all the treasures were inside the ice. As if packed within ice bricks, they were frozen in blocks of varying sizes.
The ice was incredibly transparent.
Because of that, the weapons piled within the ice looked as though they were floating in midair.
Geom Mugeuk had never seen such a mystical sight before.
“It is truly magnificent.”
The Ice Palace Lord smiled.
“It cannot be melted easily, even with considerable yang heat qi.”
Reaching this place was difficult enough, but even if one did, it would not be easy to extract the treasures from within that ice at the end.
She wondered what Geom Mugeuk would want from this place.
Geom Mugeuk pointed at one sword among the treasures in the ice stacked directly ahead and said,
“Could that sword be the Cold Heaven Divine Sword (寒天神劍)?”
“That is correct.”
It was a legendary sword known to double in power when wielded by someone who cultivated ice arts.
“And beside it, that is the Shattering Saber (破碎刀).”
“You truly have an excellent eye for weapons.”
Not only that, many other divine and wondrous weapons were stored there as well. They were things the Northern Sea Ice Palace had collected over many long years.
Even so, the Ice Palace Lord could sense it.
‘He will not choose a sword.’
He had not drawn the Black Demon Sword in front of her, but she could feel it. The sword Geom Mugeuk wore at his side was better than any sword in this place.
Indeed, though Geom Mugeuk was astonished and impressed by each and every weapon, he did not choose one.
Beside them, jewels floated in midair. The jewels enclosed within small pieces of ice looked even more mysterious.
Among the jewels, some were truly priceless. They were so exquisite that the top-grade Poison-Warding Pearl and Night-Luminous Pearl floating beside them looked shabby by comparison.
But Geom Mugeuk passed by those as well. Of course, he moved slowly, just in case Bigwe reacted.
The two beads Bigwe had obtained so far had not been among precious things. They had been abandoned and hidden.
So he had hoped that, as a twist, it might be boldly sitting among these precious jewels, but Bigwe did not react at all. How nice it would have been if it were proudly placed at the very top of these treasures.
Next came a place where elixirs were displayed.
Truly, they were elixirs that were difficult to obtain no matter how much money one had. Even the least effective among them were precious things that martial artists would wish to consume even in their dreams.
Geom Mugeuk passed that place as well. Instead, so as not to give the impression that he was searching for something special, he examined various things in detail.
“Is there nothing you want?”
“I intend to choose something if it draws my heart, but there is nothing yet.”
He looked through all the places where weapons, elixirs, and various artifacts were displayed, but Bigwe did not react.
‘Was there nothing in the Northern Sea Ice Palace for Bigwe to absorb?’
He thought perhaps it might not be reacting because everything was inside ice. But there was nothing he could do about that. Everything here was inside ice. He could not very well ask her to melt it all for him.
Just as he was about to give up, a large mural drawn on the distant wall caught Geom Mugeuk’s eye. It depicted a massive white dragon ascending to the heavens, large enough to be visible even from afar.
Geom Mugeuk walked toward it.
And when he arrived near the mural, Bigwe reacted from within his robe.
Geom Mugeuk was startled. He had not expected Bigwe to react to a mural.
Looking at it up close, he understood why. The mural was not merely painted.
In the place of the wish-fulfilling jewel held by the white dragon, a blue jade was embedded, and red jade was set into its eyes. That was not all. Jades of various colors were also embedded in its claws and across its body.
And among those many jades, there was a piece of white jade. Bigwe was reacting to it.
‘It is the White Eye!’
If he had not come this way to look at the mural, he would never have discovered it.
Who had hidden these here, and why?
That was something he could not know now. Since it had become connected to him in this way, he could only hope the day would come when he would learn.
Geom Mugeuk said to her,
“May I choose one of the jades embedded in that mural?”
Naturally, the Ice Palace Lord was surprised. She had surely never imagined he would ask for a jade embedded in the mural.
“Do you want the wish-fulfilling jewel?”
“No.”
What Geom Mugeuk pointed to was the white jade embedded at the tip of the tail.
“Please give me that tail.”
White jade was precious, but it could not compare to the treasures he had seen earlier.
“May I ask why, of all things, you want that?”
“In our cult, many have compared me to a latent dragon or a dragon ascending to the heavens. But I have always wished to live as the tail. I want that white jade so I do not forget that feeling.”
The Ice Palace Lord still looked as though she could not understand.
She lightly launched herself into the air, removed the white jade embedded in the wall, and descended.
No matter how closely she examined it, it was nothing more than white jade.
“Will this truly be enough?”
“Yes, it is enough. And simply being able to look around the Ice Palace Treasury has been an immensely valuable experience for me.”
Geom Mugeuk received the white jade and carefully placed it inside his robe.
Because she did not know what the white jade meant, the Ice Palace Lord misunderstood him in this way.
‘He does not wish to impose upon me.’
If that was the case, she could not send him away like this. The Ice Palace Lord said something unexpected.
“It is not enough for me.”
If he had not come at all, then so be it, but since he had come all the way here, she could not send away the man who had saved the Ice Palace with nothing more than a single piece of white jade.
The Ice Palace Lord went to where the spiritual medicines were kept. Then, with object retrieval through the air, she brought down the ice sitting at the highest point among the piled-up medicines.
“In any case, you are the only one who can take it.”
As the Ice Palace Lord’s inner power was infused into it, the ice melted, revealing a small bead. At a glance, it looked as if ice had simply been frozen into the shape of a bead, but this was the pinnacle of the North Sea’s spiritual medicines.
Man-geuk Ice Essence.
Among spiritual medicines with a cold attribute, it was the finest of all, but because it possessed such an extreme energy, it was known that only those who had consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit could take it.
“May I truly accept something this precious?”
“If you do not eat it, it will remain frozen here forever.”
Even now, Geom Mugeuk possessed more inner power than anyone else in the murim, but he still thirsted for more.
Training in the Nine Flames martial arts required a great deal of inner power, and on top of that, he had to cultivate it within the Space-Time Transposition Art while opening even the Sicheon Secret Art. To Geom Mugeuk, inner power was time. To him, inner power was the strength to protect everyone.
“Take it.”
“Then I will no longer decline and will accept it gratefully.”
Geom Mugeuk immediately consumed the Man-geuk Ice Essence on the spot.
It was truly a freezing energy. If the effects of the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Fruit had not made his body capable of withstanding any chill, the moment he swallowed it, his entire body would have frozen solid and he would have died. No, he would not have been able to swallow it in the first place.
The immense energy of the Man-geuk Ice Essence surged through Geom Mugeuk’s meridians. It raged like a mad northern wind, but its opponent was already a body that had pushed through even mad winds.
After carefully regulating his true qi several times, the energy of the Man-geuk Ice Essence gathered in his dantian and became pure inner power.
Until now, he had vaguely thought that perhaps he possessed the greatest inner power in the murim, but now he could be certain. His inner power was likely the greatest of all. He was not happy simply because he had gained more inner power. He was happy because he could raise the realms of the Sicheon Secret Art and the Nine Flames Demonic Art even a little faster.
Today, the Ice Palace Lord was met with one surprise after another. She had not expected him to dissolve the Man-geuk Ice Essence so quickly.
Because of that, she could decide on the third favor even more easily.
“Choose one more.”
“This alone is more than enough.”
“There are three reasons I am giving you three gifts.”
“What reasons are those?”
“The first is repayment for uncovering Wonju’s death and eliminating those behind it.”
Yes, he understood that much. He was the benefactor who had saved the Ice Palace.
“The second is because you made me look back.”
Geom Mugeuk understood. It was because he had told her that her daughter was still standing behind her. Because of her gratitude for reconnecting her with the daughter she would have lost forever.
“The third is a gift given in advance.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You will understand someday. What those words mean.”
It was an investment for her daughter.
When Han Seol became the Ice Palace Lord, this Geom Mugeuk would have become the Heavenly Demon. She was asking in advance. In the future, please take care of the Northern Sea Ice Palace, and my daughter as well. If that request cost her only one treasure, it was a bargain.
Geom Mugeuk guessed her feelings. And so he accepted the heart she held for her daughter.
“Then I will choose one more.”
Geom Mugeuk looked around the place once again. Since this gift was not for himself, he chose even more carefully.
“Then I will take this as the last one.”
What Geom Mugeuk chose was a wine cup.