# Chapter 985: The Edge of the Divine Path
Ding… ding… ding…
The sound of heavenly lake water droplets made the passage of time tangible. On the still surface of the lake, the ice spirits that had been startled away gradually quieted down, then one by one, drawn by the gentle power being exerted with effort, they slowly and hesitantly approached the different divine temple disciples.
Attracting and taming low-level ice spirits was easy for divine temple disciples, but the Heavenly Lake ice spirits were too pure, their consciousness too advanced. Just not being rejected by them was incredibly difficult. Communicating with them and drawing them close, even just one, was far harder than they had imagined.
A quarter of an hour passed… half an hour passed. Finally, a divine temple disciple at the mid-stage Divine Tribulation Realm managed to draw another ice spirit close. Now, two ice spirits were dancing and circling around him, but their movements were slow and their trajectories constantly fluctuating, as if they might drift away at any moment.
He let out a long sigh of relief, relaxing his mind slightly, and opened his eyes. He saw that the nearest divine temple disciple had one ice spirit dancing beside him, while the person next to him also had two like himself. As his gaze swept across, he noticed someone whose head was actually surrounded by three ice spirits.
His heart jolted, and his eyes fell on Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue in the distance…
Beside each of them, there were actually five ice spirits dancing, and their movements were noticeably more lively than those around him, allowing him to vaguely sense their joy.
The gap was too great… Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue were not just top disciples of the Ice Phoenix Temple—they were top-tier in an overwhelmingly prominent way. When people of the sect mentioned the Ice Phoenix Temple, they immediately thought of Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue, never a third person.
In this competition for personal disciples, people similarly only thought of Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue. The disciple ranked third in talent within the temple… had never even been included in the discussion.
He sighed inwardly, finally giving up in despair. He dispersed the two ice spirits he had worked so hard to attract, ignoring them entirely. Instead, he focused his energy, calmed his heart, and began using the cold energy of the heavenly lake water to temper his body and profound veins.
Nearly half of the divine temple disciples had also completely given up around the half-hour mark. They already regretted wasting half an hour in the heavenly lake chasing a faint and hopeless hope.
An hour passed, and eighty percent of the divine temple disciples had resigned themselves in disappointment, but several hundred were still striving with all their might.
The elders and palace masters were also concentrating on absorbing the heavenly lake's cold energy, but unlike the disciples who were fully immersed, they kept half their awareness outside, constantly monitoring the movements of their disciples, especially the Ice Phoenix Palace masters. The disciples of the Ice Phoenix Palace were relatively weaker, and as time passed in the heavenly lake, they would gradually be unable to hold on.
At the same time, they were all observing this unprecedented battle of ice spirits, and the focus was undoubtedly on Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue.
The result was not surprising. The two of them attracted the most ice spirits. After an hour, each had ten ice spirits beside them, neck and neck. Although the other disciples had given their all, the one with the most had only managed seven. Below that, even five was rare. The gap was clearly evident.
Among the seventy-two elders, two were not in the heavenly lake but high above—Mu Huanzhi and Mu Yunzhi. Mu Feixue was Mu Huanzhi's granddaughter, and Mu Hanyi was Mu Yunzhi's disciple, so naturally, they were deeply concerned. They had no heart to enjoy even the heavenly lake's cold energy. Mu Huanzhi remained relatively calm, but Mu Yunzhi's gaze flickered constantly, her aura never still for a moment. Her hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly, while her mouth stayed firmly shut, afraid to make any sound that might disturb Mu Hanyi.
"Looking at the situation now, setting aside the Ice Phoenix bloodline, Hanyi's talent is indeed not inferior to Feixue. For a man to reach such heights is something rarely seen in a thousand years." Mu Huanzhi murmured to himself with deep emotion. For now, the two were evenly matched, but he knew well that after three hours, if they still had the same number of ice spirits, then Mu Hanyi would surely win… first, because he was male, and second, because of his excellent reputation and outstanding prestige.
A pained groan came from below. At the edge of the heavenly lake, the body of an Ice Phoenix Palace disciple began to convulse violently, his face drained of color. The cold energy flooding into him had slipped beyond his control, nearing the brink of chaos.
The palace master of that Ice Phoenix Palace instantly opened his eyes, flew up from the lake, and grabbed the disciple, tossing him onto the lakeshore. The disciple's complexion immediately eased. He stood up with a shameful expression, said nothing more, and sat back down on the shore.
Everyone's profound energy, talent, physical constitution, and ability to control cold energy were different. Once they exceeded the limits of their body and ability, they had to leave. Forcing themselves to stay in the heavenly lake would only harm them. However, the far gentler cold energy on the lakeshore was still immensely valuable to them, and they dared not waste a single moment.
After the first Ice Phoenix Palace disciple, as time went on, more and more disciples could no longer endure the heavenly lake's cold energy and had to leave the water, coming to the shore to quietly refine and stabilize the results of the day.
Even the Ice Phoenix Palace disciple who had spent the shortest time in the lake—only an hour—could clearly feel a complete transformation of his body.
The pure cold energy tempering of the Minghan Heavenly Lake was unmatched by thousands of spirit pills.
Gradually, two hours passed. All three thousand five hundred Ice Phoenix Palace disciples had been forced out of the heavenly lake and moved to the shore. Only the divine temple disciples remained in the lake.
Under the overwhelming advantage of Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue, the divine temple disciples who were still striving to attract ice spirits grew fewer and fewer—from several hundred to a few dozen, then to just a handful… When the last divine temple disciple opened his eyes, Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue each had twenty ice spirits dancing around them. He looked up at the fourteen ice spirits around himself, finally disheartened. With a light sigh, he waved his arm and resignedly dispersed all the ice spirits in an instant.
The world has never lacked geniuses, but it does lack top-tier geniuses. In the presence of top-tier geniuses, even geniuses can only helplessly play the role of supporting characters.
When this battle of ice spirits reached two-thirds of its course, it had completely become a contest between only Mu Hanyi and Mu Feixue… This result surprised no one.
Yun Che knew nothing of all this. At this moment, he had entered an extremely wondrous—or rather, strange—world.
The Great Dao Pagoda Art was circulating. The cold energy of the heavenly lake surged into Yun Che's body through every pore at a speed far beyond what ordinary people could comprehend. Other Ice Phoenix disciples used their profound energy to channel the cold energy throughout their bodies, primarily to temper their bodies and profound veins, but Yun Che directly drew it into his profound veins. As more and more cold energy poured in, the flow of profound energy within his veins and body accelerated. His consciousness sank completely, focused on guiding the foreign cold energy to merge with his own profound energy.
In this state, his awareness delved deeper and deeper, losing all sense of time. After who knows how long, the flow of profound energy completed over a thousand cycles and then suddenly stopped entirely. All profound energy came to a halt, as still as if time itself had frozen.
Yun Che's consciousness was stunned. But then, the profound energy throughout his body suddenly erupted, like raging torrents, frantically surging back into his profound veins. His consciousness followed them inside. Before he could see what was happening, a resounding boom echoed through every corner of his awareness.
At the center of his profound veins, something seemed to explode. The inner world of his profound veins became a chaotic blur, filled with gray-white mist. This mist churned wildly, constantly dispersing and gathering, sometimes flashing with blue light, sometimes flaring with flames, sometimes streaked with purple lightning, and sometimes turning pitch black.
It was as if a small world had suddenly collapsed in a catastrophe…
In the end, it completely broke down. All the root profound energy in his veins scattered and drained away…
This shock was no small matter. The dispersion of root profound energy meant that all his cultivation would be lost. For any profound practitioner, this was undoubtedly a nightmare. In his horror, Yun Che suddenly noticed that in the rapidly emptying center of his profound veins, faint specks of strange starlight were flickering.
Like a nebula in an endless night sky, they shimmered with a weak yet deeply mysterious light.
At that moment, an indescribably subtle feeling spread through his body and consciousness. It was as if everything—absolutely everything—was being sublimated. It felt like his entire being, body and soul, had suddenly been transported to a completely different world, sensing the aura of another world, hearing the sounds of another world…
In his profound veins, four lights—blue, red, purple, and black—rekindled. The strange nebula at the center rotated slowly, growing with each revolution, its starlight becoming brighter. Simultaneously, the strange sensation from his body grew stronger and stronger. His meridians, bones, blood, hair, even every single cell, were vibrating intensely… Even his consciousness continuously unfurled image after image.
These images began when he was sixteen, from the day he reforged his profound veins, replaying every step of his journey on the profound path…
Every cultivation session, every breakthrough, every encounter, every danger, every desperate situation, every moment between life and death…
In these images, he seemed to walk through his past life again. Eight years… For the profound path, eight years was an extremely short time. But the experiences he had gone through, the life-and-death crises he had faced, surpassed a thousand lifetimes for others…
High above the Minghan Heavenly Lake, atop the icy, cold dragon, a beam of light from behind the mist suddenly shot down, landing on Yun Che.
Mu Bingyun also turned around like lightning, looking at Yun Che… Countless strands of profound energy were wildly releasing from his body, but instead of dispersing, they swirled around him in rings at high speed, causing the surrounding airflow to become chaotic.
At the same time, his body began to tremble violently, and the surface texture of his skin rippled like water.
Yun Che was very close to Mu Xiaolan. The violent change in his aura startled her from her meditation. As soon as she saw Yun Che's state, she was about to cry out, but Mu Bingyun's voice sounded in her soul: "Don't make a sound… He is about to break through!"
Mu Xiaolan quickly covered her mouth with both hands, then carefully backed away, her wide eyes fixed firmly on Yun Che.
Yun Che's transformation instantly drew the attention of all the Ice Phoenix Palace disciples on the shore.
This was no ordinary breakthrough.
It was the crossing of a profound practitioner from the mortal realm to the divine path!
A true sublimation and rebirth!
Three months after arriving in the Yin Xue Realm, Yun Che had finally, at this moment, under circumstances he had never anticipated, taken his first true step into the divine path.