Snow rushed through the residential lanes in thick, violent sheets, driven sideways by winds strong enough to tear loose tiles from the roofs. Ice rattled against the dark wooden buildings, while the previously mild air had become sharp enough to burn his lungs.
Snow?
Lyn looked toward the sky.
For a brief moment, enormous blue lines flickered high above Morninglight, curving across the heavens like the ribs of a vast dome. The formation extended far beyond the fortress, enclosing the entire region whose climate it controlled.
Most of Morninglight's formations were concealed from ordinary sight, but the damage had forced parts of the structure into view.
One of the blue lines flashed violently.
Then it disappeared.
The wind intensified at once.
Snow and hail descended with enough force to blur the buildings only a few dozen metres away. Students poured from their quarters, shouting questions that vanished beneath the storm, while others stood motionless and stared at the failing formation overhead.
Another explosion shook the mountain.
Lyn turned toward the sound.
Through the dense snowfall, hundreds of silhouettes had appeared in the sky.
They descended at impossible speed.
The first figure struck the residential district with a thunderous impact. A sonic boom tore through the air as the ground erupted beneath him, reducing an entire row of quarters to splintered wood and shattered stone.
More followed.
One after another, they crashed into Morninglight like falling stars. Each impact sent shockwaves through the mountain and carved fresh craters among the buildings.
Students near the landing points died before they understood what was happening.
The attackers used neither Light nor Fire.
Snow twisted around them in unnatural currents, gathering into blades, chains, and enormous crushing waves. Ice formed inside the air itself before tearing through the fleeing students.
Lyn focused through the storm.
The invaders were uniformly pale, their skin almost indistinguishable from the snow swirling around them. Most possessed bluish hair in shades ranging from frozen silver to deep glacial blue.
Their uniforms were entirely black.
A single red emblem marked each chest: a snowflake spread between a pair of wings.
Essence flooded the district.
Lyn's body became rigid as he sensed their cultivation.
Rank Eight.
Not one or two.
Most of the descending figures were Rank Eight.
Hundreds of them...
Not everyone could identify Essence leakage accurately. Damage to the Vessel Realm could dull that perception, distort it, or erase it entirely, leaving a Dao Chosen unable to judge another's rank until their power was already being used.
Perhaps that was why a nearby student mistook the descending invaders for opponents he could challenge.
He attempted to activate a shard.
The decision was so foolish that Lyn barely had time to comprehend it. Even without sensing their cultivation, the destruction surrounding the attackers should have been warning enough. They had fallen through buildings like meteors and slaughtered students before most could react; trying to confront one directly was not courage, but a refusal to understand the situation.
Before the student's Shard Gate could fully open, a thin spike of ice crossed the distance and passed through his head.
His body fell without completing the technique.
Another student rose into the air, surrounded by burning light, only for the snow above him to close like a hand. The pressure crushed the glow and hurled what remained into the ground.
Lyn backed toward the shelter of the nearest building, although he understood immediately that walls would offer little protection from people capable of descending through them like meteors.
This is not an attack meant for students.
The ground shook again.
A dark figure landed at the far end of the residential lane, sending cracks racing through the frozen earth. Snow rolled outward from the crater as the attacker slowly straightened.
Blue hair hung across his pale face.
The red, winged snowflake upon his chest seemed almost luminous against the black uniform.
His gaze moved across the scattered students.
Then it settled upon Lyn.
More than twenty miniature shards floated behind the black-uniformed man, arranged in a perfect circle like a halo.
A lance formed instantly within his right hand.
Several nearby students mistook their numerical advantage for an opportunity and rushed him from different directions.
The black-uniformed man laughed.
He swept the lance once.
The attack passed through them before any of them could react. Their bodies were torn apart in the same instant, flesh and limbs scattering across the snow in a wet mass of blood and ruined meat.
Only their heads remained suspended in the air before falling on the ground, expressions of confidence still frozen across their faces.
By then, Lyn was already gone.
I have to run.
His objective was simple.
Escape the mountain at any cost.
A piercing screech suddenly rang through Morninglight before Defying Sun's amplified voice spread across the mountainside.
"All students are to enter the underground shelters! Those at Rank Five or above are to fight or assist the elders!"
Morninglight's situation had already become dire. Although the sect possessed the advantage in numbers, ordinary students and soldiers could do almost nothing against Rank Eight cultivators.
Beyond Morning and the other instructors joined the battle, followed by elders rushing down from the administrative fortress.
Beyond Morning confronted one of the invaders. As she closed the distance, her eyes settled upon the red winged snowflake stitched across his black uniform.
"That emblem... Frozen Heaven?"
Shock briefly entered her expression.
"That clan was destroyed. How are they—"
she gritted her teeth before attacking.
"Heavenly half True Fragment Technique: Morning's Bliss!"
His entire body combusted from within. White-gold flames burst through his skin and black uniform, consuming his flesh in a single violent surge until only a scorched skeleton remained standing amid the snow.
Before the bones could fall, they collapsed into water and scattered across the snow.
"What?"
Beyond Morning stared for only a moment. The battle surrounding her left no time to investigate, and she immediately turned to assist the other defenders.
Not long afterward, another figure descended from the sky.
He was an elderly man with long bluish hair and a flowing beard, his hands folded calmly behind his back as he passed through the storm. Wherever he moved, the snow slowed, stopped, and remained suspended across the heavens, as though the entire mountain range had been commanded to hold its breath.
Three immense halos revolved behind him, each filled with hundreds of Heavenly Shards that differed in shape, colour, and radiance.
The moment his Essence leaked into the world, pressure swept across the entire Restless Mountain range.
Beyond Morning's expression changed before her knees were driven into the ground. Cracks spread beneath them, and blood slipped from the corner of her mouth as she struggled beneath the weight of his presence.
Across Morninglight, soldiers collapsed where they stood. Some lost consciousness instantly, while others remained awake only long enough to feel their bodies cease responding.
The pressure ignored walls, shelters, and defensive formations. Students hidden underground were forced flat against the floor, gasping beneath a presence too vast for mortal bodies to endure, while even the soldiers of Frozen Heaven lowered their heads.
Farther down the mountain, Lyn felt the same force descend upon him.
His legs nearly buckled. Every breath became a struggle, while darkness crept along the edges of his vision as though the air itself had solidified inside his lungs.
Even so, he remained standing, though only barely.
An immortal...
There could be no other explanation.
This was an Expression of Heaven whose unrestrained presence alone supressed the entire Region.
The old man looked across Morninglight as though observing something far beneath him.
"The man you intend to kill has noticed your attempts."
His voice was not loud, yet it travelled through the storm, passed through walls and formations, and reached every person who remained conscious.
"Come out and face us like a man."
The snow surrounding the elderly intruder melted without warning.
Before the suspended droplets could reach the ground, Defying Sun appeared behind him, his arrival so abrupt that even the storm seemed to recoil from the space between them.
"I am guessing you are one of Frozen Heaven's commanders."
The elder did not turn. A low laugh escaped him instead, carrying through the unnatural stillness of the storm.
"One of them, yes. You were foolish to betray your own people. You could have become a valuable asset."
"A valuable asset?" Vilen repeated with a smirk.
While the two men confronted one another above Morninglight, Lyn reassessed his situation.
Escaping the mountain immediately was impossible. The Restless Mountain range was enormous, and with the weather formation broken, the climate it had restrained was already reclaiming the region. Lyn was not a Fire Path Dao Chosen, nor did he possess any reliable means of maintaining his body heat through the journey. The cold had already become severe enough to burn his lungs, and it would only worsen once he left the remaining shelter of the fortress.
Running blindly into the mountains would merely change the manner of his death.
Lyn made what would have appeared to others like an absurd decision.
He turned back towards Morninglight.
Lyn tried to call upon the map stored within his Information Shard, hoping it would guide him through the damaged fortress.
Only one message appeared.
Escape to the underground shelters.
The emergency instruction had replaced every useful route, leaving him without directions to the market.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Lyn forced himself to recall Morninglight's layout from memory. Even that simple act demanded effort beneath the immortal's presence. The pressure still weighed upon his body, making each breath shallow while pain pulsed behind his eyes and threatened to break his concentration.
He pushed through it, reconstructing the streets, districts, and major structures within his mind until he could trace the market's direction on his own.
This is my chance. I need to take everything I can.
His Essence was already suppressed, reducing the risk of attracting the invaders' attention. Rather than crossing the open roads, Lyn moved through the narrow streets between buildings, advancing only when the fighting shifted elsewhere. Whenever Frozen Heaven soldiers passed nearby, he concealed himself among the damaged structures and waited until the route cleared.
By the time he reached the market, the district had long descended into chaos.
Most of the stalls had been overturned or destroyed, their wooden frames shattered by the shockwaves spreading through Morninglight. Goods lay scattered across the frozen ground, mixed with fragments of stone, broken weapons, and the bodies of those who had died before they could flee.
Lyn's attention settled upon the shards strewn between the ruined stalls.
The stands are destroyed, but the shards appear intact.
Fragments of every colour and shape glittered across the ground. Some resembled splinters of coloured glass, while others possessed intricate forms that revealed the Paths to which they belonged.
For a moment, Lyn considered taking everything.
The thought was tempting, but impractical. Heavenly Shards could not remain stored indefinitely without being nourished with Essence from time to time. With his current cultivation, maintaining too many would place an unsustainable burden upon his Sea, especially if several possessed ranks beyond his ability to use.
Yet abandoning them would be an even greater waste.
I may be able to sell them later.
Lyn began moving through the wreckage, touching each shard that appeared valuable. Whenever his fingers made contact, the information retained within it entered his intuition, revealing its rank and basic function.
Shards prepared for sale commonly contained formations designed to preserve such information, allowing prospective buyers to identify what they were purchasing without first forming a connection with them.
After examining those scattered around the nearest stalls, Lyn placed more than ten shards inside his Vessel Realm. Four immediately stood out as useful, while the others either consumed too much Essence or remained beyond his current ability to activate.
The first was Green Blossom, a healing-type shard shaped like a crystallised green flower.
The second, Lightning Spear, was a combat-type shard resembling a miniature golden spear.
Fiery Endurance was a defensive shard, reddish in colour and as slender as a needle.
The final useful shard was Winds of the North, a speed-type shard whose grey, uneven shape made it appear no different from an ordinary fragment of glass.
Green Blossom, Lightning Spear, Fiery Endurance, and Winds of the North... These four are the most useful. Most are Rank Three, and their Essence consumption ranges from low to moderate.
Because none of them contained any foreign Essence, Lyn refined the four shards almost immediately. He left the others untouched, however; refining them with his own Essence would make them more difficult to sell and reduce their value.
The remaining shards were either too costly for him to use reliably or possessed ranks high enough to make them useless until his cultivation advanced. Even so, they still held considerable value and could be exchanged later if he survived long enough to find a buyer.
As Lyn finished examining the last shard, movement among the bodies near the opposite side of the market caught his attention.
A white-haired woman was crouched beside one of the fallen, calmly searching the corpses for anything worth taking.
Nirvana.