CHAPTER 70: CHAPTER 70: FROZEN JUDGMENT: A MOTHER’S FROZEN GRIEF

The winds howled atop the Broken Moon Ridge, slicing across the treetops like blades. Snow did not belong here, not in the middle of a southern forest, but the land had turned white, eerily silent, as if it sensed the storm that was coming.

A group of cultivators moved cautiously through the ridge’s shadowed paths, their Spirit Beast Hall insignias glinting on their robes.

"Are you sure the Spirit-Eyed Thunder Tiger is still in this region?" asked a young man in blue robes, his expression filled with barely concealed greed. His name was Hao Fei, one of the four Inner Disciples sent on this mission.

"We need its core. Elder Lian said he can refine it into a Soul Tempering Pill," another Inner Disciple chimed in. This one, named Chen Yu, had sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue. "Besides, these rogue spirit beasts are becoming a nuisance. They need to be put down."

Behind them marched eight Outer Disciples, young, brash, and barely into the Foundation Realm. They joked with each other, speaking of spirit cores and merit points.

At the center of the group walked an old man, no taller than a child, hunched but radiating strength like a drawn blade.

Outer Elder Mu Lian. Opening Realm cultivator

Elder Mu Lian paused mid-step.

His thick, bushy eyebrows furrowed as a strange sensation prickled against the back of his neck. The heat that had clung to the southern forest all day, the sticky humidity that soaked even the hardiest cultivators, had vanished.

In its place came a creeping chill, Soft, Silent. And unnatural.

His breath curled into mist before him.

He raised a hand sharply. "Stop."

The chatter among the disciples died instantly.

Eight outer disciples halted, boots crunching against frost-coated grass that hadn’t been there moments ago. The four inner disciples looked around, confused, brows narrowing.

One of them, Hao Fei, cocked his head. "Is that... snow?"

A single flake spiraled down, drifting like a feather.

Mu Lian didn’t answer.

He took a slow, wary step forward. His Qi stirred around him—raw, alert. The frost beneath his boots crackled ominously. It was spreading across the ground in a slow, elegant dance, encasing fallen leaves and roots with a sheen of glassy ice.

His breath quickened.

"This isn’t natural," he muttered.

"Elder," Chen Yu said, eyes darting between the trees, "is this... some sort of spirit beast ability? The tiger?"

"No." Mu Lian’s voice was grim. "This isn’t a beast."

His hand twitched, and his blade, a crimson, wide-edged sabre, slid from its sheath with a metallic hiss. He scanned the trees, spirit sense reaching outward.

"Spread out," he said. "But..."

He narrowed his eyes.

"...something isn’t right."

Then, snowflakes began to fall around them.

Not falling from the sky, but materializing from thin air, spinning gently in the warm forest wind.

"What the ?" Hao Fei raised his arm, trying to catch one, but it melted the moment it touched his skin.

"Snow?" muttered another disciple. "But we’re in the southern forest,"

Suddenly, the ground froze.

A radius of twenty meters turned to ice in an instant. The leaves cracked beneath their boots. Roots snapped as frost spread like a plague across the land.

Then she appeared.

From the treetops, descending like a whisper.

Her robe was black with silver trim, long as a river, fluttering in the wind. Her face was hidden by a translucent ice-veil, but her black eyes shone like moonless voids. Her hair cascaded past her waist, glistening with a sheen of spiritual frost.

She walked without sound. Not a single branch cracked underfoot.

Only silence.

Hao Fei stumbled back. "Who...who are you?!"

None of them had sensed her approach.

Not even Elder Mu Lian.

"W-Wait," Elder Mu Lian barked. "State your identity! This is the territory of the Spirit Beast Hall!"

She looked at him. Then at the others.

Her voice, when it came, was colder than the ice surrounding them.

"I am Bella Darwin," she said, "Saintess of the Ice Jade Sect. Tenth of the Heavenly Dragons. Half-step into the Divine Realm."

Every single person took a step back.

Even Elder Mu Lian paled.

"You... you’re one of the Ten Heavenly Dragons...?"

"I am," she said simply, "but today, I am here not as a Saintess."

She raised her hand.

Snow burst from her sleeve like a geyser of frost. It curled in the air like a spirit made of death. The air temperature dropped again, teeth-chattering, marrow-freezing cold that no defensive Qi could block.

"Today, I am here as a mother."

Before anyone could react, she moved.

A blur.

A gust.

A flash of white.

Hao Fei barely screamed before his entire body froze solid, mid-motion. His eyes were still wide in disbelief as cracks spiderwebbed across his face, and then he shattered.

Ice and blood have fallen on the floor.

Chen Yu tried to raise a talisman, but it froze in his fingers before it activated.

He died next to his heart, impaled by a single shard of Bella’s frost Qi, launched with surgical precision.

The other two Inner Disciples ran.

They didn’t get far.

One fell, slipping on the ice, and Bella appeared behind him with no emotion on her veiled face. Her hand touched his back gently, and a lotus made of ice bloomed from his spine, erupting outward with petals of death.

The last one cried out, summoning a flying sword artifact, but the sword didn’t even manifest before his entire chest caved in from a storm of frozen spears.

Only Elder Mu Lian remained, breath ragged, eyes wild.

The eight Outer Disciples dropped their weapons, falling to their knees.

"Spare us, Saintess! Spare us! We’re just Outer Disciples!"

Bella’s voice cut through their begging.

She raised her fingers.

Eight threads of frozen mist shot forward like serpents.

And one by one, they froze. Their eyes turned to ice, their hearts stopped, and their flesh locked in eternal screams.

Elder Mu Lian finally spoke, desperation in his voice. "Bella Darwin! This is a declaration of war! You dare slay disciples of the Spirit Beast Hall?! You’ll be hunted! The Hall has Divine Realm Ancestors!"

"I know," she said.

She began to walk toward him.

Every step she took sent a ring of frost across the ground.

He summoned his Qi, a burning crimson glow erupting from his dantian, pushing against the ice. His short figure trembled with power as he roared and swung a wide arc with his spirit blade.

But when the blade touched her ice

It cracked. Then shattered.

His spiritual Qi was snuffed out in an instant. The cold climbed his legs, biting deep.

"Your sect murdered my husband," Bella whispered.

The ice climbed higher, reaching his waist. His eyes widened in horror.

"You hunted my son."

His arms froze.

"And now, your blood will be the offering to the sins you unleashed."

He opened his mouth to scream, but never did.

A single word left her lips.

"Freeze."

And he became a statue. Not of flesh of despair.

One gust of wind and he shattered.

The clearing was silent again.

The snow slowed.

Bella stood amidst the corpses of thirteen cultivators, her veil untouched by blood, her hands still glowing with cold. The silence around her was broken only by the soft crunch of frost blooming beneath her feet.

The wind whispered through the frozen branches, but she heard nothing.

Her black veil fluttered gently over her lips as she exhaled, slow, steady. The faintest shimmer of grief lay in her eyes, as dark as winter’s midnight.

"My son..." she whispered, voice barely louder than the snowflakes drifting down. "He just earned the title of Shadow Dragon... the rightful heir of the Kilvish Clan. That was his dream..."

A pause. The frost spread wider in a circle around her.

"And then... he vanished. No word. No trail. On the day when he fulfilled his wish."

Her voice cracked for a breath, but only a breath.

"I don’t even know if he’s alive. Or if he..."

She stopped. Her hands, gloved and graceful, clenched beneath her silken sleeves.

"And Charles, my husband... He was no genius, no Divine Realm prodigy. Just a man who gave everything. A father who tried. A husband who stood beside me no matter how high I flew..."

Her breath hitched.

"I couldn’t even find his body."

She turned, slowly, her veil dancing with frost-kissed wind as her gaze fell upon the frozen disciples locked in eternal stillness, their final expressions of fear and pain sealed beneath sheets of ice.

Her voice hardened now. Steel beneath snow.

"You took them both from me. My family."

She raised her hand.

Ice flared across the clearing, crackling like thunder trapped beneath crystal.

"And now..." she whispered, "I will take from you."

Then, she raised her hand.

A formation lit beneath her, and from the frost appeared four women, all dressed in the robes of the Ice Jade Sect, silent, deadly, waiting.

"Deliver these bodies to the Spirit Beast Hall," Bella commanded, her voice firm. "Let them know this is the price of spilling the blood of my kin."

Her disciples bowed. "Yes, Saintess."

"Tell them," Bella added, her tone razor-sharp, "for the death of my husband, and the disappearance of my son, their sins will be paid in the blood of their disciples... and elders."

She turned, and her black veil fluttered in the wind like a final curtain drawn over a stage of vengeance.

She was not done.

No.

This was only the beginning.

Then, she turned her eyes to the forest, Silent, still.

Like a snow demon cloaked in sorrow and power, Bella Darwin vanished without a sound, without a trace, leaving behind only ice.