Under the cataclysmic heatwave unleashed by the Sixth-Tier Element Pool, the entire abyss snow city transformed into a massive sauna.

Steam filled the air, ice and snow melted, and the hundred thousand snow monsters collapsed into powerless sludge, temporarily stripped of all threat.

Jie Ming moved like the ultimate reaping machine, his figure blurring into afterimages as he swept through the city. Wherever he passed, heaps of rare materials were unceremoniously swept into his spatial expansion bags.

High-energy ice crystal ores, millennia-old permafrost used by snow monsters for city construction, and the flesh of certain polar creatures they “bred”…

He even took the time to meticulously extract the cold crystal cores from the melted snow monster bodies, as these were valuable commodities exchangeable for substantial military merits.

His movements were astonishingly swift. In just over half an hour, he filled several massive spatial expansion bags to the brim, leaving no room for more.

Yet, amid the ecstasy of his haul, a trace of regret surfaced.

He had scoured the city’s core areas, but found no strategic structures akin to the lava giants’ “incubation pools.”

Moreover, from the materials collected, it seemed the truly rare, Third- or Fourth-Tier top-grade resources had already been taken by the departing high-tier snow monsters.

What remained in the city’s vaults were mostly common, lower-grade materials.

“They left in a hurry, but still took the important stuff,” Jie Ming realized, though he wasn’t overly disappointed.

This harvest already far exceeded his expectations.

As he prepared to conclude his looting and perform a final “cleanup” of the city, he stumbled upon a true surprise in a grand area resembling a lord’s mansion on the city’s edge.

There, encased in a massive ice crystal, was the preserved corpse of a Fourth-Tier lava giant!

The lava giant had clearly been dead for a long time, yet its body was remarkably intact.

Frozen in a struggling pose, its dark red stone body bore cracks from frost erosion, and its once-blazing eyes were now dim.

Even after so long, a faint Fourth-Tier creature’s aura could still be felt through the thick ice crystal.

“A specimen… or a trophy?” Jie Ming instantly understood its purpose.

It was evident the corpse had been specially treated, likely kept by a former snow monster lord as a “specimen” or “trophy” to flaunt their prowess.

The high-tier snow monsters, in their hasty departure, had left behind this “ornament” of no use to them.

After all, for snow monsters, the materials of their arch-enemy, the lava giant, imbued with opposing fire elemental power, held no practical value.

“A Fourth-Tier creature’s remains…” Jie Ming licked his lips.

Useless to snow monsters, but to him and any low-tier wizard, this was a supreme treasure!

Its body, core remnants, and every piece of its solidified stone shell were top-tier alchemical materials!

Without hesitation, he discarded some overflowing low-grade materials from his spatial expansion bags to make room for this massive “specimen.”

Stuffing the entire ice crystal into his bag, Jie Ming felt a surge of satisfaction.

At that moment, he noticed the air temperature beginning to cool.

The chill from the city’s depths and the sky was rapidly neutralizing the heat from the element pool’s eruption.

The slumped snow monsters were starting to reform, some of the more resilient ones already wriggling slightly.

“Time to deal with these,” Jie Ming’s gaze turned cold.

He decided to go all out.

After all, for wizards, eliminating enemies also earned substantial military merits.

This city’s snow monsters, though low-tier, were numerous.

To Jie Ming, these soon-to-recover snow monsters were no longer threats but walking piles of military merits!

“Let’s… clean them all up!”

He soared into the sky, hovering above the city.

With a thought, the Great Radiance Form unfolded again!

Thousands of talisman artifacts formed a metallic halo, glinting coldly in the dim sky, aimed at the slowly reviving city below!

Boom!

The next moment, beams of annihilating light rained down.

A relentless carpet of energy projectiles bombarded the city, sweeping it clean!

Thousands of energy bolts merged into a torrent of destruction, descending from the heavens, devouring everything on the city’s surface!

Explosions merged into a single roar, melted ice water vaporized instantly, and fragile snow structures crumbled to dust under the energy onslaught.

The snow monsters, just beginning to reform, didn’t even have time to wail before being obliterated!

With the Great Radiance Form’s supreme output, Jie Ming eradicated them all before they could regain mobility!

However, the excessive bombardment completely razed the drained lakebed city.

The ground was pockmarked with deep craters and scorched marks, the city’s outline long gone.

Searching for overlooked resources in this rubble would be challenging.

Jie Ming slowly retracted the Great Radiance Form and landed, surveying the devastation he’d wrought, grateful for his foresight to loot first.

As he prepared to leave this self-made ruin, a strange sensation rose from beneath his feet.

He paused, frowning at the ground.

It was an extremely faint yet chilling aura.

Not visual or auditory, but a keen instinct from the depths of his soul, sensitive to energy fluctuations.

He sensed that the ground beneath him was, on some level, different from what he’d felt before.

“Hm?”

He focused, sinking his mental energy into the earth, but found no anomalies.

Blinking, the odd sensation grew clearer.

Suddenly realizing something, he stopped relying on wizard senses and channeled true essence into his eyes!

With the infusion of true essence, his vision transformed.

The chaotic ruin peeled away, revealing the flow of the world’s primal energy.

In that moment, he saw the truth beneath his feet!

From under the upturned dozens of meters of permafrost, faint strands of baleful qi were seeping out!

This baleful qi, a faint gray-black, blended almost seamlessly with the surroundings.

Without his true essence vision, he’d never have noticed.

Like rootless ghost flames, it permeated from the depths, dissipating quickly into the cold air.

“Yin baleful qi?” Jie Ming identified it, his brow furrowing.

The deaths of a hundred thousand creatures could naturally produce ordinary baleful qi.

But yin baleful qi was a special kind.

Its defining trait was that it wasn’t generated in real-time.

Unlike resentment born from death, yin baleful qi required masses of corpses gathered in one place, fermenting, decaying, and settling over an immensely long time in specific conditions to form its “concept”!

This suggested a far larger, far older… corpse pit lay beneath the snow monster city!

Judging by the quality of the escaping yin baleful qi—faint but extraordinarily pure, with a soul-freezing chill—the quantity and age of the corpses were substantial!

Jie Ming’s breathing quickened, his eyes blazing with unprecedented fervor!

For damaging high-tier beings’ souls, high-quality yin baleful qi rivaled Mortal Dust Qi in potency.

Its nature was more sinister, inflicting greater harm!

While Mortal Dust Qi polluted the mind and shook the dao heart, yin baleful qi directly eroded and destroyed the soul’s essence.

As a supplement to his Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier, it was perfect!

Once refined, his protective astral barrier would combine “mind-bewitching” and “soul-destroying” properties, doubling its power!

This was an even greater windfall than the Fourth-Tier lava giant corpse!

The underground yin baleful qi had likely been suppressed by thick permafrost, ice, and the city’s ice elemental energy, hidden deep below.

His reckless carpet bombing had blasted away the upper layers, exposing a trace of it.

“Probably an ancient battlefield…” Jie Ming mused.

Geological surveys indicated the Frost-Yang Planes had been battlegrounds, so an ancient battlefield beneath the city wasn’t implausible.