“I never said anything of the sort. Don’t worry. It’s only that you’re so small, and out here alone in a place this cold, working so hard receiving all these people every day — it makes me feel sorry for you. Here, eat it. I promise I won’t ask Yaya for anything at all. Does that set your mind at rest?”

Ye Tianxie peeled the wrapper off the lollipop and held it out until it very nearly touched the tip of Yaya’s little nose. Yaya’s nose twitched distinctly, and an extraordinary brilliance sprang up in both her eyes at once… because what had come flooding into her nostrils was a sweet, clean fragrance of a kind she had never smelled in her life.

(A professional from the quality-inspection bureau discloses: this is the accursed food additive XXX artificial flavoring, and there is usually more than one variety of flavoring involved, none of them anything good.)

Yaya, who by rights ought to have refused all bribes on high principle, proved in the end unable to hold out against that wonderful smell. She swallowed, just a little, on the sly, took the lollipop out of Ye Tianxie’s hand, touched it first with her fingers, then held it up in front of her nose and inhaled hard — whereupon a little stream of drool came pouring out of the corner of her mouth, entirely beyond her control.

Sucking the drool back in hard and swallowing it, Yaya asked, still very carefully, “Big brother… you said it yourself, you won’t ask Yaya for anything, so this doesn’t count as taking a bribe. It doesn’t count, it doesn’t count.”

“Mm, of course it doesn’t count. I like Yaya, so I’m giving Yaya something to eat,” Ye Tianxie said, beaming… If I couldn’t handle an eight- or nine-year-old like you, how would I ever handle a twelve- or thirteen-year-old like Guoguo?

Yaya finally ventured to put the lollipop into her mouth. A twenty-third-century lollipop was naturally not so simple a thing as ordinary sugar. It was packed with flavor compounds that went straight for the taste buds, of a kind the people of this world had never encountered at all. And so the moment the lollipop went in, the expression on Yaya’s face was plainly one of enjoyment so complete she looked ready to float off the ground…

“So good, so good!!”

Crunch… Yaya bit the round sweet at the top of the lollipop clean through in one go, and with her eyes shut and her whole face wearing a look of intoxication, chewed away while savoring a taste she had never once savored before.

“Yee-yaa!! That’s not how you eat a lollipop, that’s not how you eat it!” Seeing Yaya crush the lollipop in a single bite and chomp it down like so much cabbage, Guoguo behaved exactly as though something of her own had been stolen, floating in front of Yaya waving her little hands and shouting at the top of her voice. “Wuu… a lollipop is for licking, it isn’t eaten like that! Wuu… Master, she’s so wasteful. Those are Guoguo’s lollipops!”

Except that she could have raised her voice another hundred decibels and Yaya still wouldn’t have heard a thing.

Ye Tianxie: “……”

A lollipop that would have lasted Guoguo half an hour was destroyed in Yaya’s hands in under half a minute.

Swallowing the last trace of that sweet, clean flavor, Yaya licked her lips and said longingly, “Big brother, it really is so good. That’s the best thing Yaya has ever eaten… Big brother, do you have any more of this lollipop thing?”

Whip… Ye Tianxie immediately produced another lollipop, orange flavored, and said, all smiles, “Of course I do. I’ve got another one on me, and it tastes even better.”

“Ah… give it to me, give it to me, I want to eat it.”

Yaya’s hand shot out in her eagerness and her body tilted with it, and she came within an inch of falling off the snowman.

Whip. Ye Tianxie snatched his hand back again and shook his head. “This one I can’t give to Yaya, because I’m saving it for my little sister. She likes lollipops very much.”

“But… I want to eat it… Give it to me, please? Yaya will remember big brother.” Yaya put on a look of perfect, pitiful innocence, gazing up at Ye Tianxie hopefully and pleadingly at once… and rather more at the lollipop in his hand.

Worn down by countless rounds of Guoguo’s eye attacks over the years, Ye Tianxie had long since built up no small immunity to that particular look. Unmoved, he lifted his wrist and checked the time, then said with a face full of reluctance, “Yaya, I ought to be getting back… I’ll come and play with you again tomorrow.”

“Ah, ah… wait a moment—”

Thump… Yaya went straight off the snowman headfirst and landed in a heap of snow on the ground. She sat stunned for a little while, and then suddenly burst into loud sobs. “Wuu wuu… big brother, you’re bullying me…”

Ye Tianxie helped Yaya up out of the snow. She was very small and very light; he lifted her with one easy movement and set her back on the snowman, saying, helpless and innocent at once, “Both of these lollipops were meant for my little sister to eat. I only gave Yaya one because I like Yaya, and I really can’t give her the other one as well.”

Yaya sniffed back her tears, her eyes red. “Then I… then I’ll send you to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, and you give it to me to eat. Can I? Wuu wuu…”

The smile on Ye Tianxie’s face immediately turned radiant. “Well, if Yaya wants to eat it that much, then Yaya can have it… Only, it was Yaya who said she’d send me to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. I never said any such thing.”

Yaya took the lollipop out of Ye Tianxie’s hand and held it very carefully, flicked her tears away and stuck her lips out. “Hmph. Bad man.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

With the lollipop in one hand, Yaya swept the other through empty air, and with an enormous bursting roar the wall of ice to the north blew apart and turned into countless flying fragments. Behind the ice wall, a passage built of ice appeared before them.

The entrance to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den.

“Then I’m off to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. Yaya, I’ll come and play with you again.” His purpose achieved, Ye Tianxie did not linger, because he was worried that if he spent much longer around this yellow-haired little girl his IQ would be dragged back down to the level of an eight-year-old’s.

After Ye Tianxie had gone into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, Yaya waved a hand again, and countless shards of ice flew up off the ground and were forged once more into an ice wall blocking the entrance.

“Wuu… big brother is a good person. Big Sister Creator God shouldn’t blame me.” Yaya cradled the lollipop and muttered it to herself in a small voice. Copying what Ye Tianxie had done earlier, she peeled off the wrapper — and this time Yaya had plainly gotten a little smarter, and instead of biting straight through it she licked at it a little at a time with her small fragrant tongue… whereupon she discovered at once that eating it this way not only made it last far longer, but seemed to make the taste more intoxicating as well.

The Ice-Severed Wolf Den. A world of ice.

There was no snow to be seen in here, only ice, uniformly. To either side and overhead were walls of ice; underfoot was ice that slid you three steps back for every one you took. After testing a short distance, Ye Tianxie finally put on the black Snow-Treading Shoes he had bought from Yaya for a thousand good gold pieces.

Well — say what you like… the moment those rough, shabby cloth wrecks went onto his feet, the sliding sensation underfoot vanished at once, and after a few steps forward he might as well have been walking on ordinary rough ground.

Money’s worth after all, Ye Tianxie consoled himself, and walked on toward the depths of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den.

The world of ice was extraordinarily quiet; there was not a sound in it. The initial passage was not long; Ye Tianxie had walked perhaps a minute when the view ahead of him opened out and a far broader world of ice appeared before him.

At the same time, a cold still more piercing came sweeping into his face.

If the cold before this had been endurable, then the cold now had begun to exceed the limit an ordinary person could bear. Even Ye Tianxie, whose resistance to cold ran far past a normal man’s, began to feel his heart falter.

-15, -15, -15, -15…

The damage figures floating above his head ran together into a solid line. There was no telling how much farther the Ice-Severed Wolf Den ran ahead of him — and at present, this was only the beginning.

Before him, the huge expanse of ice was like some extravagant skating rink, and moving idly about across it were several snow-white wolves. Seeing Ye Tianxie come in, they gave a low snarl at once and charged him.

Snow Wolf: Level 25, HP 1,600. A rare species of wolf active in freezing environments. Its nature is milder than that of ordinary wolves, and it has a powerful capacity to adapt to its surroundings. Its pelt can be made into cold-resistant outerwear.

Talent: Unafraid of Cold — able to move freely even in a freezing climate.

Skills: None.

Weakness: Fears Fire- and Earth-attribute attacks.

Three Snow Wolves sprang at Ye Tianxie together. Ye Tianxie summoned the Hour of Fate, and as he moved to evade their attacks the stiffness in his body made him knit his brows…

The cold had gone into his hands and feet and all through him, his nerves had gone faintly numb, and his movements had stiffened along with them. His strength came from that terrible talent of his — and an environment like this was plainly a terrible killer of that talent. He knew perfectly well that if his body lost its agility, the road ahead of him would become very hard going indeed.

He drew a deep breath and forced the stiffness out of his body and his movements, shifted position to avoid the three Snow Wolves’ lunge, then whipped back forward, knocked one Snow Wolf back with a Dragon Rend Slash, stepped in and added another blow to finish it, and turned on the remaining two. Within seconds he had killed them all where they stood, at the greatest speed he could manage.

Apart from those three Snow Wolves, the ground ahead was empty of any other living thing. Under these freezing conditions the rate at which his life was being devoured had already outstripped the Ring of Life’s rate of recovery, so he drank the smallest of his potions, crouched down, and worked “Gathering” on the Snow Wolves’ bodies.

“Ding… You have obtained one ‘Snow Wolf Pelt.'”

“Ding… You have obtained one ‘Snow Wolf Pelt.'”

Snow Wolf Pelt: the pelt of a Snow Wolf. Possesses a powerful capacity to keep out cold; can be made into a cold-resistant coat.

Farther on, ahead of him there was only an immensely broad avenue of ice, a full hundred meters across, with countless icicles hanging inverted from the roof of the cavern, some of them long enough to reach the ice below.

Ding!

The sense of danger came suddenly from overhead. Ye Tianxie reacted without lifting his head, taking a swift sidelong leap judged from the direction of the disturbance in the air, and rolling as he landed — and in the instant he came down, an extremely violent impact sounded from where he had been. In the spot he had occupied one second earlier, an enormous icicle stood driven straight into the ground. It was so sharp that it had fixed itself upright in the ice surface without shattering and without falling over.

Beyond question, if Ye Tianxie had just been skewered by that icicle, he would have died on the spot.

For all its stillness, this ice cavern had enormous dangers hidden in it.

(End of Chapter 189)