The guard who'd first heard the voice laughed. "Look at you, you big chicken. It's the Prince Regent in there.

The Prince Regent gave everything for this country, and every last person in the realm looks up to him. What's there to be afraid of?"

The other man blinked. "You're right. It's the Prince Regent in there. What's there to be scared of?"

"I really did hear something just now. Why don't we go in and take a look?"

"But Her Majesty decreed that no one goes in. You want to defy an edict?"

The guard who'd heard the voice flinched. Give him ten thousand times the nerve and he still wouldn't have dared defy an imperial edict, but he really had heard something moving in there.

He hesitated. "Tell you what. You stay on watch, and I'll go report to Commander Nie and let him decide."

"Fine. Get going, then!"

He was about to go and report when someone called out, "Her Majesty arrives!"

A crowd of people was coming their way, and at its head was the An Emperor.

The guards of the imperial presence posted at the ice chamber dropped to their knees in a hurry.

The An Emperor stopped at the ice chamber door. "Open it!" she ordered, her voice low.

Inside the ice chamber, meanwhile, Ning Chen was close to freezing to death.

He had groped around this cold, dark place for a long time, but wherever he went, all he found were walls of ice.

The heat was draining out of his body fast, and his hands and feet had gone stiff with cold.

He was done for. It looked like he was going to freeze to death.

The worst part was that he had no idea where he even was.

All Ning Chen could do was curl up in a ball to slow the heat loss.

Just when he was about to give out, there was a heavy rumble, like a stone door opening.

Not like. A stone door really was opening.

Then flickering firelight spilled in. It was torchlight.

Ning Chen was…