The Trial of Frostflame

On the white jade steps of Xuanji Immortal Sect, Shi Chen knelt for a hundred years.

He was the sect's lowliest servant. His skeletal fingers clutched a broom, and even his breath carried the taste of dust. When he tremulously begged to hold someone's hand once before he died, all he got was the sect master's icy sneer:

"A lowly old servant like you thinks you can talk about love?"

He scrubbed the ninety-nine jade steps spotless with his bloodied hands, yet never received a single promise.

On the brink of death, he stumbled upon the most horrifying secret: the peerlessly beautiful, ice-cold sect master was being consumed by the backlash of the Coldflame Art, with a scorching, bone-deep heat hidden beneath her icy skin.

"You need yang energy?"

A crazed smile spread across Shi Chen's withered face.

He had once been an ant trampled by all, but now he held the nine heavens' phoenix by its weakness.

Beside the Ice Jade Pool, steam billowed. With the pure yang energy he had accumulated through a hundred years of humiliation, he forced open the sealed gates of the immortal realm.

"You want me to be your cultivation furnace?"

Shi Chen caressed her breathtaking face, vengeance burning in his one eye.

"Then I'll use this broken body to refine your lofty Xuanji Immortal Sect!"

A century of servitude, repaid in a single act of retaliation.

When the lowliest speck of dust touches the pure glow of frost, a colossal storm is bound to rise.

You think I'm an ant?

Then I'll show you how an ant can hollow out an immortal mountain!

You want to drain my yang energy to keep yourself alive?

Then I'll steal your immortal essence and turn the heavens and earth upside down!

Clutching the scroll of the Coldflame Art, Yang Volume, Shi Chen grinned more hideously than a demon:

"Ling Shuangyue, you owe me a hundred years of warmth and cold. Now you'll repay me with your immortal path!"