One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

Nie Lingfeng didn't turn around; he knew Qu Tong was telling the truth. He could sense the pressure Wang Ye was under from the Qi fluctuations emanating from behind—the sword intent of the True Martial Sword was being transmitted through his meridians to the seal, and each transmission created a small, reverse-flowing tearing force within his body. These tearing forces could be healed once or twice with one's own Qi, but dozens or hundreds of times combined resulted in increasingly severe depletion.

"So you chose this time to come," Nie Lingfeng said, "you're giving me a choice between fighting you and going back to protect him."

"I never do anything meaningless." Qu Tong's voice was calm, as if stating a rule she had verified many times. "If you protect him, you'll create an opening; if you fight me, he won't last long. A person can't do two things at once—I've calculated it many times, and this logic is sound."

Nie Lingfeng was silent for a moment. His gaze didn't leave Qu Tong, but he flicked his left hand backward, and the extremely thin signal wire tucked between his fingers—the secret code he had agreed upon with Chen Duo before leaving—switched gently between his thumb and forefinger. The thin wire broke almost silently, but Chen Duo must have seen the change in reflection for that instant.

Qu Tong only noticed the small movement of his left hand, but didn't have time to interpret it. Because in the next instant, Chen Duo stood up from the shadows three steps behind Wang Ye. She didn't rush towards Qu Tong, but instead took two steps towards Wang Ye and gently placed her palms between his shoulder blades.

A very faint blue aura flowed from her palm into Wang Ye's meridians. It wasn't a Wudang internal energy cultivation method, but a purer form of "conduction"—Chen Duo was using her own internal energy to provide Wang Ye with an extra buffer layer, taking away a portion of the tearing force from the True Martial Sword's backflow into his meridians, and using her own meridians to bear the aftershocks of that force.

Qu Tong's eyes underwent a very subtle change in that instant. Her pupils contracted by about one millimeter before returning to their previous width.

"Your team member—" Her gaze shifted from Chen Duo back to Nie Lingfeng, "she used her own body as a filter."

"You overlooked one person," Nie Lingfeng said.

He swept his blade horizontally, shifting from a defensive stance to an aggressive one. This time, he no longer lingered to exchange probing techniques with her; his swordplay unfolded fully, each strike a calculated advance, a defensive maneuver. Qu Tong's palm techniques remained precise, but she was forced to draw more of her attention from the seal back to the battle before her.

Behind her, the blue light on the surface of the sealing membrane was becoming fuller at a visible speed. The gray and thin edges were being repaired, filled, and reinforced layer by layer by the cyan sword intent of the True Martial Sword, like an old piece of silk cloth with holes being rewoven.

Amidst the clashing blades, Nie Lingfeng noticed the change in the blue light. He suddenly withdrew his blade, took two steps back, and widened the distance between himself and Qu Tong.

Qu Tong also stopped her attack. She glanced at the seal; the brightness of the blue light had recovered to more than 70% of what Nie Lingfeng had seen when he first saw it, and it was still rising. Her two hands, clad in thin black gloves, hung down, the silver-gray metal pieces at her fingertips no longer reflecting light, as if they had been concealed.

She turned back to look at Nie Lingfeng, her expression devoid of the anger of a loser or the twisted rage of resentment. She simply gazed at him quietly for a few moments, then a very faint smile curved her lips.

"You've won this round." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word was as steady as a stone embedded in ice. "The seal has been repaired. It certainly won't crack again for the next few days."

"What about a few days later?" Nie Lingfeng asked.

"Come back in a few days." Qu Tong took off her right glove, folded it, and put it in her pocket with the calmness of someone finishing a day's experiment and heading home. "You'll see different results."

She didn't say anything more. She gestured to a few of her men who hadn't been held back, and they began to gather up the equipment and materials scattered outside the tent. Their movements were extremely fast, indicating that the evacuation process had been prepared in advance.

Nie Lingfeng didn't give chase. His peripheral vision returned to Wang Ye's direction—Chen Duo was still channeling Qi into him, but Wang Ye's breathing was gradually returning to a long, even rhythm, and the color in his cheeks was slowly returning to normal. The azure light emanating from the True Martial Sword had stabilized and stopped flickering, while the sealed blue light membrane had returned to a near-perfect coverage, and the extremely fine frost patterns on its surface had resumed their uniform flow.

As Qu Tong's figure disappeared into the shadows on the east side of the glacier, the sounds of fighting from Zhang Chulan's side in the eastern valley were gradually fading—the members of the Yaoxing Society who had been pulled away began to retreat in an orderly manner to the other side of the mountain after receiving the retreat signal.

Nie Lingfeng sheathed the Snow Drinking Blade, knelt down beside Wang Ye, and pressed his hand on his shoulder. The temperature from his palm was half a degree lower than usual, but not dangerously so. Wang Ye slowly exhaled a breath of white air, took the True Martial Sword from his lap and placed it on his thigh. He rested his hands on his knees for a moment, then looked up and smiled at Nie Lingfeng. It was a very slight smile, the curve of his lips like a line dipped in water.

The moment the cyan sword intent of the sealed Zhenwu Sword was fully injected into the seal, the background color of the entire glacier changed.

The azure light that erupted from the sword tip carried a tangible weight—Zhang Chulan was panting behind an ice rock seventy paces away when he felt the ice beneath his feet sink slightly by half an inch. Then, a long, deep, resonant hum came from the direction of the ice wall, traveling upwards from the soles of his feet, through his knees, down his lumbar spine, and finally resonating in his chest. Then, the blue light before his eyes suddenly intensified, transitioning from a grayish-blue to a rich, almost translucent azure, like an old window that had been cleaned and reopened to reveal the sky behind it.

Wang Ye knelt before the seal, his hands still flat against the sides of the sword's spine. His fingertips had lost their color, and the edges of his nails were tinged with a translucent bluish-white, but he did not lower the sword. He was waiting for the last trace of sword intent to completely leave the blade and enter the array's core before the warmth surging back from the seal would slowly seep back into his palms, layer by layer. He felt the depleted Qi within his body being filled by that warmth, slowly, like pouring water into a leaky bowl, but it was definitely returning.

He closed his eyes.

Nie Lingfeng stood three steps behind him, holding the Snow Drinking Blade horizontally, its tip slightly downward. Qu Tong stopped her palm strike twenty steps away. After Nie Lingfeng neutralized the force of her final palm strike, she didn't continue. Instead, she stood in place, watching the color of the seal's surface change from dull to lustrous, from lustrous to full, and from full to a near-solid stability. Moonlight fell on the ice surface, and the newly reinforced seal's blue light reflected off the entire rock wall, turning it the color of the sea, even tinging the sky with a faint blue halo.

There was a fleeting, almost imperceptible emptiness in Qu Tong's eyes—like a running machine suddenly being unplugged, all the indicator lights dimming for a moment before lighting up again. She slowly took off the thin leather glove on her right hand, and with her left hand, she took out a flat metal box from her pocket, opened it, put the frosted metal sheet inside, fastened it, and put it back in her pocket, her movements as precise as if she had done the procedure a thousand times.

"You've won this round." Her voice wasn't loud, and her tone lacked the forced, gritted teeth of a loser; instead, it stated a fact she had accepted, even though she didn't like it. "The seal has been repaired, within the timeframe I calculated."

"What you just said," Nie Lingfeng retracted the tip of his Snow Drinking Blade to his side, but didn't sheath it, "will loosen the seal again in a few days—because you left something on the array's core."