Around ten in the morning,
"Holy crap, this snow is too much, I can barely see the road… Si Shan, are you sure we're going in the right direction?" Ye Feng was speechless.
Even though the sun was bright at the moment, the temperature in their location had not risen at all. Instead, due to the heavy snowfall, it had become even colder, severely impairing their vision.
"The direction is correct. There's a pre-designed fixed route. We just need to follow the markers!" As he spoke, Jiang Si Shan used his arcane energy to activate a scroll-like object in his hand. The runes on the scroll flashed, and red lights appeared on the stones to his left and right, pointing straight ahead. It was very similar to the runway lights on an airplane.
After reconfirming the direction, Jiang Si Shan looked at Ye Feng with suspicion. "Ye Feng, are you really not cold?"
It wasn't strange for Jiang Si Shan to have such a question. Ye Feng had already taken off his thick woolen coat, which was inscribed with fire-attribute arcane runes, and was only wearing a t-shirt. He let the biting cold wind and snowflakes buffet his body…
"Oh, I'm not cold anymore. I felt very cold before, but now it's much better… it's quite refreshing, and there's a peculiar sense of comfort…"
"Do you want to try it too?" Ye Feng asked as he walked through the snow.
"No, no, my arcane energy feels like it's about to freeze!" Jiang Si Shan shook his head decisively, wrapping his two thick woolen coats even tighter around himself.
…
Ye Feng and Jiang Si Shan moved quickly along the rugged icy path, braving the heavy snow.
Around noon, after traversing a treacherous mountain path, the two arrived at the entrance of a cave.
"Ye Feng, it's just ahead!" Jiang Si Shan's face was already bruised and purple from the cold. He pointed towards the cave, his voice trembling slightly from the extreme chill.
"Uh… there doesn't seem to be a passage further into the cave. There's just a hibernating big black bear…" Ye Feng observed after approaching, then turned to look at Jiang Si Shan with confusion.
Jiang Si Shan took a deep breath, walked to the cave entrance, and shouted, "Elder Zhao, junior Jiang Si Shan, sent by the City Lord to maintain the city's protective formation. Please open the gate!" As he spoke, his hand flashed, and a square token appeared. He then looked at Ye Feng.
Seeing this, Ye Feng also took out an identical token.
"Buzz!"
While Ye Feng was wondering if Jiang Si Shan's "Elder Zhao" was the big black bear, the space in front of the cave entrance twisted. A white-haired elder wearing glasses appeared before them.
"Spatial teleportation array?" Ye Feng understood as he saw the runes appearing on the stones at the edge of the cave.
"Whoosh!~" At this moment, the white-haired elder with glasses flashed, and the square tokens in Ye Feng and Jiang Si Shan's hands were instantly collected.
"Jiang Si Shan?" After examining the square tokens, the white-haired elder with glasses looked at Jiang Si Shan, then turned to Ye Feng.
"Oh, I'm Lin Dan Da~" Ye Feng nodded and replied.
"You… aren't you cold?" Elder Zhao looked at Ye Feng, who was wearing only a thin t-shirt and seven-tenths length sports pants, with surprise in his expression.
"Mm, it's alright~ I exercise regularly, so I'm not very sensitive to the cold~" Ye Feng nodded, glancing at the heavy snow around them.
"Um, Elder Zhao, we're a bit short-handed this time, and it's getting late. What do you think…?" Jiang Si Shan spoke up, his voice filled with obvious urgency.
"Mm!" The white-haired elder with glasses nodded at Jiang Si Shan and then turned, striding towards the cave.
"Let's go!" Jiang Si Shan nodded at Ye Feng. Then, holding their tokens, they followed the white-haired elder with glasses into the teleportation array at the cave entrance.
"Buzz buzz!~" Ye Feng and Jiang Si Shan felt a distortion of space, and then they found themselves in a space about 20 square meters. It was quite bright, with several arcane energy lamps. Ahead was a dimly lit passage.
Jiang Si Shan turned and thanked the white-haired elder with glasses, then he and Ye Feng quickly walked towards the passage ahead.
"Alas, only two people, Golden Rank two… Silver intermediate… The Jiang family has truly fallen to such a state…" Watching Ye Feng and Jiang Si Shan disappear, the white-haired elder with glasses sighed and vanished from his spot.
…
"Si Shan, this… the surroundings seem to be all arcane raw ore! And it's ice-attribute…" Ye Feng walked down a passage, touching the frost-covered walls with his hand, quite curious.
"The core of the protective formation of the City of Arcane is located within a massive ice-attribute arcane raw ore vein… There's a saying that the abnormal cold in this area is due to this ice-attribute arcane raw ore vein…"
"However, that theory is quite debatable, because the cold in this area far exceeds the cold emitted by ice-attribute arcane raw ore…" Jiang Si Shan explained as they walked forward.
"The cold outside… is indeed different from here…" Ye Feng frowned slightly, looking at the frozen walls around him.
…
Led by Jiang Si Shan, the two soon arrived in a space as large as a thousand-person grand hall.
"This… seems to be some kind of sanctuary!" Ye Feng murmured after surveying the surroundings.
"That's right!" Jiang Si Shan nodded. "My father told me this was originally a sanctuary built by humans after the great cataclysm!"
"Speaking of which, it's much colder here than I remember…" As he spoke, Jiang Si Shan exhaled wisps of white mist and stamped his feet to warm himself up.
"Here, this is the core of the City of Arcane's protective formation!" Jiang Si Shan walked to a large, black lump, densely encased in ice, and spoke to Ye Feng.
"It seems to be frozen…" Ye Feng walked beside Jiang Si Shan, asking curiously, "Then how are you going to maintain it?"
"Whoosh!" Jiang Si Shan took a deep breath, arcane energy surged around him, and his hands rapidly formed a series of intricate rune seals. He then slammed them onto the ice-encased lump.
"Buzz~!" The ice-encased lump seemed to respond, emitting a red light. The ice layers outside the lump rapidly disintegrated.
"Crack, crack, crack~!" After a series of cracking sounds, Ye Feng saw a black lump, about a person tall and a meter wide, covered in intricate runes.
"This… arcane crystal?" After a careful look, Ye Feng couldn't help but be surprised, as the core of the City of Arcane's protective formation that Jiang Si Shan mentioned was actually made of arcane crystal.
…