Li Guanglong gripped his sword tightly, his knuckles turning white from the strain. The footsteps outside the cave grew nearer, accompanied by heavy breathing and the crisp crackle of breaking ice, as though a herd of giant beasts was crushing across the snowy plains. He signaled his soldiers to extinguish the torches, leaving only the faint blue glow from the minerals on the cave walls, which stretched the shadows of more than thirty men long and narrow against the damp moss. “Hu --- chi… hu --- chi…” Out of the shadows emerged several towering figures, each as wide as two ordinary men at the shoulders, their entire bodies covered in gray-white fur, as if woven from the threads of polar ice. In their hands were long spears tipped with sharpened ice crystals, refracting the pale light from outside and casting flickering cold gleams against the rock walls. The leader wore a string of icy beads around his neck, each bead encasing tiny beast bones, clinking sharply as he moved...