Pant…Pant…

The frost planes…

Desolate fields of ice that spread countless thousands of miles without interruption.

Many were the fools, who, blinded by myths and tales, decided to explore these desolate and ruthless lands in search of treasures and opportunities.

But of these 'fools'…

None were said to have ever returned.

The strong howling winds, the piercing frost, and most of all, the bone-freezing temperature, all became one with the environment as soon as one set foot in that place.

And for these reasons, between the mortals, these uninhabitable plains gained another name…

The Ice of the Forgotten.

And at the core of these very lands… a young man stood lonely, sinking in the thick layer of fresh snow as he struggled to move forward.

Pant…

Pant…

However, things were not looking good for the young man.

His lips were covered in frost, his skin was as pale as the snow, and even his long white hair was tightened and frozen.

Every step he took felt like climbing a mountain and every breath he forced felt like being pierced by thousands of needles, although his hopes had never been high… Yi Shuang could feel it…

His end was nearing.

The young man attempted to carry his trembling body forward and take another step while his labored breathing transformed into puffs of fog and the little heat left in his body escaped from his mouth.

Although he should have long since collapsed and accepted the white field's embrace, maybe through unwavering perseverance, or maybe because of pure fear of death, the young man took yet another step towards nothing but the endless white.

Behind him, the trail he had left didn't extend even a dozen meters as his traces were wiped away by the raging blizzard.

At this moment, as if having an instant of clarity before the inevitable, his thoughts that had long since abandoned his body came back to him, and the young man's life flashed before his eyes, accompanied by his endless regrets.

Yi Shuang was once a normal student, at eighteen years old, he was preparing for the exams that awaited him after his last year of high school, his life, although fairly peaceful and tranquil, seemed like hell to him.

Until he arrived where he currently was that is.

He thought about it as if decades had passed, but just a few hours had elapsed since then.

Hours… just hours, yet… an eternity wouldn't have been enough to make him feel like he felt.

He had lost all hope.

He was now unsure whether even that little screen displayed in front of his eyes truly existed or was just an illusion.

But even if it was… what else could he have done?

Yi Shuang barely managed to split his eyelashes, which had also been frozen, to gaze at the panel.

He couldn't even think straight, let alone see, but through his blurred vision, he managed to concentrate and recognize an arrow pointing forward.

That's right, he wasn't simply wishfully walking towards his death, he still had a strand of hope left in him.

As his mind numbed even more, and his very soul was freezing, Yi Shuang walked forward.

A first… a second… a third… a fourth step… he continued for as long as he could, but just a dozen steps later, even the last boost given to him by his regrets and memories subdued, leaving him nothing but a frozen corpse.

His statue was beautiful, his frozen skin, hair, and even clothes blended with the surroundings, almost making his last struggle like a piece of art.

Out of curiosity, Yi Shuang opened his frozen eyes one last time, he wanted to see the world as he left.

To his surprise, what he saw wasn't just white.

In his blurry vision, a splash of light, taking the form of a little flame, stood in the middle of his blank surroundings.

He didn't know what it might have been, he had no interest in such things anymore, he just exhaled one last time as he lamented to himself:

'If I had just… been able to persist a bit more'

With that thought, the seemingly already lifeless young man fell to the snow.

That thing he had seen wasn't far away, maybe less than a hundred steps from him, but not to mention a hundred steps, even taking a single one was already impossible in his current state.

Now, the only thing he could do was rest, maybe he should have done so long ago, his stubbornness had caused him nothing but suffering.

As he fell, his body didn't stop.

He had just passed a small cliff, and once fallen to the side, his body couldn't help but spin as it descended the slope.

He tumbled down the little hill, gathering a lot of speed, and even after he stopped accelerating, his body still traveled quite a distance.

By the time his body stopped, if he was awake, the young man would not have been able to feel the snow underneath his body, and that was because he stood atop a wooden floor.

The unconscious young man's hair and limbs began to defrost as the little flames dancing just a few meters from him heated his body.

Yi Shuang, whose fate seemed to have been predetermined to fall on that day, had been saved by the heavens, but of course, he knew nothing about that yet.

In front of his face, the panel that had previously been acting as a guide for the lost young man suddenly changed.

The arrow that pointed toward the floor of the place he was residing had vanished, and after a few seconds of pause, a few words appeared on the blue, seemingly magical screen.

[Congratulations to the host for passing the first mission issued by the Divine Frost Palace system, you will be rewarded with the ice-element cultivation technique: pure frost technique!]

[you are now recognized as the place master of the Divine Frost Palace]