Chapter 279. Heaven Defying Bead Changes (2/2)

The snow raged and the cold air tried to invade his body every time he took a deep breath. After a long time, he saw an ice city in the distance.

In the center of the city was a 30 plus floor ice tower with a bead that emitted a mysterious light.

The land under his feet now belonged to the new Xue Yu, so he really didn’t have any right to intervene in this matter. He only wanted to find a quiet place to spend the next four years to reach the Soul Formation stage.

When Wang Lin arrived in the ice city, he looked no different from a mortal.

Xue Yu also had mortals. After they had migrated to the new land, they built new cities with the help of the cultivators.

Wang Lin silently appeared inside the city. As he looked at all the ice houses, he couldn’t help but feel like he was in a foreign place.

There weren’t many people walking around outside and there weren’t many inns or restaurants. The most common sight in the city were ice sculpture shops.

Outside almost every house there was someone carving a giant block of ice with a chisel, creating very rough ice sculptures. There was something strange about these people.

Along the way, no one talked at all. They were all either hurrying to somewhere or focused on carving the ice.

Also, whenever an ice sculpture was completed, all of the nearby mortals would help move it to the ice tower.

After leaving the ice sculptures there, someone from the tower would come out to accept it.

Wang Lin pondered a little. His appearance seemed a bit out of place, so others were already taking notice of him. He let out a sigh and turned to leave. Once he reached a secluded area, he disappeared.

In the blink of an eye, one year passed. During this year, Wang Lin had traveled all over Xue Yu and had entered almost every city. People no longer paid much attention to him as he started dressing like other Xue Yu mortals after going into the first city. He was now wearing clothes made out of animal fur and a fizzled animal hat.

Wang Lin learned a lot about Xue Yu during his one year here. The mortals of Xue Yu existed only to create ice sculpture for cultivators.

They created ice sculptures to exchange for what they needed to live.

There were no royal families or anything similar to them in Xue Yu. Instead, each city belonged to a powerful cultivator.

Wang Lin had figured out what the use for those ice sculptures in this past year. The cultivators would take them, place a formation on them, and then use a special technique to bring them to life, making them into something like a puppet.

This method was very mysterious. It required the use of the core essence of the Xue Yu cultivators. Wang Lin had studied it for a long time and still wasn’t able to learn anything.

As for the ice sculptures themselves, a large amount of them were sold to other countries. Their prices varied depending on the cultivation level the ice sculptures displayed.

The most expensive ice sculptures were Nascent Soul level. Wang Lin had only seen a few being made in all the cities he had visited. The failure rate to make one was extremely high.

As for Soul Formation ice sculptures, Wang Lin still hadn’t found a city that could produce one. Those types of puppets were probably very hard to produce, or even impossible. If they could easily make them, then the power of the Xue Yu cultivators would reach an unimaginable level.

In this year, Wang Lin had witnessed three occasions where a large number of ice sculptures was bought by another rank 4 country.

These ice sculptures required a large amount of materials to make, but they were the foundation of Xue Yu’s infrastructure, so no expenses were spared.

In addition to all of this, there was large amount of mortals starting to mine at the spirit veins in this land.

It can be said that the mortals were slaves as everything they did was to serve the cultivators. What baffled Wang Lin the most was that the mortals felt proud doing this; they weren’t rejecting this type of treatment.

Even if they were being overworked, there were no complaints.

Wang Lin had come to a conclusion after spending a year here: Xue Yu was a very strange country.

There was one more thing that shocked Wang Lin: all of the mortals carried a small ice sculpture with them. These ice sculptures were connected to the most powerful cultivator in their respective cities.

No matter how tired they were or even if they were dying, every morning and evening they would take out the small ice sculpture to pray. They would kneel on the ground with complete devotion.

All of these unbelievable things caused Wang Lin to have a very strange feeling about Xue Yu. This country, much like the snow and ice covering it, had no signs of vigor or life.

The sky was the same as well. There was this dull feeling everywhere he went.