He continued to sculpt. One knife stroke at a time. The statue was gradually taking shape. Another decade pa.s.sed. It was now ninety percent complete, and the world outside was colder than ever.

The wind blew, and food grew even more scarce. Even the caves got colder and colder. It was not uncommon for people to fall asleep and never wake up.

Things got worse until the caves were little warmer than the outside. Things began to freeze over, and soon, there was so much ice that the people left had only one choice. Stay and die, or leave the caves and try to find some other place to live.

The first group of people who left never returned. Then a second group left, and a third....

One morning, Little Treasure woke up to a very strange feeling. He reached out to touch his wife and realized that she was very stiff. He began to ma.s.sage her, eventually holding her in his arms, until she finally awoke. He knew why she was like this: at night, she would lay next to him in such a way that the wind didn't blow on him.

After a moment of silence, Little Treasure said, “Let’s leave this place!”

A few days later, the fourth group of people marched out into the wind and snow. The world was completely white as they searched for another location to hunker down in. Three days later, an avalanche suddenly struck, burying the entire group.

Meng Hao hovered in midair up above, looking down. By this point, he had suppressed the impulse to intervene on too many occasions to count. But now, he really felt as if he had no choice. He was just about to do something when his jaw dropped.

Down in the snow, one area began to shake, and then a woman crawled out. It was Yan’er. She was a cultivator, so despite having lost the use of her cultivation base, her body was a lot tougher than a mortal’s.

Despite her weakened state, she was able to drag a person with her out of the snow, which was the unconscious Little Treasure. Within the world of ice and snow, everything was quiet. Yan’er wrapped her arms around Little Treasure to warm him up, then slung him over her shoulder. Looking around blankly for a moment, she then began to trudge onward.

Meng Hao felt deeply and profoundly shaken. Yan’er was very weak by this point, but she used what energy she had to press on with determination.

She walked for three days, during which time Little Treasure lapsed in and out of consciousness. His skin was very hot, although not from fever, but rather, because he was on the verge of freezing to death.

Tears leaked out of Yan’er’s eyes. She called out to him, and held him close to keep him warm. Little Treasure’s aura was growing weaker and weaker.

By this point, Meng Hao could even see his soul was on the verge of emerging. That told him that his clone's ninth reincarnation was reaching the end of his life. Eyes glittering, he extended his finger toward the clone.

But then he suddenly stopped, and his hand quivered. There was something pus.h.i.+ng back against him, making it impossible for him to interfere.

Furthermore, Meng Hao could sense that the eight complete sealing marks had suddenly cracked. Apparently, if he did anything more to interfere, they would be destroyed, and the ninth sealing mark would also completely vanish.

Meng Hao sank into his silence. Although this was his first time attempting to take control of the ninth sealing mark, he had long since antic.i.p.ated that something like this might happen.

“Is it all a failure...?” he thought, gazing blankly at Little Treasure’s soul as it struggled to emerge and fly away.

However, it was at this point that Yan’er did something that completely shocked Meng Hao. She looked at Little Treasure’s ashen face, and at his chest, which was barely rising and falling. A tender expression appeared in her eyes.

“Master, I love you,” she murmured. “I loved you in my last life, and it's the same in this one....” She lifted her wrist up to her mouth and bit down hard. Then she lowered it down to Little Treasure’s mouth, allowing the blood to flow into him.

Her own blood was the warmest part of her.

The wound closed up a moment later, so she ripped open another gash. The pain meant nothing to her. As long as the hot, nouris.h.i.+ng blood could help Little Treasure to recover, she was willing to do it. Little Treasure’s destiny hadn’t been fulfilled, nor was he dead. So she picked him up and struggled back to the caves where they had lived for so many years. After they arrived, she collapsed into unconsciousness.

A few days later, Little Treasure woke up. He couldn’t see his wife, but he knew that she had saved his life yet again.

In his bitterness, Little Treasure began to weep. Eventually, Yan’er wrapped her arms around him, and the two of them sat there in the coldness of the cave, feeling each other's’ warmth.

After some time pa.s.sed, Little Treasure suddenly reached up and began to pat his clothing. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he began to tremble.

The wooden statue was gone.

It was more than ninety percent complete, and had been with him for years upon years. But now, it was buried somewhere in the snow.

A moment pa.s.sed. Little Treasure felt as if he lad lost his soul. He sighed bitterly.

When his wife realized what had happened, she didn't say anything. However, later that night, after Little Treasure had fallen asleep, she rose to her feet, straightened her clothes, and then walked to the mouth of the cave. After turning to look back at Little Treasure for a moment, she gritted her teeth and walked out into the snow.

She knew what her husband’s destiny was.

She followed the same path they had taken when they left. Because of the blood loss, she was now very weak, like a flame that could be snuffed out at any moment by the freezing wind.

After walking for a few days she reached the place where the avalanche had struck. Then she began to dig. She dug and dug until her hands were stiff.

She dug up one corpse after another, corpses belonging to the group they had been traveling with. Her vision was swimming by the time she found the little wooden statue.

She smiled, put the statue into her garment, and then, fighting the urge to pa.s.s out, turned and walked back. A day later, she was getting hot, but was in much better spirits.

She began to walk faster, and continued to get hotter. Two days later, she reached the cave, and smiled. She wasn't even sure how she had returned. She entered, and as soon as she saw Little Treasure, she stumbled and fell into his arms.

“Little Treasure,” she said softly, “I managed... to get your statue back.....

“I should stay to protect you, but I don’t think I can....

“Master, I... I love you.”

Little Treasure trembled as Yan’er’s aura faded away.

**

A few days earlier, Little Treasure had awoken to find his wife gone. He wasn’t sure where she had left to, and considering he was blind, it wasn't really possible to track her down.

He could only sit there in the cave, s.h.i.+vering, paying close attention to the sounds he heard. However, all he heard was the whistling of the wind, and not his wife’s footsteps.

He waited a whole day. Then another, and another. Soon he began to lose hope. Eventually, he began to chuckle bitterly, and recall that time in the forest when he was a child.

“Why did I have to be born blind!?” He had always deceived himself into believing that it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the world. But as of this moment, he hated the fact that he was blind.

“Everyone’s gone. Dad and mom are gone. Perfect is gone. And now you’re gone.... I'm the only one left....” Tears flowed down his face. His hair had long since turned gray. There he sat, an old man in a cave, crying alone.

He wasn’t sure how much time pa.s.sed. First it was hours, then days. Eventually, he heard footsteps in the wind, very familiar footsteps. He began to tremble as he rose to his feet, and suddenly, she fell into his arms.

She was cold. Freezing cold.

“Little Treasure,” she said softly, “I managed... to get your statue back.....

“I should stay to protect you, but I don’t think I can....

“Master, I... I love you.”

Those three sentences truck Little Treasure like lightning. Trembling, he held her body, unsure of what to say. His throat seemed stuck shut, unable of emitting sound. His heart felt as if it had just been stabbed through.

He suddenly coughed up some blood, which splattered onto his wife’s body like crimson flower petals.

He thought back to the young woman he had met in the forest as a boy. He thought about the night they were married. He thought about how he had lifted her veil and touched her face.

He thought about the day Perfect was born, and how everyone had been so happy. He thought about how, when it started to rain, his wife stuck with him the entire time, even when he was sculpting. He thought about how sad he had been when his parents died, and how she had comforted him.

He thought about how she had cared for him when he was sick, and how she blocked the wind with her own body. Finally, he thought about how she had nourished him with her own blood after the avalanche. That taste still seemed to linger in his mouth.

He held her in his arms for a long, long time. Eventually, her aura was gone, and yet Little Treasure didn't want to believe it. More tears flowed.

“It's fine, it's fine,” he murmured. “I'm here. You rest for a bit. You’re so cold, let me try to warm you up.” Little Treasure carried his wife’s corpse deep into the cave, where he tried to warm her with his own body.