Chapter 23: Kabedon-ing the Ice Empress, and a Certain Jealous Dragon King!
Her delicate brows furrowed for a fleeting, almost imperceptible moment.
What is this emotion?
Why did seeing the Golden Dragon King getting so close to another powerful female soul beast cause her to feel a spark of displeasure?
The moment the thought surfaced, it was instantly snuffed out by Gu Yuena's formidable willpower, like a ripple on a frozen lake returning to absolute stillness. Her purple eyes became deep and waveless once more, as if that split-second anomaly had never occurred.
She was the Silver Dragon King, the Co-ruler of Soul Beasts, bearing the heavy responsibility of reviving the Dragon Race. The Golden Dragon King was her other half—a rival, a potential subject for fusion, and a massive variable... but he certainly should not, and could not, be an existence that triggered such trivial emotions.
She redirected her gaze toward the battlefield, forcing her attention onto analyzing the nature of Lin Yu's power to ignore Ultimate Ice, attempting to suppress that fleeting sense of irritation.
In Lin Yu's arms, the Ice Empress's struggle appeared pale and powerless. She was like a child easily subdued by an adult, futilely kicking and throwing a tantrum.
"Let go of me! You bastard! If you have the guts, release me and let's have a fair fight!"
The Ice Empress gritted her teeth, her emerald eyes nearly spitting physical flames, yet her body couldn't budge Lin Yu's iron-like arm even an inch.
"Fair?"
Lin Yu lowered his head, his lips almost brushing against her cold earlobe. The warm breath fanning over her made the Ice Empress's entire body stiffen.
"Lady Ice Empress, your sneak attack earlier, and your current domain—neither of those were particularly 'fair.' Besides..."
A wicked grin curled on Lin Yu's lips. Seeing her expression of utter shame and rage made him find her exceptionally interesting. "You're much cuter like this than when you're acting all cold."
"YOU!!!"
The Ice Empress trembled with rage, yet she was at her wit's end. She couldn't win the fight, she couldn't escape, the power she took pride in was a joke in front of him, and now she was being verbally toyed with...
As one of the Three Heavens Kings of the Far North, when had she ever suffered such humiliation?! Grievance, fury, shame, and an incomprehensible fear intertwined, making the rims of her eyes turn slightly red. She stared death at Lin Yu's close-up face and that annoying smile, her mind racing:
Ignores space! Ignores Ultimate Ice! Physical strength is unfathomable! He can make a Ferocious Beast like Bear Lord willingly serve as a mount... What kind of monster is he?!
Could he be... from the God Realm? But how could a God of the God Realm be... be so flippant?!
For the first time, the Ice Empress felt a bone-deep confusion and helplessness regarding her own understanding of the world and her opponent's strength.
Seeing her pushed to the brink of tears and shame, Lin Yu found it even more amusing. That frost-cold, exquisite face flushed with vivid anger, and the mixture of fire and daze in those emerald eyes made her look far more lively and heart-stirring than her icy facade.
His wicked smile deepened. Instead of letting go, he leaned his face even closer. His powerful aura completely enveloped her; their noses were almost touching, a posture so intimate it was effectively a "kabedon" in mid-air.
Lin Yu deliberately lowered his voice, adopting a drawn-out, seductive, and teasing tone as his warm breath brushed against the Ice Empress's cold cheek:
"If you really want to know..."
His voice was deep and magnetic, carrying a heart-racing hint: "Then beg me, Lady Ice Empress."
The Ice Empress's body snapped taut, her emerald pupils constricting sharply due to the proximity. She wanted to dodge, but Lin Yu held her in a firm grip; she wanted to roar, but her throat was choked by the ambiguous atmosphere, allowing only a short, flustered syllable to escape:
"You...!"
Lin Yu admired her rare panic, his smile becoming even more malicious as he continued slowly:
"Of course, just using words won't do... you need to provide something practical. For example..."
His words were pointedly leading, and his gaze grew deeper, moving slowly from her angry eyes down to her tightly pursed, beautifully shaped lips. Their faces grew closer; the surrounding frozen air seemed to take on a hint of heat. Even Ah Tai, slung over Bear Lord's shoulder in the distance, forgot to struggle, his giant ice-crystal eyes bulging.
The Ice Empress felt her heartbeat spiral out of control under his breath and gaze. Her mind went blank, leaving only shame and a never-before-felt sensation that left her flustered and confused.
Just as their lips were about to touch—just as that ambiguous threshold was about to be broken—
"Buzz—!"
An extremely subtle yet terrifyingly powerful spatial pulse erupted without warning!
A silver blade of light, condensed into solid form, did not shoot at Lin Yu or the Ice Empress. Instead, it tore through space at a horrific speed, accurately striking a massive ice pillar a hundred meters behind them that had seemed completely empty!
"BOOM!!!"
The ten-thousand-year-old profound ice pillar, harder than refined steel, was instantly blown into a sky full of shimmering powder! The wild aftermath of the spatial cutting force stirred the area into chaos, revealing a bottomless ice pit!
However, the attack wasn't the point—it was a trigger, or rather, a logical cover!
At the exact same instant the silver blade exploded, a fair, slender hand—yet one containing immense power—grabbed Lin Yu's arm that was wrapped around the Ice Empress's waist like a lightning strike!
A powerful yet strangely gentle spatial force instantly enveloped Lin Yu, pulling him away from the Ice Empress before he could resist! Space seemed to fold automatically beneath Gu Yuena's feet. With a flash of silver, Lin Yu had been dragged to her side, suspended in mid-air, a good ten meters away from the Ice Empress.
The Ice Empress felt her arms suddenly empty. That hot breath and the annoying sense of imprisonment vanished instantly as the cold air rushed back in. She staggered before finding her footing, her emerald eyes filled with shock and daze. The heart-stopping palpitations from a moment ago still lingered, but they were now mostly replaced by a blankness from the forced interruption.
Lin Yu was also completely bewildered.
One second he was immersed in the wicked pleasure of teasing the Ice Empress and that nearly successful intimate contact, and the next, the world spun, he was forcibly pulled away by a surge of power, and then...
He was floating next to Gu Yuena?
He looked down at his dangling feet, then up at the equally stunned Ice Empress, whose face still bore a fading blush. Finally, he turned his head toward the calm, silver-haired beauty beside him.
"Hey!"
Lin Yu gave Gu Yuena a miffed glare, his tone full of incredulous teasing: "Gu Yuena! Even if those five old geezers from the God Realm were attacking us together right now, there's no need to be this dramatic, is there?"
He exaggeratedly patted his seemingly thin chest, producing a dull thump-thump sound like striking divine metal: "With my physical toughness, who else on this Douluo Continent besides your elemental fusion attacks can even break my defense?"