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Xiro slightly lowered his head, and I could see his delicate eyebrows furrow tightly as he fell into deep thought. At this moment, the boy seemed absent-minded. If I were to make a sudden move, I could snatch the "Mark of Ice." However, since I had given Xiro the choice, I naturally wouldn't act. Besides, upon careful consideration, my main goal was to prevent the mark from falling back into the hands of the Temple. Possessing it was not essential, after all, using it once would kill a mage over level ten, and the Orc Alliance's mages were scarce; they couldn't afford to be as wasteful as humans.

After a long while, Xiro finally lifted his head, and a hint of mature resolve appeared in his youthful features. He calmly said to me, "Teacher, I've made my decision."

I sighed deeply and nodded, saying, "I know your choice, Xiro. To be honest, I am very regretful, but also very proud."

Xiro suddenly exerted more force, and the nameless gray crystal sword easily tore through the crystal containing the "Mark of Ice," the power of the ice elemental forbidden spell forever leaving this world.

With a wave of my left hand, I unleashed the "Nine Yin White Bone Claw," piercing Xiro's chest and abdomen. Blood immediately gushed from his body, even trickling from the corner of his mouth. I whispered, "Xiro, rest well in this snowy domain."

I didn't want to see him die before me, so I gently pushed his body, along with the crystal sword, down into the deep snow beside us.

As I turned to leave, I didn't see the faint blue light that suddenly flashed on Xiro's falling body. The lifeless crystal sword burst forth with the same power as the "Mark of Ice—Sacrifice," and the blue light rapidly formed a spherical barrier around Xiro, continuously flowing into his wounds and instantly sealing the fatal injuries.

The "Imperial Sword—Hero's Mark," known as the continent's first divine weapon, finally absorbed its first mark, "Sacrifice," and was about to reveal its world-shaking sharpness once again.

Back at the mountaintop, I used a spatial bag to store all the magical items, including Apu's wolf-tooth club, which I cut open with the "Divine Punishment Light Thunder" to retrieve a high-level tenth-grade earth Beamon crystal core inside. Then, I gathered the armies of the White Dragon Dongye and Katherine, launching a surprise attack on the Temple's fully prepared forces at Snowfalon Port. Due to the element of surprise, most of their forces were captured by me, including four ninth-grade mages, ten eighth-grade mages, nineteen seventh-grade mages, 253 senior priests, and nearly 300 Holy Sword Knights.

A day later, I met Jin Luosha and Li Jia, who had teleported to the ice plains using the Twelve Sages' Magic Tower.

Three days later, the orc search team found the bodies of Apu and Lansino at the base of the cliff where the forbidden spell was cast. However, Lansino's curved blade and unique magical battle armor were missing. From the state of the two bodies, it was clear that although they were severely injured, they did not die from the fall. Instead, they had condensed the essence of their "Holy Ice Thorn Halo" into "Holy Blood Pearls" and passed them on to someone else. I could roughly guess the identity of the person who received the inheritance, as the search team never found the body of another young man.

At that moment, I knew we would meet again, but I didn't expect that each encounter between Xiro and me would make the entire Mainland so—extraordinary.

Chapter 83: The Evil Energy of a Thousand Souls

Snowfalon Port, once the most important harbor for the barbarians, was built with numerous warehouses to store goods for trade and exchange with humans. Now, it has become the camp of the Fountainebleau Half-Orc Army. The vast warehouses, local military camps, and a few higher-grade buildings can accommodate over ten thousand orcs and several thousand remaining half-orcs. Of course, the other tens of thousands of half-orcs have already turned into ice fragments beneath Hurricane Fortress.

The devastating power of the "Tears of the Sky" has been gone for five days. Young eagle rider Siegfried, using his hundred-kilometer vision, observed from the sky that the land within a twenty-kilometer radius around Hurricane Fortress suffered direct attacks from the forbidden spell, turning all living things into ice fragments. Even the massive rock structures of Hurricane Fortress and the towering Crystal Canyon cliffs were completely reduced to dust. Within a radius of twenty to a hundred kilometers, the land was affected by the shockwave of the forbidden spell, killing all living things, though most retained some remains, especially rocks. Beyond a hundred kilometers, the power of the forbidden spell gradually dissipated, leaving frozen corpses of both plants and animals, which would crumble at the slightest touch. However, if there were mountains blocking the way, safe areas could be created. This impact only began to fade at a distance of three hundred kilometers.

The forbidden spell is truly the ultimate disaster surpassing all worldly powers. Among known spells, the strongest area-of-effect necromancy spell, the tenth-grade "Roar of Death," has a killing diameter of only one kilometer. In terms of destructive power, even the strongest point-targeting tenth-grade fire spell, "Inferno Spirit Cannon," cannot penetrate several kilometers of rock. According to the White Dragon Dongye, the diminishing effect of the spell's power over distance is due to the caster's incomplete mastery of the forbidden spell. If the Ice Sage himself had cast it, everything within a hundred kilometers would have been reduced to dust, and beyond that, there would have been no impact.

The Crystal Canyon, which connects the Northern Ice Plains to the Arctic Tundra, has been gouged out to form a circular basin twenty kilometers in diameter. The once impregnable terrain is now gone, but this does not mean that orcs or barbarians can cross this land. According to the observations of the mages, the forbidden spell disrupted the energy balance between the Inner Planes of the "Ice Plane" and the "Astral Sea" through a rule singularity, merging the near-absolute-zero "Ultra-Cold Space" with the normal "Material Plane Space," creating a destructive force. The spatial anomalies caused by the forbidden spell continue to affect this land. If nothing changes, this area will remain a death zone for all living things for decades, as the extreme cold is a result of spatial influence, making it impossible to stop heat loss regardless of how thick the clothing. Even after the spatial anomalies gradually return to normal in a few decades, any living thing that stays here for too long will still be affected by the "Ice Plane," either dying from illness or gradually mutating into creatures with ice elemental magic.