Evan Lin slowly began circulating the fire element within his body. The fire element could still move, so he tried using Fireshift to melt the ice layer covering his body. But the flames produced by Fireshift had no effect on the ice at all. Even after several days of repeated attempts, he couldn’t melt a single bit of it.
Evan felt a wave of despair. Was he really going to be sealed in ice here forever? He still had so many missions waiting for him! No way—he had to get out, had to grow stronger. Luna was still waiting for him; he couldn’t let himself be trapped here.
Struggling inside, Evan’s heart suddenly stirred—a dragon’s roar erupted from his throat. He tried to transform into his Golden Dragon form, but found that, at this moment, he simply couldn’t. Normally, his Golden Dragon body was massive enough to shatter the ice in an instant and let him escape.
But even the Golden Dragon transformation was impossible now. Evan felt even more hopeless. Through the ice, he saw Jade Chu and Tom Chu also frozen solid, and his heart ached as if it were bleeding.
Just like that, Evan, Jade Chu, and Tom Chu stayed trapped here for twenty years, unable to break through the ice. By now, the ice around Evan was growing thicker and thicker, making escape even more impossible.
Meanwhile, the ice around Jade Chu and Tom Chu was gradually thinning. One day, Jade Chu broke out first, then smashed the ice around Tom Chu with a powerful palm strike, freeing him as well.
The two of them stared in fear at the block of ice now over three meters tall and nearly a meter thick encasing Evan. If this were ordinary Mystic Ice, their combined strength could easily break it. But this was no ordinary Mystic Ice—Jade Chu knew exactly what kind of ice this was.
From her inherited memories, Jade Chu clearly remembered that this was a type of ice that shouldn’t exist in the Immortal Realm. It was called Extreme Frost, found only in the God Realm’s Ten-Thousand-Year Mystic Ice Domain. But because the Ice-Spirit Fruit appeared here, this heaven-defying ice had manifested as well.
"Sister Jade, now that Big Brother is trapped here, what should we do?" Tom Chu asked anxiously.
Jade Chu closed her eyes and thought for a moment before replying, "Let’s knock Big Brother over first. Extreme Frost may be powerful, but even it can’t withstand the earth-fire’s high temperature forever. I believe that one day, the ice around him will eventually melt."
Tom Chu didn’t quite understand what Jade Chu meant. He looked at her in confusion and asked, "What are you talking about? I don’t get it!"
"Just knock Big Brother’s body over," Jade Chu explained. "Then we’ll drag him to the hottest part of the earth-fire and use the heat to melt the ice around him."
After hearing this, Tom Chu immediately struck with his palm. But he didn’t dare hit Evan’s ice shell directly—if he got frozen again like last time, it’d be a disaster.
His powerful palm force slammed into the ice, but nothing happened. Aside from the huge sound and Tom Chu being blasted away by the rebound, everything stayed perfectly calm.
Climbing up from the ground, Tom Chu said gloomily, "Sister Jade, the ice around Big Brother is way too tough—I can’t knock him down at all. What should we do?"
Jade Chu frowned and said, "Let’s attack together. I refuse to believe we can’t knock him down. The ice beneath Big Brother’s feet isn’t real Mystic Ice. If we break the ice at his feet, he’ll topple over."
The two of them started attacking again. At first, it was just as useless as before, and both of them felt like giving up. But seeing Evan still suffering—and already fallen into deep sleep—gave them new determination.
They were injured by the rebound force countless times, but never gave up. Finally, one day, Jade Chu saw cracks appearing in the ice at Evan’s feet. Overjoyed, she shouted, "Tom, look! There are cracks at the base. If we keep at it, we can finally get Big Brother out!"
Tom Chu was thrilled when he saw the cracks, and attacked even harder. Time meant nothing to them now—they hammered away day and night. With a thunderous boom, the ice encasing Evan finally toppled. Thirty years after entering this place, Jade Chu and Tom Chu managed to push Evan’s frozen body into the hottest earth-fire below.
The place where the Fire-Spirit Fruit and Ice-Spirit Fruit once grew had vanished completely. Such heaven-defying treasures wouldn’t appear again for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. Seeing Evan in the earth-fire at last, Jade Chu and Tom Chu finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The ice around Evan’s body slowly began to melt. The heat of the earth-fire was truly terrifying—it took a full fifty years for the ice to finally dissolve. At that moment, Evan woke up, as if an animal emerging from hibernation.
The instant the ice broke, Evan—still in the earth-fire—was hit by a wave of scorching heat. He shot up from the flames and flew straight to Jade Chu and Tom Chu’s side.
"Big Brother, you’re finally out! Waiting for you felt like tens of thousands of years—it was so hard," Jade Chu said, her voice choked with emotion.
Evan realized it was Jade Chu and Tom Chu who had put him in the earth-fire and saved him from the ice. "Jade, Tom, you two worked so hard. Thank you, truly."
"Big Brother, don’t say that—it’s what we’re supposed to do. How do you feel now?" Jade Chu asked.
Suddenly, Evan remembered something. His face changed as he blurted out, "How long have I been down here? Has my hundred-year deadline already passed?"
"You’ve got twenty years left, Big Brother. You need to train hard—otherwise, when you come out after a hundred years, you might still not be a match for the Immortal Emperors," Jade Chu said.
Evan’s worries eased at her words. Twenty years left meant two hundred years in the Timewheel Bracelet. "Looks like it’s time to dive back into the Bracelet and train like mad."
But just as he prepared to bring Jade Chu and Tom Chu into the Timewheel Bracelet, the artifact on his wrist suddenly erupted with dazzling light. A stabbing pain shot through his wrist, as if it were about to snap, startling Evan.
Evan stared in shock at the Timewheel Bracelet, unable to understand what was happening. The pain faded quickly, but a flood of powerful information about the Bracelet surged into his mind.
There was a lot of information, but Evan could only see the first two points for now. The first was that he had only two entries left into the Timewheel Bracelet, and each time couldn’t exceed a thousand years inside. If he wanted to enter again, he’d have to feed Divine Power into the Bracelet, which would then remove all limits.
The second warning was that the Timewheel Bracelet was a heaven-defying divine item. The more he used it, the heavier the heavenly punishment would be. Unless there were truly special circumstances, he should avoid entering the Bracelet casually—otherwise, when he ascended to the God Realm, he could face a terrifying tribulation...