You won't have him, Fang Yuan!" Yue Xiao's voice wasn't a scream; it was a cold, crystalline decree.
She didn't retreat. Instead, she lunged forward, not to strike Lu Chen, but to embrace him. As her arms wrapped around his shivering, possessed frame, she ignited her Source-Ice Core. This wasn't standard frost; it was the Absolute Zero Paradox—a state where even atoms cease to vibrate, and thoughts are frozen in mid-air.
"Xiao... stop..." the voice of Fang Yuan hissed through Lu Chen's teeth, his eyes widening as he felt the soul-binding cold.
"Sleep now, my love," Yue Xiao whispered into Lu Chen's ear, her hair turning into pure, translucent ice. "In this frozen moment, he cannot control you, and you cannot forget me."
A pillar of diamond-hard ice erupted from the ground, encasing them both in a massive, shimmering glacier. The purple sparks of Fang Yuan's seed were trapped like insects in amber. The flow of the Tenth Law within Lu Chen was halted, locked in a permanent stalemate with Yue Xiao's sacrificial frost.
Outside the glacier, the projection of Fang Yuan vanished, his connection severed by the absolute lack of molecular motion. But the price was total: Yue Xiao's life-force was now the battery keeping the cage sealed. They were both suspended in a beautiful, terrifying tomb of ice, waiting for a miracle—or the end of the world.