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The ancestors of the Snowstorm City were a human race that migrated to the far north of the Great Xia during the ancient cataclysm.

Nourished by millennia-old glaciers and polar cold veins, the tribe gradually awakened to an affinity for ice elements.

Long, silver-white hair is an outward sign of pure bloodline, while the icy patterns on her skin are a mark of awakened talent.

For thousands of years, the Snow Clan, who hunted giant beasts on the icy plains and guarded the northern border, never intervened in the power struggles of the southern plains. That is, until the rise of the Great Xia Kingdom, centered on the three upper cities of Qian Yuan, Gu Yong, and Daye.

The Wind and Snow Clan became the last nominally independent human settlement on the map of the Great Xia Dynasty.

In the 173rd year of the Qian Yuan calendar, the Great Xia army officially launched a northern expedition, aiming to conquer this last human settlement.

In the early stages of the war, the Great Xia army was not used to the extreme low temperatures and complex glacial terrain of the permafrost, and was repeatedly ambushed by snow warriors at canyon passes, which brought their advance to a standstill.

The battle raged for three months, with both sides suffering losses.

The Great Xia Kingdom was wary of the Snowstorm Tribe's equally impressive talent and combat prowess, and was unwilling to expend too much military strength in the northern border. Therefore, it negotiated peace with the Snowstorm Tribe. The Snowstorm Tribe also knew that the ice plains were poor in resources and that its large population would eventually become unsustainable if it remained isolated for too long. Thus, the Snowstorm Tribe and the Great Xia Kingdom reached a peace treaty.

In the 196th year of the Qian Yuan calendar, an anomaly appeared deep within the permafrost ice field of the northern border.

During a routine patrol of the glacial crevasse, hunting teams of the Snowstorm Tribe experienced a series of instances where entire teams went missing.

At first, the Snowstorm Clan thought it was just an attack by giant ice beasts, until the search and rescue team found the remains in the frozen canyon—those giant ice bears with thick armor had been gnawed to the skeleton, and traces of purplish-black corrosive liquid remained on the ice, even the hard ice was corroded with dense holes.

That same day, the tribal council of elders issued a level-one warning: this was not any known creature on the ice plains.

This was the first time the Purple Lieutenant Insect Clan had come into human view. They originated from the depths of the spatial rifts in the North, possessing layered purplish-black carapaces, limbs as sharp as knives, and mouthparts capable of spraying highly corrosive acid. What was particularly terrifying was their reproductive speed—given sufficient flesh and minerals, a single queen insect could reproduce hundreds of worker insects within half a month.

The extreme cold environment not only failed to suppress them, but instead became a natural burrow.

In the following year, the threat posed by the Purple Clan to the Snowstorm Tribe gradually increased.

The Snowstorm Tribe could only rely on their familiarity with the terrain to repeatedly harass and clear out the insect swarm by small-scale raids and freezing the passes, attempting to suppress the insect swarm around the rift. Although the Snowstorm Tribe's council of elders also found the situation difficult, they still adhered to the tribe's thousand-year-old tradition of self-reliance and did not seek help from the Great Xia Kingdom in the south.

In their view, this was the duty of the defenders of the northern border, and they were unwilling to easily disrupt the peace that had been established after the peace talks.

However, the Snowstorm Tribe still underestimated the evolutionary speed of the Purple Lieutenant Insect Clan.

In the winter of the 200th year of the Qian Yuan calendar, the first large-scale insect swarm suddenly broke out. Tens of thousands of Purple Lieutenant Insects poured out from the cracks, like a purplish-black tide overflowing a glacier, breaching twenty-two outer outposts of the Wind and Snow Tribe within half a month. The ice walls constructed by the Wind and Snow Warriors with their ice-type talents could freeze the bodies of ordinary insects, but they could not stop the relentless gnawing and corroding of the swarm.

One swarm of insects is driven back only to be replaced by another, seemingly without end.

In the most devastating battle of Ice Ridge Valley, the Lord of Eternal Frozen City personally led three hundred elite blizzard warriors to cover the rear, buying time for the civilians to retreat to the main city. In the end, all three hundred men perished in battle. The Lord of Eternal Frozen City also used his own icy veins as a catalyst to detonate the ice veins throughout the valley, freezing tens of thousands of insect swarms beneath the ice. However, this only delayed the insect tide by two days.

As the swarm bypassed the frozen canyon and gradually approached the Snowstorm tribe's stronghold, the Snowstorm tribe's elite forces had already suffered more than 40% casualties. Even the minors in the city had taken up ice blades and climbed the city walls to help defend.

At this point, the elders of the Wind and Snow Tribe finally decided to send the letter requesting help to Qian Yuan Upper City in the northern border of the Great Xia Dynasty.

When the news reached Qianyuan Upper City, the military headquarters dispatched troops to assist without hesitation.

The alliance between the Great Xia Kingdom and the Fengxue Tribe clearly stated: "If there is an alarm in the northern border, we will jointly defend against foreign enemies."

More importantly, the rulers of the Great Xia Kingdom at the time were well aware that if the Snowstorm Tribe stationed in the Ice Plains were completely wiped out, the entire northern border of the Great Xia Kingdom would face the threat of the Purple Guard Insect Clan for a long time.

In the winter of that year, the three upper cities of the Great Xia dispatched six heavily armed legions and two martial god battle groups to the ice plains.

The following year was marked by the famous "Icefield Tug-of-War" between the North and Great Xia.

Under the attack of the Great Xia Heavy Armored Legion and the railgun force, the allied forces steadily advanced, gradually encroaching on the Ziwei Zerg's activity space and precisely destroying the Zerg hive nodes.

In the 202nd year of the Qian Yuan calendar, the allied forces finally forced the main force of the Ziwei insectoid race back into the spatial rift, and built a permanent military fortress at the rift exit—the Ever-Frozen Fortress, which was jointly garrisoned by the Great Xia military and the Snowstorm City-State.

This battle cost the Wind and Snow Tribe a devastating 40% reduction in population, but it also firmly established its core position in the Great Xia's defense system.

To this day, although the large-scale invasion of the Purple Wing insectoids has been contained, small swarms still occasionally spill out from the cracks, harassing the defenses and border settlements of the Snowstorm tribe.

In the deep winter of the 205th year of the Qian Yuan calendar, the "Covenant of Wind and Snow" was proclaimed to the world simultaneously in the main city of Wind and Snow and the upper city of Qian Yuan.

The Wind and Snow Tribe officially relinquished its tribal name and renamed itself the Wind and Snow City-State, becoming the first autonomous city-state in the far north of the Great Xia Kingdom, under the control of Qian Yuan Shang City.

This was the first city-state in the Great Xia territory established primarily by a tribe, and it was also the final destination for the north and south since the Great Xia Kingdom's northern expedition.

The Elder Council of the Snowfield Tribe was reorganized into the Council of the Snowfield City-State, which is in charge of the city-state's internal affairs, customs, civil justice, and the inheritance of talents. The personnel sent by the Great Xia to the Snowfield City-State are only responsible for defense coordination, resource allocation, trade route management, and official document exchanges, and are not allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of the Snowfield Tribe.

The warriors of the Snowstorm Tribe were also reorganized into the "Great Xia Northern Legion," commonly known as the "Snowstorm Legion."

While retaining its independent organizational structure and ice-based combat characteristics, it guards the rift defense line together with the three heavy-armored legions permanently stationed in the Great Xia's frozen fortress, and is unified in the deployment of troops in Qian Yuan Upper City during wartime.

Every year, the Great Xia Dynasty would trade with the Snowstorm City-State and open the "Icefield Trade Route," allowing the Snowstorm City-State's specialties such as Frost Crystals, Ice Marrow, and Icefield Beast Bones to be sold to the mainland in exchange for various supplies and daily necessities from the Great Xia Dynasty.

In the 230th year of the Qian Yuan calendar, the Ziwei insectoids launched their second large-scale invasion. The insectoid swarm was even larger than it had been thirty years ago, and they also had the support of the extremely powerful Ziwei royal family.

This time, however, the Snow City-State was no longer fighting alone. Under the ice magic cast by the Northern Legion, the Great Xia railgun forces accurately bombarded the insect hive nodes, and the heavy armored legion steadily and firmly defended the permafrost fortress, once again defeating the Purple Lieutenant insectoids in just three months.

After this battle, no one doubted the significance of the "Oath of the Wind and Snow" from back then.

The Snow City-State is no longer a "foreign land" on the edge of the Great Xia territory, but has become the sharpest ice blade and the strongest ice wall on the northern border of all mankind.

Those outstanding-looking warriors with long, silver-white hair became one of the most respected elite symbols in the Great Xia army.