On the Dragon-Slaying Platform, I was executed and became Yang Jian's brother-in-law.

Time flows at a cruelly fast pace in the Frost Realm.

For Su Bai, who possesses an endless lifespan, twenty years is merely the time it takes to take a nap, not even a deep period of seclusion.

But for Ashuang, a mortal burdened with the curse of a remnant soul, these twenty years have been a long journey from a naive young girl to old age.

The snow and wind still blow in Xueling Town, and the ice sculptures that used to fill the courtyard in the renovated courtyard are now much less.

Inside the house, the fire in the stove wasn't burning very brightly.

"Cough cough... cough cough cough..."

A violent, suppressed cough broke the silence of the winter night.

Ashuang sat hunched over on the edge of the bed, clutching a gray handkerchief tightly to her lips. Her body trembled violently, and each cough felt like countless dull knives churning inside her lungs.

After a while, the coughing gradually stopped.

Ashuang shakily moved the handkerchief away.

On the gray cloth, several crystal-clear ice crystals lay prominently.

Unlike previous years, these ice crystals are no longer pure white, but have taken on an eerie scarlet hue. The blood-like veins are frozen within the ice crystals as if they were alive, emanating a chilling aura.

Ashuang looked at the blood-stained ice crystals, a bitter smile appeared on her pale face.

She is just forty years old this year.

But in the Frost Realm, where the average lifespan of mortals is sixty, she looked like a sixty-year-old woman. Her hair was completely white, a withered white etched by the cold, and her face was covered with wrinkles carved by wind and frost. Her once clear and lively eyes were now cloudy and tired.

"cough……"

Another wave of chest tightness hit me.

"Squeak—"

The door was pushed open, and an old doctor carrying a medicine chest walked in with a sigh. He was the most skilled doctor in town, and the only one who had dared to treat Ashuang in recent years.

"Doctor..." Ashuang tried to get up.

"Don't move, don't move." The old doctor quickly waved his hand, took a few steps forward, and placed his hand on Ashuang's withered wrist.

In just a moment, the old doctor's brows furrowed into a deep frown.

He felt a chill, as if from the deepest hell, rushing through Ah Shuang's pulse and making him shiver. He quickly released his grip.

"well……"

The old doctor put away the pulse pillow, looked at Ah Shuang's eyes, which were full of hope yet had long since seen through life and death, and shook his head.

"Miss Ashuang, this old man... is powerless to help."

The old doctor stood up, packing his medicine box as he said helplessly, "The cold poison in your body has now penetrated deep into your bone marrow and even eroded your heart meridian. This isn't an illness; it's fate."

"In the past, we could suppress it with medication, but now... the ice crystals coughed up are mixed with blood, which means that the internal organs are starting to freeze and die."

Ashuang remained silent for a moment, showing little fear, but softly asked, "How much longer...can I live?"

The old doctor held up three fingers, hesitated for a moment, and then told the truth:

"At most three years."

"And over these three years, you will grow colder and colder until... you become a complete ice sculpture."

"This kind of rare poison is something I have never heard of or seen in my fifty years of medical practice. Young lady, you should prepare for your funeral."

The old doctor left behind a few packets of herbs that could only provide slight pain relief, shook his head, and braved the wind and snow to leave.

The room fell silent once again.

Ashuang clutched the packets of herbs in her hand, staring blankly at the faint flames flickering in the stove.

Three years old...

She turned her head and looked at the table by the window. There, still stood an unfinished ice sculpture. It was the candle dragon she had dreamed of more than twenty years ago.

Over the years, she has sculpted countless times, but she has never been able to capture the essence of that night.

"Perhaps, this is how my life will be...."

Ashuang gave a bitter smile and threw the blood-stained ice crystal in her hand into the furnace.

sizzle-

The flames did not melt the ice crystals; instead, they were nearly extinguished by the terrifying cold air.

Just then.

"call……"

There was no wind, but the temperature inside the room suddenly rose. A familiar and warm feeling appeared out of nowhere, dispelling the deathly silence and cold that filled the room.

Ashuang stiffened, but did not turn around. Only a complex light flashed in her originally cloudy eyes.

"You've arrived."

Her voice was soft, yet it carried an air of certainty that it was indeed true.

Su Bai's figure slowly appeared beside the bed.

More than twenty years have passed without leaving a trace on his face. He is still that handsome young nobleman in a black fox fur coat, still with that unforgettable appearance.

But at this moment, those gray eyes were filled with unconcealable grief and guilt.

He heard what the doctor said.

He also saw the blood ice that Ashuang coughed up.

He could no longer remain a bystander, hiding in the shadows watching her suffer alone at the end of her life.

"Ah Shuang," Su Bai called softly.

Ashuang slowly turned her head.

This was the first time in over twenty years that she had looked at him so closely and formally.

Compared to Su Bai's youthful vigor, she was now old and withered, like a piece of rotten wood about to burn out.

If it were an ordinary woman, upon seeing a former lover who is still young, she might feel ashamed and try to hide her age.

But Ashuang didn't.

She simply looked at Su Bai quietly, her gaze as calm as a bottomless, icy pool.

"Young Master Su."

Ashuang's lips curled up slightly, drawing out the wrinkles around her eyes. "Long time no see."

"Yes, it's been a long time." Su Bai felt as if his heart was being torn apart. He wanted to reach out and touch her face, but he was afraid that the coldness on her face would hurt him—no, he was afraid that his yang energy was too strong and would backfire on her fragile body.

"I heard everything the doctor said," Su Bai said in a hoarse voice.

"Mm." Ashuang nodded. "Three years, that's good. Longer than I expected."

The two remained silent, a suffocating silence hanging in the air.

a long time.

Suddenly, Ashuang spoke up, asking a question that had been buried in her heart for more than twenty years:

"Young Master Su."

"Did we...know each other in a past life?"

Su Bai was startled and suddenly looked up at her.

Ashuang looked into his eyes, her voice weak yet exceptionally clear: "From the first time I saw you, I felt you weren't a stranger. The way you looked at me was like looking at someone else, or like looking through me at a long, long-lost friend."

"and……"

Ashuang pointed to the room and said, "In the past twenty years, although I haven't seen you, I know you've always been here."

"Whenever I suffer from a severe cold attack and am in excruciating pain, a warm current always enters my body; whenever I encounter difficulties and am on the verge of not being able to go on, good luck always comes to me inexplicably."

"Even... Lai San, who always bullied people, went crazy later."

Ashuang smiled, a smile that carried a hint of worldly wisdom:

"I'm just an ordinary village woman, I've never been to school, but I'm not stupid."

"How many times in this world can God protect us? How many coincidences are there?"

"Young Master Su, I want to hear the truth."

At this moment, Ah Shuang's cloudy eyes suddenly became unusually bright, as if in a final burst of light, radiating a light that was too dazzling to look directly at.

"Did we know each other in a past life?"

Faced with Ashuang's questioning, Su Bai remained silent.

What should he say?

You say you are Xuanming, the ancestor of rain in the primordial world? You say you are a hero who sacrificed yourself to save me? You say we once depended on each other for a hundred years in the Ruins of Return?

She is now just a mortal with a broken soul, and she cannot bear this enormous karma.

Su Bai opened his mouth, but ultimately didn't say anything.

He didn't answer, but silently walked to the bedside, reached out, and gently grasped Ashuang's withered, cold, and calloused hand.

"Buzz—"

The gray origin of time and the gentle blood energy of the ancestral witches flowed slowly into her body through her palm.

It's not about healing, because this physical body is already broken, its essence is exhausted, and even a god couldn't save it.

He is suppressing.

Using his immense power, he forcefully suppressed the rampant cold energy within her body, ensuring that she would suffer less torment even in the final moments of her life.

As the warm current flowed in, Ashuang's originally pale face finally regained a rosy hue. The excruciating pain that had tormented her day and night also miraculously subsided at this moment.

She looked at Su Bai's focused profile and his furrowed brows.

Although he didn't say anything.

But this silent gesture, this warm palm, had already given her the answer.

"It really is you..."

Ashuang's eyes reddened, and two streams of turbid tears slid down her wrinkled cheeks. "All these years... you've always been protecting me, haven't you?"

Su Bai's hand trembled slightly.

He lowered his head, not daring to look into her eyes, and simply nodded heavily.

"sorry……"

Su Bai's voice choked with emotion, "I'm too late. I can suppress your pain, and I can spare you from the torment of the cold for the next three years... but I can't save your life."

This is his greatest sense of powerlessness.

As a quasi-saint and a former ancestral witch, he can pluck stars from the sky with one hand and reverse the river of time.

But he couldn't save this mortal whose lifespan had ended and whose soul was incomplete.

The laws of nature are orderly, and life and death are preordained. In this life, she is destined to dissipate within a hundred years, so that her wisp of soul can return to the underworld and complete her true spirit.

Forcibly prolonging her life would only cause her soul to be scattered.

"I'm sorry, Ashuang." Su Bai held her hand tightly. "I couldn't save you."

Upon hearing this, Ashuang did not show the disappointment or fear that Su Bai had expected.

in contrast.

She felt as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders, and her whole body relaxed. She gently grasped Su Bai's fingers with her other hand, her grip small but firm.

"It's okay."

Ashuang looked at him, a genuine, satisfied smile spreading across her face:

Whether I can survive or not, I haven't really cared about it for a long time.

"My whole life has been one of suffering and freezing cold. I was abandoned at birth, called a jinx, and despised. I have been suffering all my life."

"I thought that until I died, I would be all alone, freezing to death in some unknown corner."

"But now..."

Ah Shuang's gaze softened considerably, like a spring breeze caressing a frozen lake.

"Knowing that there is still someone in this world who is willing to watch over me and protect me, even if I become an old and ugly woman, will not despise me..."

That's enough.

"Really, that's enough."

She didn't know what happened in her past life, nor did she know who she was. But at this moment, the feeling of being cherished and held dear made her feel that all the bitterness of her life had turned into sweetness.

Looking at her satisfied smile, Su Bai felt so heartbroken he could hardly breathe.

"fool……"

Su Bai took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the stinging in his eyes.

From that day on, Su Bai no longer hid in the shadows.

He moved into Ashuang's house openly and honestly—and of course, he transformed the dilapidated hut into a warm and comfortable retreat with a wave of his hand.

He did not use magic to make her young again, because that would interfere with the fate of a mortal and hasten her death.

He was simply there for her as a "friend," or rather, a "guardian."

Every morning, he would use the best spiritual spring water to brew medicinal meals for her that ordinary people could bear.

Every evening at dusk, he would sit beside her, hold her hand, and use his primal power to gradually clear the coldness accumulated in her body, allowing her to breathe like a normal person, no longer coughing or in pain.

But he remained restrained throughout.

Aside from shaking hands to ease his pain, he always kept a distance of three feet from her.

These three feet mark the boundary between immortals and mortals.

These three feet also represent his respect for this incarnation of Ashuang, and his awe for the proud and aloof Xuanming from his memories.

The days passed by.

Although Ashuang's body is still aging, her spirits are better than ever before.

She no longer carves those cold ice sculptures.

She preferred to move a chair to the yard, basking in the rare sunshine, and watching the back of the man who was sweeping snow and chopping wood for her in the yard (even though it was completely unnecessary).

That gaze was no longer one of unfamiliarity, nor of awe.

Rather, it is a deeper and more undisguised dependence.

Just like the look in Xuanming's eyes when he was injured and nestled in Zhujiuyin's arms in Guixu back then.

No matter how many times you reincarnate.

No matter what it becomes.

As long as it's you.

I can recognize you at a glance, and then... I fall in love with you again.