Theron shot out of the Dark River.
The answer was never in the Dark River to begin with.
As he ran, the Alpha flashed to his side. And then, with a simple leap, Theron landed on its back.
Their speed instantly accelerated, becoming nothing more than blurs in the forest.
Clouds of crimson darkness appeared beneath the Alpha’s paws and claws as it launched itself into the air. Its agility hit a completely new plane of existence. It dodged trees not just in a left and right sense any longer, but up and down as well, gliding through the air and along the ground as though they were one and the same.
As it ran, Theron gripped its sides with his legs, his eyes scanning one map he had stolen from the Nightingale Sect after another.
He had underestimated just how far the Dark River raged on for.
Planet Nightingale didn’t have a single large ocean body. The Dark River was actually their one and only source, and if not for various methods Mancers had of collecting water, this alone would probably leave them without a living population at all.
This was why it was so easy to miss.
The core reason for what was causing all of this wasn’t in the river at all, but instead far out of it. In fact...
Theron looked up toward the moon hanging in the skies. Or, rather, the moons. Two of them.
The irony that this circulation of moons was a miniature three-body problem of its own.
Of course, this wasn’t exactly true.
The three-body problem was always relative. It was only unpredictable if there were three equivalent forces acting. Moons were too small to dictate their own fates.
But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t dictate the fates of those smaller than them.
It was the cycle of life, the strong bullying the weak while submitting to those stronger than them.
By this point, Theron had read more than one book speaking of the effect of the moons on the waves of a world.
High tide... low tide... even Theron’s own Water Mana Control had begun shockingly improving when night fell for reasons he still couldn’t explain.
Suddenly, the Alpha skidded to a stop as the crunch of snow sliced apart beneath its claws.
Theron leapt off its back.
They hadn’t travelled all that far. The Nightingale Sect was quite near a cold climate. The problem was that the odd interaction between Dark Mana and Water Mana had caused even the river to be suppressed by darkness.
As such, though the climate was more than cold enough for perpetual snowfall, there was none at the Sect and the temperature was mild enough that cultivators could ignore it.
However, exactly as Theron had predicted, so long as you travelled just a bit further than normal, this mild temperature went wild, becoming a roaring snowstorm as the balance was tipped.
This region was especially dangerous to the Sect members of the Nightingale Sect. It was said this snowy plain sapped you of your strength and froze even Cloud Realm experts to death.
It felt like nothing at all to Theron. And this happened to be exactly where he wanted to be.
It was a concept that was hard to describe in simple scientific terms, but the way Theron saw it... a brand boiled in a furnace would burn you just the same as one dipped in dry ice.
Two extremes, the same result.
The reason the balance here was tipped so severely was because the Dark Mana had suppressed Water and Ice so severely in the Nightingale Sect’s territory that the moment the balance broke just the slightest bit, they lashed out in a rage.
Theron’s eyes scanned the region, exhaling a breath.
Fog of heat formed, only to crackle into icicles and fall to the ground below.
Theron watched this in silence. He would have never expected the Nightingale Planet to have such a dense region of cold. In fact, if he was correct, this region was impossibly small.
It was located in what should be the north pole of the planet, but rather than expanding across thousands of kilometers like it should, it was probably barely a few hundred—if that.
A few hundred kilometers stretch of land even Patriarch Nightingale would have feared stepping into... but one that Theron certainly didn’t fear.
He raised a hand, and he fell into silence.
An eruption of cold after a shocking amount of suppression.
There were nine Bronze Laws to his Chilling Mandate... followed by three Silver Laws.
Those three Silver Laws were the Law of Freezing, the Law of Hollowing, and the Law of Eruption.
Of the three, the last was definitely the most odd and the one that Theron was sure he would have the most difficulty in comprehension.
The Law of Eruption sounded like something that made more sense for the Heat Mandate. In fact, there were many Bronze Laws of that Mandate that sounded like they fit right in with it... like the Law of Release, the Law of Pressure, the Law of Intensity.
But what Theron didn’t expect was that he would reach enlightenment in this Law first.
The three Silver Laws of the Heat Mandate were the Law of Burning, the Law of Filling, and the Law of Silence.
The moment Theron grasped the corner of the Law of Eruption, he likewise grasped the Law of Silence as though the two were two sides of the very same coin.
A Silent Eruption. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel·fire·net
He felt it burning within him.
This cold here was suppressed and suppressed again, buried so far and so harshly that it seemed as though it would die out completely...
Until it suddenly erupted here.
It was just as he had said. The Extremes, when brought to the other side, would only manifest in terms that the other extreme could grasp.
Theron’s eyes snapped open, one eye becoming a blazing white-blue as though forming a burning white flame, while the other became a calm, smoldering violet.