Her eyes turned glacial.

  “Die.”

  She appeared in front of one of them in a blur and seized his skull. Frost-infused spiritual power flooded through his body, freezing him solid from the inside out.

  With a sharp palm strike—

  CRACK.

  His body shattered into hundreds of glittering ice fragments.

  Lauren extracted the Golden Core sphere and casually tossed it into her inner space.

  Edmund glanced at it… then flung it aside in disgust.

  “Filthy. I’d rather eat a low-grade beast core.”

  .....

  The remaining leader panicked completely.

  He pulled out a Thousand-Mile Escape Talisman and tried to activate it.

  Lauren slapped a Stabilization Talisman into the air.

  The escape talisman froze in his hand, refusing to trigger.

  Cold sweat poured down his face.

  “Spare me! I’ll give you everything! All my treasures!”

  “Too late.”

  She blasted a massive hole straight through his dantian. His Golden Core was ripped free, followed by his storage pouch.

  He collapsed lifelessly into the snow.

  The last survivor remained trapped in shattered ice, his mangled legs useless. Watching his companions die so brutally shattered his remaining courage.

  “You… no… please… don’t kill me…”

  Lauren stepped forward.

  BOOM.

  Before she reached him, the man detonated his own core. The explosion tore apart his body and pulverized the surrounding ice into bloody fragments.

  Even a Nascent Soul cultivator would take serious damage from the self-destruction of a Core Formation expert. The moment the man detonated his core, Lauren reacted instantly, raising a thick ice barrier around herself.

  The explosion tore through the barrier, shattering it into crystalline fragments—but her Spirit Treasure–grade armor absorbed the remaining force, leaving her completely unharmed.

  Unfortunately, the blast destroyed the man’s storage pouches.

  Lauren sighed faintly and collected the two surviving pouches from the other corpses before tossing them into her inner space for Edmund to sort through.

  Storage pouches from Core Formation cultivators rarely contained anything particularly impressive. She didn’t even bother checking.

  Inside her inner space, Edmund stared at the pile with visible irritation.

  “So I’m just your trash collector now?”

  Lauren paused before replying, “They should have plenty of beast cores inside. Pull those out for yourself and clean up the rest.”

  Edmund opened one of the pouches and immediately spotted the mountain of beast cores inside.

  He shut his mouth.

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  ......

  Lauren suppressed her aura to the Core Formation stage and rushed toward the third level before nightfall.

  The moment she crossed the boundary, Dante’s voice sounded in her mind.

  “Miss Lauren, where are you?”

  “I just reached the third level. What about you?”

  “I arrived around noon. I’m not sure how deep I’ve gone, but I’m with Orion and the others now.”

  “Oh? Have you managed to contact Sebastian?”

  “No. Communication with the outside world is completely blocked from this floor.”

  “Let’s regroup at the fourth level,” she said. “Be careful.”

  “You too.”

  The third level was significantly colder than the outer layers. Lauren swallowed a Fire Spirit Pill as frost formed instantly along her sleeves.

  Perhaps sensing the approaching night, the beasts here were noticeably less aggressive. The few creatures she encountered simply observed her before retreating.

  Lauren smirked faintly.

  Night would be their slaughterhouse.

  No… her slaughterhouse.

  She selected a suitable location, erected her tent, and lit four Lampwick lanterns as she had done before.

  The cultivators on this level were clearly far more experienced. No one rushed forward recklessly. Every group methodically set up camps, surrounding their tents with multiple lanterns.

  When true darkness fell, Lauren once again released her spiritual sense. Her Nascent Soul projection condensed into a towering humanoid phantom that stepped into the black mist beyond her tent.

  Battle erupted instantly.

  Beast souls surged from the darkness, roaring and shrieking as they lunged toward her. Lauren met them head-on, tearing through them with brutal efficiency.

  The monstrous howls echoed across the entire third level, terrifying the cultivators inside their tents. No one dared step outside.

  The intelligence they had purchased mentioned nothing about nightly massacres like this.

  Had they all been scammed?

  The monsters inhabiting the third level of the Icefield Secret Realm were far more dangerous than those below. Most were fourth-tier creatures, though fifth-tier monsters appeared frequently.

  Winged predators screeched through the darkness. Serpentine horrors writhed across the snow. Hulking beasts charged like living siege weapons.

  Fourth-tier souls posed little challenge.

  The fifth-tier ones, however, appeared in overwhelming numbers.

  After two relentless hours of slaughter, Lauren finally withdrew her projection and returned to her physical body.

  “Beast cores everywhere…” she muttered, already half-asleep. “What a waste…”

  She yawned and collapsed immediately.

  “How is that a waste?” Edmund muttered.

  Unlike Lauren, he had already regained enough strength to manifest his Nascent Soul physically. The black mist posed no threat to him.

  Casually grabbing an empty storage pouch, he slipped out of the tent.

  The entire area had been terrorized into silence by Lauren’s massacre. No cultivator dared wander nearby, leaving Edmund free to collect the spoils.

  By the time dawn broke, he had gathered every beast core and salvageable corpse she had left behind.

  Lauren awoke fully restored.

  She continued advancing deeper into the third level, harvesting spiritual herbs, mining Far North ores, and hunting mutated beasts foolish enough to attack her.

  Every corpse was tossed into her inner space. Beast hides were stripped, useful materials extracted, and spiritually rich meat was processed into fertilizer for her growing internal ecosystem.

  All harvested spiritual plants were transplanted as well—especially the high-age herbs she acquired from elite monster territories.

  Ordinarily, such herbs would wither quickly once removed from their natural habitat and required preservation inside specialized jade containers. But Edmund possessed his own mysterious cultivation methods.

  While he couldn’t preserve every specimen—roughly seven or eight out of ten survived—it drastically reduced their reliance on storage artifacts.

  Over the past several days, Edmund had essentially transformed into a multitasking butcher and gardener, utterly stripped of his once-imposing ancient dignity.

  The unique geography of the Icefield Secret Realm made the distance between the third and fourth levels enormous. Even with Divine Travel Talismans, it still took Lauren five full days to cross.

  Most Core Formation cultivators remained trapped within the third level. Only the strongest—and the most reckless—attempted to enter the fourth level in coordinated groups.

  The fourth level was an entirely different world.

  Here, the weakest demonic beasts were fifth-tier, equivalent to Nascent Soul cultivators among humans.

  Nascent Soul experts were rare across the entire cultivation world. Naturally, very few could reach this region.

  The environment here was purer… wilder… untouched by the chaos below. Fewer cultivators roamed its frozen wilderness, but the density of demonic beasts—and priceless treasures—was vastly greater.

  Upon entering, Lauren stopped concealing her cultivation entirely, releasing her true Nascent Soul aura without restraint.

  After confirming that Dante had successfully reunited with several fellow disciples, she made no attempt to join them.

  She simply sent a brief message confirming her safety—and chose to continue forward alone.

  The sheer abundance of high-grade spiritual herbs here was almost obscene.

  After carefully reviewing the map her master had given her, Lauren selected a relatively safe and fertile route and began harvesting plants with ruthless efficiency—like someone shoveling dirt into a cart.

  Edmund had suggested she bring the soil along with the plants to increase survival rates. By that, he meant transplanting entire root systems with their native earth intact, saving him the trouble of replanting later.

  As long as they were watered with Weak Tree water, more than eighty percent of the spiritual herbs would survive.

  Not bad at all.