"Are you ready?" Hei Long asked as he stood up from his seat.

They were currently in the Capital City of the Wang Empire and it was around nine in the morning.

They had stopped at an Inn to have some warm drinks before setting off to the Snow Fields.

Li Ming watched her mate who was acting like nothing had happened. He still acted cold towards her, mostly indifferent.

She should already have known. A drunk man uttering garbage about how he was in love with her and how he won't be going to be cold towards her anymore, everything was pure nonsense.

To say that seeing him behaving indifferently like he just didn't confess to her the previous night was making Li Ming sad would be a straight-out lie.

She was rather happy that at least he forgot everything and did not remember a specific part to blame her for taking advantage of him.

Scratch that! She felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her. Just first let her get him free from the curse.

The day he would come to her begging for her forgiveness, she would be ready to kick him right on his face and would make sure to take her revenge.

Thank Goodness that she succeeded in casting the spell the previous night. At the very corner of the spell, parchment was a hidden message.

The blood of a pureblood mage could be used to perform the spell. Since Li Ming was a pure-blood mage, she did exactly as advised, and miraculously the spell worked.

The raven feather pulled in a small portion of the energy of the curse and locked it inside the crystal ball which was safely tucked in a wooden box inside her spell room.

Both of them came out of the Inn and headed towards the capital gate. Hei Long made sure to stay a little ahead of her.

To be honest, Li Ming had her doubts about his ignorant behavior. There was an equal chance that he remembered everything and was just pretending to save himself from embarrassment.

But who cared? He could pretend all he wanted. She only wanted to reach the Snow Fields as soon as possible.

She had started feeling that weird pull again and as they moved closer towards the Snow Fields, the pull only grew.

"We will teleport from here." Hei Long said after they had come a little far away from the City gate.

No one could be seen around them as they were surrounded by never-ending barren fields.

She just looked at him with her bored eyes. She had no idea where they were going since she had never been to the Snow Fields before, therefore it was Hei Long's task to take them both to their destination.

However, they won't be teleporting directly to the Snow Fields. Lord Yueliang had told her that the Snow Fields was surrounded by a protection ward and it won't be possible for them to teleport directly there. They would provably teleport to someplace near the fields.

Hei Long looked at her with impatient eyes, in return of which Li Ming stared at him with her raised eyebrows.

He was the one who was going to teleport them, then why was he also the one getting impatient, wasn't it supposed to be her right.

Letting out a deep sigh, Hei Long moved his right hand towards her and with a single jerk pulled her in his embrace.

How could Li Ming let go of such a great chance?

Li Ming pushed him away lightly which made a frown appear on the Second Demon Prince's face.

"You don't need to always take advantage of me. We just needed to be connected while teleporting. Me holding your robes would be enough, of course, unless you decided to get them off during the teleportation process."

Her tone was filled with sarcasm and so was the smile that was playing on her lips.

She watched as the frown of Hei Long's face changed into the realization of what she had just done and the lightest flicker of red appeared in his eyes.

Though he didn't say anything. Making sure that she was gripping his sleeves tightly, he teleported both of them at the outskirts of the Snow Fields.

"Here you go! This path will take you to the east entrance of the Snow Fields. You will find a shrub full of red berries, just put it on fire and wait for an old gatekeeper to appear. He will open the portal and you can enter the Snow Fields." The Demon Prince told her as they both stood in the middle of a path that was covered in small dried wild plants and shrubs.

She wanted to ask him where he was going but then decided against it and kept quiet watching as his silhouette disappeared in front of her eyes in red and black smoke.

Though he didn't show any concern about her well being but at least he was caring enough to share how she could enter the Snow Fields.

Only if she knew!

***

"My Lord, Supreme Majesty, are you leaving for the Snow Fields?" The white-robed man, who had been following his Master all this time as a shadow asked.

"En! Stay here and keep your eyes on the Western coast of the Wang Empire. I'm sure at this rate, we will soon find something." The man with the golden hairpin replied.

The white-robed man bowed and left the room, leaving his master behind who also disappeared from the room with the flicker of a golden smoke.

At the same time, two people were standing outside the protective barrier surrounding the Snow Fields. While one was at the Eastern part, the other was exactly on the opposite end, the western part.

The man with the golden hairpin formed a little ball of his spiritual energy and let it fly towards the barrier where it collided straight into the barrier.

Unlike him, at the eastern end of the Snow Fields, a girl took out a lighter and a bottle of whiskey out of her spatial ring.

She emptied the entire bottle of whiskey on the little shrub filled with small cherry-like things.

After stuffing the empty bottle back in her kitchen, she clicked in the lighter and lit the bush on fire.

Immediately the cherry-like things started craking with loud popping sounds, making Li Ming retreat back to place some distance between herself and the crackling tree.

The worst part came when a stale and foul smell rose in the air attacking her nose in full force.

Li Ming almost gagged as she hurriedly covered her nose, though it was not much of a help.

When the two figures had first appeared outside the ward of the Snow Fields, an old man who was sitting inside the kitchen of his small hut had immediately noticed them on the mirror which was hanging on the wall right in front of him.

After passing a swift glance at the two figures, he again got busy with his cooking. Even after millenniums of years, he couldn't make a single dish properly.

A few seconds later, a golden ball of spiritual energy flew inside the hut, alerting him of the presence of the Heaven Emperor before it disappeared into the thin air.

However, the old man stayed indifferent as he continued to chop the long pink leaves of some kind of wild plant.

The very next second he got a panic attack as loud popping sounds entered into his ear, making him accidentally spill the boiling water on his feet.

"What...?"

The man stared at the figure of the girl who had set the blood cherry plant on fire.

Forgetting all about his lunch which still had to be cooked and the Heaven Emperor who was still waiting outside the wards, the old man grabbed his fur cloak and flew straight towards Li Ming.

On the other side of the ward, the Heaven Emperor smiled as he looked at the wards. The old man was probably taking his anger out on him.

He could smell a weird scent in the air but it was too light for him to pay it much attention. He just kept standing there waiting for the old man to open the wards.

---

Li Ming had started coughing due to the smoke that was starting to surround her. It barely took the fire three minutes to make her regret setting the shrub on fire.

Right that moment she heard a sound coming from the wards and the next second an old man wrapped in a fur cloak came running out of the Snow Fields.

Finally!

Li Ming didn't miss a single second as she immediately ran inside the wards, away from the smoke and foul smell that were trying to kill her.

She watched as the old man stopped the fire with the flick of his sleeves and then immediately closed the wards to stop the smoke from entering inside the wards.

"Thank goodness. I was about to die out there." Li Ming said with a sigh as she pulled out a warm fur coat from her collections and draped it over her body to keep herself warm.

Just like its name suggested, the Snow Fields were completely covered in snow. Not a single trace of any other color could be seen except the dark brown and a little green of the trees that were also covered in the snow.

"How dare you!"