Ice Mirror Mountain. Crack, crack, crack. The spring breeze brought warmth. The sound of ice armor melting and fracturing echoed through the colossal cavern, where ice stretching ten zhang across lay crystal clear and transparent.
Ice water dripped onto stalagmites, glimmering in the light. Half a translucent, ice-like foot was exposed to the air. Looking up along that half-foot, one could see a young woman frozen within the ice.
The place where a fish had bitten through her knee showed no trace of blood. Sunlight outside the mountain penetrated the cave entrance. Candlelight bathed the scene, neither hot nor cold, revealing every organ inside the girl's transparent, ice-like body.
A thumb-sized bitterling still swam within her intestines, frozen in that same instant. Inside the ice blocks, there were hundreds of corpses just like hers. Some were nothing but white bones, some were half bone and half flesh, and some looked lifelike.
Those not encased in ice were a jumble of white bones, stacked like twigs in a bird's nest. In early April, high atop the mountain, the weather turned slightly warm. Frost coated the ice surfaces, making everything hazy and indistinct.