Given that shale reservoir characteristics necessitate hydraulic fracturing for extraction, while traditional hydraulic fracturing faces significant challenges related to water consumption and pollution, the development of new waterless/low-water fracturing technologies has become an urgent industry need. Low-temperature fracturing, particularly methods utilizing liquid nitrogen to cool reservoirs, holds great promise. This study systematically reveals, through numerical simulation, the influence of initial temperature, confining pressure, and material heterogeneity on the stress evolution patterns in shale during liquid nitrogen cooling. An increase in initial temperature intensifies the stress intensity and response complexity within shale during cooling. Confining pressure dominates stress redistribution by suppressing tensile stresses, amplifying compressive stresses, and limiting deformation, thereby magnifying stress fluctuations. Furthermore, the heterogeneous distribution of thermal expansion coefficients and thermal conductivity increases the stress difference between interior and exterior regions, while the heterogeneity of thermal expansion coefficients and Young's modulus exacerbates the heterogeneous stress distribution. This study provides a theoretical basis for low-temperature fracturing.