Far below, where a majestic jade platform once gleamed like a verdant crown, a colossal crater now yawned—a smoldering wound in the earth, born of an inferno's relentless fury.
At its heart stood Qin Ting, an unshaken sentinel of ice amid a world consumed by flame. His robes fluttered faintly, touched by tendrils of fire that dared not singe him, as if the roaring blaze were merely a candle's flicker brushing silken threads. His face, a sculpted mask of serene contempt, surveyed the chaos with the indifference of a god gazing upon a crumbling anthill.
Moments earlier, when Ye Qiu's reckless assault had driven the Strange Flame into a frenzied crescendo, Qin Ting had moved with the grace of a river carving through stone. His hand slipped into his sleeve, retrieving a humble paper talisman—the Veiled Scroll Guard.
With a flick of his wrist, it unfurled like a flower in a phantom breeze, its edges curling delicately, aglow with an opalescent shimmer that hinted at secrets older than the stars.
Instantly, a translucent dome sprang up around him, a radiant cocoon of light. The explosion struck—a cataclysmic tide of fire and force, a howling maelstrom as if a thousand suns had collapsed into one apocalyptic breath. The shield held firm, scattering the blast's fury in a dazzling cascade of sparks that danced through the air like fireflies in twilight.
The Veiled Scroll Guard, a treasure disguised as a simple charm, had deflected the inferno's brunt with effortless elegance. Yet this was merely his opening move—a gambit hiding a greater shield, forged in secrecy long before this trap closed.
Hours earlier, within the resplendent halls of the Celestial Harmony Palace nestled in his dantian, Qin Ting had bartered with the system shop for a prize of unmatched potency: a Mystic Sun Dragon Fruit. It rested in his palm, a radiant orb pulsing with the raw essence of a primordial sun, its golden light casting fractal shadows.
The cost was steep—200,000 Villain Points drained in an instant—but its value was immeasurable. Having crushed the holy lands and seized the sacred Ignis Petal Tree, he still held a formidable reserve of 120,000 points.
This fruit was his ace, concealed until the perfect moment.
As Qin Ting faced the Earth Emperor's Mysterious Flame, he staged a mortal struggle to tame its wild essence. Beneath this facade, he deftly refined the Mystic Sun Dragon Fruit. Its potent energy surged through his meridians like liquid sunlight, igniting his cultivation with radiant power.
In moments, he ascended to the fifth layer of the Divine Spirit Realm, his spiritual essence weaving seamlessly into the Emperor's Flame. The golden tongues of fire bowed to him, loyal as hounds, their searing heat now a gentle caress against his skin.
Yet his triumph remained hidden. Neither Ye Qiu, Jiang Zhongbai, nor the sharp-eyed Nie You could sense his ascent. The Flame's overwhelming aura filled the air like a thick, intoxicating fog, dulling the senses of all nearby, blinding them to the quiet supernova within him. Only a relic like the fabled Eye of Celestial Truth could have pierced his deception—and his foes possessed no such treasure.
He could have tamed the Strange Flame instantly, as he had the sacred tree, bending its will with a mere thought. But Qin Ting held back.
Why? Because he was waiting for Ye Qiu to act, of course.
Earlier, after rescuing Mu Qingyi and resuming his pursuit of the Strange Flame, Qin Ting had unleashed his Death Guards upon the palace's depths. Their blades carved a bloody path through every spirit beast—not for their cores or pelts, which overflowed his spatial ring in glittering heaps, but to scatter a trail of shimmering crumbs.
To other cultivators scavenging the ruins, it seemed the greed of a tyrant hoarding spoils; to Qin Ting, the bounty was chaff, discarded without a glance. But to Ye Qiu—a ragged upstart risen from obscurity—the extravagance of Qin Ting's harvest would burn like a brand in his soul, stoking envy that drew him toward the flame like a moth to its pyre.
When Qin Ting sensed the faint flicker of Ye Qiu's spiritual signature entwined with Jiang Zhongbai's—two dim candles in the vast expanse of his perception—he struck. Refining the Flame in secret, he tamed its feral heart and harnessed its power, soaring to the zenith of the Divine Spirit Realm.
The pagoda's collapse, the fading pulse of spiritual energy—it was all theater, a carefully woven snare. The Veiled Scroll Guard, a celestial treasure from the Wheel of Fate, had absorbed the explosion's wrath while he played the cornered prey. Its humble guise hid a might capable of withstanding assaults up to the Illusory God Realm, though it crumbled to ash after one glorious stand.
Now, his enemies stood exposed—depleted, their reserves drained, their spirits fraying like threads in a storm. The board was his, every piece aligned in perfect symmetry.
Qin Ting's lips curled into the faintest of smiles, a predator's promise etched in frost amid the flames.
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In a corner of the chamber, the battle teetered on a knife's edge—a clash of fury and desperation. Nie You's madness spawned a nightmare: dark energy erupted from his core, twisting into a colossal black python.
Its scales shimmered like midnight oil, its maw gaping as it lunged for Jiang Zhongbai, venomous fangs dripping with abyssal hunger. The ground shook beneath its coils, fissures snaking through the stone as its hiss filled the air—a sound like death given voice.
Jiang Zhongbai's sneer held firm. With a lazy flick of his hand, he summoned a spectral fist from the void—a towering colossus of pale light that seized the python mid-strike, crushing it into dissipating shadow with a casual grip.
The air crackled with released energy as the fist swung downward, aiming to flatten Nie You, its descent a silent vow of annihilation. Elder Liu roared, lunging to intercept.
"You'll not take him so easily!" His voice was raw with defiance, his blade flashing like a comet. But Ye Qiu darted into his path, a venomous wraith cloaked in teal flames.
Though only at the Divine Wheel Realm, Ye Qiu's strikes were a flurry of sinister precision—each a dart of poison that drove Elder Liu back, his Divine Spirit Realm power faltering under the onslaught.
"Out of my way, old man!" Ye Qiu spat, his eyes wild with glee. "You're next after Nie You!"
Nie You stared up at the descending fist, despair flooding his veins like ice. 'I've failed… the young master's death unavenged.' His eyes fluttered shut, resignation settling as the shadow loomed, its chill brushing his skin. Death beckoned, and he braced for its embrace.
But then—a towering wall of golden-violet fire erupted, a radiant inferno that devoured the spectral fist in a single, voracious gulp. The ghostly energy frayed and unraveled, dissolving into a cascade of harmless sparks that danced through the air like fireflies.
"What?! Who did that?!" Jiang Zhongbai barked, his smirk vanishing, replaced by a twitch of unease as he stepped back, his hand tightening on his dagger.
From the heart of the inferno, the teal barrier Ye Qiu had summoned with his own Strange Flame was snuffed out, its ethereal glow extinguished like a candle.
Then, a figure emerged, wreathed in the heavenly aura of the Earth Emperor's Mysterious Flame—a deity of ruin born from the molten dance of golden-violet fire. The air thickened with his presence, an invisible weight pressing down like a collapsing peak, sending faint tremors through the cracked stone beneath his feet. Each step reverberated with quiet menace, the ground yielding to his will.
His robes, deep imperial purple, flowed untouched by the chaos, their silken folds billowing as if kissed by a phantom breeze. Golden dragons embroidered along the hems gleamed in the flickering firelight, their scales shimmering like coins. His eyes—twin glaciers ablaze with frigid wrath—cut through the haze, pinning his adversaries with a gaze that promised only annihilation.
Nie You's breath caught, a jagged gasp shattering the despair clawing at his heart. "Young Master!" he cried, his voice splintering as he stumbled forward and collapsed to his knees.
Tears carved trails through the soot caking his face, his trembling hands clawing at the earth. 'He lives… he lives!' The thought pulsed through him, a lifeline in the abyss of his grief.
Ye Qiu recoiled, his ashen face drained of color, his voice a hoarse, trembling rasp. "No… this can't be real! You were dead—swallowed by the Earth Emperor's Mysterious Flame! Not even a Divine Palace expert could survive that!" His hands shook as he summoned a faltering teal flame, its weak light guttering like a candle in a storm, dimming with his unraveling confidence.
Jiang Zhongbai's sneer twisted into a grimace, his polished composure fraying. "This… this defies all reason," he muttered, beads of sweat gleaming on his brow like tiny, treacherous stars.
His fingers tightened around his dagger's hilt, the metal slick against his palm. 'How did he survive? What manner of dark sorcery sustains him?' His mind raced, grasping for an answer that eluded him.
Qin Ting's lips curled into a faint, mocking smirk, his voice a silken drawl threaded with ice. "Dead? How quaint. You truly believed you'd seized the day." A low, sadistic chuckle slithered from his throat, sharp and chilling, as he stepped forward. The flames parted in reverence, a royal court yielding to its sovereign. His shadow stretched long and lethal across the shattered stone, a blade cast in darkness.
"Look at you—giddy as children, intoxicated by a victory I spoon-fed you," he said, his tone laced with amusement. "Tell me, Ye Qiu… did that fleeting thrill warm the hollow pit of your soul?"
"Jiang Zhongbai… did you taste supremacy in that stolen breath?" His words sharpened, each syllable a dagger slicing through their fragile bravado. A faint, cruel smile flickered as he paused, savoring the moment. "How tragic that it was all an illusion. I granted you that moment—so I could relish watching it crumble beneath your trembling feet. And now? Now you'll choke on the terror you thought you'd escaped, while I drink in every shudder of your despair."
No more laughter spilled from him, only a quiet, predatory menace that coiled around their throats like a noose. The flames roared higher, pulsing in time with his scorn, the air thick with the weight of his disdain.
Ye Qiu's body trembled violently, his crumbling resolve dragging him to one knee. The teal flames in his grasp flickered and died, snuffed out like a whisper in a gale. "No… no, this isn't how it ends!" he whimpered, his nails scraping the stone in a frantic, futile plea, leaving faint trails of blood on the jagged surface.
Jiang Zhongbai's grimace deepened, his carefully woven schemes unraveling thread by thread. "You… you orchestrated this?" he hissed, his voice quaking with rage and dread. He stumbled back, the dagger slipping in his sweat-drenched grip, its blade catching the firelight in a desperate glint.
Qin Ting tilted his head, his smirk stretching into a cruel, crescent moon, sharp and cold as a reaper's scythe. "What's this? No more crowing success? No more deadly ambushes? How utterly pitiful."
He paused, letting the silence tighten around them like a noose, a slow strangulation of their dwindling hope, broken only by the crackling of golden-violet flames and the desperate, ragged gasps of their uneven breaths.
Then he leaned closer, his whisper a venomous hiss that slithered into their ears. "By all means, feel free to beg for mercy. Crawl through the ashes like worms. It won't save you—but oh, how I'll savor every groveling second." His voice dripped with malice, each word a barb sinking deeper into their flesh.
The flames surged in a deafening crescendo, a chorus heralding their doom, as Qin Ting towered over them—a harbinger of retribution cloaked in fire and shadow.
He raised a hand, and the Earth Emperor's Mysterious Flame coiled around it like a living entity, its golden-violet tendrils writhing with eager hunger. The heat radiating from it promised agony, singeing the air with its intensity.
"The Flame… it's fused with him completely!" Elder Liu murmured, his voice barely audible over the inferno's roar. His eyes widened in stunned disbelief, reflecting the fire's glow. "Such a bond was deemed impossible—only the Earth Emperor himself wielded his Flame as an extension of his very soul!"
The revelation struck like a thunderclap. Qin Ting hadn't merely survived the blaze—he had claimed the full, unbridled might of a legend, a power dormant since the Emperor's fall eons ago.