Huo Jin's forehead slammed onto the ground, and his chest was next. He grunted silently as his lungs were begging for air. Stones with sharp edges dig into his clothes and skin, but not sharp enough to cause serious wounds. He was so lucky the drop was not that high.
His head spun around as he tried to get up. After a few shakes, his sight began to focus once again. As soon as the vast landscape registered into his brain, his eyes rounded wide.
"This is Flame Valley. I made it!" Huo Jin grinning wide from ear to ear.
However, his astonishment immediately turned into a horror upon witnessing the hellish, apocalyptic world.
Flame Valley stretched endlessly before him. The heat from Fire Qi was almost unbearable for his mortal body.
Caws of the flying Fiery Vermillion Bird resounded in the sky. Echoes of the beast's roars travelled wide and far.
Remnants of ancient civilization scattered all over the plain.
Jagged stone structures rose from the ground at unnatural angles. Some resembled towering giant swords driven into the earth. Others looked like shattered spears, snapped at the shaft.
"What is this place?!" Huo Jin tried to control his shock. The place was nothing like he had imagined. He gradually calmed down after the initial shock.
Looking back, the only way out of this place seemed to be drained of its power. Huo Jin touched the stone platform and was cold to the touch.
"It will take a while before I can use the gate." Huo Jin shook his head in disappointment, he regretted his half-assed plan, but he knew best nothing would change if he remained silent and accepted his fate as a daily punching bag.
Huo Jin walked over the huge ridge, overlooking the realm while calculating his survival chance.
"The air is still breathable somehow…" Huo Jin took a deep breath.
The air felt very warm in his chest, but not in a harmful way. He could survive in this place, but not without water. With that in mind, Huo Jin prioritized his survival chances.
Huo Jin wiped the blood from his forehead, and continued forward to find a water source. As he ventured deeper into the valley, away from the river of molten lava, sweat began to bead on his forehead.
"The air is humid in this valley…"
Huo Jin looked around him. He then found a sparse of moss clinging on the shadowed lime rock. He followed the moss carefully into a narrow crack between huge boulders. He squeezed himself into the crack and walked sideways until he found a small gorge with a small pound in the middle.
Driven by curiosity, Huo Jin suppressed his fear and forced his feet to step forward into the
"Wow…"
Huo Jin couldn't shut his mouth as his gaze locked at the shiny egg nestled atop a broad lotus leaf. The fiery veins beneath the egg's surface beats with profound Fire Qi.
However, the thirst defeated his curiosity. He scooped a sip of water with his palm ever so gently, not wanting to cause a ripple on the water. The foggy thoughts in his head were cleared at once after he sated his thirst.
"I can't be wrong, this must be the Infernal Python's egg, and it's about to hatch. This whole gorge is its incubation chamber." Huo Jin was marveled by the beast's ingenuity to create an insulated environment.
Huo Jin promptly studied the pond, the diameter was no more than twenty meters across, but he couldn't possibly tell how deep the pond was. But somehow, Huo Jin had a strong hunch that Infernal Python must be nearby.
Instead of taking the egg right away, Huo Jin opted to back up. 'I need to find the Infernal Beast first and confirm its whereabouts.'
Just when he stepped away from the pond, a tremor passed beneath his feet, and it gradually got stronger. Something huge was approaching from underground.
"Damn it! The serpent is here!"
Huo Jin promptly leaped away towards the gorge entrance, leaving the beast's egg behind. There was no treasure worth his last lifetime.
The gorge exploded upward along the emergence of a huge serpent beast. The deafening hiss ripped through the air behind him, causing his ears to bleed out from the sheer violent sound frequency. He wobbled and stumbled forward due to cerebellum damage.
However, he quickly regained his bearing and got on his feet. He quickly ran toward the boulders' crack but the massive Infernal-Beast beat him to it.
He skidded to slow his momentum, and quickly changed his vector toward the clearing. Unfortunately, the serpent beast was unwilling to let him go.
The ground behind him shuddered even harder as the Infernal Python surged forward. It tried to kill Huo Jin with one chomp of its massive jaws, but he was too agile for its massive body.
Frustrated, the Infernal-Python hissed once again, spitting out venomous fumes from its fangs. Huo Jin could feel the intensity of the superheated fume on his back as he ran away.
He tried to dodge the rolling fumes by jumping forward. Alas, his body couldn't keep up with his brain. As the venomous fumes licked his left ankle, he could feel an intense burning sensation on his skin as if he was being flayed alive.
Notwithstanding the excruciating pain, Huo Jin kept running. He refused to stop as long as his bones and muscles were still functional. He kept moving blurred vision, his lungs were screaming for fresh air but his innate survival instinct forced his mortal body to surpass its limit.
Before long, he met a dead end, standing on the edge of a cliff. A deep ravine with violent wind was raging beneath him. Looking back, Infernal Python was coming toward him, jaws wide open, driven by instinct to eat a living being after laying an egg.
The world around him was silenced and moved in slow motion inside the moment of clarity. The probability of him surviving the fall was almost absolute zero, but it's better than nothing.
By the time his mind entered the zen state amidst the extreme pressure, Huo Jin opted to do a leap of faith into the ravine. Both arms stretched wide to either side.
'Another dead end, huh?' Huo Jin muttered in resignation.
Amidst the utter despair, the space around him suddenly warped, a small wormhole suddenly appeared below him, swallowing him whole.
As the wormhole reopened horizontally at its destination, Huo Jin's body skidded over for several dozen meters before the friction slowed him down.
"Fuck! What just happened?" Huo Jin clenched his head. He immediately threw up profusely as his brain failed to process the sudden space and time distortion. He instinctively checked if there were injuries, but nothing was serious except his left ankle.
The space was inherently huge just from the distant echo alone. But Huo Jin could tell he was inside an underground structure.
Worse yet, he couldn't see anything except a faint red glow at the end of the room.
"Another Infernal beast?!" Huo Jin was alerted.