Desolate Devouring Art

An eerie crimson radiance drenched the entire space, spreading above Liu Wuxie's head like vast sheets of red silk. Yet when he looked more closely, the illusion unraveled. No silk hung overhead, only a boundless ocean of raging flames, and deep within that inferno flowed a mass of crimson liquid that burned like living fire.

"The Divine Fire Core," Liu Wuxie exclaimed, a brilliant gleam igniting in his eyes as he stared at the liquid flame.

A violent pulse ran through the Desolate World, betraying its ravenous desire to consume the Divine Fire Core. Yet the flames surrounding it burned with such ferocity that Liu Wuxie could not even get near, much less collect it.

His passage through the gate to the Heart Palace had already weakened the heartfire outside little by little. Shen Can and the others would soon break into the Heart Palace, leaving him little time to seize the Divine Fire Core before they arrived.

As if it sensed the danger closing in, the Divine Fire Core unleashed terrifying crimson ripples that rolled downward toward Liu Wuxie.

"Get out of my way," Liu Wuxie snapped, thrusting his palm forward and blasting the oncoming ripples into nothingness.

The temperature inside the Heart Palace climbed at a horrifying speed. Beads of sweat formed on Liu Wuxie's skin before they vaporized almost instantly. This went far beyond ordinary heat; the terrifying temperature could scorch the soul itself.

The assault sent violent waves surging through Liu Wuxie's soul sea. Agony pierced through him as though countless arrows had struck at once, but he clenched his teeth and forced himself closer to the Divine Fire Core. A torrent of icy energy erupted from Liu Wuxie and sheathed his entire body, dulling the searing heat that pressed against him.

Dense mist churned around him wherever the ice-attribute energy collided with the scorching waves. Water droplets gathered throughout the air, freezing and evaporating in an endless cycle. Light scattered through the drifting mist, painting a dazzling rainbow across the surroundings.

......

Outside, the swiftest cultivators had already reached the gate. They wasted no time before assaulting it with their artifacts, each strike intended to tear open a passage.

"Young Master, the Divine Fire Core must contain terrifying heat. Liu Wuxie can't possibly claim it so quickly. We still have enough time to force open the gate," the Shen Clan disciples said as they gathered tightly around Shen Can.

The reasoning convinced the cultivators nearby, and they nodded in agreement.

"Exactly. If we destroy the gate quickly enough, we can still stop Liu Wuxie before he succeeds."

The Profound Immortals combined their strength and condensed it into a colossal sword ray. Once that devastating attack descended, the gate would almost certainly be ripped apart.

At that same moment, Liu Wuxie had arrived directly beneath the sea of fire, where the heat reached its most unbearable intensity. By his estimation, the temperature had already risen beyond a thousand degrees, enough to reduce an ordinary mortal to vapor in an instant. Even ordinary immortals would find such terrifying heat difficult to endure.

Liu Wuxie could remain on his feet only because of his ice-attribute energy, which neutralized part of the scorching temperature.

The crimson clouds overhead grew denser by the moment. Terrifying fire dragons emerged from their depths one after another, closing around Liu Wuxie from every direction.

"Everything rides on this moment," Liu Wuxie muttered, fierce light flashing through his eyes.

No path remained except to stake everything and press onward. Without the Divine Fire Core, he would never be able to craft the Divine Penta Elemental Bolt.

He dared not summon the Bloodthirst Blade, fearing that the extreme temperature would damage it. His only remaining option was the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.

The fire dragons lunged at him from every direction, but his composure never wavered. The Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron appeared above him and devoured every last one of them in a single instant.

Until now, Liu Wuxie had feared that the horrifying heat might damage the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron. What unfolded before him swept those concerns aside. No ordinary materials had forged the cauldron; the primal chaos energy of heaven and earth itself had condensed into its form.

Upon entering the cauldron, the fire dragons rapidly dissolved into divine fire force and streamed into the deepest regions of the desolate world. A boundless ocean of flames instantly surged across the entire desolate world, saturating it with countless fire laws.

A thunderous detonation erupted behind Liu Wuxie. The Heart Palace gate shook so violently that it was on the verge of collapsing.

"I'm running out of time," Liu Wuxie said.

A colossal black hole formed in the sky and plunged straight into the sea of fire. The moment the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron touched the flames, layer after layer began peeling from its surface. The temperature of the Divine Fire Core surpassed even Liu Wuxie's most terrifying expectations.

The heat outside had already exceeded a thousand degrees. The temperature concealed within the Divine Fire Core itself had therefore reached an unimaginable height.

"Come to me," Liu Wuxie roared.

The black hole swelled at a terrifying rate until it engulfed the entire Divine Fire Core. An overwhelming suction force burst from its depths, dragging even the surrounding space inward. Caught within that irresistible pull, the Divine Fire Core slowly drifted toward the black hole.

Liu Wuxie held his breath. His nerves were drawn taut as he watched without blinking, fearing that the slightest unforeseen change would destroy everything.

The rumbling behind him grew increasingly violent as countless cracks crawled across the gate.

Sharp cracking noises burst from the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron the moment the Divine Fire Core began entering it, warning that the cauldron might break apart. Liu Wuxie immediately mobilized the laws of the Desolate World to mend the damage while forcing the devouring speed even higher. As soon as the entire Divine Fire Core disappeared inside, a deafening rumble tore through the cauldron.

Liu Wuxie had no opportunity to refine the Divine Fire Core. The instant he collected it, the sea of fire split asunder and transformed into a torrential rain of flames, turning the entire Heart Palace into a horrifying spectacle.

"I need to leave," Liu Wuxie muttered under his breath.

He shot forward and raced toward the next region, which he calculated to be the Spleen Palace. Within the five elements, the spleen corresponded to earth, and earth ranked foremost among them. Though the Spleen itself was not particularly large, it performed an exceptionally important function.

Without the Divine Fire Core to sustain it, the sea of fire rapidly lost its strength. The Heart Palace gate began weakening on its own, even though no further attacks struck it.

A deafening explosion thundered through the Heart Palace as the gate finally shattered. Thousands of cultivators flooded inside at once, only to find a torrential rain of fire awaiting them instead of the Divine Fire Core.

"ARGH!" Agonized screams tore through the Heart Palace from every direction.

The weaker cultivators could not withstand the fiery deluge. They collapsed one after another, and the flames swiftly reduced their bodies to charred corpses.

In only a few moments, four to five hundred cultivators lost their lives, filling the Heart Palace with the stench of scorched flesh. Those who entered later managed to escape the disaster, but the charred corpses littering the ground still left them traumatized.

Sharp breaths swept through the surrounding crowd. Shen Can had numbered among the first to enter, but his cultivation as a peak Profound Immortal allowed him to withstand the fiery downpour with ease.

As the rain of fire gradually diminished, the obscured sky regained its clarity. The Divine Fire Core, however, had vanished without a trace.

"Liu Wuxie, I'll tear you to pieces. If you hadn't taken the Divine Fire Core, my elder brother would still be alive," a youth roared as he knelt beside a charred corpse.

After all, the fiery downpour had erupted only after Liu Wuxie had collected the Divine Fire Core.

Furious curses erupted from every direction, and more cultivators willingly joined the hunt for Liu Wuxie. Only a small number remained unmoved, for they had accepted the possibility of death from the moment they had entered the Ancient Origin Spatial Realm.

Shen Can offered no response. His gaze remained fixed upon the empty sky while the murderous intent in his eyes intensified with every passing moment, growing almost tangible.

Two cultivators happened to walk past Shen Can as one of them said, "Isn't Liu Wuxie's luck far too heaven-defying? First, he obtained the Divine Metal Core, and now the Divine Fire Core. Once he refines it, he'll probably reach the ninth-level True Immortal Realm."

Without warning, sword rays erupted from Shen Can's sword and sliced cleanly through both men's throats. Blood sprayed across the air, dyeing the clothes of the surrounding cultivators crimson.

An oppressive silence seized the crowd, and no one dared to talk about Liu Wuxie openly again. Only a small number of cultivators curled their lips in disdain. To them, Shen Can's outburst merely laid bare the Shen Clan's incompetence. They had failed to kill Liu Wuxie and sacrificed so many of their own people in the process.

"Maybe we should give up. Liu Wuxie's luck is simply too extraordinary," Jiang Hongran said, lingering fear trembling through his voice.

He stood in a corner beside Wei Wenbin and Shen Chao, already regretting his decision to join the Zhu Clan's group. After entering the Azure Flame Dao Hall, crisis after crisis had descended upon Liu Wuxie. Yet every time, he had conquered the danger and emerged with even greater gains.

"We'll wait and see what happens," Wei Wenbin replied.

Wei Wenbin's confidence had begun to crumble, and his determination to kill Liu Wuxie was shaken. If even the two mighty clans could suffer repeated setbacks at Liu Wuxie's hands, then the three of them clearly needed to proceed with far greater caution.

......

With the Divine Fire Core secured, Liu Wuxie traveled along another thick meridian toward the next region. Just as he had predicted, a powerful tide of earth-attribute energy surged toward him the moment he arrived.

A raging storm of yellow sand swallowed the new region and blotted out the sky. Even Liu Wuxie had to narrow his eyes against the relentless onslaught before he could examine his surroundings.

Towering peaks dominated the terrain, joining into sprawling mountain ranges steeped in an ancient and desolate aura. Neither rivers nor trees broke the barren expanse. Endless mountains dominated the landscape, one range rising beyond another.

At first, the mountains seemed to stand in complete disorder. Careful observation, however, revealed a subtle pattern hidden within their arrangement.

"My priority is refining the Divine Fire Core and reaching the ninth-level True Immortal Realm," Liu Wuxie thought before racing toward a distant mountain.

Far fewer meridians ran through the spleen than the heart, and only a limited number connected to this region. Finding somewhere safe within it would therefore prove anything but easy.

Liu Wuxie spent two hours traveling through the mountain range, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the entrance so Shen Can would not find him easily. After activating Ghost Pupil, he discovered a wind cave concealed inside one of the mountains and entered it without delay.

The enormous wind cave resembled a gigantic beehive, its interior riddled with countless interconnected passages. Anyone who ventured inside without a guide could easily become hopelessly lost. For Liu Wuxie, it offered precisely the isolation he needed to refine the Divine Fire Core.

Upon reaching the deepest part of the wind cave, Liu Wuxie produced several array flags and arranged an illusion array around himself. Even if someone passed close by, they would have little chance of sensing his presence.

He then entered it and sat cross-legged on the ground. His divine sense sank into the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, revealing the Divine Fire Core flowing within like molten liquid and radiating a terrifying aura.

As soon as Liu Wuxie circulated the Desolate Devouring Art, dense earth-attribute energy erupted from beneath the ground.

Supported by that earth-attribute energy, Liu Wuxie's breakthrough advanced at an astonishing speed. In less than half a breath, he stripped away every trace of immortal energy within a radius of ten thousand meters.

Not long after Liu Wuxie disappeared into the wind cave, Shen Can and the others reached the spleen as well. The sight of dust and sand blotting out the sky prompted them to cover their mouths and noses with cloths and napkins.

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