An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

Hiss... Hiss... Hiss...

The silver fire python slithered over to Luo Chen and circled around him three times before finally diving deep into the earth. Watching the scene unfold, Luo Chen began to understand. ”It’s thanking me?”

The situation felt utterly ridiculous. He had clearly destroyed the sprite’s cultivation grounds, yet here it was, expressing gratitude.

In the distance, the black tiger cast one final look toward him before leaping directly into a volcano. For some reason, Luo Chen felt as though that look carried a warning. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it before. Even He Yuan’s devilish aura couldn’t compare to those black flames. That should be some kind of devil flame...

Eventually, Luo Chen let out a slow breath and discarded the temptation of devouring these fourth-tier fire sprites. At his level, they were not opponents he could afford to provoke.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Three streaks of light descended beside him.

”Master!”

”Master!”

”Are you two alright?”

After such a fierce battle, the first thing Luo Chen asked about was not the outcome, but their condition. Both Black King and Heavenjade felt a sudden surge of warmth in their hearts.

”We are fine, Master.”

Luo Chen nodded. ”What about that Sea-Devouring Golden Toad?”

At the mention of the toad, Heavenjade’s expression immediately dimmed. ”I failed to kill it, and it got away. Please punish me, Master.”

Black King wore an equally disgruntled expression. ”That thing is too strange. It’s a water-attribute demonic beast like us, yet it can hide in lava. By the time we figured out what it was up to, it had already slipped away.”

On the other hand, unlike Black King and Heavenjade, the Flesh Ganoderma had no interest in reporting every detail. It casually tossed something onto the ground. ”The Great King Squid is dead. Also, Devil’s Cloud took Saberstorm’s strongest strike and fell unconscious.”

The thing unceremoniously tossed onto the ground was precisely the unconscious Devil’s Cloud. His robes were tattered beyond recognition, and a massive wound stretched across his chest and abdomen, deep enough to expose bone. Had his defenses been even slightly weaker, he would likely have been split in two.

”As for Saberstorm, he died within the volcano. There is probably nothing left of his body.”

Luo Chen nodded. ”Perhaps that’s a form of release for him.”

To be enslaved by another, stripped of all freedom, and even forced to raise a sword against an old friend was something no one could ever accept. It was a real pity that a great warrior like Saberstorm had fallen like this, but at the same time, Luo Chen thought that the man must have felt liberated in his final moments.

Flesh Ganoderma grunted in acknowledgement before its gaze fell upon Luo Chen’s left arm. ”What happened to your hand?”

Luo Chen glanced at the empty wrist and smiled faintly. ”How could I drive back a Demon Emperor without paying some price?”

Even as he spoke, he beckoned toward the distance. A streak of light shot through the air and landed before him. It was his severed left hand... or, more accurately, what remained of it. The azure and blue flames were still locked in battle, but all flesh had already been burned away, leaving behind nothing but bone.

A trace of solemnity appeared in Flesh Ganoderma’s eyes. It was not the two flames that concerned it, but what Luo Chen had just said. I see. So the powerful aura Ding Yi sensed by Surging Lake back then wasn’t an illusion, nor was it the effect of the formation.

Still, it suppressed its thoughts and instead tried to comfort him. ”Hey, it’s only a hand. There are plenty of ways to deal with something like this. You’re not going to stay like this forever. I can...”

The words died in its throat. Before its eyes, Luo Chen repeatedly formed seals with his right hand, using the Dragon-Slaying Art. The blue light gradually weakened until, with an odd swooshing sound, it vanished completely. Then, Luo Chen calmly brought the skeletal hand to his severed wrist. The instant they touched, crimson light surged from his body and enveloped the exposed bone and seeped into them. A thin red membrane appeared, linking the hand and arm together.

Before the Flesh Ganoderma or the two demons could react, flesh began growing across Luo Chen’s bones, while veins, tendons, and blood vessels emerged one after another. In little more than the blink of an eye, Luo Chen’s left hand had been completely restored.

Flesh Ganoderma swallowed involuntarily. Its gaze slowly rose to Luo Chen’s handsome face, disbelief written plainly across its features. ”You...”

Luo Chen merely curled his lips. ”I still have something to take care of. Please look after Devil’s Cloud for now. I’ll be back shortly.”

With that, he leapt into the air and headed toward Vermilion Bird Mountain once more. In the span of a single breath, his figure disappeared into the distance.

Flesh Ganoderma remained standing exactly where it was, completely still for a few moments. Then, it began shivering uncontrollably. ”T-That was origin blood! And that body... That’s the physique of an archaic beast going down the Titan Beast path! If I could take that body, I could easily break through the Monarch’s restrictions, and I could force my way into the inheritance grounds!”

***

Luo Chen once more appeared above the magma lake inside Vermilion Bird Mountain. Feeling the strange tingling sensation within his newly regenerated left hand, Luo Chen continuously flexed and rotated his wrist, and his thoughts drifted back to the blue flame Liu Jun had used.

According to the ancient records, the merfolk race had once lived under the oppression of the ancient beast called Kun.[1] They only escaped that fate after the great war between humans and beasts, when the Kun disappeared; they then rose to become one of the dominant demon races of the Northern Sea. A race with such a history naturally would not have forgotten its former overlord. Over countless generations, they had evidently developed techniques specifically designed to counter archaic beasts, and the culmination of those techniques was likely what Liu Jun had just displayed.

Thinking back on it now, the blue flame had never been consuming his life force at all. Instead, it had used the origin energy within his arm as fuel, allowing it to overpower the Withering-Flourishing True Fire. If his true fire had not grown stronger, and if he had not decisively severed his own arm, Liu Jun’s attack might well have succeeded. After all, he was not merely a Demon Emperor; as he himself stated, he was a survivor of the great war. Such a being could never be measured by ordinary standards. After dwelling on the matter for a moment longer, Luo Chen shook his head and lowered his gaze toward the bubbling magma lake below.

”Is the Five Elements Lotus still in there?”

”It is. My corpse avatar has been tracking it this entire time.”

”Great.”

Only now did the last weight pressing on his heart begin to lift. The battle against Liu Jun had been fierce and he’d gained plenty from it, but his true objective had always been the Five Elements Lotus. If the treasure had escaped during the chaos, all the risks he had taken today would have been for nothing.

Though Han Zhan had seemed inconspicuous during the battle at Vermilion Bird Mountain, he had actually contributed enormously. First, he neutralized Liu Jun’s enchanting voice. Then he used the Seven Fiend Sword Formation to shatter the mysterious pearl treasure Liu Jun had produced. Finally, when Luo Chen departed, he dispatched the corpse avatar to secretly track the lotus. He had taken the right actions at the right time, every time; this seemed like the result of careful planning, but it was actually just pure improvisation. After years of working together, the cooperation between him and Luo Chen had become increasingly seamless. Most of the time, they no longer needed words to understand each other’s intentions.

Suddenly, Han Zhan’s tone turned grave. ”The Five Elements Lotus has become extremely cautious after being captured by Liu Jun earlier. The place it’s hiding now is extraordinarily dangerous. You must proceed with caution.”

”Hm?”

”If you’re careless this time, both of us could die here. The place where it’s hiding now is extremely close to the Vermilion Bird Fire Sprite!”

Luo Chen’s heart lurched. The tension that had only just left him came rushing back at once.

1. The Kun (鲲 kūn) is a mythical beast from Chinese mythology, most famously described as an enormous fish many thousands of li in size. It transforms into the giant bird Peng (鹏 péng), which soars ninety thousand li into the sky with a single flap of its wings, hence the name of Luo Chen’s technique. The Kunpeng (鲲鹏) is the combined name of these two forms. ☜