Chapter 429: Smelting
Nie Tian and the Spirit Pearl disappeared before Dong Li’s eyes almost simultaneously.
The spatial vortex also vanished after appearing out of nowhere, as if it had never been there.
Dong Li’s jaw dropped.
Only after a while did she come to her senses and say with a flabbergasted expression on her face, “A tool that can form spatial tunnels at any time?”
In the Domain of the Falling Stars, most people would have to rely on large-scale, inter-realm teleportation portals to travel back and forth between realms.
She had only heard of spiritual tools that could rip open space and teleport people at anytime and anywhere, but she had never seen one with her own eyes.
This was her first time experiencing such a thing.
She had never expected that Nie Tian would actually possess such a profound spiritual tool, which only grand Qi warriors, extremely skilled at spatial magics, would possess.
Confusion and shock replaced the desperation on her face.
A train of thoughts entered Dong Li’s mind. “Where the hell did he go? The Phantasms’ Spirit Pearl went with him. Will he be able to survive it? Will he return?”
She slowly sat down on the ground, looking as if she had lost something important to her. Then, she took out a handful of medicinal pills and swallowed them as she mulled the matter over.
She failed to figure anything out after some time, but sounds of movement coming from the depths of the forest caught her ears.
She jerked her head around to gaze towards the source of the sounds.
In the next moment, the figure of a man arrived before her like a flash. “Where’s that Wu Tian kid, Dong Li? And where did that sphere of cyan light go?”
It was Shen Zhong from the Pill Pavilion Sect.
As Dong Mingxuan had predicted, after dashing for an hour, he had successfully detected Dong Li’s life aura.
He followed her aura to this location, and discovered that Dong Li was the only one here. The Spirit Pearl, which he considered the most important target, was nowhere to be seen.
The truth was that he didn’t really care about Nie Tian and Dong Li’s safety. That Spirit Pearl was the only thing he could think about now.
He had long since seen that the Spirit Pearl had close ties with the Phantasms’ ancient starship, and that it must contain secrets and valuable information on the Phantasms.
If he could obtain it and unveil the profound mysteries within it, this exploration trip would turn out to be very productive.
With a grim look in her eyes, Dong Li looked down at the ground as she weighed over what to say.
A second later, she sorted through her thoughts. Looking up at Shen Zhong’s face, she said with an indifferent tone and slightly gritted teeth, “The Spirit Pearl’s target was Wu Tian, not me.”
“That thing is called a Spirit Pearl?” Shen Zhong asked, his eyes lighting up. “I figured that it was after Wu Tian, not you. But where is he?”
With a cold laugh, Dong Li said, “He woke up after we left the lake area. Since I was exhausted and couldn’t carry him any further, I could only land here. I realized that the Spirit Pearl was after him, and I could no longer protect him, so... I drove him away. I told him to lead the Spirit Pearl away, so that at least one of us would live.”
Shen Zhong was taken aback. “Are you saying that you commanded him to flee after he woke up, so that the Spirit Pearl would go after him?”
“Yeah, would you expect me to die with him?” Dong Li said with an expression as if it was the right thing to do.
The tips of Shen Zhong’s eyebrows rose as he felt disgusted inwardly.
Since they were both from the Realm of a Hundred Battles, he had heard something about her notoriously cunning and vicious nature.
He assumed she had sacrificed her subordinate in order to save herself, knowing that the Spirit Pearl wasn’t after her.
Therefore, Shen Zhong bought Dong Li’s story.
Furthermore, he indeed couldn’t detect any signs of Nie Tian or the Spirit Pearl’s aura in the vicinity with his soul power.
He didn’t believe Dong Li was able to hide Nie Tian or the Spirit Pearl under his nose without him noticing anything.
Shen Zhong nodded gently and said, “Oh, so that’s how it is. So where did he go?”
Dong Li pointed out a random direction and said with a somewhat embarrassed expression, “What I did... wasn’t exactly honorable. Will you please keep it a secret, Senior Shen?”
Shen Zhong felt increasingly disgusted. “Sure, Wu Tian is one of your subordinates. How you treat him doesn’t concern me.” After uttering these words, he sped off in the direction Dong Li had pointed out for him.
Long after he was gone, Dong Li looked at the place Nie Tian had vanished from and muttered in a self-mocking way, “If it was before, I probably would have actually considered doing such a thing. After all, this guy got me good and made me lose face before the whole clan. But now, I hope you can survive this and return alive.”
She didn’t leave.
She had a feeling that Nie Tian’s spatial spiritual tool might teleport him back to this very location.
Therefore, she decided to wait a while and see.
...
In an unknown heaven and earth, where the spiritual Qi was extremely rich and pure...
On a bloodstained, dilapidated altar faced by eight enormous dragon skulls, a bit of fire appeared and rapidly expanded.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Nie Tian and the Flame Dragon Armor flew out of a flaming portal one after the other.
After them, the unrelenting Spirit Pearl also flew into this mysterious land through the expanding ball of flames.
Like the Realm of Dark Underworld, the sky here was also misty. There was no sun, moon, or any stars, and there was no way to tell time.
As soon as the Spirit Pearl entered, it began to shine with dazzling, cyan light. In the next moment, countless discarnate souls and Specters flew out of it and swooped down towards Nie Tian.
The Spirit Pearl remained in midair, as if it were completely unaffected by the super gravity in this mysterious heaven and earth.
The heavy fall made Nie Tian light-headed. As soon as he recovered a sound mind, he saw countless discarnate souls and Specters swarming towards him like a storm of locusts.
Subconsciously, he made attempts to summon the last remaining power from the seven fragmentary stars in his soul. However, it turned out that he couldn’t draw upon any of it.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
At that moment, the Flame Dragon Armor took control and started absorbing pure flame power and flesh power from him.
Formidable flame power was suddenly born within its Blood Core, turning the Flame Dragon Armor, which was currently floating over Nie Tian’s head, into a giant ball of torrential flames.
A dragon’s howl rang out within Nie Tian’s mind.
FIZZ! FIZZ!
Under his gaze, eight rivers of flames shot out from the ball of flames over his head and infused into the eight huge dragon skulls that were facing the dilapidated altar.
Each of the eight dragon skeletons was thousands of meters long, and their skulls were the size of small mountains.
As soon as the rivers of flames flew into the dragons’ skulls, their flames of life seemed to light up again.
At that moment, it was as if the eight enormous dragons that had nothing but bones left were suddenly vested with life and souls again.
Originally, there was nothing inside their hollow eye sockets. But now, blazing flames appeared in them, serving as their eyeballs, making them look alive again.
The rivers of flames ran through the dragons’ entire skeletons before spewing out of their opened mouths.
After flowing through the dragon skeletons, the might of the eight rivers of flame skyrocketed.
As they shot towards the dilapidated altar, Nie Tian felt a mysterious force from the Flame Dragon Armor, and was thrown away.
The Flame Dragon Armor, however, remained at the center of the altar, where it was engulfed by a storm of flames along with the Spirit Pearl and the swarm of discarnate souls and Specters it had unleashed.
CRACKLE! CRACKLE!
Nie Tian watched the dilapidated altar become enveloped by raging flames.
He could vaguely hear the discarnate souls and the Specters’ miserable screams.
The Spirit Pearl seemed to sense the unfavorable situation and made repeated attempts to break free from the sea of flames enveloping the altar.
However, as unrivaled and powerful as it had appeared in the Realm of Dark Underworld, it failed to escape from the altar.
No matter how hard it tried, it couldn’t charge out of the hemispherical area enveloping the altar, even though wasn’t very wide.
After flowing through the dragon skeletons, the flames seemed to be vested with a divine power that allowed them to incinerate any life or soul in this heaven and earth.
At that moment, Nie Tian discovered that a distortion seemed to have occurred in the blazing space over the altar, as if even space couldn’t withstand the heat.
Crackling sounds could be heard as the swarm of discarnate souls and Specters were being burned and purged of their negative energy fluctuations by the flames enhanced by the eight dragon skeletons.
Soon, wisps of refined, cyan-gray soul power, which could be absorbed as sources of energy, gradually rose from the sea of flames.
As that happened, Nie Tian noticed that the seven dim and lifeless fragmentary stars in his soul seemed to be stirred.
Immediately afterwards, the second fragmentary star mark, which he hadn’t refined yet, separated itself from his chest and floated out.
Completely uncontrolled by Nie Tian, it quietly rose to a location three inches in front of the middle of his eyebrows, where it started to shine with blinding starlight.
FIZZ! FIZZ!
The wisps of pure soul power, which had been refined by the pure flames, were suddenly attracted and then rapidly flew straight into the fragmentary star mark floating before his face.
As the wisps of soul power entered the second fragmentary star mark, they seemed to be refined for a second time, becoming completely devoid of any impurities.
Afterwards, one wisp of incomparably pure soul power after another flew into his mind through the space between his eyebrows.
As soon as the seven fragmentary stars in his souls saw the appearance of the wisps of soul power, they started channeling them towards themselves.
The darkened fragmentary stars, which had already shrunk to the size of grains, started glittering brightly again after absorbing some wisps of soul power.
The scene before his eyes made Nie Tian tremble with a flabbergasted expression on his face. “T-this is...?!”
The Flame Dragon Armor, which had taken him to this mysterious heaven and earth, was clearly using the altar and the eight sets of dragon skeletons to smelt the discarnate souls and Specters within the Spirit Pearl in a way he couldn’t understand.
Even though he hadn’t derived any enlightenment from the second fragmentary star mark yet, it was voluntarily cooperating with the Flame Dragon Armor to refine the wisps of soul power a second time before sending them directly into his mind.
All of this completely overturned his understanding of the Flame Dragon Armor and the fragmentary star marks!