A sphere of crystalline flame, roughly the size of a large basin, hovered silently before Luo Zhen.
This was the Mystic Crystal Fire.
To the naked eye, it was a ghostly, translucent white, radiating an aura of suppressed power that far outstripped the Tier 2 Silver Fire he had wielded previously. In the world of cultivation, every Exotic Fire came with a secondary, innate ability. The Mystic Crystal Fire was unique; it carried the restorative properties of its predecessor, the Essence Restoring Silver Fire, but it also harbored a paradoxical, bone-chilling secret: the power of Ice.
With a mere thought, Luo Zhen sent the flame streaking toward the earth below. As it made contact, the heat didn't scorch the ground. Instead, the latent ice attribute erupted with the force of a broken dam.
In the blink of an eye, a ten-mile radius of the rugged terrain was encased in a thick, glittering layer of permafrost.
Luo Zhen nodded, satisfied. He waved a hand, and the white flame obeyed, snapping back to hover obediently at his side.
It was a fascinating contradiction. The Mystic Crystal Fire possessed the terrifying temperatures expected of an Exotic Fire, yet it could freeze a landscape in seconds. Heat and frost, two forces that should have canceled each other out, existed in perfect, lethal harmony within this single entity. This was the anomaly that made Exotic Fires so coveted.
For a cultivator without an affinity for ice, acquiring this fire would be a miracle—essentially granting them mastery over a new element overnight. For Luo Zhen, who already commanded a vast arsenal of ice-based arts, the utility was less about versatility and more about raw power.
Ultimately, the nature of the fire mattered less than its capacity for destruction. Auxiliary abilities were just the garnish; lethality was the main course.
He summoned his internal interface. The spectral blue text of his attribute panel materialized in his vision, updated with his latest acquisition.
Host: Luo Zhen
Species: Wyrm (Tier 2 Holy Beast — Double-Headed Green Scale Wyrm)
Bloodline: Holy Tier 2
Innate Elements: Water, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison
Divine Power: Illusion Light Eye
Exotic Fire: Mystic Crystal Fire (Tier 3)
Physique: Green Jade Spirit Body
Combat Skills: Thunder Fury, Venomous Evil Seal, Thunder Wyrm Breaker
Defense: Thunder Realm Descent, Dark Green Poison Mist
Summon: Demon Shadow Descent
Level: Demon King (Late Stage)
XP: 1,250,300 / 15,000,000
His eyes scanned the numbers. The Mystic Crystal Fire was duly noted, and his experience points had ticked upward. The increase was the result of slaughtering the Fire Sun Sect disciples and the dozen Snake Kings earlier. They had been King-level entities, powerful in their own right, yet their deaths offered only a drop in the bucket compared to what he now needed.
Fifteen million experience points.
The number was staggering. At his current level, grinding through human cultivators or beasts yielded diminishing returns. To evolve, to reach the next great realm, he couldn't just kill; he needed to consume heavenly treasures of the highest order.
Luo Zhen dismissed the thought and the interface. He collected the storage artifacts from his fallen enemies, stashed the Mystic Crystal Fire back into his core, and turned his gaze toward the center of the chaos.
Above the valley, the sky was a bruised purple, torn apart by arcs of lightning. The target of this celestial rage was the Ba Snake.
The colossal serpent was enduring a Heavenly Tribulation. Bolt after bolt of lightning hammered its massive frame, tearing scales from flesh and eliciting mournful, ground-shaking howls.
"It doesn't look like the Ba Snake is going to make it," Luo Zhen mused, watching the carnage. "Wait..."
He frowned, his hand instinctively going to the Spirit Beast Bag at his waist.
Inside, thirty distinct consciousnesses were screaming. The Tai Xuan Demon Mantises—tiny, voracious horrors—were chirping in a frenzy of anxiety and excitement. Luo Zhen extended his spiritual sense, connecting with the hive mind of the insects.
A moment later, a strange expression crossed his face.
"They smell blood," he realized. "They want the meat."
The battlefield below was littered with the remains of the Snake Kings Luo Zhen had obliterated. While his fire and poison had vaporized most of them, his Thunder Wyrm Breaker had blasted a few into tangible chunks of high-grade spirit flesh. Even shattered fragments of their Demon Infants—the core of their power—lay scattered in the dust.
Luo Zhen hesitated only a second before opening the bag.
Thirty streaks of crimson light shot out, diving toward the ground with the speed of starving arrows. They were small, no larger than cherries, but their appetites were bottomless. They descended upon the scattered gore, devouring the flesh and the shattered Demon Infants with terrifying efficiency.
It took them moments to clean the battlefield, but it wasn't enough. The taste of power had only whetted their appetites. Baring microscopic, razor-sharp fangs, the swarm turned their attention to the entrance of the Ten Thousand Snake Cave.
They had a specific target: the Demon Generals.
These were the elites of the snake clan, creatures that had cultivated a Demon Core. To the mantises, they were walking buffets.
Chaos erupted in the cave.
"What are these things?!" a voice shrieked from the depths.
"My core! It dug out my core!"
"Hit them! Why won't they die?!"
"Their shells are too hard! My attacks are bouncing off! Watch out, they're phasing into the void!"
The Ten Thousand Snake Cave, usually a bastion of silence and dread, transformed into a slaughterhouse. The snake demons, particularly the half-human hybrids who served as generals, found themselves outmatched by insects the size of fingertips. The mantises were fast, nearly indestructible, and capable of vanishing into thin air.
Ironically, the lesser snakes survived. They were too weak to be appetizing.
Luo Zhen watched from above, genuinely surprised. He had worried about releasing them so early; they were practically newborns. He hadn't expected the larval Tai Xuan Demon Mantises to rout an entire army of Demon Generals.
"I need to feed them high-level flesh more often," Luo Zhen noted, his mind already calculating the benefits. "If they eat enough, it might unlock deeper ancestral memories in their bloodline."
Half a day passed.
The slaughter finally ceased. The thirty mantises returned to Luo Zhen, sluggish and content, their bellies distended and mouths slick with oil. They nuzzled against him with affectionate chirps before retreating into the Spirit Beast Bag to sleep and digest their feast.
Luo Zhen did a quick mental tally and felt a chill run down his spine.
In just a few hours, the swarm had killed over three hundred Demon Generals. On average, each cherry-sized insect had taken down ten powerful adversaries and consumed ten high-level Demon Cores.
The Ten Thousand Snake Cave was decimated. Only a dozen shell-shocked survivors remained, huddled in the darkness, spared only because their cores were deemed flavorless.
Luo Zhen secured the bag and looked toward the horizon. The thunder was fading.
The Ba Snake's tribulation was over.
The final bolt of lightning dissipated into the ether. In the center of the crater lay the Ba Snake. It was a ruin of a creature—scorched black, flesh flayed to reveal white bone, bleeding from a thousand wounds. But as Luo Zhen watched, a terrifying pressure began to rise from the broken body.
It was the aura of a Demon Emperor.
Luo Zhen smiled. He didn't run. Instead, he blurred into motion, reappearing directly in front of the massive serpent.
Up close, the scale of the creature was breathtaking. The Ba Snake stretched nearly two thousand meters in length, its body thicker than a fortress wall. Its eyes alone were three meters wide—vast, golden pools of malice. Standing before it, Luo Zhen, a six-foot-tall man, was nothing more than a speck of dust.
The Ba Snake raised its head.
It had seen everything. It had seen Luo Zhen looting the battlefield. It had seen the mantises eating its generals. It had been helpless, pinned down by the heavens, but now the lightning was gone.
It was a Demon Emperor. And this gnat, this mere King-level cultivator, dared to stand before it?
The snake didn't hesitate. It opened its cavernous maw and exhaled.
A stream of azure breath blasted outward. It was a concentrated torrent of absolute zero. The air moisture instantly crystallized, and the temperature within thirty miles plummeted, turning the humid valley into a frozen wasteland.
Luo Zhen didn't flinch. He simply summoned the Mystic Crystal Fire.
The white flame surged forward, meeting the blue breath head-on. There was no explosion, only a sudden, violent hiss as the Ba Snake's intrinsic frost was instantaneously vaporized by the superior heat of the Exotic Fire.
The Ba Snake recoiled, its golden eyes widening in shock.
It was a generic Emperor now. Its breath weapon should have frozen this human's soul. Instead, it had been erased mid-air.
"What is that fire?" the snake rumbled, its voice shaking the earth.
"Tier 3 Exotic Fire," Luo Zhen replied, his voice calm.
"Tier 3..." The snake's confidence faltered. A fire of that magnitude was a threat to its life. But the Ba Snake was ancient and cunning. "Hmph. It is powerful, yes. But fire requires fuel and volume. You have a mere spark—"
The taunt died in its throat.
Luo Zhen pushed his energy outward. The small flame exploded in size, expanding into a roaring inferno the size of a carriage.
"You... how?" The Ba Snake stammered, horror dawning on its massive face. "You are just a King! How can you sustain that much essence?"
Luo Zhen flicked his wrist. The mass of white fire elongated, condensing into a ten-meter-long blade of searing plasma. He slashed downward.
BOOM!
The valley shook. The Ba Snake thrashed, deploying barriers and counter-spells, but the Mystic Crystal blade sheared through them. It carved a massive trench into the snake's side, cauterizing the wound instantly.
The fire tried to stick, to burrow into the flesh, but a strange blue bioluminescence flared across the Ba Snake's scales, snuffing out the lingering flames.
Luo Zhen raised an eyebrow. The snake was resilient. The exchange had cost Luo Zhen about a tenth of his fire's volume, and the beast was still moving.
He raised his hand for a second strike.
"Wait!" the Ba Snake wheezed, battered and bleeding. "I have words!"
"Speak to hell," Luo Zhen said, the fire blade humming as it prepared to strike again. He knew the tropes; villains only talked to buy time.
"Brother!" the snake screamed, dodging a strike that shattered a nearby cliff face. "I sensed your aura! You are a Wyrm! We are kin! Snake and Wyrm, we are of the same blood!"
Luo Zhen paused, but the fire didn't dim.
"Please!" The giant snake groveled, a pitiful sight for a Demon Emperor. "We are the same species! We shouldn't kill each other! Mercy, for the sake of our bloodline!"
Luo Zhen let out a cold, sharp laugh.
"Kin?" he mocked. "Now we are kin? I saw the bones in your cave, snake. Thousands of them. All serpents. You built your throne on the corpses of your own 'kin.' You ate them to gain power, and now you preach to me about brotherhood?"
Luo Zhen raised his arm, pointing a single finger at the turbulent sky.
The clouds, which had just begun to disperse, swirled back with renewed violence. The air grew heavy with static.
"You are right about one thing," Luo Zhen said softly. "The strong eat the weak."
He slashed his hand down.
"Thunder Fury."
CRACK-BOOM!
The heavens tore open. A bolt of lightning, carrying the devastating weight of a Tribulation strike, slammed directly into the center of the Ba Snake's skull.
"AAAAHHH!"
The snake convulsed, spewing a fountain of blood and brain matter. It was already weakened from its evolution; it had no reserves left to tank a strike of this magnitude.
Luo Zhen didn't let up. He drove the Mystic Crystal Fire forward while summoning bolt after bolt of lightning.
"Thunder Fury! Thunder Fury!"
It was a merciless bombardment. Fire ravaged the snake's flesh while lightning pulverized its bones. For fifteen minutes, the valley was filled with the smell of ozone and burnt meat.
Finally, the Ba Snake stopped moving.
Its energy was spent. It lay paralyzed, staring up at the human who hovered above it like a god of judgment. It watched as the lightning gathered one last time.
The bolt fell.
The Ba Snake's head disintegrated. The Mystic Crystal Fire swept over the remains, turning bone to ash.
Silence returned to the valley.
Luo Zhen exhaled, recalling his fire. A moment later, a familiar, robotic chime echoed in his mind.
[System Notification: You have slain the Demon Emperor "Ba Snake." Obtained 500,000 Experience Points.]