Icefire Backlash

The purple crystals lining both sides of the passage streaked backward in trails of light as he raced ahead.

Yet just as Mo Lin came within a few dozen yards of the bright light at the cave entrance—when he could already faintly hear the earth-shaking clashes of energy outside and the Purple Crystal Winged Lion King's furious roar—a sudden change erupted!

An utterly unexpected, heart-rending agony suddenly exploded from his abdomen without warning!

It was as though an icy and a fiery venomous dragon had abruptly awakened inside him and begun the fiercest, most primal battle!

"Urgh—!"

Mo Lin let out a muffled groan of unbearable pain. His sprinting body stumbled sharply, and he nearly crashed straight to the ground.

He forced himself to brace against the rock wall beside him, barely steadying himself. But his face instantly turned pale as paper, and large beads of cold sweat seeped from his forehead and slid down his temples.

It was the Companion Purple Crystal Source!

He instantly understood the source of his pain. The Purple Crystal Source liquid he had swallowed contained immensely pure and vast Fire Attribute energy. Though relatively mild, the accumulated quantity still made its energy enormous.

And before swallowing the Purple Crystal Source, he had deliberately drawn upon a thread of the nearly imperceptible yet exceptionally high-grade Extreme Ice essence originating from the Snow Empress, mixing it with the liquid in order to test his mad hypothesis regarding the Yin Yang Feather Transformation Art—whether the collision of extreme elemental powers could be used to reverse-engineer the Yin Yang Great Dao.

He had originally believed that, with the Snow Empress's absolute control over ice attributes and since the Purple Crystal Source was not Extreme Fire but merely abundant in quantity, he could cautiously conduct a miniature, controllable "icefire collision" experiment. Even catching the slightest sign of yin-yang evolution would have provided immeasurable guidance for his future cultivation.

However, he had vastly underestimated the terrifying rejection produced when two extreme attribute energies met after losing absolute suppression, even in minute amounts!

And he had overestimated his current control over this body and these two powerful energies.

That thread of Extreme Ice essence was like a drop of ice water thrown into boiling oil, instantly detonating every hidden energy conflict!

The mild Fire Attribute energy within the Purple Crystal Source was thoroughly enraged, becoming incomparably violent, while the Extreme Ice refused to yield an inch. Using his meridians and internal organs as their battlefield, the two energies began madly eroding and annihilating each other!

The pain caused by the violent energy conflict far exceeded anything he had imagined, as though countless icy needles and fiery spikes were ravaging his body at once.

His meridians burned and cracked as though they were about to rupture inch by inch. His internal organs felt as if they were being roasted over blazing flames, then instantly plunged into ten-thousand-year profound ice!

Under the assault of that ultimate icefire agony, his consciousness rapidly began to blur.

His vision swayed and overlapped, his ears rang, and even the deafening sounds of battle outside the cave became distant and unreal.

Damn... damn it... I messed up... That was the only despairing thought left in Mo Lin's mind.

He desperately circulated his battle qi, trying to suppress the out-of-control situation. But the high-level Dou Master strength he had only temporarily acquired seemed so feeble before the conflict between these two energies of such high essence.

The Snow Empress and Ice Empress seemed to be issuing warnings within his Sea of Consciousness as well, but his mind was too chaotic to receive them clearly.

Enduring the suffocating pain, he clenched his teeth. Driven by his final instinct to survive and his worry for Yun Yun's safety, he dragged his nearly uncontrollable body onward, staggering and stumbling toward the light at the cave entrance.

Every step felt like treading upon knife edges and seas of flame, the agony nearly enough to make him pass out.

The cave entrance was right before him. He could even see the sky outside, flickering between light and darkness beneath the battle's glow.

Yet his stamina and willpower had finally reached their limit. His legs gave way, his vision went utterly black, and he fell forward helplessly like a puppet with its strings cut.

In the instant before his consciousness sank completely into darkness, he seemed to hear the bloodthirsty roar of magical beasts right beside him, followed by... a familiar sound of air tearing through the sky and a cool, clear cry filled with anxiety and fury...

Just as Mo Lin's consciousness gradually blurred under the agonizing conflict between the ice and fire energies within his body, as he was on the verge of sinking into a dark abyss and closing his eyes to await death—

"Swish! Swish!"

Two bone-chilling, peerlessly sharp green Sword Gangs shot down from the heavens like bolts of judgment cast from the ninth sky!

They struck with flawless precision between the waists and abdomens of the two vicious magical beasts about to pounce on Mo Lin!

"Ao—!"

Their shrill howls were cut short. The two formidable magical beasts were instantly severed at the waist, their foul blood and entrails spraying across the ground as their massive corpses crashed down heavily.

At nearly the same moment, Mo Lin felt his body grow light, while the scene before his eyes rapidly blurred and spun.

The next instant, he fell into an exceptionally soft, warm embrace.

A familiar, faintly elegant fragrance entered his nose, strangely soothing a trace of the violent pain within him.

With great difficulty, he hazily opened his heavy eyelids. Through his blurred vision, an exquisitely beautiful and familiar face came into view.

At that moment, the usually cool and noble face was filled with anxiety and worry, while her autumn-water eyes watched him tensely.

"Yun... Zhi..." Mo Lin's throat was dry as if scorched by fire. Gathering his last trace of strength, he forced out a weak smile and struggled to say, "Purple Spirit Crystal... got it... in... the storage ring..."

Before he could finish, intense dizziness and pain swept over him like a tide once more. His consciousness completely sank into darkness, and he passed out.

Upon hearing Mo Lin's words before he lost consciousness, a complicated look flashed through Yun Yun's beautiful eyes. There was relief, but even more heartache and anger.

What exactly had this brat done in the cave? How had he ended up in such a state?

Without the slightest hesitation, she ignored even the Purple Crystal Winged Lion King's furious roar echoing in the distance. Her jade-like arms tightly held the boy, who was burning like a live coal, and the green energy wings behind her back suddenly flapped!

"Whoosh—!"

The two became a streak of green light. Like a meteor chasing the moon, they pushed their speed to the limit and frantically shot toward the outer regions of the Magical Beast Mountain Range.

Intense sonic booms erupted behind them. Yun Yun spared no expense in battle qi, determined only to leave the dangerous area as quickly as possible.

After some time, once they had completely left the deepest core of the Magical Beast Mountain Range and she felt the boy's breath in her arms growing ever weaker, his body temperature frighteningly high, Yun Yun finally found a highly concealed valley with a babbling stream and slowly descended.

Landing in a clearing beside the stream hidden beneath dense vines, Yun Yun hurriedly and gently laid Mo Lin down on the soft moss-covered ground.

The moment her jade-like hand touched his body, the astonishing heat made her recoil slightly. Her lovely face immediately filled with shock. "What tyrannical energy! This definitely isn't ordinary fire poison backlash! What exactly did this fellow absorb?"

Mo Lin lay on the ground, his skin all over an unnatural purplish red, as though scorched by blazing fire. Strands of black impurities seeped from his pores.

Though unconscious, his body curled up painfully. His hands unconsciously tore at clothes already soaked through with sweat, and white vapor of terrifying heat even billowed from his open mouth, slightly warping the surrounding air.

What alarmed Yun Yun even more was that besides the violent, blazing energy within him, there was another exceptionally pure and frigid ice energy wildly colliding and entangling with it. That was the true reason his body stood on the brink of collapse!