The Truth from a Century Ago

Qin Han felt as though pain had woken him.

Every bone in his body felt as if it had been crushed, his organs churned violently, and his dou qi circulated with unbearable sluggishness.

"...Hiss."

A suppressed groan of pain squeezed from his throat as Qin Han struggled to lift his heavy eyelids.

His vision was blurry at first, filled only with boundless dark red.

Air carrying the distinctive scent of sulfur rushed into his nostrils, making him cough. The movement tugged at his chest, bringing another tearing pain.

Yun Qianhang had clearly held back that palm strike. He had probably wanted to keep Qin Han alive and torment him slowly. Yet even a restrained blow from a Peak Dou Huang was enough to severely injure Qin Han.

It took him several seconds to adjust before he could barely make out where he was.

This was an immensely vast underground space.

Far overhead, he could vaguely see an inverted... wok bottom.

All around him lay a slowly surging lake of dark red magma, with waves of scorching heat rolling through the air.

The only place to stand was the black platform beneath him, seemingly formed from lava that had condensed and cooled to an extreme degree.

The fire poison did not seem particularly potent?

Qin Han keenly sensed that the air was filled with terrifyingly pure fire-attributed energy and the scent of sulfur, yet the strange fire poison capable of corroding dou qi was instead quite sparse.

He immediately understood. To prepare this scheme, Yun Qianhang must have accumulated a great amount of fire poison at the cave entrance.

During the battle outside, he had likely scattered most of it above. Beneath this furnace, the space had instead become relatively clean.

Qin Han shifted his gaze toward the other side of the platform.

A figure lay there silently, only several zhang away from him.

It was Yun Qianhang, and he was not in that half-human, half-ghost state.

His hair and beard were completely white, his face gaunt. He wore a dark red old robe that had nearly rotted into strips of cloth, while his exposed skin was shriveled and wrinkled. His breath was so faint that it resembled a dying candle in the wind.

Qin Han's taut nerves relaxed slightly. Enduring the pain of a body that felt ready to fall apart, he sat cross-legged.

"Hack... cough..."

Yun Qianhang had awakened at some point. A wheezing sound like a broken bellows came from his throat.

The look he gave Qin Han remained cold and venomous.

Their eyes met.

"How do we get out?"

Qin Han broke the silence first, though he knew there would likely be no answer.

Yun Qianhang's voice carried malicious delight. "Don't waste your efforts... This is deep within the earth vein of my Fallen Fire Sect.

"The furnace overhead—even if it has been damaged—still possesses the power of its seal. An ordinary Dou Emperor could exhaust all his strength and still never hope to shake it."

"Just wait obediently for death. By the time the fire poison above... has slowly been dispersed and purified by your Jia Nan Academy people, and they dare to come down to investigate..."

He grinned, splitting his cracked lips. "You will have long since exhausted your final trace of Qi and Blood and become a dried skeleton."

"Or... you can become like the disciples of my Fallen Fire Sect, neither human nor ghost! Cough, cough, cough..."

A violent fit of coughing interrupted him.

Qin Han listened expressionlessly.

After regulating his breath for a moment and recovering a sliver of strength, he struggled to his feet.

With a thought, the small amount of dou qi he had just recovered roared through his body and flooded into his right arm.

Fallen Heart Flame rose up. Combining it with the savage force of Qi and Blood brought by the Flame Demon Rage Phase, he leaped high into the air and threw a punch at the ceiling.

Boom—!!!

A dull, thunderous crash exploded through the enclosed space.

Qin Han only felt an enormous rebounding force strike him. His fist ached fiercely, and he shot back even faster than he had risen, smashing heavily into the black platform with a bang.

Pfft—

A sweet taste rose in his throat, and he spat out another mouthful of blood. His aura grew weaker than ever.

Yun Qianhang let out a low, sinister laugh. "An ant trying to shake a tree. You overestimate yourself."

Qin Han wiped away the trace of blood at the corner of his mouth without replying.

Yun Qianhang was right. Qin Han had no idea what material the Myriad Fire Furnace was made from. Even when he had struck it outside with two fused and compressed Heavenly Flames, he had merely caused cracks and dents without breaking it open.

In his current condition, it was absolutely impossible for him to break the seal.

With that thought, Qin Han abandoned any immediate plan of escape. He sat down cross-legged and tossed two healing pills into his mouth.

The concentration of fire poison here was low, at least not enough to threaten him. He would wait until he had returned to his peak condition before making any further plans.

Seven or eight days slowly passed in this sunless underground world.

Qin Han sat cross-legged at the center of the black platform, faint green-white light lingering around him.

Fallen Heart Flame continuously refined and expelled the fire poison within his body, while the surrounding pure fire-attributed energy, so dense it was almost viscous, was drawn into him like a whale swallowing the sea. It transformed into surging dou qi and filled his nearly depleted Qi Whirlpool.

At last, when the final trace of lingering pain had completely subsided and his Qi Whirlpool was once again full and circulating smoothly, Qin Han slowly opened his eyes.

Yun Qianhang still lay there, but he looked even more miserable than he had seven or eight days ago.

The blood-colored spots on his face had spread, his skin was dry as cracked bark, and the rise and fall of his chest was almost imperceptible.

Qin Han guessed that this old bastard had gone all out outside, using some secret technique to forcibly raise his strength to its peak.

The grand formation had been broken, all his efforts had come to nothing, and the old man did not have long to live.

"Old thing," Qin Han said as he stood and stretched his fully recovered body, "your life is pretty tough. You still haven't died?"

"You sharp-tongued brat... When this old man roamed the Black Corner Region, your grandfather was still wetting the bed..."

Gathering his strength, Yun Qianhang's eyes flashed with a trace of satisfaction. "But... it doesn't matter anymore. Trading this broken body of mine... to have a peerless genius of Jia Nan Academy buried with me... it is worth it."

He stared fixedly at Qin Han, his tone carrying a warped satisfaction. "Fallen Heart Flame has ultimately remained with my Fallen Fire Sect. It can be considered the conclusion of what happened back then... Heh..."

Qin Han frowned.

"What do you mean by that?"

He took two steps forward and asked the question that had troubled him most. "A century ago, your Fallen Fire Sect turned into a magma hell overnight. Some said Myriad Stars Flame had gone out of control. Looking at it now, that was not what happened at all, was it?"

"Ha... hahaha..."

Upon hearing this, Yun Qianhang seemed to have heard an enormous joke. His injuries were aggravated, and he coughed up even more dark red, filthy blood.

"Myriad Stars Flame went out of control?"

"A bunch of idiots! My Fallen Fire Sect's Myriad Stars Flame Scripture is so profound—if we could not even handle an Eighth Rank Flame, we would have no business surviving on the Dou Qi Continent!"

Qin Han was not surprised by this outcome. The Fallen Fire Sect playing with fire and getting itself killed had always seemed suspicious after even the slightest scrutiny.

"So the reason the Fallen Fire Sect was destroyed... was this fire poison?"

Qin Han had formed a guess.

Yun Qianhang stared at Qin Han. A trace of struggle appeared in his eyes, but after a moment, he finally spoke.

"Since you brat will not live much longer anyway, there is no harm in telling you."

"That's right. What destroyed my Fallen Fire Sect was the fire poison of the Underground Lava World."

Qin Han nodded slightly. "Then what does that have to do with Fallen Heart Flame of my Jia Nan Academy?"

"Your Jia Nan Academy? Hmph!"

He spat out a mouthful of saliva mixed with fire ash. "Because that Fallen Heart Flame should have belonged to my Fallen Fire Sect!"