Over the following days, the sky above the valley remained shrouded by scorching black flames. The trees on the surrounding peaks had first been frozen by the chill of the Nine-Headed Heavenly Serpent's magic core, and were now roasted by the black flames.
Under the alternating extremes of cold and heat, vast swathes of vegetation instantly withered away.
At the same time, after several days of Feng'er's refining, scarcely anything remained of the enormous serpent corpse before them. Only a fist-sized mass of bright red blood floated where the corpse had been, emitting a faint pressure.
Meanwhile, a small black mountain had appeared in the valley below, entirely formed from the ashes left behind after the Nine-Headed Heavenly Serpent's corpse had been refined.
"What a pity. If all this blood were essence blood, that would have been perfect."
Feng'er gazed at the blood before her and sighed helplessly.
The blood before her was not the Nine-Headed Heavenly Serpent's essence blood, but merely blood that had remained in the corpse's heart.
As for its essence blood, she had not found even a trace of it within the serpent's corpse.
It had likely evaporated completely over the long years.
Even after refining it for so long, she had found only this fist-sized mass of blood in the heart, blood that had not yet entirely evaporated.
However, while this blood was not essence blood, the energy contained within it far surpassed that of ordinary blood.
After considering it for a while, Feng Qing'er concluded that the blood had been located in the heart, extremely close to where the essence blood had been.
Thus, when the essence blood dissipated, it had absorbed some of the vital essence it released and undergone slight changes without anyone realizing it.
"Ah, at least we got some blood