Pale Flame

A churning, sickly-sweet taste of blood still stirred faintly in Su Chen's chest.

Su Chen sat cross-legged on the cold floor. Each breath tugged at the needle-like pain deep within his soul.

That mad experiment, an attempt to steal the authority of the gods, had struck like a merciless hammer, shattering all his arrogance and conceit.

The backlash from the Heavenly Flames had made him realize, with unprecedented clarity, the vast gulf between himself and those true wonders of heaven and earth.

But he didn't wallow in the shadow of failure.

On the contrary, his brush with death had been like a basin of bone-chilling water, dousing the false flame greed had kindled in his heart and leaving his mind calmer and clearer than ever.

His consciousness sank once more into that thoroughly wrecked mental space.

The ancient Stone Platform's light had dimmed to the extreme. It looked like an old crystal that had exhausted all its energy, its surface webbed with tiny cracks.

Su Chen's consciousness hovered before the Stone Platform.

His gaze no longer rested on the complete data model representing Bone Spirit Cold Flame.

That thing was poison to him now.

"Review."

A feeble thought passed through him.

The dim Stone Platform flickered faintly.

Streams of data made up of runes slowly appeared across its surface, recording the entire failed experiment.

From constructing the model to injecting energy, then rejection, conflict, and finally annihilation.

Every detail appeared before him with precise, merciless clarity.

Su Chen's consciousness stared fixedly at the data streams, missing nothing.

He saw the energy structure of the Rock Fire Seed begin to collapse from within the instant it touched the Bone Spirit Cold Flame model.

He saw that the fusion rate between the two energies had never exceeded one-thousandth.

His reasoning had been wrong from the very beginning.

He had tried to "overwrite" it—to use a higher-level soul to forcibly replace a lower-level vessel.

That was a method only a god could use.

And he was merely a mortal.

A mortal... who dared to steal the authority of the gods.

"I was wrong... all of it was wrong..."

Su Chen's consciousness murmured to itself.

Amid the countless lines of data, his gaze finally settled on a short stretch of code.

It represented the most basic, yet most fundamental, of Bone Spirit Cold Flame's countless traits.

"Energy property: extreme cold."

He stared at the code. Deep within his originally dim consciousness, a faint light suddenly reignited.

It grew brighter and brighter.

A brand-new idea, even more reckless yet far more feasible, sprang fiercely to life in his mind!

He couldn't copy the sun.

That was the realm of the gods.

But...

Perhaps he didn't have to copy the sun itself.

Instead, he might find a way to borrow a ray of its light from that distant sun!

"Extract property!"

At this new command, the entire Stone Platform shuddered as if injected with its last trace of energy!

The complete Bone Spirit Cold Flame data model began to break apart by force.

Rune chains representing complex properties like "dominance," "spirit," and "devouring" were stripped away one by one and discarded.

It was like the cruelest destruction of a priceless treasure.

Su Chen's spiritual power drained away like floodwaters released from a dam.

At last, every extraneous property had been removed.

Only one remained.

A pure energy model, made up of the simplest runes and representing the very concept of "extreme cold"!

It had neither form nor substance, yet radiated an essence cold enough to freeze the soul.

Having done all this, Su Chen didn't pause for even a moment.

From his storage space, he retrieved a material he had prepared long ago.

It was a bottle of Rock Fire Seed he had purified to the utmost.

Its energy was gentle and pure. It was the highest-quality Beast Flame in his possession, and the final "vessel" he had prepared for this experiment.

An orange-red flame appeared quietly atop the Stone Platform, radiating a gentle glow.

It was like an innocent, ignorant creature, gazing blankly at the invisible phantom above it, which exuded a deadly chill.

"Seep in!"

Su Chen issued the command again, his voice carrying a resolve he hadn't even realized he possessed.

This time, he wouldn't force the energy in and overwrite the flame.

Instead, like spring rain soaking into the earth, he would carefully... seep it in!

The invisible model of extreme cold moved.

Like the finest ice needle, it bore an irresistible will as it slowly pierced into the orange-red Rock Fire Seed below!

There was no earth-shaking boom.

No clash of energies.

The instant they touched, time seemed to slow.

Su Chen held his breath, focusing every bit of his consciousness on the flame.

It remained the size of a fist, hovering quietly.

But its surface began to change in a bizarre way.

Strands of pale chill, like living vines, struggled to crawl inch by inch out from within the flame!

The orange-red fire began to tremble violently!

It was no longer steady or quiet.

Like a living creature with poison injected into its body, it endured unimaginable agony and torment!

Its color flashed wildly between orange-red and pale.

Atop the Stone Platform, it was at times as hot as a furnace, and at others as cold as a frozen pool!

"Hold steady!"

The veins stood out at Su Chen's temples.

He focused completely, his spiritual power concentrated to the utmost, like a tightrope walker crossing a chasm ten thousand feet deep with a balance pole in hand.

In his left hand, he held the weight of extreme cold.

In his right, the weight of Scorching Heat.

He had to find that one-in-ten-thousand point of wonder where the two ends of the scale could achieve perfect balance!

If even a little too much extreme cold was added, the flame would burst from within and go out completely.

If even a little too little was added, it wouldn't change the flame's nature, and he would repeat his previous failure.

Once.

Twice.

Ten times.

Su Chen kept making adjustments, and each one tore at his spiritual power.

His face had long since turned from pale to a waxy yellow, utterly devoid of blood.

Even his mental space began to shudder violently from the battle raging on the microscopic level!

The Stone Platform hummed, and the void around it twisted!

The flame's struggle grew ever more violent.

Its form twisted wildly, at times swelling into a huge, ghastly pale orb, then suddenly shrinking and bursting into countless blazing orange-red sparks.

Just as Su Chen felt his mind was about to be drained dry and his consciousness began to blur, the struggling flame neared total collapse.

He found it!

Now!

"Sever!"

A decisive thought struck down!

He forcibly cut off his connection to the extreme cold model!

The twisting, struggling flame atop the Stone Platform abruptly went still.

All its frenzy, all its conflict, all its struggle came to a halt in that one ten-thousandth of an instant.

Then...

A miracle happened.

The flame's color began to change irreversibly.

Its once-pure orange-red rapidly faded, like a sand painting washed away by the tide.

In its place came a strange pale hue, tinged with the sheen of metal.

Its shape steadied as well.

It floated quietly above the Stone Platform, no longer flickering or flashing.

It was a full size smaller than the Rock Fire Seed had been, no bigger than an infant's fist.

Yet the aura it gave off had undergone an earth-shaking transformation!

A contradictory yet powerful force spread from the tiny pale flame.

Its outer flames exuded wisps of chill visible to the naked eye.

Wherever that chill passed, even the empty space seemed to crystallize with a thin layer of ice.

But directly above the flame, the space twisted violently and irregularly under the astonishing heat contained in its core!

A new flame had been born: cold without, hot within, bearing a trace of the true essence of a Heavenly Flame.

"Ha... ha..."

Su Chen abruptly withdrew from his mental space.

He collapsed onto the bed as if he'd just been hauled out of the water, gasping for breath. Violent dizziness made his vision go black in waves.

The aftereffects of overusing his spiritual power surged over him like a tide.

But he couldn't spare them a thought.

There wasn't a trace of exhaustion on his face.

Only an uncontrollable, nearly crazed joy!

He'd succeeded!

He really had succeeded!

With a trembling hand, he summoned the new flame from his mental space into the real world with a single thought!

Hum.

A pale flame appeared out of nowhere in his palm.

The instant it appeared, the temperature inside the dilapidated hut plummeted!

A thin layer of frost formed across the water vat in the corner, visibly spreading over its surface.

Yet Su Chen felt not the slightest chill in his palm.

He could clearly sense the pure, scorching core wrapped beneath that icy pale exterior!

This was the first true trump card in his hands!

It was what gave him the confidence to face that smiling tiger from the Aoba Clan three days from now!

It was his first "masterpiece" offered to this world!

Su Chen gazed at the quietly burning pale flame in his palm. After a long while, he slowly spoke three words.

"From now on, your name will be..."

"Pale Flame."