Evil Fire Phoenix Ma Hongjun

The fat boy lifted his head, his equally filthy face filled with relief at having survived a disaster.

But when he saw what lay before him, he froze.

Oscar, whom he had chased the whole way, was clinging to the thigh of a strange boy dressed like a hunter, sobbing as if the world were ending.

And all around them, people lay sprawled across the ground.

They were the Flying Divine Pig Group, the very people who had been hunting them.

Every one of them was twitching on the ground, frothing at the mouth, and utterly incapable of fighting.

"W-what... what happened?"

The fat boy's mind went blank.

Hearing his voice, Oscar jerked his head up and pointed at Li Hao through his tears and snot.

"Hongjun! Quick! Come pay your respects to big brother!"

"He saved us! Big brother is like a god descended to the mortal world!"

The fat boy they called Hongjun was Ma Hongjun.

He stared dumbly at Li Hao, who wore an exasperated expression and was desperately trying to pull his leg free.

Then he looked at the enemies lying defeated on the ground.

An unbelievable thought suddenly took shape in his mind.

"Could it be..."

"Could this boy, who looks a few years younger than me, have taken down the entire Flying Divine Pig Group by himself?"

That group included a Soul Elder and several Soul Grandmasters!

Ma Hongjun wasn't stupid.

He immediately figured out what was going on.

The person before him was undoubtedly a peerless expert, hiding his true strength behind a harmless appearance!

He and Oscar, two brothers in adversity, had been driven to the brink while being hunted.

Oscar was being pursued for his Martial Soul.

And he was being hunted because of the damn Evil Fire inside him.

As the Evil Fire's backlash grew more severe, the people in his village had started treating him like a monster and driven him out.

He had thought he was as good as dead.

Now, hope had appeared!

Thump!

Without a moment's hesitation, Ma Hongjun copied Oscar and dropped to his knees on Li Hao's other side.

His posture was even more textbook-perfect than Oscar's.

"Big brother! No, sir! Ancestor!"

"Please, save me too!"

His voice was louder than Oscar's, and he wailed even more miserably.

Li Hao's body went completely rigid.

He hadn't even shaken off one human wad of glue, and now there was another?

A supersized, extra-thick one, at that?

His social-anxiety alarm wasn't just going off anymore.

The air-raid siren had started blaring, shrill enough to pierce his eardrums.

"You two... get off me!"

Li Hao forced the words out through clenched teeth.

He tried to pull his leg free, but the two of them clung to him as if they'd been welded to his body.

The onlookers all around them pointed and whispered.

Every gaze pricked Li Hao in the back like a needle.

He wanted to die.

Right now, he wanted to die.

Just then, a strange, nauseating smell wafted from Ma Hongjun.

It wasn't ordinary body odor.

It was a burnt stench, mixed with desire and restlessness, as if his life force were being consumed in an unnatural blaze.

It was the scent of the Evil Fire.

Li Hao's stomach churned.

Instinctively, he felt an intense disgust for such tainted, impure power.

"I can't save you! Get lost!" he snapped without a trace of courtesy.

"Sir, you must have a way!"

Ma Hongjun sobbed, "This Evil Fire is about to kill me! If this goes on, I'll either explode or turn into a madman who only knows how to vent himself! Please, have mercy!"

"I said, get lost!"

Li Hao was genuinely getting angry.

All he wanted was to quietly obtain a Soul Ring, then go home and live a lazy life with his daughter and Her Majesty the Queen.

Why did he keep running into this kind of nonsense?

He was about to release his Soul Power and forcibly shake the two of them off.

But at the instant he was about to activate it,

the Karma Rod in his hand, disguised as a fire poker, suddenly grew faintly warm.

The wave of heat was weak, vanishing in an instant.

But Li Hao felt it clearly.

This divine artifact, which did nothing except fish and fight, had actually reacted to the fat boy?

He paused.

[ Ding! ]

The system notification rang out at just the right moment in his mind.

[Special bloodline source detected.]

[The target possesses a trace of exceptionally thin yet incomparably pure True Phoenix Fire bloodline.]

[This bloodline is being severely contaminated and suppressed by the "Evil Fire" acquired after birth. If the Evil Fire continues to grow, it will completely devour the Phoenix bloodline, reducing the target to its slave.]

[If the Evil Fire can be purged and the bloodline refined, this Martial Soul will have immense potential. It may return to its ancestral form and evolve into a true top-tier Beast Martial Soul—the Fire Phoenix.]

The flood of information made Li Hao's head ring.

Evil Fire Phoenix Ma Hongjun.

So his Martial Soul's origin was a true phoenix.

It had just been corrupted.

"Purge the Evil Fire?"

An absurd thought suddenly sprang from the depths of his heart, making it pound wildly.

If this rod could fish up good fortune and causal marks,

then...

"Could I treat the Evil Fire inside this fat boy as a bad fish and forcibly fish it out?"

Once the thought appeared, he couldn't suppress it.

It was as if a door to a whole new world had opened before him.

Li Hao looked at Ma Hongjun, still wailing on the ground. His disgust had unknowingly faded.

In its place was a kind of curiosity... the sort one felt upon discovering a new experimental subject.

He cleared his throat.

"Stop crying."

His voice wasn't loud, but Oscar and Ma Hongjun's sobs stopped abruptly.

Both raised their heads in unison, looking at him with hopeful eyes.

"Helping you isn't out of the question," Li Hao said slowly.

"Really?!" Ma Hongjun was overjoyed.

"But."

Li Hao changed tack. "I never make a losing deal. What can you offer in exchange?"

Ma Hongjun's joy froze on his face.

He felt around his body. Apart from a few ragged clothes, he had nothing.

"I... I don't have any money." He lowered his head in dejection.

Oscar hurriedly interjected, "Big brother, I do! I'll give you all my sausages!"

"I don't want your sausages." Li Hao rejected the offer with a look of disgust.

He looked at Ma Hongjun and pondered for a moment.

"How about this: I'll put your life on my tab for now."

"When I come to collect, you won't refuse."

It was practically a deed of sale.

But to Ma Hongjun, that was no problem at all.

"You can have my life ten times over!"

He agreed without hesitation, afraid Li Hao might change his mind.

"Good."

Li Hao nodded.

"You, sit down and don't move."

He pointed to the open space in front of him.

Ma Hongjun immediately let go, then scrambled over and sat cross-legged where he'd been told, like a schoolboy waiting for his teacher to hand out candy.

Oscar also edged closer, his peach-blossom eyes wide with curiosity.

The Soul Masters around them craned their necks. They, too, wanted to see what miraculous method this mysterious boy would use to treat an Evil Fire problem that even a Soul Saint couldn't solve.

Li Hao ignored every gaze fixed on him.

He stepped forward and raised the ordinary-looking fishing rod above Ma Hongjun's head.

"Close your eyes, clear your mind, and don't resist at all."

Ma Hongjun hurriedly did as he was told.

Li Hao took a deep breath.

With a flick of his wrist, the fishing line, formed of light, silently dropped down.

The hook hovered three inches above Ma Hongjun's crown.

Then Li Hao closed his eyes.

He sank his entire mind into the Karma Rod.

This time, the target he locked onto wasn't good fortune or causality.

It was the tainted, restless power inside Ma Hongjun, burning with a desire to destroy... the Evil Fire!

"Get... out!"

He gave a low shout in his mind and jerked the fishing rod upward!

Buzz!

Before Oscar and all the onlookers' horrified eyes, an unbelievable scene unfolded.

A strand of blackish-red flame, seemingly alive, was forcibly drawn out of the top of Ma Hongjun's head!

The flame twisted and struggled wildly on the hook, letting out silent shrieks and radiating a chilling, evil aura.

"My heavens..."

"What is that thing?!"

"He... he fished a ball of fire out of his head?!"

Gasps rose one after another.

Ma Hongjun's body trembled violently.

He felt the sinister power that had long plagued him, constantly burning away at his reason, being roughly dragged out by an invisible hand!

A sense of relief he had never known swept through his whole body!

Li Hao didn't stop.

He kept pulling with his wrist, drawing in the fishing line tighter and tighter.

More blackish-red flames poured out of Ma Hongjun's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, gathering on the hook to form a writhing ball of Evil Fire about the size of a fist.

The instant the last wisp of blackish-red flame was pulled free,

a clear, sonorous phoenix cry rang out from inside Ma Hongjun without warning!

A pure, brilliant golden flame burst from his body!

It engulfed him completely.

Li Hao looked at the Evil Fire still struggling on the hook and didn't hesitate.

With a casual flick, he sealed the ball of Evil Fire inside a special jade bottle Cailin had given him.

Once he had finished, he turned and tried to leave.

The trouble was over. Time to make a run for it.

But as soon as he turned, two pairs of arms wrapped around his legs again.

This time, it was Ma Hongjun, wreathed in golden flames, and Oscar, who had been left completely dumbfounded.

"Big brother! You're my reborn parents!"

"Big Brother! Take us with you! We'll work like oxen and horses for you!"

The two men were more worked up than the other, each throwing himself into it with all his might.

A vein bulged at Li Hao's temple.

Again?

Would this never end?

"Get lost!"

At the end of his tether, he kicked each of the two sticky pests away.

"Don't follow me!"

Before the words had even faded, his figure flickered, instantly turning into a blur and vanishing deep in the dense forest.