Amid the erupting lava, a monster wreathed in blazing flames strode out step by step. The aura bursting from his body was even stronger than that of the previous Divine Aberration.
He had four hooves, his entire body encased in scale armor entwined with blazing flames. Fire flickered in his eyes, and a pair of flame-wreathed horns rose from his head.
"You dared steal my clan's sacred relic. I will make it so that you can neither live nor die."
With his furious roar, the gray mist all around surged violently toward him. In a short time, his aura rose without cease, only stopping when it reached the true threshold—the peak of the True Immortal realm.
At this moment, he was only one step away from that realm: the Taiyi Mystic Immortal realm.
He was the Divine Aberration, Flame Venerable.
He had once been a supreme prodigy of the Kui Ox Clan, but was later infected by aberrant qi and turned into an aberration. He worshipped the God of Aberrations.
As his four hooves shifted slightly, his body vanished into the air.
Elsewhere, on a stretch of flat ground permeated with death qi, a withered figure sat cross-legged.
There were no decorations around him—only dense death qi. Not even True Immortals could remain here for long.
There was not a trace of flesh on this withered figure's body. It was merely a layer of skin wrapped around a skeleton.
His eyes were tightly shut, his sockets sunken, his complexion deathly pale without the slightest hint of color.
Yet in the next moment, he slowly opened his eyes. Death qi churned around him, while streaks of blue flames ignited across the earth. These flames were the fires of the underworld.
They seemed to have come from the true Nine Netherworlds.
He