"Besides, she doesn't have even a trace of Soul Power. In this unfamiliar place, where could she possibly run?"
The scene continued on the Sky Screen.
The young master in the blue robe waved his hand, signaling the servants behind him to withdraw.
He bent down, his tone growing gentler. "Don't be afraid, miss. This is Skywater City, in Zhao State."
"I see you're all alone, with nowhere to turn, and your stomach's growling with hunger. Why don't you come back to my residence with me and have a proper meal?"
"Once you've eaten your fill, I'll send someone to help you find the way home. How does that sound?"
At the words "a proper meal," a flicker of hesitation crossed Cui Hua's eyes.
She glanced at the young master in blue. He looked refined and well-mannered, and his clothes were so fine that he probably wasn't a bad person.
More importantly, the aroma of steamed buns kept drifting into her nose. She was terribly hungry; her stomach felt as though it were burning.
"R-really... you'll feed me?" Cui Hua asked timidly.
"Of course. A gentleman's word is as good as gold."
The young master in blue smiled and held out his hand. "My home is just a little farther ahead. Come along."
Cui Hua hesitated, but in the end, she climbed to her feet.
She didn't take his hand. Instead, she clutched her battered wooden bowl tightly and followed cautiously behind him.
Half an hour later, Cui Hua followed the young master in blue into a sprawling mansion.
The mansion's pavilions, towers, rock gardens, and flowing streams dazzled her eyes.
She was led into a side room.
Before long, the table was laden with roast chicken, roast duck, and all sorts of exquisite pastries.
Cui Hua had never seen so much delicious food in her entire life. She didn't care about appearances and grabbed a greasy chicken leg with her bare hand, stuffing it straight into her mouth.
The young master in blue sat opposite her, watching with a beaming smile as she wolfed down the food.
Then he thoughtfully poured Cui Hua a cup of tea.
"Slow down. Don't choke. Have a drink to wash it down."
Cui Hua took the teacup and gulped it down.
"Thank you, young master. You're such a good person..." Cui Hua mumbled her thanks through a mouthful of food.
But before she could finish, she suddenly felt dizzy.
Her vision began to blur, and everything seemed to double.
The half-eaten chicken leg slipped from her hand and fell onto the wooden table.
"Young master, I'm so dizzy..." Cui Hua tried to stand, only to find that she had no strength left in her body.
The young master in blue slowly rose. The gentle smile vanished from his face, replaced by a lecherous leer.
He walked over to Cui Hua and lifted her chin with two fingers.
"Since you've eaten my food and drunk my tea, you belong to me now."
"Becoming a personal maid in my Zhao Mansion is a blessing you'd be lucky to earn in several lifetimes, you country bumpkin."
Tears spilled from Cui Hua's eyes in terror.
She tried to scream for help, but only a faint whimper escaped her throat.
She struggled with all her might, but her body was limp and boneless, slumped over the chair like a puddle of mud.
The young master in blue sneered, scooped Cui Hua up in his arms, and turned toward the bed in the inner room.
Bang!
The servants outside shut the side room's door tight.
Douluo Continent, Shrek Academy.
Ma Hongjun's eyes were bloodshot, and his whole body trembled.
"Bastard! I'll kill him!"
A burst of purplish-red flames erupted from the Fatty's body, and the surrounding air grew scorching hot in an instant.
Ma Hongjun punched wildly at the sky, tears and snot streaming down his face.
Although he and Cui Hua had already broken up, watching someone who had once been his woman fall victim to such despicable tricks made his heart feel as if it were being carved apart by a knife.
Tang San grabbed the Fatty by the arm and shouted, "Fatty! Calm down!"
"This happened in the Renegade Immortal World. What good does it do to go berserk here?"
Xiao Wu was so frightened that she hid behind Tang San. She stared at the closed door on the Sky Screen, her little face full of sympathy and lingering fear.
"Why are people in that world so awful..." Xiao Wu murmured.
Dai Mubai sighed, feeling a wave of helplessness wash over him.
This was the price of having no power.
In that utterly unfamiliar higher-dimensional world, a commoner with no means of defending themself could meet a fate even more miserable than being eaten alive by a beast.
At that moment, the common people across Douluo Continent also sank into deep silence and panic.
Just as everyone was feeling furious and helpless over what had happened to Cui Hua,
the screen in the middle of the Sky Screen suddenly began to shake violently.
Yan, a fifty-two-level Soul King from Spirit Hall's Golden Generation, stood at the edge of a volcano's crater.
He was already completely surrounded by blinding firelight and thick black smoke.
The dense smoke billowed continuously from the enormous crater ahead, carrying the pungent smell of sulfur.
The temperature here was frighteningly high.
Even through the screen, the viewers across Douluo Continent seemed to feel the scorching heat rushing toward them.
Spirit City, the open-air training grounds behind Pope Palace.
Sunlight fell across the hard granite ground, but next to the searing heat pouring out of the Sky Screen, today's sunshine seemed insignificant.
Xie Yue stared intently at the screen, his palms damp with sweat.
He stepped forward, his brows knitted tightly, and pointed at the churning black smoke in the scene. "The conditions there are far too harsh."
"Look at the stones along the edge. They've all been baked dark red by the heat, and some of them are already partly molten."
"Yan's a fire attribute Soul Master, but in an extreme environment like this, deep inside the earth, I'm afraid his body won't be able to take it."
Hu Liena stood to one side, biting her lower lip with her hands clasped before her chest, her knuckles gone pale.
Her foxlike eyes, usually brimming with allure, were now filled with worry.
"Yan's Martial Soul is the Flame Lord. A place like that should suit him perfectly, shouldn't it?" Hu Liena sounded as though she were trying to reassure herself, her voice low.
"He's spent years training around volcanoes in Spirit Hall's Mimicry Cultivation Environment. He should be able to adapt."
Bibi Dong, standing at the very front, gave a slight nod, a hint of approval in her gaze.
She lightly tapped her scepter against the ground, the clear sound ringing out.
"Liena is right. Although the volcano's crater is dangerous, fire elements are abundant there." Bibi Dong's voice remained calm, carrying the majesty of someone in control of everything.
"Yan's Soul Power will recover more than twice as fast there as it would under normal conditions."
"Besides, that extreme environment can bring out the earth and fire attributes in his Martial Soul to the fullest."
"Even if he encounters a powerful enemy, he can use the terrain to his advantage. If he can't win, he can still retreat unharmed."
"That's why I told him to train more."
Hearing His Holiness the Pope say this, Hu Liena and Xie Yue relaxed a little.
But in the very next moment,
when Yan followed the steep rock wall down to the bottom of the volcano's crater, the camera slowly zoomed in.
The entire training ground erupted in a collective gasp.
It was an enormous underground cavern, with a hundred-zhang-wide lake of lava in the middle.
Glug, glug.
The viscous lava constantly bubbled, and each burst sent sparks flying.
And right in the middle of that churning lake of lava, a round, pitch-black stone was floating.
A bald, burly man in a bright red robe sat cross-legged on it.
Xie Yue's eyes widened, and he cried out, "How is that possible? That man is sitting in the lava!"
"He hasn't even summoned his Martial Soul, and he has no Soul Rings protecting him?" Hu Liena was just as shocked, her small mouth hanging open as if she were looking at some monster defying the laws of nature.
Even Bibi Dong, who was usually so composed, had a drastic change of expression.
Disbelief flickered in her beautiful eyes.
As a level-ninety-nine pinnacle powerhouse, Bibi Dong understood better than anyone how terrifying molten rock deep beneath the earth was.
Its temperature was enough to melt refined steel in an instant.
Even she wouldn't dare sit unprotected in the middle of churning lava like that burly man without using a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Skill to shield herself.
The most hair-raising part was that, with every breath the bald, burly man took, the raging lava around him turned into wisps of red mist that streamed straight into his body through his nostrils!
"What realm is that bald brute at? What kind of monster is he?" Bibi Dong's heart was rocked by stormy waves. She even began to doubt what the pinnacle strength she was so proud of would amount to in the Renegade Immortal World.
Heaven Dou Empire, the central plaza of Blazing Fire Academy.
A huge statue of flames stood in the center of the plaza, surrounded by more than a hundred students and teachers in red uniforms.
Huo Wushuang, captain of Blazing Fire Academy's team, stood with his arms crossed, staring intently at the Sky Screen overhead.
His short, fiery-red hair fluttered in the wind, but his expression was grave.
"How terrifyingly strong the fire element is." Huo Wushuang swallowed, his voice a little hoarse.
"Judging by the color and viscosity of that lava, it must be fire from the deepest layers of the earth."
"If an ordinary Soul Master got within ten meters of the edge, their clothes would catch fire and their lungs would be scorched dry in an instant."
Huo Wu, standing beside him, was just as stunned.
Her voluptuous figure was wrapped in a tight school uniform, but she had no interest in the gazes of the male students around her.
"Brother, have you noticed? The fire elements in that cavern have become almost tangible." Huo Wu pointed a slender finger at the red mist produced as the burly man breathed.
"That bald man hasn't released his Martial Soul at all, yet he can directly absorb those violent fire toxins into his body."
"That completely defies everything we know about how Soul Masters absorb energy from the outside world!"
The dean of Blazing Fire Academy, a Soul Saint in his seventies, stroked his beard and sighed again and again.
"I've spent most of my life studying fire-attribute Martial Souls. I'd always thought that few in the Heaven Dou Empire could match me when it came to playing with fire." The dean shook his head, awe filling his eyes.
"But if I sat in the middle of that lava lake for even the time it takes to burn a stick of incense, I'd probably be reduced to bones and ashes, even if I used every trump card I had."
Hearing the dean say this, the students around him sucked in sharp breaths.
Huo Wu gritted her teeth and said, unconvinced, "Are the people in the Renegade Immortal World made of some kind of special material?"
"Why aren't they afraid of fire toxins attacking their hearts?"
"No, look closely." Huo Wushuang narrowed his eyes and pointed at the red bead above the bald man's head.
"There's a bead floating above his head, radiating red light."
"I bet he can sit safely in the lava only because that treasure is protecting him."
"Without that bead, he'd definitely burn to ashes too."
Huo Wushuang's deduction made the people from Blazing Fire Academy feel a little better.
If he was relying on an external object, then he himself wasn't all that frightening.
Fasinuo Province, the training field at Shrek Academy.
Ma Hongjun, who had just been standing up for Cui Hua, was now drawn to Yan's point of view on the Sky Screen.
As a Soul Master with the top-tier fire-attribute Martial Soul Evil Fire Phoenix, the Fatty was more sensitive to flames than ordinary people.
"Good heavens, that's a great place!" Ma Hongjun wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth, staring at the lava lake with shining eyes.
"If I got to train there for ten days or half a month, my Evil Fire would definitely become several grades purer."
"That kid Yan from Spirit Hall is one lucky bastard."
Dai Mubai sneered from the side. "Fatty, take a closer look."
"That place isn't playing around. If your puny Evil Fire fell into that lava lake, it probably wouldn't even make a splash."
Tang San also nodded, his eyes shimmering with purple light.
"Boss Dai is right," Tang San said, calmly analyzing the situation.
"This place is completely enclosed, so the fire toxins can't escape. After building up for years, the temperature would be enough to melt Hidden Weapons instantly."
"But what I'm most curious about is the bald man sitting in the middle of the lava."
Hearing Tang San's words, everyone turned their attention to Yu Xiaogang.
Yu Xiaogang stood with his hands behind his back, still wearing that air of unfathomable wisdom.
He cleared his throat, a glint of confidence flashing in his eyes.
"Xiao San, there's no need to be surprised. This is actually very easy to explain."
Yu Xiaogang paced back and forth and began his theoretical analysis.
"First, we need to be clear about one thing: the human body absolutely cannot withstand the high temperature of lava. That's an iron law on Douluo Continent and in every other world."
"That bald, burly man isn't sitting there because he's incredibly powerful."
Yu Xiaogang held out his hand and pointed at the red bead on the Sky Screen.
"The key is that bead. It's definitely a top-grade defensive Soul Tool, perhaps even a divine artifact."
"The red light it emits blocks the lava's heat and fire toxins."
"And the bald man's breathing, which looks as if he's drawing in fire elements, is really just an illusion created with the help of that treasure."
Yu Xiaogang turned around and addressed the students before him with absolute certainty. "Look at the bald man's build. He's burly, but he doesn't have a single well-defined muscle. In fact, he's rather pudgy."
"On Douluo Continent, someone like that would be no more than a somewhat strong blacksmith."
"Yan is a fifty-two-level Soul King with the top-tier Beast Martial Soul, the Flame Lord."
"As long as Yan attacks and breaks through the bead's defenses, the lava will swallow that bald man in an instant."
After hearing the Grandmaster's detailed analysis, everyone from Shrek Academy nodded, convinced that his reasoning was flawless.
Ma Hongjun slapped his chest and said, "The Grandmaster is right!"
"That bald guy was just a fraud, using a treasure to put on a show. Just watch Yan teach him a lesson!"
Renegade Immortal World, at the bottom of a volcanic crater.
Yan wiped the hot sweat from his forehead, his gaze fixed fervently on the red bead atop the burly bald man's head.
He had also seen the man breathe in and out the volcanic fumes, and it had startled him.
But he quickly reached the same conclusion as Huo Wushuang and Yu Xiaogang.
"I knew it. How could an ordinary person possibly bathe in lava?"
"So that glowing bead is protecting him."
In Yan's eyes, the bald man had not the slightest trace of Soul Power about him. He was relying entirely on that treasure to hold up.
If Yan could snatch the bead and take it back to the Spirit Hall, it would be a great achievement. Nana would surely see him in a new light, too.
At the thought, Yan's courage swelled.