At the summit of Red Maple Ridge, within the stronghold formation established by those before him, Liang Zhaohuang had expected to find a luxuriant scene of spiritual herbs carpeting the ground and spiritual plants growing in abundance.
After all, no one had harvested it for nearly a thousand years. The spiritual herbs and plants growing here should have run wild long ago.
Yet reality gave him a vicious slap across the face.
All around him, the ground was dry and cracked, like land that had suffered drought for countless years. From the fissures splitting the earth, billowing heat and smoke seeped out and drifted slowly through the air.
Liang Zhaohuang extended his Spiritual Sense into those cracks and saw massive amounts of fire-element spiritual energy gathered within, nearly solidifying as it flowed through them.
Activating his Five Elements Dharma Eye, he looked down and saw a terrifying quantity of fire-element spiritual energy pooling, stagnating, and blazing beneath the dry, fractured ground. It was even more horrifying than the enormous "bonfire" he had observed outside Red Maple Ridge.
The terrifying, immense amount of fire-element spiritual energy accumulated underground constantly flowed toward the summit of Red Maple Ridge, toward the center of the stronghold. Thus, the farther upward he went and the deeper he entered the stronghold, the more fire-element spiritual energy gathered and surged beneath the ground—and the more terrifying it became.
Liang Zhaohuang's expression changed. At that moment, he even felt as though he were standing atop a volcano on the verge of eruption, or atop a keg of gunpowder about to explode.
And he still had to head for the crater, for the heart of the powder keg. The Millennium Sacred Heart Fruit was at the very peak of Red Maple Ridge, at the center of the stronghold—the destination