Song Wen meditated and regulated his breathing for three days, restoring both his spiritual power and mental state to their peak.
Then, he took out a jade casket three feet wide.
When the jade casket was opened, there was a bowl-sized lotus inside. Beneath it was a three-foot stalk, with a jade-white lotus root at its end.
Song Wen snapped off the flower, plucked a crystal-clear lotus petal, and placed it in his mouth.
The seemingly delicate petal turned into a scorching molten stream the instant it touched his tongue, like red-hot liquid steel surging violently down his throat.
"Ugh—!"
A pained groan involuntarily escaped Song Wen's mouth.
Once the Jadeglow Lotus entered his stomach, it was as though he had swallowed a volcano on the verge of eruption, clutching all his internal organs within a blazing-red furnace.
The pure, violent heat seemed poised to vaporize his insides in an instant.
Yet Song Wen paid it no heed. He plucked another lotus petal and put it into his mouth.
The third petal.
The fourth petal.
Until all the petals, the stamens, the sepals... the entire lotus had been swallowed into his stomach.
Boom—
The volcano erupted completely. Heat exploded within him, surging through his organs, limbs, bones, meridians, dantian... every part of his body.
His flesh gave off unbearable sizzling sounds, as though it would be utterly incinerated and turned to charcoal the very next moment.
The skin across his body instantly turned crimson. Countless tiny blood vessels ruptured under the high heat, beads of blood seeping out only to immediately evaporate into a scarlet blood mist that shrouded his entire body.
Rolling blood mist, carrying terrifying heat, erupted from all around him, making the surrounding air twist and scald.
The ground began to melt, and the pavilion began to