Mo Xie noticed the azure flames around the Bifang Bird change again, turning into wisps of red fire streaked with black.
He paused. These flames looked remarkably like the Heavenly Tribulation Fire he had seen before.
The vines seemed to be absorbing the sphere, drawing in the Bifang Bird's fire energy within it.
As the azure flames slowly drained away, the Bifang Bird they cradled began to change once more.
Its dreamlike feathers of azure and red started to wither and fade as the flames ebbed, like autumn leaves about to fall.
What's going on? Could it be...
Before coming here, Mo Xie had done some research. According to the legends of Dunhuang, a god had once guarded this land.
But that god had fallen countless millennia ago. Its death had brought a catastrophe that destroyed Dunhuang's once-brilliant civilization and turned the land into the scorched place it was now.
Could the Bifang Bird have been Dunhuang's guardian god? More precisely, its guardian Totem Beast!
Perhaps the Bifang Bird's body had perished back then, but its soul had possessed immense power.
Mo Xie could sense an extraordinarily powerful soul force inside the vine-wrapped sphere. That must have been what kept it alive.
And the tree buried deep within the Northern Corner of the Scorching Plains, with roots like these, had to be the Star Language Sky Tree that nurtured the Flame Belle at the center of the flat-topped mountain.
That meant the Bifang Bird's soul might have served as nourishment. Its remaining wood-attribute power had become the Star Language Sky Tree, a vessel for nurturing life, while its fire element nurtured the embryo.
Until, at last, a fire-elemental spirit of heaven and earth was born... the Flame Belle!
And Jiang Feng had said that this Flame Belle would be the