Time slipped by, the years hurried past, and in the blink of an eye, more than twenty years had passed.
In a secluded valley ringed by mountains in the Red Peak Mountains of the Southern Wilds, six young men and women in fine robes fought together in formation against their enemies.
With the six of them at its core, they formed a defensive ring around a small mound over a hundred feet high. Their Manifested Spirit Creatures-Blazing Mountain Tigers, Three-Headed Gray Wolves, Rampaging Bears, and the like-formed the outer ring, while beyond them stood packs of wolves condensed from spirit essence through the Summoning Art.
Besieging them was a horde of hunched stone creatures wreathed in flames, their bodies like molten lava. Whenever someone attacked with a sword under their control or slashed into them, scarlet magma splattered out, burning the surrounding grassland into scorched earth.
These were mutated spirit monsters known as lava demons, which could only form near fire-aspected earth veins.
These young men and women were disciples of the Mystic Sun Sect in the Southern Wilds. Answering their sect's call, they had set out together to hone their skills and slay demons, accepting a mission from a nearby mortal kingdom to clear out this valley. They had thought that their combined strength as sect elites would make the task easy, never imagining they would provoke so many enemies at once and find themselves trapped in the valley instead.
Fortunately, three of them were experts at the seventh transformation or higher, and the others were all Inner Disciples whose cultivation had reached at least the middle stage of the human rank. Relying on their formation to defend against the enemy, they were in no immediate danger of losing their lives.
"Watch out, senior brother!"
Amid the fighting, a