An Unexpected Turn

Yet the Fallen Heart Flame did not even try to dodge. It chose the most brutal approach and took the attack head-on.

It rammed its rock-hard head straight into the enormous palm.

Sparks flew and lightning spread as they collided, making that instant look like the end of the world.

In the end, the Fallen Heart Flame merely shook its aching head and shed a few flame scales.

The moment those scales of flame fell to the ground, they erupted into roaring fires, reducing everything within ten meters to nothingness.

Still, Fei Tian's side had strength in numbers. Coupled with their distinctive coordination in battle, they managed to suppress the Fallen Heart Flame.

Their goal this time, however, was clearly not to destroy it outright, but to weaken it until less than a tenth of its strength remained. Only then would it be easier to refine and absorb.

For a while, they remained locked in this stalemate. As time slowly passed,

the Fallen Heart Flame's movements gradually slowed, and the heat radiating from its flames was no longer as scorching as it had been at the start.

Even its body, originally hundreds of meters long, had shrunk somewhat.

"Hold on. It should only have twenty percent of its stamina left now. We should be able to wrap this up in another two hours or so," Fei Tian reminded them, still not relaxing in the slightest.

Although the Heavenly Flame was already extremely weak, they still had to guard against its dying counterattack.

After all, it was an embodiment of one of the most violent forces between heaven and earth. If it decided to fight until the fish died and the net tore, their side could very well suffer casualties.

Yet the very thing they feared came to pass. They had already reached the final stage, but one Dou Emperor elder had exhausted himself too much. A momentary lapse gave the Fallen Heart Flame an opening to strike back.

The Fallen Heart Flame acted decisively. Once it seized that opening, it immediately chose to self-destruct, burning its essence without the slightest hesitation.

In an instant, its hundreds-of-meters-long body turned into masses of molten fireballs that exploded in every direction.

The entire sky was immediately blanketed in blazing meteors, and countless streaks of fire rained down in a dense barrage.

"This is bad! It's targeting the students on the outer perimeter! Hurry back and protect them!" Su Qian immediately saw through the Fallen Heart Flame's intentions.

It wanted to divide its power into countless fiery meteors, targeting the weak students in the distance.

It meant to draw the elders back to defend them while its true body hid somewhere inconspicuous, ready to slip away at any moment.

The students had never expected such an unprovoked calamity to befall them. They had already evacuated more than ten kilometers away.

Yet the Fallen Heart Flame's strength seemed to exceed their expectations. Even from that far away, it could still hurl fireballs at them.

Since almost all the stronger elders were fighting at the front, only a few elders around the Dou Wang level had remained behind.

And almost every meteor in this fiery shower had enough power to kill a Dou Wang.

Looking at the students caught in the attack, Su Qian was reluctant to let the Fallen Heart Flame's true body escape just like that. Still, the students' safety came first in his heart.

As for his promise to Qin Yun and the others, he could only apologize. At worst, he would offer them some other compensation later.

Before they could rush back to help, however, Qin Yun and Feng Qing'er had already joined forces to block the shower of fiery meteors.

"Leave these fireballs to me. Keep looking for the Heavenly Flame's true body!" Qin Yun called across to them. A moment later, he unleashed Three Thousand Lightning Movement and Three Thousand Lightning Illusory Body simultaneously.

Every fireball hurtling toward them was blasted apart with a single punch. In the blink of an eye, he had already destroyed more than a dozen small and medium-sized fireballs.

Feng Qing'er struggled a little more, but she still managed to deal with several fireballs.

The price, however, was that her ribbons were countered by the fire element, and more than half of them had already burned away.

Watching her weapon being destroyed, Feng Qing'er merely frowned before continuing to intercept the fireballs.

To her, these things were only worldly possessions. It was better to carry out Qin Yun's instructions first.

If they missed out on this Heavenly Flame, who knew when they would find another?

Seeing that the situation was gradually coming back under control, Su Qian and the others spread out to search a wide area for the Heavenly Flame's true body after it had divided its power.

Once they found its true body, all of this would finally be over.

What they had not expected was that this Heavenly Flame was actually quite intelligent. For a time, they could find no trace of it whatsoever.

Meanwhile, everything had initially gone fairly smoothly for Feng Qing'er, but something unexpected happened as she destroyed one of the larger fireballs.

After her Dou Qi tore the fireball apart, something long and slender shot out from within.

It moved so fast that no one could make out what it was, but its target was unmistakable: Feng Qing'er, who had yet to react.

The people around her were too far away to come to her aid in time.

Even Qin Yun, who was closest, could not reach her. Just as it was about to pierce Feng Qing'er's body,

Qin Yun suddenly had a flash of inspiration and thought of a special application of Feng Hou Qimen.

"Chaotic Golden Watch!" Qin Yun immediately formed a hand seal and forcibly applied the technique to Feng Qing'er.

Because of the difference in their levels, immobilizing her took little effort.

Feng Qing'er's body froze on the spot, and the slender, unidentified object ambushing her passed straight through her body without causing the slightest harm.

Chaotic Golden Watch was one of Feng Hou Qimen's applications for controlling space.

Wang Ye often used this move to briefly freeze his opponents, preventing them from attacking.

It could even freeze the Old Celestial Master for an instant, though that amounted to trading his own life for one basic attack from the other man.

Of course, this was no ordinary immobilization technique. It shifted the target's body into another independent space, where the immobilized person could neither attack nor move.

The corresponding limitation was that even the caster could not attack someone affected by Chaotic Golden Watch.

To attack them, the caster had to use another technique, Tortoise-Fly Body, to draw both people into the same space before striking.

As for making the target immune to all attacks, producing an effect akin to Kamui in Naruto, that was something Qin Yun had only thought of in that desperate flash of inspiration.

It had originally been nothing more than an improvised stopgap, but unexpectedly, it had produced a surprising effect.

Only after the unidentified object passed through Feng Qing'er's body did everyone realize that it was actually a long, slender Fire Python.

"That's the Fallen Heart Flame's true body!" Fei Tian recognized it at a glance. This was the true body they had spent so long searching for.

They simply had not expected it to be hiding inside that earlier fireball. Had Feng Qing'er not blasted the fireball apart, it really would have slipped away.

Yet the Fire Python did not flee immediately. Instead, to everyone's surprise, it made an exceptionally risky decision.

As though determined to inflict a fatal wound on them at the last moment, the Fallen Heart Flame instantly changed the direction of its attack and lunged straight at Qin Yun.