On the other side of the mountain range where Jia Nan Academy's Inner Academy stood,
lay the land of chaos famed across the continent: the Black-Corner Region.
In a city not far from that mountain range, there was a place called Maple City.
Maple City held considerable standing in the Black-Corner Region, all because it housed the region's only sixth-tier Alchemist, Han Feng.
Maple City had been named after him. Even across the entire Black-Corner Region, only a handful of cities enjoyed such a distinction.
As a sixth-tier Alchemist, Han Feng commanded a measure of respect from everyone in the Black-Corner Region.
After all, the network of connections a sixth-tier Alchemist possessed was terrifying.
Within Maple City lay an exceptionally vast bamboo grove. Anyone who wandered into it by mistake might die without even knowing how.
Every year, countless people were killed for straying into this place.
A two-story pavilion stood within the bamboo grove. Beside a second-floor window overlooking the bamboo, a middle-aged man who appeared to be in his thirties sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, dressed in Alchemist robes. He held a medicinal formula in his hand. His features were rather handsome, and a faint smile always lingered at the corners of his mouth.
Whoosh!
Han Feng, who had been studying the formula, suddenly raised his head and glanced at the distant sky. Then he lowered his head in thought, searching his memories for this somewhat familiar aura.
Abruptly, the formula slipped from his hand and fell onto the wooden floor. He remembered now. Those fluctuations, both familiar and strange, came from heavenly flames!
Han Feng gently closed his eyes. A mass of blue water surged from his body and swirled around him before rising like a flame.
No, what flowed like rippling water was actually a