After the Thick-Winged Bird flew into Desert City's air transport depot, Xiao Yu left. This time, unlike when he entered Black Rock City, he did not have to pay an entry tax.
Once inside the city, Xiao Yu began preparing supplies for his journey into the Tagor Desert.
First, he needed drinking water. Although Xiao Yu now possessed the strength of a Dou Ling, he was still nowhere near being able to survive without food or drink. He could go without food, but he still needed a little water at regular intervals.
Next came a desert map. The Tagor Desert was immense. Without an accurate map, he would likely lose his way amid that boundless sea of sand.
He also needed to ask about conditions in the desert, which would spare him plenty of unnecessary trouble.
He stopped a passerby to ask. Although the man seemed impatient, Xiao Yu still obtained the information he wanted.
Following that information, Xiao Yu found a shop selling the Detailed Guide to the Tagor Desert and spent several gold coins on it. He had to admit, it was outrageously expensive-a tiny, wafer-thin book cost several gold coins.
He then went to the Water Reservoir, the busiest business in Desert City. It sold water in large quantities, at prices more than ten times higher than elsewhere. The profits were truly exorbitant, though water was a vital resource in the desert, so the price was understandable.
Then Xiao Yu reached his final stop, a map shop. According to that passerby, the maps sold here were the most accurate in all of Desert City-and the most expensive.
Looking at the simple, old-fashioned shop and the words "Ancient Map" carved into its sign, Xiao Yu felt a strange sense of familiarity.
He paid it no mind and entered the shop.
The furnishings inside were as plain and old-fashioned as the exterior. Business was rather quiet, with only one or two people browsing the maps.
Two moonlight stones were embedded in the ceiling, keeping the shop reasonably bright. Behind the counter, a Blue-Clothed Elder with a head of white hair was engrossed in drawing a map.
Xiao Yu visibly paused when he saw the old man, remembering something. Rather than disturb him, however, he began browsing the maps laid out on the other counters.
Just as the passerby had said, the maps were exquisitely detailed, with almost every location in the desert clearly marked. Xiao Yu had no doubts about their accuracy.
Each map had a price marked beside it, so Xiao Yu did not ask the shopkeeper how much it cost. He simply set down the gold coins and left with his map.
After Xiao Yu left, the old man's brush noticeably paused before he resumed drawing.
Upon leaving the Ancient Map Shop, Xiao Yu planned to leave the city and head for the Tagor Desert. The desert was still quite far away, and he would have to cross several mountains before reaching it properly.
Putting the map into his Storage Ring, Xiao Yu officially began his desert journey.
Two days later.
At the edge of the Tagor Desert, Xiao Yu studied his map, deciding on his destination.
He chose the southern part of the Tagor Desert. It was sparsely populated, and even the Snake-People rarely ventured there.
After leaving Desert City and entering the desert, he only needed to head straight south to reach his destination.
"Looks like I've still got several days of travel ahead."
Xiao Yu put away the map and murmured to himself.
The abundant fire-attribute energy in the desert air was remarkably pure and domineering, making even the fire attribute Dou Qi inside Xiao Yu stir eagerly.
"No wonder people say the desert is suited to fire- and earth-attribute cultivators. With all the fire- and earth-attribute energy in the air, it really does benefit them enormously."
Looking across the endless desert horizon, with scorching wind and sand sweeping toward him at every turn, Xiao Yu hurried south. The footprints he left behind were completely swallowed by the shifting sands.
Even at Xiao Yu's pace, it took five full days to reach the edge of the southern Tagor Desert. Another three days passed before he truly entered its southern reaches.
Just as his information had said, the south was indeed sparsely populated. Early in the journey, he still encountered mercenaries making their living in the desert and a few Snake-People, but the farther south he went, the harder it became to encounter any living creature.
After choosing a campsite, Xiao Yu took out the large tent he had prepared to shelter him from the wind and sand, pitched it, and crawled inside.
Then he began his desert training.
First, he took out his pill furnace and the medicinal ingredients for the Mystic Essence Pill. Following the instructions in the Pill Formula, he began trial attempts at refining it.
Over half a month, Xiao Yu refined three Mystic Essence Pills.
The first two batches of ingredients had failed mainly because the Pill Formula described refinement using fire and wood. Xiao Yu needed to modify the steps involving wood energy as a catalyst, and thus ruined two batches.
Once he had the Mystic Essence Pills, Xiao Yu stopped refining medicine and devoted himself to cultivation instead.
Time slowly passed. A month later, with the help of his first Mystic Essence Pill, Xiao Yu successfully broke through to Four-Star Dou Ling.
Rather than continue cultivating, Xiao Yu began practicing his Origin Flame Divine Thunder fusion technique.
Through day-and-night practice, Xiao Yu grew increasingly quick at fusing Blue-Silver Cold Lightning and extreme-breaking ice flame into blue ice thunderflame, and his control became ever more proficient.
The only reason Xiao Yu had managed to fuse them so quickly back in the Magical Beast Mountain Range was that he had forced the fusion.
Forced fusion was extremely dangerous. Not only did it require vast quantities of Dou Qi, but it also consumed enormous amounts of soul power. It would drain Xiao Yu's Dou Qi and soul power in an instant, leaving him temporarily so weak that even a third-rank magical beast could easily kill him.
The fusion he performed now was different. As Xiao Yu's mastery of the two powers deepened, he needed less and less Dou Qi and soul power.
Eventually, he could fuse them effortlessly, expending less than a quarter of the power a forced fusion required while achieving the same speed and might.
There was no secret to it-only a practiced hand.
Afterward, Xiao Yu began attempting to fuse Returning-to-Truth Lightning and the Myriad Transformation Flame.
He had considered fusing Divine Thunder with Divine Thunder and Origin Flame with Origin Flame. But after many attempts, every one had left him in a wretched state. Fortunately, his Origin Flames and Divine Thunders had all been born within his body; otherwise, he would have suffered far more than a little humiliation.
Furthermore, the Divine Thunder and Origin Flame awakened at the Dou Zhe level could not fuse with those awakened at other realms. They always repelled one another, without even a single point of equilibrium for fusion.
For instance, Blue-Silver Cold Lightning and extreme-breaking ice flame shared a cold nature that served as their point of equilibrium. Blue-Silver Cold Lightning and the Myriad Transformation Flame, however, had no point at which they could fuse.
Thus, his success in fusing Blue-Silver Cold Lightning and extreme-breaking ice flame on his first attempt had been nothing more than a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse-sheer luck.
From then on, he abandoned attempts to fuse powers of the same type or across different ranks.
As time passed, Xiao Yu found the point at which the Myriad Transformation Flame and Returning-to-Truth Lightning could fuse.
One was real, the other illusory. They checked and balanced one another, like two sides of the same thing, or the revolving interplay of yin and yang.
To his delight, Xiao Yu discovered that the thunderflame born of their fusion could briefly create a world that was both real and illusory.
At its fundamental level, this world was false, merely approaching the real world infinitely closely. On a material level, however, it was utterly real-every flower, blade of grass, and tree truly existed.
This perfectly matched the Myriad Transformation Flame's countless transformations and Returning-to-Truth Lightning's return to pristine truth.
Yet the energy required to sustain an entire world was immense. With Xiao Yu's current strength, he could only create a world a thousand meters across that lasted a little over ten seconds.
Even that was formidable enough. Whether used to trap enemies or aid him in battle, it could produce extraordinary results, because Xiao Yu held absolute control over this world.
Xiao Yu named it Illusory World Thunderflame.
Compared with the surprise brought by fusing the Myriad Transformation Flame and Returning-to-Truth Lightning, the thunderflame formed from blazing sun heart flame and Three Thousand Puppet Thunders offered far less excitement, because Xiao Yu had no idea how powerful it was.
Based on the characteristics of those two powers, Xiao Yu could roughly deduce that their fused thunderflame should target the mind. He simply did not know how effective it would be against an enemy.
Still, brimming with anticipation, Xiao Yu named it Heart Puppet Thunder Flame.
Perhaps Heart Puppet Thunder Flame could produce an unexpected effect?
Finally came purple extreme astral thunder and dark cinder baleflame. These two powers were extraordinarily difficult to fuse, and Xiao Yu spent a great deal of time before finding a way.
They could not fuse in thunderflame form. Xiao Yu only succeeded by converting them into a gaseous form.
Again, without a test subject, Xiao Yu had no idea how powerful it was. But since these powers had been born when he advanced to Dou Ling, their might surely would not fall short of the earlier fusions.
Extreme Cinder Annihilation.
That was the name Xiao Yu gave this mass of astral baleful energy, pitch-black with wisps of purple within it.
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