Several thoughts passed through Qing Chen's mind. He set aside what he could not figure out for now and dealt with the matter before him first.
He glanced up at the ball of light and reached out to grab it.
The moment his fingertips touched it-
"Hiss!"
Scalding heat exploded from his fingertips, as though he had plunged his hand into volcanic lava. The heat surged up his fingers, burned through his palm, his wrist, his arm, and kept burning its way upward. It was fierce indeed!
"Sss-"
Qing Chen sucked in a cold breath, nearly crying out in pain, and instinctively moved to let go.
But he did not.
Not only did he hold on, he gritted his teeth and snapped his fingers shut, gripping the ball of light tightly. Heat spurted between his fingers, searing the flesh of his palm with a sizzling sound. A scorched smell rushed straight into his nose.
The Budong Dark Gold Baleful-Subduing Essence-Augmenting Light circulated wildly within him. Dark golden light burst from his palm like an iron shell, forcibly pressing the heat back!
Three breaths.
Five breaths.
Ten breaths.
Only then did the heat gradually recede, withdrawing bit by bit from the crevices of his bones before finally shrinking back into his palm, becoming a small, warm, quiet ball of light.
Qing Chen looked down. A fingernail-sized fragment lay in his palm. Dark red and translucent, it resembled a piece of congealed blood.
A tiny flame was enclosed within the fragment, its eerie blue, dark purple, and scarlet colors mingling together, flickering bright and dim. It looked rather strange.
This was the Fire Seed Fragment.
Qing Chen tried putting it into his Storage Ring.
It did not work. The fragment seemed alive, bouncing out no matter how he tried to put it