Great Thousand World, on the edge of the Extreme Flame Continent, Red Fire City.
This was the outer supercity closest to the Endless Fire Domain.
The entire city was built from dark red volcanic rock, and the air brimmed with fire-attributed Spiritual Energy so dense it almost took physical form.
After more than half a year of wandering through hardship and exhausting the last of the Lower-grade Spirit Stones in his Storage Bag, Tang San finally dragged his weary body into the city.
The moment he entered, a wave of heat struck him head-on and nearly set his hair alight.
Cultivators wearing Alchemy Master's robes of every color were everywhere along the streets.
Even the roadside stallholders occasionally conjured flames of various colors in their hands, refining medicinal ingredients and ores that emitted astonishing Spiritual Energy fluctuations.
Any normal person who saw everyone playing with fire like this, with foundations too deep to fathom, would long since have put away their arrogance and tucked their tail between their legs.
But Tang San was different.
He hid among the crowd, quietly activating his Purple Demon Eye as he coldly observed several apprentices refining low-grade healing pills by the roadside.
"Hmph. Such crude control of the heat, and their purification of the ingredients is downright barbaric."
Tang San watched an apprentice forcibly burn a spiritual herb down into medicinal liquid, his eyes filled with disdain.
"Alchemy is about sovereign, minister, assistant, and envoy ingredients working together-a perfect fusion of medicinal principles."
"These people don't understand harmonizing yin and yang at all. All they know is forcibly burning things with their so-called Spiritual Energy flames."
"Before the poison section of my Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record, these barbaric refining methods are like those of primitive people who have only just learned to use