The Flame Essence was only the tiny remnant left after the Minghong Saber's devouring just now. Even that little bit of unabsorbed flame had injured Huang Xiao.
Still, this time the Minghong Saber had devoured the flames in the wound on his palm as well. Had he refined them with his own true qi, it would probably have taken some time, and a single mishap might even have endangered his life. These flames seemed even more powerful than the Flame Essence he had absorbed earlier.
I didn't get a single one! Huang Xiao felt unwilling to accept it. The nine jade slips had been right before him, within arm's reach, yet in the end, they had all flown away. He had drawn water with a bamboo basket and come up empty.
He knew that the jade slips had probably flown away because the breaking of the formation outside had triggered something here. Of course, he himself had played a part, as had the Minghong Saber, and the formation over the Lava Pool was also about to break. All these factors had sent the jade slips shooting away.
The sheer force of their flight, combined with the Flame Essence remaining on the Jade Slips, meant that even he could not catch a single one. He could only watch helplessly as they shot toward the lake's surface.
As the nine jade slips shot away, the cracks in the formation holding back the lake water grew larger and larger. What had begun as droplets seeping through had now become small streams. Water flooding into the formation was already inevitable.
The formation within the Lava Pool had begun to crumble. The lava inside could barely be restrained anymore, and Lava Pillars erupted wildly from below, shooting straight toward the lake's surface.
Huang Xiao could