Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus

The blood threads filling the sky finally vanished into Xue Shi's body. The Blood God Clan assassins lying on the ice cavern floor had become shriveled husks of skin, without the slightest sign of life. The scarlet blood mist that Xiao Yan's flames had just steamed out of the array diagram, filling the cavern, also seemed to answer some summons. Churning and roaring, it swept madly back toward Xue Shi.

Xiao Yan's heart sank slightly. He had been the one to steam out that blood mist.

Xue Shi stood at the center of the churning blood mist, his body undergoing a transformation that made one's scalp crawl. As the blood mist poured into his pale, gaunt frame, it swelled inch by inch. Dark red blood patterns crisscrossed beneath his skin like an outspread net of blood, enveloping his entire body. In the blink of an eye, he had become a blood-colored giant thirty feet tall.

The giant's body was covered in armor that resembled a layer of congealed blood plasma. The two dark red eyes in his head had become two masses of burning blood flames, and a pressure of Spiritual Energy several times more formidable than before poured violently from his body like a mountain torrent.

That pressure had already far surpassed the bounds of a Second Grade Sovereign. Fourth Grade? Fifth Grade? Beneath the ice wall, the Luo God Clan disciples could not even stand steady under it. One after another, they fell to their knees on the ice, their faces as pale as paper.

"Wh-what kind of monster is that...?" someone asked in a trembling voice.

"A forbidden technique of the Blood God Clan." Hearing that, Luo Feng gritted his teeth, bracing himself hard against his sword to keep from kneeling. "Burn the blood of his own clansmen in exchange for temporary power. After using it, he'll lose at least a hundred years of his life... He's gone mad!"

The blood-colored giant slowly lowered his head, his two blood-flame eyes locking onto the lean figure standing with a ruler at the center of the ice cavern. "Boy from a Lower Plane."

His voice sounded like hundreds upon thousands of people speaking at once, layered, hoarse, and grating. "Well done. You forced me to use this move. So you'll die a miserable death."

Boom!

The blood-colored giant took a step, and the ice collapsed beneath him. The next instant, a blood-colored fist as large as a millstone was already in front of Xiao Yan.

Too fast. Almost instinctively, Xiao Yan held the Heavy Xuan Ruler across his body. The fist smashed into it, and he felt an indescribable force surge through the ruler. Within that force was an exceedingly vicious Blood Fiend Qi that burrowed madly along the ruler and into his meridians. He shot backward like a stone hurled from a catapult and slammed into the ice cavern wall.

Rumble!

The ice wall, dozens of feet thick, collapsed with a crash. Xiao Yan's body smashed straight through it, sending him flying into a deep, narrow ice valley beyond.

"Brother Xiao!" Luo Lan's eyes nearly split with rage. The blood-colored giant let out a wild laugh and pursued him into the ice valley, one step at a time.

Within the ice valley, shards of ice pattered down. Xiao Yan lay on a pile of broken ice and coughed up a mouthful of blood streaked with black. When the blood landed on the ice, it sizzled and corroded a series of small pits: that was the Blood Fiend Qi. Gritting his teeth, he circulated the Flame Mantra and gradually burned away the Blood Fiend Qi that had burrowed into his meridians. But the Spiritual Energy in his body had already been running low, and the burning consumed another portion of it. Xiao Yan thought to himself that he could not let this continue.

Leaning on the Heavy Xuan Ruler, Xiao Yan slowly rose to his feet. At the entrance to the ice valley, the thirty-foot-tall blood-colored giant was walking in, one step at a time. With each step, the valley trembled.

"You can still stand?" The blood-colored giant's layered voice echoed through the ice valley. "You truly are the man who keeps Elder Xue Li awake at night."

Xiao Yan ignored him, his mind already sinking into his body. Back on the Dou Qi Continent, his strongest move had been Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus. By fusing multiple Heavenly Flames and drawing on their mutual generation and suppression, he had condensed world-destroying power into a single Fire Lotus. In those days, he had relied on that move to fight his way from the Jia Ma Empire to the Central Plains, killing more powerful enemies than he could count.

But since coming to the Great Thousand World, he had not used it once. It was not that he did not want to, but that he could not. The Heavenly Flames in his body had all fused into Xiao Yi's body, and Xiao Yi was asleep. Without Heavenly Flames, there could be no Buddha's Fury Fire Lotus.

Xiao Yan's attention settled on the wisp of pink flame deep within his heart meridian. It was much brighter than it had been a few days ago. Within it, the little one with a tuft of hair sticking straight up was still curled into a ball, fast asleep with the wisp of pale blue ice flame in her arms. Xiao Yan looked at her, and an absurd idea suddenly occurred to him. He hesitated for an instant, then gently touched the little one with his mind.

"Xiao Yi," he said softly in his heart, "lend me a little fire. Just a little."

The little one did not wake, but her scrunched-up face stirred slightly in her sleep. Then, as if someone had disturbed a pleasant dream, she rolled over impatiently and gave a push with her little hand, sending two wisps out of the pink flame: a wisp of pink flame and a wisp of pale blue ice flame. The two little flames drifted unsteadily out of the depths of his heart meridian, floated along his meridians, and came to rest in his palms.

Xiao Yan stared at the two little flames in his palms, one pink and one blue. He was stunned for a moment, then the corners of his mouth slowly rose. He smiled and said, "Heh, thanks."

In the ice valley, the blood-colored giant had already come within a hundred feet of Xiao Yan. He looked at Xiao Yan's open palms, at the two pitiful little flames in them, and could not help bursting into wild laughter. "You're relying on that?"

Xiao Yan did not answer. He slowly brought his palms together. In his left hand was the wisp of pink flame, Xiao Yi's fire, the essence of six Heavenly Flames, supremely yang and fierce. In his right was the wisp of pale blue ice flame, the fire of the Mystic Yin Abyss, supremely yin and cold. Between them was his own Flame Mantra fire, pale gold, carrying the vibrations of this world's Spiritual Energy. The three flames slowly approached one another between his palms.

Sizzle!

The instant the three flames touched, they began to repel one another violently. The pink flame's scorching heat, the pale blue flame's chilling cold, and the pale gold flame's lively essence-three utterly different powers clashed madly in his palms. The flesh of Xiao Yan's palms split inch by inch, and before the blood could flow, the flames steamed it into a bloody mist.

He clenched his teeth. His Emperor Realm Soul Power transformed into countless fine threads, forcibly pressing the three madly colliding powers together, just as he had done time and again on the Dou Qi Continent.

Only this time, fire was not all he pressed into it. There were Spirit Marks as well. The Yin-Separating Mark, the Spirit-Guiding Mark, the Reverse Scale Mark-every kind of Spirit Mark he had learned, inscribed, and comprehended over these past days, he used his Soul Power to inscribe stroke by stroke into the raging flames. They let the three incompatible powers each take their place and follow their own path, like a plant gaining roots, a stem, and the veins of its leaves. Spirit Marks formed the bones, and fire the blood.

Gradually, the raging flames grew quiet. Then they began to spin, faster and faster, growing more and more condensed. Layer by layer, the flames unfolded in Xiao Yan's palms and became petals, pale blue at the edges and pink in the middle. At the heart of the flower, a speck of pale gold light slowly pulsed.

A Fire Lotus, only the size of a palm, nowhere near as large as the Fire Lotuses that had so often blotted out the sky and sun back on the Dou Qi Continent. Yet the blood-colored giant's wild laughter abruptly stopped.

His two blood-flame eyes fixed on the tiny Fire Lotus in Xiao Yan's palm. His enormous blood-colored body took an involuntary step backward. He could sense it: the Fire Lotus contained a power capable of wiping him out along with the entire ice valley.

"No..."

Xiao Yan raised his head and looked at him. His face was pale and his hands were covered in blood, but his eyes shone with startling brightness. He gently lifted his palm, and the Fire Lotus slowly floated away from it, drifting toward the blood-colored giant. It moved very slowly, like a petal falling on the wind.

The blood-colored giant let out a roar and swung his fists wildly. Blood Fiend Palm prints filled the sky and earth as they blasted toward the Fire Lotus, but before they could come within three feet of it, they sizzled and steamed away without a trace.

The Fire Lotus settled gently on his chest, then blossomed.

There was no sound. In that instant, there was only light in the ice valley. Pale gold, pink, and ice blue radiance burst from where the Fire Lotus bloomed, like a sun rising within the valley, illuminating the dark Cold Abyss.

Immediately afterward-

Rumble!!!

The earth-shaking roar of the explosion finally arrived, belatedly, at that moment. On either side of the ice valley, the walls of mystic ice that had not melted for ages collapsed, melted, and vaporized inch by inch in the light. A terrifying shock wave swept violently outward from the Fire Lotus like an ever-expanding ripple, flattening everything in its path.

In the ice cavern, the Luo God Clan disciples felt the ice beneath their feet tremble violently. A raging wave of heat mixed with a bone-piercing cold wind surged out of the ice valley, buffeting them until they staggered and could not open their eyes.

No one knew how much time passed before the trembling, the roaring, the heat wave, and the cold wind finally began to subside.

Luo Feng was the first to rush into the ice valley, only to stop in a daze. The deep, narrow ice valley was gone. In its place was a stretch of level ground several hundred feet across, a patchwork of blackened earth and ice crystals. The ice walls that had once towered there had been sheared down by half, their cut surfaces smooth as mirrors, half scorched black and half covered in a thick layer of frost.

Half the valley had been razed flat.

At the very center of the level ground, a gaunt figure lay curled up at the bottom of a huge crater. The blood-colored armor on his body had long since vanished, and he was charred black from head to toe. Only his chest still rose and fell faintly. It was Xue Shi. At the edge of the crater, Xiao Yan knelt on one knee, his hands hanging at his sides. From fingertips to wrists, there was not a patch of uninjured flesh on them. He raised his head, looked at Luo Feng as he rushed in, and grinned with a chuckle.

"It was only thirty percent of its former size," he murmured between breaths, as if speaking to Luo Feng, yet also as if speaking to himself. "...A long way short."

With that, his body swayed, and he toppled to one side.