The dust of battle had barely settled, hanging in the stagnant air like a shroud over the fresh grave of a king. Luo Zhen stood at the edge of the massive crater, his breath steady despite the carnage he had just unleashed. He looked down into the pit, where the broken remains of his enemies lay. With a slow, calculated clench of his fist, he exerted his will. A localized vacuum of spiritual pressure erupted from his palm, acting like an invisible tether. From the depths of the scorched earth, two objects rose through the haze: a suit of heavy, earth-toned armor and a wickedly curved longblade.
As they hovered before him, a glint caught his eye. Something remained at the very bottom of the pit—a small, silver spark hidden beneath the settling ash. He realized the armor had been shielding it. With another flick of his wrist, the object flew into his hand. It was a spatial ring, cool to the touch and humming with the residual energy of its previous owner.
Luo Zhen turned the band over in his fingers. In this world, a Demon King without a spatial artifact was like a dragon without a hoard. These items were forged from rare spatial-grade materials, designed to survive the very cataclysms that killed their masters.
"If Xiong Shan carried a ring," Luo Zhen mused, his voice a low rasp in the silence, "then his brother wouldn't be far behind."
He swept his sleeve across the air. A sudden gale, summoned by a mere thought, scoured the second crater where Xiong He had fallen. Amidst the shifting piles of gray bone-ash, a sturdy leather belt revealed itself. Luo Zhen beckoned it forward. Now, the tally was complete: a ring, a belt, a suit of supreme armor, and a blade that felt like it was carved from a single giant emerald.
The first order of business was the digital hygiene of the soul. He closed his eyes, projecting his spiritual sense into the storage artifacts. He found the mental locks left by the Black Bear brothers—jagged, stubborn imprints of their personalities. With the cold efficiency of a predator, Luo Zhen flooded the artifacts with his own overwhelming aura, grinding away their lingering presence until the "locks" shattered. In their place, he etched his own mark, a crimson brand of ownership that bonded the items to his very heartbeat.
He slipped the ring on and buckled the belt. When he peered into the internal dimensions, his composure finally broke into a predatory grin. The space inside was vast—cavernous enough to hold a small mountain. But it wasn't the size that moved him; it was the contents. Piles of high-grade spirit stones lay stacked like cordwood, glowing with a soft, rhythmic luminescence.
In the economy of the immortals, wealth followed a strict hierarchy. Luo Zhen had spent his life scraping together mid-grade stones, the common currency of the rising elite. But these brothers had been hoarding the "blue chips." A single high-grade stone carried the condensed energy of a hundred mid-grade ones. The sheer volume of wealth was staggering.
"The lords of Red Rock City certainly knew how to tax their subjects," he whispered, a hint of dark admiration in his tone. All that history, all those centuries of accumulation, had been transferred to him in a single afternoon of violence.
He turned his attention to the hardware.
The Beast King Armor was a marvel of craftsmanship. It wasn't just metal; it felt organic, like the hide of a prehistoric titan reinforced with mountain-gold. It radiated a dense, grounding pressure. Beside it, the Green Radiance Blade shimmered. Four feet of translucent jade-like steel, it pulsed with the vibrant, hungry energy of the Wood attribute.
Luo Zhen's internal system hummed to life, an ethereal HUD flickering across his vision as he scanned the items:
[Beast King Armor]: Supreme-grade. It featured the "Beast King Tyrant Garment"—a reactive defense that conjured ethereal robes to intercept killing blows. More importantly, it offered a 25% flat reduction to all Earth-attribute damage.
[Green Radiance Blade]: Supreme-grade. Its signature move, "Violent Emperor's Slay," promised a level of destructive output that made Luo Zhen's pulse quicken.
"Supreme-grade," he noted, his thumb tracing the edge of the blade. "No wonder they survived the first few waves of the Nine-Infant Demon Shadow."
One detail, however, caught him off guard. The system flagged the armor as Xiong Shan's Natal Artifact. This was a rarity. Most cultivators bound their life-force to a weapon—a spear to pierce the heavens or a sword to cleave the sea. To bind one's soul to a defensive shell suggested a man possessed by a profound, pathological fear of death.
He didn't hesitate. He began the grueling process of purging the armor. A Natal Artifact wasn't just locked; it was "blooded." He had to boil away the essence-blood of a dead man, a process that risked damaging the item's grade. For thirty minutes, he sat in a meditative trance, his demon power acting like a caustic acid, stripping away the Bear King's legacy.
When he finished, the armor groaned, its spiritual light dimming slightly as it dropped from Supreme to High-grade. It was a necessary sacrifice. He shed his tattered black robes and willed the armor to fit. It responded instantly, the heavy plates shifting and shrinking until they hugged his frame like a second skin. He threw his cloak back on over it, feeling a new, profound sense of solidity.
"The city is waiting," he said to the wind.
Red Rock City was a monument to order and stone, but as Luo Zhen approached the City Lord's Mansion, he found it draped in an eerie, expectant silence. The guards moved like clockwork, unaware that the gods they served had been erased from the map.
Luo Zhen didn't bother with the front gates. He didn't want a parade; he wanted the source.
He tapped into the Earth-attribute power of his new armor and felt the ground soften beneath him. He dived. The sensation was less like digging and more like swimming through a dense, warm liquid. He descended through the crust, passing the foundations of the city, plunging deeper into the dark heat of the planet.
Eighty kilometers down, the world changed. The dirt and stone gave way to a subterranean cathedral of fire. Before him lay a Fire-Attribute Essence Vein—a river of molten liquid energy that pulsed like a glowing artery. It was a high-grade vein, a rare geological miracle that had likely been the secret behind the Black Bear brothers' rapid rise to power.
Hovering just above the magma was a stone cultivation platform, accessible by a spiral staircase that wound its way back up to the surface. Luo Zhen landed on the platform, the air so hot it would have blistered a mortal's lungs in seconds. To him, it felt like a warm bath.
He sat cross-legged, the center of his own universe.
"System," he thought, "begin devouring."
A pitch-black vortex opened in the air before him, a hole in reality that began to pull at the fire vein. The magma didn't just move; it screamed. Torrents of pure, incandescent essence were ripped from the river, spiraling into the vortex and flooding into Luo Zhen's meridians.
The system notifications began to chime, a rhythmic percussion of progress:
+30,000 EXP.
+30,000 EXP.
+30,000 EXP.
He felt his cultivation level swelling, his foundations hardening. For half an hour, he was a black hole, consuming the literal lifeblood of the earth. By the time the fire vein began to dim and flicker, he had amassed 5.5 million experience points. He was on the precipice of the Mid-stage Demon King Realm. Just a few more resources, a few more pills, and he would ascend again.
But as the vein withered, he noticed something strange. The magma had disappeared, but in the center of the now-darkened trench, a single fist-sized orb of dark-red flame remained.
It didn't behave like fire. It moved with intent. It skittered across the cooling rock, sensing Luo Zhen's gaze, trying to find a crevice to hide in.
Luo Zhen's eyes widened as the scan results populated:
[Earth Vein Essence Fire]: Rank 1 Exotic Fire.
Special Ability: Massive acceleration of Origin Qi recovery.
"An Exotic Fire," Luo Zhen breathed, his heart hammering against the Beast King Armor.
In the taxonomy of power, there were Beast Fires, which Luo Zhen already possessed in the form of his Green Scale Fire. But above them were the Exotic Fires—flames born from the freak occurrences of nature, imbued with a primitive sentience and unique, reality-bending properties. His current Green Scale Fire was becoming obsolete; it lacked the "bite" needed for combat at the Demon King level. This, however, was a game-changer.
But Exotic Fires were notoriously territorial. They didn't want to be "used."
Luo Zhen lunged. He unleashed a focused blast of suction, dragging the sentient flame toward his palm. The Earth Vein Essence Fire shrieked—a sound that resonated in his mind rather than his ears—and fought back. It realized it couldn't escape, so it decided to kill.
The flame surged up Luo Zhen's arm.
The pain was instantaneous and absolute. His flesh began to char, turning to black carbon in heartbeats. The smell of his own burning skin filled the small cavern.
Suddenly, the Beast King Armor hummed. The "Beast King Tyrant Garment" flickered into existence—a shimmering robe of earth-energy that wrapped around Luo Zhen, acting as a heat sink. The agonizing temperature dropped by a crucial margin.
"Now," Luo Zhen hissed through gritted teeth.
He activated the Sapphire Spirit Body.
A vibrant green light erupted from his pores, clashing with the dark red of the fire. It was a battle of attrition. The fire burned, but the Sapphire Spirit Body healed. For every cell the flame destroyed, the spirit body forged two more. His arm became a battlefield of rapid necrosis and instant regeneration.
Under the relentless pressure of his spiritual sense and his demon power, the Earth Vein Essence Fire began to lose its shape. Its "will" was being crushed by a superior predator. It flickered, its movements becoming erratic and pained.
Luo Zhen leaned in, his eyes glowing with the same green light as his healing factor. He didn't just want to use the fire; he wanted to be the fire. He opened his meridians wide, inviting the agony in, prepared to consume the very thing that was trying to erase him.
The struggle beneath Red Rock City had only just begun.