It must be said that Cheng Wenming's talent was truly excellent; otherwise, he would not have been so valued by his sect as to gain the qualification to enter the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda. He was a two-lineage Heaven Spirit Root. This kind of spirit root was considered top-tier even in the Four Great Sects. He was only in his thirties but had already cultivated to the peak of Foundation Establishment. As for Ye Xiuwen and Tan Zeshan, they were actually much older than him, just not as high in cultivation. In the cultivation world, strength is paramount, so they called him "Brother Cheng." Cheng Wenming's main cultivation was fire-type divine abilities, supplemented by a wood-type spirit root. However, using his unskilled wood-type divine abilities to fight a grade-two demonic beast, his combat power was truly lackluster.
On the side, Ye Xiuwen and his junior brother were not being targeted by the Snow Sprite Lord for the time being, so it was relatively easy for them. A few times, they also wanted to go forward and join forces with Cheng Wenming to deal with the Snow Sprite Lord, but the already enraged Snow Sprite Lord had not only summoned hundreds more Snow Sprites on its way but had also mixed in forty other types of demonic beasts. The vast majority of these forty demonic beasts were still grade-one, but their attack methods were all different, which made Ye Xiuwen and his junior brother quite miserable for a time. Especially since there were three early-stage grade-two demonic beasts among them. In this way, the two were also trapped in a heavy siege, and even their own escape seemed hopeless.
None of the three had ever imagined that a battle that should have been an easy hunt for their target through ambush and slow killing would end up like this.
Li Yan had been nearby all along. With his character, how could he easily believe that a stranger would offer him a good deal for no reason? As early as when Cheng Wenming's group invited him to enter the Melting Cave together, he had already guessed that the other party must have ill intentions. It was just that at that time, he was sure it was likely related to the Snow Sprite Lord they mentioned, but he didn't know how the three would carry out their specific plan. But Li Yan also needed to enter the Melting Cave. Even if he looked for others, it was not guaranteed that the people he found would not have ill intentions. So he might as well just agree. With the cultivation of Cheng Wenming's group of three, although Li Yan would not underestimate them, he also felt that getting away would be no problem.
On the way to the Melting Cave, he had noticed that the three of them seemed very concerned about what kind of spirit root and divine abilities he had. Coupled with the fact that Cheng Wenming had previously confirmed that he was a fire-type spirit root cultivator, Li Yan naturally knew what to do. After using the True Scripture of Gui Water, he easily converted his main spirit power in his body into fire spirit power. After seemingly inadvertently observing the subtle gestures of the three, Li Yan was even more certain that the ultimate yang fire flame having a natural restraining effect on the Snow Sprite Lord was definitely not the truth. So after entering the Melting Cave, when he encountered and hunted Snow Sprites in the early stages, although he used fire-type immortal arts, he did not find anything unusual. Later, Li Yan secretly used his fire spirit power to communicate with the blue ethereal flame in the demonic core of the Snow Sprites he had obtained. He found that the blue ethereal flame seemed to have a tendency to devour the fire spirit power. Li Yan secretly let a wisp of fire spirit power into the demonic core. The moment the blue ethereal flame in the demonic core came into contact with the fire spirit power, it became abnormally active and excited. It pounced over at once, continuously enveloping this wisp of fire spirit power and devouring it. And when Li Yan tried to cut off that wisp of fire spirit power, he was surprised to find that the blue ethereal flame had already tightly wrapped around the fire spirit power, and the suction was getting stronger and stronger, firmly adhering to the spirit power and spreading at an extremely fast speed. And the blue ethereal flame was also getting more and more vigorous. In the end, Li Yan could only forcefully sever the connection with that trace of spirit power.
Thus, Li Yan learned that the ability of the grade-one Snow Sprite demonic beast was insufficient, and it could not release the blue ethereal flame from its demonic core through its body, so this devouring ability was extremely weak and could not be discovered without careful observation. But if it were a grade-two demonic beast of the same level, Li Yan calculated that he would really not have the confidence to forcibly sever the entanglement of the other party's blue ethereal flame.
Later, when he continued to secretly test with the other four types of spirit power, even if he used gold, wood, water, or earth spirit power to conjure flames, because the essence of the spirit power was not an ultimate yang thing, the blue ethereal flame in the demonic core would not have a strong intention to devour.
This discovery made Li Yan slowly guess the other party's thoughts. The three of them wanted to use him as bait, and then attempt to let the Snow Sprite Lord devour his spirit power. As for the purpose? Li Yan himself had experience with devouring. From the fact that the Fragmented Poison Body had devoured the potent poison in the Huchen Ancestor's magical treasure a while ago, it was possible that after the Snow Sprite Lord devoured his spirit power, it would be in an unstable or weakened state. In this way, the three of them could easily capture a Snow Sprite Lord. And Cheng Wenming, as a fire-type cultivator, his role might be to be the last straw that breaks the camel's back. When the Snow Sprite Lord had almost reached saturation from devouring the fire spirit power of a cultivator of the same level, Cheng Wenming would only need to input another stream of pure fire spirit power, and it might be possible to instantly make the Snow Sprite Lord unable to suppress the un-fused fire spirit power in its body, immediately triggering a rampage of spirit power within its body, thus easily taking it down.
Knowing was knowing. Li Yan began to think of a way to leave on his way forward. If he were to suddenly attack and injure them, he estimated that Cheng Wenming's group of three would not be able to keep him. Even without using forceful means, to deal with three Foundation Establishment cultivators, just the Fragmented Poison Body secretly poisoning them would also cause the three to die without knowing it. But how could Li Yan easily let go of those who had schemed against him?
So, while flying, he continued to test the blue ethereal flame in the Snow Sprite demonic core. He constantly and quietly changed the combination of his spirit power and then secretly communicated with a Snow Sprite demonic core. On the surface, he still maintained a look of conversing with the three of them, but secretly he was constantly thinking about how to make these three suffer the consequences of their own actions, rather than just cheaply ending their lives. It was not until Li Yan added a trace of water spirit power to his fire spirit power that he discovered that the spirit power produced by this combination, due to their naturally conflicting attributes, would cancel each other out, and then the blue ethereal flame could no longer devour it and would eventually give up.
Li Yan was still a little strange when he made this discovery. The principle of this situation was very simple, it was just making the fire spirit power impure, causing the blue ethereal flame to lose its entangling effect and thus lose its motivation to devour. If this were the case, then the number of Saint Spirit Root cultivators in the world could be described as a phoenix feather or a qilin horn, but there were too many multi-spirit root cultivators. They could achieve this by just injecting a trace of another attribute's spirit power. Why did Cheng Wenming's group still use this method to lure him into a trap?
Thinking was trying. After quietly trying various combinations of other spirit power attributes many times, Li Yan helplessly found that apart from the combination of water and fire spirit power, which could achieve this, the combination of fire spirit power with wood, gold, or earth could not prevent the blue ethereal flame from devouring. After thinking for a while, Li Yan finally understood that gold, earth, and wood spirit powers were all spirit powers that contained extreme hardness, fierceness, and even vigorous vitality. When combined with fire spirit power, their effect was negligible, and they might even make the fire spirit power more active. Especially when wood spirit power was added, it would inevitably make the fire spirit power more vigorous. Li Yan had actually known this principle for a long time, but he had overlooked it. For example, an alchemist must have both a fire spirit root and a wood spirit root to ensure that the medicinal power in the pill is full of vitality while refining it.
But a cultivator who possessed both fire and water spirit roots at the same time was, in most cases, just a Qi Condensation stage cultivator with a miscellaneous spirit root. For this reason, even if someone knew that the blue ethereal flame in the Snow Sprite Lord's demonic core was ineffective against this type of cultivator, they would not believe that they could meet a legendary miscellaneous spirit root cultivator who could reach Foundation Establishment.
After this confirmation, Li Yan was even more reluctant to kill the three of them immediately. He wanted to let them have a big fight with the Snow Sprite Lord, and then he could profit from it. When Cheng Wenming shouted for them to kill the Snow Sprite Lord with all their strength as soon as possible, while he himself, as if to attract the Snow Sprite Lord, threw out a large number of fire talismans, Li Yan was sneering in his heart. Cheng Wenming's pretense was because he was afraid of using his fire-type divine abilities and getting burned. He had adopted other attack methods, which made others think at a glance that he had already started a powerful attack.
At this time, Li Yan had already figured out the intentions of the three of them. Of course, he didn't want to continue acting. The moment the Snow Sprite Lord began to devour his spirit power, water spirit power surged out and mixed in. After the Snow Sprite Lord's senses weakened, and in its surprised state, Li Yan used "Stealthy Night Art" and had long since merged with the surrounding ice and snow. At this time, the "Stealthy Night Art" divine ability was almost unsolvable for Foundation Establishment cultivators. Unless they cultivated a special Divine Sense immortal art, they could discover Li Yan's whereabouts. Otherwise, they would be completely unaware.
But "Stealthy Night Art" consumed too much spirit power. It required the five elements of spirit power to be constantly converted to keep oneself in the same spirit power fluctuation as the surrounding environment, always staying within a fluctuation range. So when he was on the snowfield earlier, when Li Yan saw a large number of Snow Mosquitoes merging into the wind and snow to attack him, he also wanted to become invisible at the same time. It was just that in that state, his spirit power could not support it. How could he maintain this state of constantly merging with the surrounding environment on a snowfield of tens of thousands of li? In that state, he could not move quickly, otherwise a certain spatial fluctuation would appear abrupt, and he would be exposed.
Later, seeing Cheng Wenming's group of three break out of the Snow Sprite Lord's encirclement, Li Yan was not too surprised. It was impossible for a Foundation Establishment cultivator to not have some life-saving trump cards. But as for Ye Xiuwen's Righteous Qi, it brought a considerable shock to Li Yan, and his vigilance was raised even more in his heart. This was the first time he had personally seen Righteous Qi, which was the same as the Buddhist school's Willpower and the Daoist school's Votive Power. At first sight, although he had been mentally prepared, he still did not expect that Righteous Qi, in addition to attacking, could also be used to escape. Although it was not an instantaneous movement, it was also a kind of spatial transfer. It was just that the body of a Confucian cultivator was weak and could not withstand the force of a spatial impact in a very short period of time. If it were a Buddhist disciple who used it, with the vajra body of a Buddhist disciple, it might be possible to move three or four zhang at once.
After observing the final life-saving measures of the other three and confirming the divine abilities and means they could use when risking their lives, Li Yan finally relaxed. So he no longer delayed. It was not a long-term plan for him to always be in the "Stealthy Night Art" state. So he quietly cast an immortal art, causing a large area of ice spikes to appear in front of Cheng Wenming's group of three. This kind of immortal art was actually just the most basic small immortal art. Even Qi Condensation disciples could use it. If it were in normal times, Cheng Wenming's group of three would have simply sneered at it. With just a flick of their fingers, everything would have turned to dust. But under the use of Li Yan's Foundation Establishment cultivation, its power had increased more than tenfold and had become a deadly thing. With the delay, the Snow Sprite Lord and the other demonic beasts had already arrived behind them. And what was even more terrifying was that after a short while, more demonic beasts came from the depths of the Melting Cave to reinforce them.
In this way, a great battle began again. Cheng Wenming's group of three, seeing the tide-like swarm of demonic beasts, couldn't help but show despair in their eyes. In the next moment, their eyes turned crimson, and they began to curse at the empty air deep in the cave. Although they felt it wasn't Jianghai who was using the ice spike art, besides him, there were no other cultivators who could have entered. Amidst endless vicious curses and the loud laughter of the Snow Sprite Lord, the two sides instantly clashed. For a time, ice and snow filled the sky, and flesh and blood splattered everywhere.