As the large, portly monk spoke, he glanced toward a certain spot to the side.
'Xu Yeyua… is dead?' This was Yiming's first reaction. He couldn't believe it.
Following Zhiyuan's gaze, he looked several hundred feet away. A white-robed figure was there, one hand pressing down on the tail of a white crane, the other gripping its head. The crane's eyes were a blazing white, and most of the feathers had fallen from its body, leaving it in a miserable state. But the crane was already motionless. The white-robed man holding it also had no trace of life in his eyes. He stood frozen on the spot, his face filled with terror—the terror of death.
"And that brat?" Yiming felt his mouth go dry. The voice that came out sounded terribly hoarse, as if someone else were speaking beside his ear.
The three monks standing beside him heard Yiming's question and shifted their gaze toward the mountain that was perpetually ablaze with fire.
This was a space of incomparable heat. Every breath felt like a stream of fire flowing into the abdomen. Li Yan, carrying the book boy with the bamboo basket on his back, scanned his surroundings. His eyes met with a field of shimmering gold—magma, slowly slithering in one direction. Li Yan had long since activated his Spirit Power, which was the only thing preventing him from being instantly incinerated.
'This won't work. I have to keep my Spirit Power active at all times, and the consumption is just too great. Besides…'
Li Yan glanced at Bu Luo, whom he was carrying, his Divine Sense sweeping the area as he pondered. Although Bu Luo wasn't dead for the time being, the moment Li Yan withdrew the protective shield of Spirit Power, Bu Luo would likely turn into a wisp of smoke and dissipate completely from the world in a matter of moments.
In the final exchange just now, Li Yan had finally managed to unleash ninety percent of the Qiongqi Purgatory Art's power. He hadn't killed Yiming outright. Though he was the type to seek revenge for the smallest grievance, he couldn't kill Yiming if he didn't want to be hunted down immediately.
Although Li Yan was exceptionally intelligent and capable of killing those of a higher cultivation level, he never considered himself some god of war. On the contrary, he was cautious and calculating in all matters.
The combat experience of the monk Yiming today was so rich that Li Yan had been unable to determine his true strength in the first ten breaths. By the time he confirmed it, his opponent had backup.
If Li Yan hadn't been so concerned about the immense trouble that would come from killing a Jingtu Sect cultivator here, he truly could have turned Yiming into a bloody pulp with that final strike, and then proceeded to kill the three monks who arrived immediately after.
'Of the three monks, the strongest is only at the Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment. But if they decided to flee, I'm not confident I could keep all three of them here, especially…' Li Yan felt a sense of frustration, resentful that he couldn't kill the monk Yiming who had ambushed him.
Besides the three monks, even more cultivators were arriving in the distance. Unless he could kill all several dozen of them and ensure not a single word of what happened here got out—but he wasn't a Golden Core cultivator. To even think of such a thing was a joke.
Li Yan's gaze swept around before he opened his mouth and spat out a small purple flag. It floated before him and immediately began to spin rapidly, swallowing his figure from sight in a mere instant.
Li Yan's idea was simple. Since he couldn't kill the monk Yiming and the enemy had reinforcements arriving, he naturally couldn't linger nearby. Yet, he couldn't stray too far from the Flame Palace either. Thus, he decided to take a risk and hide within the "Fire Eye."
The area around the Flame Palace was not a place cultivators were willing to stay for long, and the inside of the mountain was even less accessible. Therefore, even if cultivators came, they wouldn't stay for too long. If Li Yan hid well, this place was a much better option than fleeing far away.
As for saving Bu Luo, it was, of course, because even if the boy was beyond saving, Li Yan had no intention of letting the Jingtu Sect monks get their hands on his magical treasures.
These thoughts had already been decided upon the moment he heavily injured Yiming. Seizing the opportunity, he killed the white-robed youth. A Mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator was someone he could now almost instantly kill, especially when he was riding the unabated momentum from repelling Yiming. The white-robed youth was as fragile as paper.
Then, with a single motion, he had brought Bu Luo along with him. The book boy was laden with numerous magical treasures and had an extraordinary background. At the same time, Li Yan's wariness of the middle-aged Confucian scholar in the green robe was always in the back of his mind, which was why he had to decide how to handle Bu Luo now.
The moment Li Yan entered the Fire Eye, a quick probe of the area was all it took for him to immediately set up the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation. He only intended to use the cave entrance as a hiding spot and had no plans to venture deeper. Just as the formation took shape, three streams of Divine Sense followed him in.
The three streams of Divine Sense swept around the area near the entrance for a moment but found no trace of Li Yan. After a brief pause, they slowly and somewhat suspiciously retreated.
Sensing the Divine Senses of the three Jingtu Sect monks that had followed him in, Li Yan let out a cold sneer. Ever since he had refined the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation, he had come to understand its power. Even a Golden Core cultivator might not be able to see through it, let alone these people.
Otherwise, in all those long years, had there truly never been a Golden Core cultivator who entered the Melting Cave of that Snow Sprite Lord?
The formation Li Yan had set up was, of course, not right at the mouth of the cave.
Upon entering the cave, there was an open, rocky area about seventy feet wide. Further ahead was a deep pit resembling a cliff's edge, within which golden magma flowed slowly along the cliff wall, its destination unknown. In contrast to the slowly moving magma at the edges, the magma in the center of the pit churned violently.
The rocky, open area where Li Yan stood was only sixty or seventy feet deep; one more step forward would send him plunging into the roiling magma. However, the stone cliff at the mouth of the cave extended for several dozen feet to the left and right, stretching along the cave walls, creating a crooked, horizontal "I" shape between the entrance and the magma pit.
Li Yan's formation was set up at the very end of the right-hand path. It was only twenty feet in size, just enough to accommodate two people. Without prior knowledge of the Fire Eye's true layout, it would be impossible to know how far the cave walls extended to the left and right.
As long as they couldn't break the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation, those pursuing Li Yan would only assume that he had already entered the magma in the deep pit beyond the cliff.
Li Yan, carrying Bu Luo, took two steps forward, planning to find a relatively flat spot to put him down before deciding what to do. However, the rocks here were no different from red-hot iron plates. Bu Luo was currently unconscious and had lost the protection of his Spirit Power; leaving him on the ground for even a moment would turn him into a pile of cooked meat. Thus, Li Yan had to temporarily use his own Spirit Power to protect Bu Luo.
Just as Li Yan was resigned to continuing this consumption of his Spirit Power, a low roar suddenly sounded by his ear. He then felt the surrounding high temperature stagnate and even begin to recede. The low roar gave Li Yan a start, but fortunately, he had kept his Spirit Power shield active ever since entering, so he wasn't worried about a sneak attack.
In a flash, Li Yan was already carrying Bu Luo against the mountain's inner wall. The sight that met his eyes, however, left him stunned. Floating in mid-air before him was a small purple elephant. It was staring at Li Yan with unfriendly eyes. The elephant was only the size of an adult human, its body so illusory it seemed to be composed of just a few wisps of purple qi, its shape only vaguely discernible as that of an elephant.
The moment the small elephant appeared, waves of coldness emanated from its body, which was the reason Li Yan felt the temperature drop. This coldness was very familiar to him; it was the extreme cold from the Melting Cave on the first level.
This sudden development was no small shock to Li Yan, but he quickly recovered. A thought arose in his mind. 'This… is… a Purple… Divine Dragon-Elephant?'
If he remembered correctly, when he first obtained the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation from the jade slip, he learned that this formation had been created by an ancient sect by refining ten Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants. But after Li Yan refined it, aside from feeling that the formation was indeed more powerful than any protective formation he had ever seen, he had never seen a formation spirit appear.
Based on his understanding of formations, Li Yan believed the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation was already incomplete. Its formation spirits had either been annihilated or had fallen into a permanent slumber.
Li Yan had planned to ask Gong Chenying for guidance after returning to the sect to determine if the formation spirits of this array were alive or dead. If the latter, he even wondered if he could awaken them and allow the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation to unleash its true power.
But why was there only a single small purple elephant before him? Even as a soul, it was clearly just a juvenile. And there was only one. The ten Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants recorded in the jade slip were each adult souls, capable of rending the heavens and earth and trampling mountains and rivers.
Just as Li Yan was finding the scene before him surreal, the small elephant, while staring at him, continuously swung its long trunk. Then, with a sharp inhale, Li Yan felt the surrounding heat wave get sucked away as if into a vacuum. The temperature inside the formation plummeted instantly.
After this one breath, the purple light around the small elephant's body flickered erratically, like threads of translucent purple silk lighting up. But the temperature here was simply too high. The cooling was only momentary before Li Yan felt the heat wave rush back in to fill the void, once again flooding the entire space.
The purple elephant, however, had no intention of stopping. The instant the purple threads on its body brightened, it excitedly swung its trunk and let out another low roar. This time, Li Yan felt the roar was much more solid. Then, it took another long inhale, and the temperature dropped again.
Only then did Li Yan snap back to his senses, the spirit light around him flaring brightly. He wasn't worried that the purple elephant's roar would be heard outside; the small purple flag was still under his Divine Sense's control. With the restrictive power of the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation, the group of Foundation Establishment cultivators outside would be completely unable to sense anything happening within the formation.
What worried Li Yan was that this purple elephant had appeared without any warning. Although he guessed it might be a "Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant," he hadn't sensed their existence when he first refined the formation, and they never appeared when he used it later. Even his intentional efforts to summon them had been in vain. Yet today, one had appeared on its own, without any warning.
A Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant was an ancient ferocious beast. Even in the current cultivation world, there were only legends of it; the species was considered virtually extinct.
What was an ancient ferocious beast? Even a juvenile, a Golden Core cultivator might not be able to withstand a single blow from it. Li Yan knew perfectly well that with his meager cultivation, if the creature before him was truly one of the ten Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants, even as a wisp of a soul, it could very likely kill him instantly.
Li Yan did not act to stop it. He just watched everything quietly, the light in his eyes flickering unceasingly.
Just like that, the purple elephant continued to suck in the surrounding heat waves, causing the temperature within the great formation to fluctuate wildly. The purple threads on its body grew more numerous, denser, and brighter, until they gradually formed a semi-corporeal body, though it remained the size of an adult human.