Flying over the God Burial River, Huang Xiaolong looked down at the seemingly calm river surface below. Occasionally, sporadic faint red streams of energy could be seen floating to the air. These faint red energy streams had extremely high temperatures. To test it out, Huang Xiaolong threw a saint grade spirit stone down into the river.
The moment the saint grade spirit stone came in contact with the red energy stream, it evaporated into a pool of spiritual energy.
Although the hardness of a saint grade spirit stone couldn’t compare to divine grade spirit stone, its hardness was no less than ten thousand year old iron ore. Still, it evaporated in an instant.
Wan Long’s group sucked in a breath of cold air watching this result.
Everyone was twice as careful after that.
Halfway across the river, Huang Xiaolong suddenly heard soft grinding noises near his body. Checking his surrounding, he saw a swarm of fiery red bugs as big as an adult thumb fall into the river from midair.
Each of those fiery red bugs had sharp fangs and ugly features.
Coming across this swarm of bugs, everyone slightly tensed, realizing immediately that these were the infamous fire maggots that could sneak inside a person’s bloodstream without any signs, sucking their victims’ blood essence, bone marrows, and soul!
Huang Xiaolong was breaking out in cold sweat without the others noticing.
Those fire maggots slightly resembled the Tailless Corpse Worm he encountered on the Heavenly Mountain, with undetectable presence even when they were moving. Huang Xiaolong also failed to sense them with this powerful divine sense.
Fortunately, he created a protective barrier around himself using the true immortal essence fire.
Before long, they were attacked by another swarm of fire maggots.
Before entering the Fire World, the armors that Wan Long’s group prepared were specifically used to deal with these fire maggots. Thus, despite the consecutive attacks from the fire maggots, Wan Long’s group of four weren’t in any actual danger.
Half an hour later, the five of them crossed the daunting God Burial River without mishap.
Reaching the other side of the river, obvious relief could be seen on Wan Long and the other three people’s face as they wiped the cold sweat off their foreheads.
Not wanting to stay close to the river any longer, the group quickly left, flying off in the direction of the Firecloud Mountain.
As they flew closer to Firecloud Mountain, the number of fire element demonic beasts they encounter increased. Once or twice, the group was attacked by Tenth Order God Realm demonic beasts, but those only had early Tenth Order God Realm strength. Huang Xiaolong didn’t even need to lift a finger, all the attacks were easily dealt with by Wan Long alone.
Another hour passed when Huang Xiaolong’s stopped before an enormous mountain.
This enormous mountain had many fire-red clouds floating around it starting from its mid-height.
Hence, its name—Firecloud Mountain.
Even from where they were, endless roars of demonic beasts could be heard.
“Master, we don’t know the precise location of that Fire Scaled Beast’s cave, finding it in this situation would be quite troublesome.” Wan Long spoke respectfully to Huang Xiaolong.
Huang Xiaolong nodded. Quite troublesome indeed.
The Firecloud Mountain area was too big, close to a hundred thousand li, and who knows how tall its peak was, combing over such a big area would take them several days’ time. Furthermore, if they alarmed all the demonic beasts living in this Firecloud Mountain area, triggering their anger all around, as confident as Huang Xiaolong was in his own strength, it was undeniably a headache as well.
Although they didn’t know how many demonic beasts were living here, their number was likely to be around ten thousand by rough estimation. Demonic beasts capable of winning a territory for themselves here in Firecloud Mountain, their strength would not be lower than Tenth Order God Realm.
With the majority of these demonic beasts possessing Tenth Order God Realm cultivation, there might also be Highgod Realm demonic beasts amongst them.
An idea flashed in Huang Xiaolong’s mind and his eyes lit up. They might not know where the Fire Scaled Beast’s cave was, but the demonic beasts living here in the Firecloud Mountain might know something. He could capture a few of these demonic beasts and scour their souls, perhaps he could learn some useful information.
Pondering deeper, Huang Xiaolong did not order Wan Long’s group to go, instead, he told them to stay where they were and wait for news. Amongst the four, two of them were of Ninth Order God Realm, comparably weaker, and Huang Xiaolong might not be able to take care of them if an accident happened in between.
Toward Huang Xiaolong’s order, the four of them dared not voice any objection. Thus, they obediently waited for Huang Xiaolong’s news.
In a flicker, Huang Xiaolong disappeared from the spot.
When his figure appeared, he was high in the air where the fire clouds hovered. With a quick glance over the terrain, Huang Xiaolong then flew toward a mountain cliff up ahead.
Somewhere up ahead on a cliff laid a demonic beast that looked like a crocodile. However, its body was covered with gray-colored dragon scales, and there was a sharp horn protruding out from its forehead.
This demonic beast was called Iron Scales Dragon Croc. A distant descendant of an ancient dragon, however, its dragon bloodline was extremely weak, and therefore it was difficult for them to advance to the Highgod Realm.
The one in front of Huang Xiaolong was an early Tenth Order God Realm. Then again, an early Tenth Order God Realm Iron Scales Dragon Croc was quite rare in a lower realm like theirs.
The suction force from his hands pulled the Iron Scales Dragon Croc right in front of him. Against Huang Xiaolong, the demonic beast was powerless to resist, a single slap from Huang Xiaolong’s palm rendered it unconscious, and the soul-scouring began.
A while later, the soul-scouring ended, but Huang Xiaolong was disappointed, for there were no clues about the Fire Scaled Beast’s cave location in its memory.
Despite his disappointment, Huang Xiaolong did not kill the Iron Scales Dragon Croc, instead, he branded a soul mark into the Iron Scales Dragon Croc’s soul before throwing it into his Asura Ring.
Huang Xiaolong decided to tame a herd of Tenth Order God Realm demonic beasts. Other than the Ascending Moon Old Man and Yang Yi temporarily staying in the Martial Spirit World, overall, its defense was incredibly weak.
But, things would be different with a herd of Tenth Order God Realm demonic beasts. Adding the defensive formations that he arranged, the Martial Spirit World’s, or at the very least the Huang Clan Manor’s defenses would be impenetrable even for a Highgod Realm master.
After throwing the Iron Scales Dragon Croc into his Asura Ring, Huang Xiaolong continued to search for the next target. His demonic beast targets were all Tenth Order God Realm and above.
From the information Wan Long received, that Fire Scaled Beast’s strength was between mid-Tenth Order to late-Tenth Order God Realm. According to Huang Xiaolong’s line of thought, the demonic beasts that came in contact with the Fire Scaled Beast would more or less have a similar level of strength.
However, Huang Xiaolong had scoured a total of thirteen demonic beasts of early and mid-Tenth Order God Realm, but still failed to find the location of its cave.
Throwing the thirteenth demonic beast, a mid-Tenth Order God Realm, into his Asura Ring, Huang Xiaolong’s eyebrows rose in deep thought. Could it be there was no Fire Scaled Beast within the Firecloud Mountain area?
If there was a Fire Scales Beast living on this mountain, it was unlikely for not even one of the thirteen demonic beasts he captured to have any clues.
After a while, Huang Xiaolong flew up toward the Firecloud Mountain’s peak.
In general, demonic beasts that lived higher than the mountain’s mid-point were Tenth Order God Realm strength. The higher up one went, the stronger they were.
On the peak, Huang Xiaolong found a late-Tenth Order God Realm purple serpent with a pair of radiant wings next to a fire lake. It had an ancient fierce beast bloodline, Luminous Wings Flying Serpent. However, this one that Huang Xiaolong found was a mutated variant, and much stronger.
Huang Xiaolong dared not underestimate this Luminous Wings Flying Serpent. Concealing his aura, Huang Xiaolong summoned the twin dragon martial spirits and soul transformed. Then, executing the two abilities of Space Concealment and Phantom Shadow at the same time, Huang Xiaolong arrived right above the purple serpent’s head. Then, he struck down a palm, slamming on the purple serpent’s head.
The Luminous Wings Flying Serpent reacted almost immediately. Its wings spread, releasing a blinding light, but its reaction was still half a second too late.
Huang Xiaolong’s palm stunned the purple serpent unconscious, however, he couldn’t afford to scour its soul at the moment. With a quick action, he threw the serpent into his Asura Ring and disappeared from the spot in a flicker.
Just as Huang Xiaolong left, echoes of demonic beast roars shook the air, overwhelming pressure was coming from many different directions.
In that split second when the Luminous Wings Flying Serpent reacted, the bright radiance from its wings alerted the surrounding demonic beasts.