Hot.
Wei Wuyin found that his surroundings were heating up, like a pre-heating prelude to his eventual frying. If a normal soul was here, they would feel abnormally discomforted by the slowly rising heat, but Wei Wuyin was here with his physical body. Light-emitting silvery embryonic fluid aside, Wei Wuyin's physical body was refined by Absolute Hot Fire Energies and Scorching Ash Magma Energies, two Apex-level heat-exuding elemental energies elevating his resistance to typical heat to be absolute.
For now.
"This is only the start," Wei Wuyin murmured as he realized that the mucus-like substance on his body wasn't evaporating despite the rising heat or experiencing any adverse reaction at the moment. This only further strengthened his belief that this strange fluid wasn't ordinary, capable of remaining unaffected and even coming to Hell with him.
"Am I still in a cocoon?" Wei Wuyin still didn't understand the transportation of the Calamities of Hell very well; he was only able to verify that his physical body and soul would accompany him, a stark difference from normal souls. This was the core advantage that the Bloodline of Sin granted him and likely contributed to why the Bloodline of Sin Inheritors, those typically within the Realm of Sages, would be able to continuously survive these calamities.
"Woo!" Wei Wuyin lightly exhaled, expelling a breath of condensed Absolute Ice Origin Energy from his mouth into the surroundings. The heat within the vicinity cooled instantly, but only for a brief period. "So my cultivated power and inherent energies can affect this calamity." With this discovery, he no longer felt the slightest hint of trepidation towards the Third Calamity in his heart, his confidence rose to the highest level possible in his circumstance.
"This space… it is named the Agonized Road Dimension," Wei Wuyin recalled the information that Wen Mingna had risked her life to transmit. The calamity itself was called the Calamity of Blade and Fire, a sign of its characteristics and power. "The Agonized Road Dimension is a forceful journey of a path. To survive, one must fully travel the road amidst blade and fire. This was my analysis; It seems to be correct."
The surroundings were a haze of heat and red, overwhelming the scenery, but there was a stretch of road that was extremely clear within his senses. It urged him to move. The urge originated from his soul, telling him that traveling was the only route to survival.
Sinners who arrived here would face this Calamity of Hell with only their souls, without their physical bodies, and would already be roasting and feeling deeply uncomfortable by the rising heat. With utmost urgency to preserve their lives, they would rush across the Agonized Road for an escape or flee from the path.
"Don't stray from the path," Wei Wuyin reminded himself with all his heart before he lifted his foot and stepped forward. As he did, the heat within the world rose by several degrees. To someone with a physical body and a high affinity for fire, he easily felt the sudden difference.
"Don't run yet," Wei Wuyin lightly breathed as he took another step forward. The heat rose once again, but the rate of its increase was a degree or two higher. Despite his internally-issued self-warning, a hum of blades resounded behind him, causing the nape of his neck to grow cold, and his heart leaped out of his chest as he instinctively moved to dodge.
He leaped forward, easily traversing a thousand steps.
"Shit!"
Suddenly, the rising heat exploded!
FIRE BLAZED!
Flames!
Flames erupted everywhere!
The visible world was overwhelmed by a flood of flames, enveloping Wei Wuyin in an instant. The Agonized Road was instantly drowned, and Wei Wuyin's eyes remained open, keeping track of a single direction!
The heat emitted from the flames seared his skin, and the flames licked his eyes, scorching them a dark color, and igniting his hair. While he was in his fleshy body, the Calamities of Hell were not so simple.
Eye of Immortality!
Wei Wuyin's eyes had been on the verge of melting as they burned, but the Eye of Immortality was evoked, and those silver eyes of his were instantly reborn alongside the flaring of a wisp of eternal aura.
"Hm?" Wei Wuyin was stunned for a brief moment as his body was slowly being burned, forcefully calming himself down as the flames drowned him, entering his orifices, trying to eradicate him from every angle.
His blood burned! His bones burned! His cells burned!
His physical body was being scorched and seared by the passing moment, but Wei Wuyin remained calm. A normal soul would've been howling in despair, wishing for death at this point, especially since the searching flames burned everything. Fortunately, his fleshy body acted as the first layer of defense and the flames couldn't touch the Outer Shell of his soul as long as it existed!
While Wei Wuyin wasn't entirely scorched black, his skin looked molten with a heated glow.
He didn't feel any pain.
Using the Seven Source Soul Light and Alchemic Eden Force, he applied the aspect of Containment to his sense of touch. At the moment, he was entirely numb as all his terrifyingly hellish responses to burning pain from his fleshy body and Primary Mind were being scooped up and placed at the edge of his Sea of Consciousness.
"I rushed it a little, but it works." Wei Wuyin sighed in his heart after acting on instinct, dashing a thousand steps when he sought to test his theory of pain containment. Unfortunately, there was a sacrificial piece to this tactic.
"AHHHHHHH! AURGH!!!" Wei Wuyin's Secondary Mind was howling while in indescribable levels of agony as if it was in its death throes. It could rip apart a person's psyche just hearing such raging howls seeking the comfort of death, capable of instilling everlasting nightmares.
The sensation of pain must be felt, this was an unchangeable law of the Calamity of Hell.
Fortunately, using Seven Source Soul Light, his Second Mind's connection with his Soul was severed, so the cleansing process of this hell hadn't been initiated.
"The Agonized Road releases the Cleansing Power of Hell depending on the degree of pain felt by the Soul." Wen Mingna's information had been absolutely crucial to coming up with this tactic. If he had entered here while ignorant, chances were that he would've never been able to come up with this strategy while experiencing agonizing pain or resisting the cleansing power.
Stronger Souls felt less pain. As a result, stronger Souls often survived the Agonized Road for longer, while those True Souls refined through extraordinary methods such as the True Soul of Sin might be entirely unaffected by the rising heat to a certain extent.
Unfortunately, Wei Wuyin had a Mortal's Soul; There was no amount of cultivation in the Mortal Realms that would change that, and the amount of cleansing power that needed to affect him for him to be eradicated was utterly insignificant in quantity. After all, it took three minutes of the Second Calamity's cleansing power to lose eighty percent of his Soul's Outer Shell.
The Third Calamity's Cleansing Power was considerably stronger.
This was why Wei Wuyin, unknowingly, had observers that were curious enough to come. It should be a virtual impossibility for a Mortal's Soul to survive given the conditions of the Calamity of Blade and Fire. There was no escape path—either be cleansed or traverse the entirety of the Agonized Road.
Wei Wuyin's eyes peered ahead as the flames soon abated, but the heat was ever-rising! The Agonized Road was ahead of him, and if Wen Mingna's information was correct, then he had to traverse 108,000,000 steps!
He pressed his palm over his heart area, "It's almost your turn."
Ba-Dum!