"Now!"
With that, Vermilion Demon Lord thrust both hands forward, spell-weaving fingers blurring in fevered session. A wave of dark-scarlet demonic aura burst from his palms and hardened into three monstrous ice serpents, their scales jagged with murderous frost. They shot downward likeet tails and drove toward the triangle formed by the three array banners, aiming for the very vein beneath the cavern floor.
Boom!
A thunderous detonation followed. Pr cold mmed against molten heat, and the collision screamed like metal dragged across bone. The magmake convulsed, yet in that instant, the serpents bored into the subterranean meridians and froze the fiery current solid.
The next second, Jared sprang into action.
Instead of using the Dragonyer Sword, he raised two fingers as a de, gathering at their tips a thread of graying chaotic sword energy so condensed it looked carved from storm clouds caught at dusk.
His footing wavered like a drunk, yet his speed was spectral. He slipped through the gap at the heart of the three array banners, a ghost of motion even the eye resisted tracking.
Those two fingers touched the base of an iridescent crystal pir, exactly where its roots anchored into stone.
"Break!"
The single breath of a word drifted out as lightly as falling ash, yet inside the pir, atticework of fractures began to proliferate with the haste of winter ice racing across a pond.
Its glowing runes dimmed. One pir failing triggered the next, until all nine trembled in sympathetic panic. Soon, lines of molten rock on the array map faltered, reversed, and spiraled into chaos.
"Retreat!" Jared hissed the order and wheeled back up the tunnel.
The trio had barely cleared the mouth of the cavern when apocalypse roared behind them. Nine pirs detonated together, uprushing magma forming a crimson geyser that swallowed every trace of stone.
The shockwave should have levelled mountains, but the cramped tunnel throttled its fury, directing most of the violence inward where it imploded upon itself.
When theva settled and the smoke thinned, the formation was gone. In its ce yawned a crater so deep its bottom shimmered with magma trying to crawl home.
At the darkest reach of that pit, a natural staircase glimmered, descending into untouched night.
"Let''s go," Jared said as he wiped fresh blood from the corner of his mouth and stepped onto the first basalt tread.
Behind him, Vermilion Demon Lord watched the younger man''s swaying yet unbowed back, a knot of emotions flickering across crimson eyes before he followed in silence.
The stairway coiled ever downward, each turn dragging them closer to the''s molten heart. Worse still, the heat thickened until breathing felt like drinking me.
Walls had vitrified under ages of furnace wind, bing mirror-bright ss that distorted their reflections into wandering phantoms.
Sometimes, ancient fossils shed behind the translucent ze-creatures no surface schr had ever named.
One hourter, their path was blocked again.
This time, no man-made array stood in their way, but a barrier forged by nature itself a roaring waterfall of livingva.
Streams of dark-goldva poured from the vaulted ceiling, spreading into a curtain dozens of yards across, heat shimmering like a killing haze. Beyond that incandescent veil flickered a jade-green glow-the aura of Jadeheart Marrow.
s, theva waterfall was no inert wall as shapes swam across its surface. Countless beasts sculpted from pure fire prowled within the molten sheet. They resembled lizards but bore three heads and six wed limbs, each body wreathed in blinding white mes.
Every one of those Lava Beasts was a guardian born by the furnace of the world to deny passage to all who dared seek the marrow beyond, and they exuded power equal to the Heavenly Immortal Realm beginner phase.
That said, what made the approach to the falls truly perilous was a buried current of geomantic gravity that pulsed through the stone like a second, darker heartbeat. Step by step, that unseen weight thickened around anyone who dared to venture closer, dragging at flesh and bone until every breath felt shackled by an invisible iron band.
Jared''s wounds still throbbed. He suspected that, in his present state, he would not reach even halfway across the glowing torrent before the crushing force snapped his spine and pulped him against the molten wall.
Vermilion Demon Lord inhaled, his chest expanding like a furnace bellows. "I''ll lead the way."
Demonic aura surged around him,
Jared swallowed pride and offered a
sharp nod. "Those Lava Beasts are wrought from pure earth fire
essence. Their core sits inside the centrabskull. Riding the waterfall''s fury, they strike like giants and regenerate endlessly unless a three fire cores are shattered at the same instant."
Vermilion Demon Lord answered with a hunting cry. Ancient runes red across the demonic armor, buying him a heartbeat against the mounting gravity. "Understood."
He hurled himself forward, a zing red meteor that mmed straight into the molten torrent.
A guttural, world-splitting roar thundered from the depths.
Dozens of Lava Beasts erupted, charging as one molten tide.
Demonic aura coiled around Vermilion Demon Lord''s arms, solidifying into twin crimson war des. He swept them left and right in ovepping arcs that painted the air with sizzling crescents.
Where the des passed, rocky heads toppled. Yet, just as Jared had warned, magma churned at each wound, rebuilding skulls even before the headless bodies struck the ground.
A murderous glint shed in the demon lord''s eyes. "Demonic me-Coreburn!" The twin des burst apart, transforming into hundreds of hair-thin crimson threads that spun outward and drilled with surgical precision into the brow of every beast, targeting the hidden fire cores in all three skulls at once.
A rapid series of muffled pops echoed through the spray.
The Lava Beasts froze, their glow fading. Secondster, they copsed into ordinary g, sliding back into the waterfall like spent embers swept into a forge.
The maneuver demanded near-perfect fire control, and it was clear that Vermilion Demon Lord had revealed his true skill.
However, the torrent birthed more monsters without pause; sever one head and three new bodies burst free.
As the trio pushed deeper, the gravity thickened, and spiderweb fractures began crawling across Vermilion Demon Lord''s crimson armor.
Jared saw the fissures spreading and spoke to Lindsay without shifting his gaze from the battle. "Cover me for a while."
With that, he sat down cross-legged, the Dragonyer Swordid horizontally across his knees, as his hands formed an ancient, arcane seal.
A single mote of chaotic light ignited between his brows, seeping like quicksilver through every vein. Inside his torn chest, the Soul-Devouring Demonic me recoiled,shing back in dark red tendrils that skittered toward his heart.
With a gutturalmand, he ground the word through clenched teeth. "Suppress!"
Jared''s Golden Dragon Bloodline instantly boiled awake, a muted roar coursing through his meridians and forcing the demonic mes to retreat by half a breath. Seizing the opening, he pushed his chaotic celestial energy to its limits, tuning its nature to pure assimtion.
This was no strike-it was infiltration.
The chaotic celestial energy slid outward, silent as mercury, blending into the surrounding earth vein and mimicking the very breath of theva fall.
A single misstep would invite earth fire bacsh that might finish him for good.
Ten breathster, Jared''s eyes snapped open, blood streaking his lips, yet his voice
rang firm. "Seven yards left, three feet behind the fall—there''s a gravity node. Smash it now!"
Hemmed in by five gargantuan Lava Beasts, Vermilion Demon Lord
epted the order without hesitation. He endured two molten blows that shattered half his armor,
then hurled himself left, gathered every shred of his demonic power. and hammered his fist into the point Jared had called out.
Crack! Crack!
A crackling like shattering crystal ripped through the air.
The entireva curtain shivered, its molten torrent spasming as though struck by an invisible hammer. Gravity itself ckened, loosening its grip by nearly a third.
Across the river of fire, every roaming Lava Beast lurched mid-prowl, their once- dense bodies suddenly porous, as if the heat that birthed them had been leeched
away.