59: Chapter 59 Old fox! So calculating over a book!

Xie Feng's blind staff tapped against a piece of gravel on the edge of the mine pit. The rock had been baked crisp by the subterranean fire, and at the mere touch of the staff's tip, it split into several pieces, a faint scent of sulfur seeping from the cracks.

This was already the deepest part of the outer mine pit, and the boundary line of the three-li restricted zone was less than a hundred paces ahead. Spreading out his Spiritual Qi perception allowed him to touch a tremendously heavy barrier of runes.

The Seal laid down by the Tianque Sect separated the core region of the subterranean fire fissure and the outer mine pit into two different worlds.

The mine pit on this side of the barrier had already been abandoned, the ground scattered with Ore residues and fractured copper ingot scraps, each piece covered with a layer of grayish-white charcoal ash.

"Shouldn't Cultivators be flying around every day? Yet here we are, acting just like orc miners every day." Tu Ziguan ransacked the place speechlessly.

"Stop chattering and hurry up and search to see if there are any good materials left." Xie Feng squatted down, using his fingertips to fish out a fist-sized copper Ore from the ash pile.

"Everything here is waste." Tu Ziguan stuck half his body out from the other end of the mine tunnel, his face smudged with several streaks of dark gray coal ash. "I've been rummaging for nearly half an hour and haven't even seen a single usable piece."

"The raw materials on the periphery of the mine pit are also draining away." Mo Tang squatted on the ground, tapping the surface of an Ore with a file. "Spiritual Qi is escaping even faster than before the mine was sealed."

Gu Jian did not speak. He stood at the edge of the mine tunnel, his back leaning against a supporting wooden pillar that had been baked crisp by the subterranean fire, his old sword propped on the ground.

Xie Feng continued walking deeper into the mine pit.

Probing downward layer by layer with his Spiritual Qi perception, he flipped over a piece of Ore fragment cracked by the subterranean fire, and fished out a palm-sized copper ingot scrap from the ash pile beneath the fragment.

It had some age to it, having been tempered by the subterranean fire for at least a hundred years. The copper surface had turned black, and when his Spiritual Qi perception probed inside, there was still a very thin layer of Spiritual Qi slowly wriggling deep within.

This piece wasn't completely dead.

Xie Feng stuffed the copper ingot scrap into his sleeve. It wasn't enough to forge a staff body, but it should be enough to make a counterweight for the staff tip. Just as he was about to continue rummaging through the next pile of Ore residue, the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled.

Ghatanothoa's mark simultaneously leaped against his chest.

"Seriously, how many weird things are there inside this damn Ranhuo City?!"

A crisp sound came from the depths of the mine pit. Xie Feng's Spiritual Qi perception suddenly surged forward, and a palm-wide fissure split open across a patch of gravelly ground at the bottom of the mine pit.

The rocks at the edge of the fissure were scorched dark red the moment it split open. An intense heat wave spewed from the fissure, carrying the scent of sulfur and lava, and then a ball of flame floated up from the fissure.

It drifted up without fuel or a carrier—it was simply a ball of fire growing in mid-air. The form of the fire ball constantly shifted, sometimes spherical, sometimes elliptical, sometimes elongated into a twisting band of light, its edges continuously ejecting tiny plasma streams outward.

Its core was a blinding blue-white, and its edges were a scorching orange-red, with countless extremely fine lines of light rolling across its surface. It floated out of the fissure, stopping about a person's height in mid-air. The surrounding air was severely distorted by the heat, and the gravel on the ground of the mine pit began to crackle under the high temperature.

"Get out of the way!"

Tu Ziguan reacted the fastest. An earth-shaking thunder left his waist, its copper shell tracing an arc and crashing into that ball of flame. The shockwave of the explosion burst within the mine pit, knocking the flame back half a foot. The light lines rolling across its surface fluctuated violently, and then the flame turned from orange-red to incandescent white.

It swallowed the impact force of the earth-shaking thunder; the heat and shockwave produced by the explosion were consumed by it as food. After eating, it became even brighter than before.

"Holy shit, what is this thing?!" Tu Ziguan shouted in astonishment.

Gu Jian swiftly leaped into the battle. The moment his new sword was unsheathed, a silver-white arc sliced open the dim air of the mine pit.

He cut in from the side, the tip of his sword piercing straight at the very center of the flame—that blue-white core. Gu Jian retreated as soon as the sword thrust was finished, without being greedy.

When the sword tip was pulled out of the flame, the blade was stained with an extremely thin layer of plasma residual liquid, which rolled twice on the blade edge and then evaporated. The sword body remained intact, but the back of Gu Jian's hand holding the sword gained a scalded red mark.

Mo Tang thumped her wooden box onto the ground, pulled out two rune-covered iron plates from the box, and thrust them into the ground. The rune circuits on the iron plates lit up, and an extremely faint aquamarine barrier rose between the plates. With lightning-fast hand speed, one rune circuit after another lit up, weaving a blocking barrier within the mine pit.

Xie Feng's face turned green on the side. Standing at the edge of the mine pit, his Spiritual Qi perception locked onto that ball of flame for dear life.

"A Fire Vampire!! What on earth is sealed beneath this damn Ranhuo City?!"

A Fire Vampire was not a physical entity, but a plasma-state energy aggregate. Any heat attacks would be swallowed by it and converted into its own heat, and it would also absorb magic power. To kill it, one either had to pour water on it or attack directly with magic before the magic power was absorbed.

Magic power?

Xie Feng horizontally barred his blind staff in front of him, his Spiritual Qi perception sinking into his six Meridians. Silver-white threads swam slowly within the Spiritual Qi. He pulled the finest thread out from his Meridians, guiding it downward along the body of the blind staff.

Xie Feng lunged forward as a whole, his blind staff sweeping horizontally. The moment the staff tip brushed across the edge of the flame, the silver-white halo and the orange-red plasma collided.

The plasma structure of the Fire Vampire briefly lost balance under the suppression of the magic power. The blue-white core shrank abruptly, and the orange-red edges splashed countless tiny points of light in all directions.

"Xie Feng, what kind of thing is inside your body?!" Mo Tang exclaimed while repairing the barrier.

Xie Feng's blind staff tapped against the ground, stabilizing his posture.

"A Fire Vampire, Cthugha's kin." He withdrew his blind staff, the residual silver-white halo on the staff tip fading away. "Do you have water, or long-range Spiritual Qi attack methods!?"

After that strike, the Fire Vampire dimmed a little. The blue-white core was still there, but the orange-red light patterns on the edges were noticeably sparser than before. It floated in mid-air without launching an active attack.

"Water?" Tu Ziguan immediately took down the water skin from behind him. This was originally the cooling water inside his water-cooled sleeve, and now it came in handy.

Tu Ziguan violently ripped the water skin from his waist and flung it over. In mid-air, the leather of the water skin was scorched black by the high temperature, and it burst open by itself when it flew above the Fire Vampire's head. A bag of water splashed onto the plasma surface, instantly vaporized into a dense white mist, and the Fire Vampire let out an extremely piercing screech.

It began to collapse. The blue-white core flickered frantically at an extremely fast frequency, rapidly extinguished, and then turned into a ball of red light that drilled back into the fissure.

Gu Jian sheathed his sword. The scalded red mark on the back of his hand had already turned light brown. Xie Feng leaned on his blind staff, stood for a few breaths, and then turned his head toward Gu Jian.

At this moment, Gu Jian suddenly lowered his sword tip; he sensed that Xie Feng was looking at him. The two hollow sockets beneath the black cloth were aimed straight at his face.

"Brother Gu."

"..."

"Gu Jian."

Gu Jian lowered his head, gripping the sword hilt so tightly his knuckles turned white. His Adam's apple rolled, and he took half a step back, his back pressing against the rock wall of the mine pit. A trace of extremely unnatural stiffness flashed across his habitually expressionless face.

Gu Jian turned his face away, looking at the ground. He neither spoke nor moved.

"Immortal Swordsman Gu? Did you take someone else's idea when you asked me to accompany you?" Xie Feng tilted his head, pressing right up in front of Gu Jian's face.

The corner of Gu Jian's mouth twitched.

"...It was Elder Wen." Gu Jian's voice was muffled, carrying a sense of resignation like someone dragged to a courtroom and forced to speak. "Elder Wen Heng. He said you went to Cangyun City to investigate the city-guard Cultivators, and that you are more familiar with these things than anyone else in the Sect."

His Adam's apple rolled again. "He said this trip to Ranhuo City to retrieve the sword required me to bring you along. Several months ago, he received letters about abnormalities in Ranhuo City; he felt that there was something beneath Ranhuo City belonging to the same category as the kind of things you had investigated."

Tu Ziguan's earth-shaking thunder drooped down to his knees. "So retrieving the sword is a cover?"

"The sword is real." Gu Jian finally turned his face back, looked at Xie Feng for a second, and then looked away. "But Elder Wen said that things you investigate won't only appear in one place. Cangyun City had trouble, so Ranhuo City would likely have trouble too. He told me to bring you along so you could recognize it if something happened. I couldn't explain it clearly, and he told me not to say anything."

After finishing, he closed his mouth, his lips pressed tightly together, completing the absolute limit of confessions in his entire life.

"Those damned grandfather and grandson!"

Xie Feng gritted his teeth. To think that Wen Yushu still had the nerve to extort him—this Wen Heng was simply treating him like a free popular science investigator!

Thinking back to the day he finished reading "cultes des goules" in the Scripture Pavilion, Wen Heng was sitting by the window, asking him, "Have you learned it?"

What an old fox!