On the cold, hard surface of the meteor, there lay a corpse that had decayed for god knows how many years.
It had dark-green skin and was clearly not of the human race.
It even had a meter-long tail. The flesh on the tail had long since rotted away, and all that was left were pale-white bones.
The end of the tail bones were similar to a sharp fork, which pierced into the ground. Even after it had wasted away for countless years, it was still flickering with a faint green light, and there seemed to still be energy contained in it.
“Is this…” Nie Tian observed it for a long time and frowned as he said, “the body of an outsider race?”
Zheng Bin nodded and softly said, “I’ve lived in the Realm of Flame Heaven my whole life and so I’ve never seen an outsider before. However, this is clearly not a human, and he’s been dead for god knows how many years, but that tail of his still has strong energy fluctuating within.”
Nie Tian was puzzled. “Why were you so excited to show it to me?”
“The energy contained in that tail carries a strong life force, and that life force is very much beyond ordinary.” Zheng Bin quietly scanned his surroundings again as he spoke, as if he was worried that they would be discovered. “I want to cut the tail off, but I’m a bit scared…”
“Scared?” Nie Tian asked. “It must have been dead for a long time, what’s there to be afraid of?”
Zheng Bin bitterly laughed. “I’ve already tried…
“I can’t sever that tail with my spiritual tool. Even though there is nothing but bones left in that tail, it’s still terrifyingly tough.
“You aren’t asking me to do that for you, are you?” Nie Tian shook his head and continued, “I don’t have anything that’s sharp enough, either.”
Zheng Bin looked at him with a longing expression in his eyes. “You’re Wu Ji’s disciple. Don’t tell me that your master didn’t give you a high ranked spiritual tool.”
Without any hesitation, Nie Tian shook his head again. “No.”
Before he had stepped into the Heaven Gate, Wu Ji had indeed given him many life-saving magical items, but none of them were sharp.
Wu Ji told him that since he already possessed the Spirit Channeling grade Flame Dragon Armor, all he needed to do was to be patient and take his time to establish a deep relationship with the Flame Dragon Armor’s soul. In the future, the Flame Dragon Armor would help him obtain everything that he ever wanted.
With the Flame Dragon Armor in his possession, he wouldn’t need another spiritual tool.
“Oh, if you really don’t have any, then fine.” Zheng Bin had a face full of disappointment.
In his eyes, Nie Tian was simply reluctant to help him, and that was all.
He also was perfectly aware that he and Nie Tian weren’t exactly friends, and he had even abandoned Nie Tian more than one time in the past.
In return, when he and Han Xin were trapped in the Scarlet Flame Mountain Range, Nie Tian and the others hadn’t stopped the Thunder Beast for him on their way out of there.
Therefore, he found it quite natural that Nie Tian had adopted such an attitude.
Zheng Bin didn’t say anything more. Instead, he squatted beside the tail of the outsider’s corpse, and took out a sharp sword.
Unwilling to give up, he swung the sword at the tail.
CLANK!
Sparks of white and green splashed out from the tail as soon as his sword made contact with it.
Nie Tian looked closely when Zheng Bin made the attempt, and found that when his sword landed on one of the bones, the faint green light that had been flickering on the tail suddenly brightened.
A surge of mysterious energy that was filled with a vigorous life force suddenly rushed out from that bone, as if it strengthened that bone.
The slash didn’t even leave a mark on the bone. Instead, Zheng Bin slightly staggered, trying his best to hold on to his sword.
He still didn’t want to give up. Since he couldn’t break that particular bone, he raised his sword once more and went for the other bones of the tail.
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
However, every time his sword fell, those bones shone with a green light.
Every time, the green light offset the attacking momentum and the slash of Zheng Bin’s sword.
By the time his sword made contact with the tail bones, the spiritual power within his sword had already worn out, and the blade seemed to have lost its edge.
“Well, that’s interesting…” Intrigued, Nie Tian narrowed his eyes as he closely examined the tail bones, pondering what method he should use to break the resistance of the strong life force of that joint.
He secretly sent a strand of psychic awareness into his bracelet of holding, with the intention to find a piece of equipment that could break the self-defense of that bone.
Unfortunately, besides the Flame Dragon Armor, he didn’t find any other spiritual tool that he could use.
And the Flame Dragon Armor was currently in a dormant mode, refining the energy it had obtained from the Earthflame Crystal Strings and healing its damages.
He wouldn’t possibly awaken it from its sleep just to try to break off the tail with it.
In addition, the Flame Dragon Armor was an extremely precious treasure of the Spirit Channeling grade, and it came from the Realm of Dark Underworld.
Both his master Wu Ji and Hua Mu had warned him against using the Flame Dragon Armor unless it was a situation of life or death, in order to prevent the fact that he had it from leaking, which would very likely attract unnecessary attention from the Realm of Dark Underworld.
He couldn’t come up with a good solution, so didn’t say anything.
“You keep trying, and I’ll go check the perimeter.” With these words, he separated with Zheng Bin. After hearing Zheng Bin’s warnings, he no longer dared to bounce into the sky.
He tried to control his body and adapt to the gravity. With light and quick steps, he moved about on the prismatic meteor that he and Zheng Bin were on.
The meteor was only five or six miles across, and before long, he covered every inch of it. As he did it, he used his psychic awareness to scan the surroundings.
He was convinced that there was no one else on the prismatic meteor except for Zheng Bin and himself.
Not long after, he stopped by the edge of the meteor.
A slender stone protrusion, which was several hundreds of meters long, stabbed horizontally into another meteor that was even bigger than the one he was on, connecting the two.
The slender stone protrusion was only a foot wide. If he wanted to, he could go to the other meteor via the stone path.
However, he didn’t.
Previously, when the cold wind blew over, he had consumed a large amount of his spiritual power to resist the coldness.
With the lessons that he had drawn from the battles within the Green Illusion dimension, he knew that his cultivation base was low to start with. If he couldn’t maintain his peak state, he would definitely suffer a terrible loss when he encountered a stranger.
Therefore, he sat down on the ground and took out the spirit stones that his master Wu Ji had given him, and with the Qi Refining Incantation, he began to restore the spiritual power that he had lost.
During the process, he took out his master’s command medallion from his bracelet of holding.
When his spiritual power was fully recovered, he sent a strand of his psychic power into the command medallion to check the three spiritual incantations that Wu Ji had branded within it.
According to Wu Ji’s instructions, he could choose one of them or all three of them to cultivate.
On his way to the Hell sect, he had only glanced at them for a moment due to lack of time, and didn’t really read into them.
Now that he was temporarily safe in this cold, mysterious dimension, he wanted to make use of this good opportunity to quickly master a spiritual incantation, so as to raise his battle prowess.
“Flame Spirit Incantation, Illusion Spirit Incantation, Gentle Water Incantation…”
Up till now, he still hadn’t had a clue regarding his cultivation attribute, and thus didn’t know what direction his cultivation would go down in the future.
He had once asked Wu Ji about it.
According to Wu Ji, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing if someone didn’t have a specific cultivation attribute.
People with no specific attributes could choose many types of spiritual incantations to cultivate, and they would be able to cultivate any type to a good extent.
This was the privilege that people with no specific cultivation attribute would have.
However, their disadvantages were also very obvious.
If people without specific cultivation attributes wanted to cultivate a spiritual incantation of a certain attribute, their cultivating speed would be much slower than those with matching attributes.
Not only that, they would also need much more energy and time to comprehend the profundity of specific spiritual incantations.
For example, since An Shiyi had fire as her cultivation attribute, she would improve rapidly and achieve deep understandings of it if she were to cultivate the Flame Spirit Incantation.
If he were to cultivate the Flame Spirit Incantation, his improvement would be much slower, to the extent where he could have no hope to reach the pinnacle of fire mastery within his lifetime.
However, if An Shiyi, who possessed the fire attribute, didn’t cultivate the Flame Spirit Incantation, but learned the Gentle Water Incantation instead, it would be extremely difficult for her.
Furthermore, compared to a person like Nie Tian, who had no specific attributes, learning that incantation would be countless times more dangerous, so much so that she could even fall into a Qi deviation, due to the conflict between attributes.
On the other hand, although a person with no specific attributes could cultivate all kinds of spiritual incantations, their improvement with every type of incantation would be rather slow. They might possibly be unable to comprehend the profound mysteries within those spiritual incantations over the course of their whole life.
The lifespan of a human was limited, which would cause people with no attributes to run out their years and die due to their incapability to comprehend the deep truth of a certain attribute and break through into a higher realm.
This was also the reason that the seven major sects of the Realm of Flame Heaven would always choose youngsters who had been born with cultivation attributes as their disciples.
After that, they would pass on incantations of matching attributes to the youngsters, and let them continuously break through at a fast speed, since only in that way would they be able to increase their lifespans and thus continue cultivating.
Nie Tian thought for a moment and soon made up his mind. “The Flame Dragon Armor is definitely fire attributed, so I guess I’d better cultivate the Flame Spirit Incantation first.”
As soon as he picked the Flame Spirit Incantation as the first one to cultivate, he started to study it wholeheartedly.