Chapter 157: The Lion of the Nine Dragons
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
Walking along this branch for about 3000 feet, it was much further than where the so called geocentric fire vein was. In fact, for Junior Leopard, the place was actually not the hub of this fire vein. It was only a spacious underground magma pool formed from a wide passageway.
It was actually a passageway that the underground magma would pass through. And its surrounding branches would lead to deeper places of the entire underground fire vein. Junior Leopard even inferred that each branch in the passageway could lead to the same earth vein evil qi. Only that those passageways were too narrow, so none of the explorers who could reach here wanted to go further to explore the branches.
There were also inevitable reasons why nobody would explore them. In the four smelting families, only a few people’s cultivation could reach Level Seven. The Wu Family was an example: only Lyu Yiyue’s cultivation was Level Seven. A person of this kind had almost practiced gang qi, and he usually didn’t know any good Special Techniques. Hence, the person normally wouldn’t care much about things like evil qi. Or it could be put that even if he was interested, it made no difference either. Because the underground fire vein here was evil qi of fire, even though it was an evil qi. In this world, Special Techniques and gang qi that really needed evil qi of fire to be cultivated were in fact very scarce.
For famous techniques that would require evil qi of fire while practising, there was only Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique possessed by the Wu Family and Distant Fire Mysterious Skill studied by the Sect of Flame.
When one’s cultivation was over Level Seven, he wouldn’t need the evil qi here. While the experts whose cultivation was under Level Seven they wouldn’t have the ability to explore the branches here. Therefore, although earth vein evil qi existed in the underground fire vein, people who both had the ability and desire to explore here were few.
And Junior Leopard was one of the minorities. He was also the only person who could make full use of the evil qi here.
Junior Leopard continued to walk forward following the branch. He walked for about 3000 feet, and then reached a corner that led to a deeper place. He then went on slowly. Now, the surrounding fire toxin, which was also called evil qi of fire, was also getting thick. If it was in the past, Junior Leopard would no longer be able to endure it and would have had to exert his internal qi or fist intent to balance out the fire toxins of evil qi here, but things were different this time.
He had been to the underground fire vein a couple of times already, but it was different this time because he had another External Elixir.
Now he had two External Elixirs. One was the bone of Dragon Chimera attached to his ear, which practiced Green Jade Qian Yuan Skill he learned from Snake King. At present, its cultivation was Level Six. The other was the Fiery Eye he newly obtained, which was embedded between his eyebrows.
What was different from other people’s External Elixirs was that both of his were practicing automatically. That meant even if Junior Leopard didn’t practice them, they would practice day and night in the way he had previously set them up. It was exactly for this reason that his first External Elixir’s cultivation could reach Level Six in such a short time.
And why could he do that? The major reason was still the Mysterious Fire in his Dantian that he inherited from Dragon Chimera.
While his first External Elixir was affected by the Mysterious Fire, his second External Elixir, the Fiery Eye, was originally practicing the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique. And within his body the Mysterious Fire in Dantian had already melted into his internal qi, so even if Junior Leopard didn’t split the Mysterious Fire out of his Dantian, it had been connected to his internal qi.
It was beyond his expectations but was also within his expectations.
He had noticed this matter when he was practicing in his underground practice field home. In the meantime, it also occurred to him that Xu Yong once told him about the function of External Elixir, which was to store the excessive internal qi that the body couldn’t. It was not used to practice another cultivation method like what Snake King did, as one had to start everything from scratch again.
Junior Leopard felt lucky that he had figured it out. He would regret so much if he didn’t possess the Plug-in of the Mysterious Fire.
To start everything from scratch would not be that easy.
And now his second External Elixir, the Fiery Eye, was practicing the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique that his body was also practicing. The Fiery Eye could even practice nonstop for 24 hours a day. Only a few days had passed, and Junior Leopard had already felt the internal qi of Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique in his Fiery Eyes had improved dramatically. Compared to his own body’s practicing speed, it was even ten times faster. And most important was that the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique in this External Elixir could merge with the internal qi in his body harmoniously. Or it could be said that it was born to be connected to his body. So his External Elixir’s cultivation reached Level Nine equaled to his own body’s Level Nine cultivation. Junior Leopard was thrilled by merely thinking of how fast his External Elixir could practice.
It was this feeling of excitement that pushed him to enter the underground fire vein. It was also because he entered the underground fire vein that his External Elixir started to make trouble.
Now both his two External Elixirs, the one between the eyebrows and the one attached to one of his ears, were practicing day and night according to their own internal qi operation routes. Frankly speaking, practicing internal qi was inhaling and exhaling. It was to inhale external spiritual qi and transform it into the body’s internal qi. Green Jade Qian Yuan Skill was not a cultivation method that had the property of fire, although it already possessed some fiery characteristic it couldn’t inhale the fiery spiritual qi from the vein here and its operation speed was therefore much slower than when it was outside. But the Fiery Eye embedded between his eyebrows was different. It practiced an authentic Fire Way Method which was called Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique. In this underground fire vein spiritual energy of Fire was ample, therefore, the Fiery Eye began to function abnormally the moment it entered the fire vein. Or we could explain that it began to practice aggressively. Its cultivating speed was a hundred times faster than usual that it had now turned into an endless swirl absorbing all fiery spiritual qi from around. It would then circulate the Qi for around and turn it into internal qi of the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique.
Junior Leopard was walking slower and slower as he felt things were becoming abnormal in his External Elixir embedded between his eyebrows. The Fiery Eye was becoming hotter and hotter. He had only walked one hundred feet or so but the cultivation of his External Elixir had surged from Level One to Level Three. That was fine as it was an External Elixir. It was an External Elixir of the highest quality. Nothing dangerous would happen to the External Elixir even its cultivation would surge to Level Nine. However, things were complicated as the External Elixir was between his eyebrows. The internal qi in the Fiery Eye had melted into the black flame in his Dantian. The black flame made the Fiery Eye to practice all day and also made it closely connected to Junior Leopard’s own body. This connection was much closer than any other kind of ordinary External Elixirs in the world. Hence, what wouldn’t happen to an ordinary External Elixir would happen to the External Elixir that was between his eyebrows.
As the External Elixir’s cultivation accumulated, its influence on Junior Leopard’s internal qi was also strengthening, and now it had begun to drag the internal qi in his body. Meanwhile, the powerful internal qi then began to go through Junior Leopard’s entire body following the passageway of the Mysterious Fire. This was unbearable for Junior Leopard. No matter how strong he was, his body’s cultivation was merely on Level Three and his body’s intensity was newly reaching Bone-Forging Realm Full Closure. He could endure the powerful internal qi that was transmitting into his body for a while, but if the time was prolonged and the internal qi’s cultivation in the Fiery Eyes reached Level Four, he would be in great trouble.
So what Junior Leopard had to do now was to stop his External Elixir from practising as soon as possible and consolidate his current phase carefully. The External Elixir’s internal qi transmitting into Junior Leopard’s body was mainly because the External Elixir’s cultivation was improving dramatically while its state wasn’t stable yet. Hence, only by consolidating the current phase and infusing the newly formed Blaze Technique of the Heavenly Ninth Dragon internal qi and Mysterious Fire could the transmitting process be terminated.
However, saying it was easy but doing it was difficult.
First, he had to implant his divine thoughts into the Fiery Eyes. Observing the sea of fire within the Fiery Eyes he saw a faint trace of black flow. The black flow was very clear and was exceedingly active as well, which was why Fiery Eyes could inhale and exhale without stopping to practice. The spiritual qi of fire was too abundant and it was because of this environment that the Fiery Eye’s inhaling and exhaling speed was too quick. Although it could turn spiritual qi into Blaze Technique of the Heavenly Ninth Dragon’s internal qi, it didn’t have enough time to merge internal qi with Mysterious Fire’s energy. This was the cause of the trouble. And Junior Leopard had to settle this issue now.
After stopping the External Elixir from practicing greedily, he then needed to control the black flow and Blaze Technique of the Heavenly Ninth Dragon’s internal qi and let them infuse gradually. As the internal qi in his body was the product of the infusion, Junior Leopard was familiar enough to do it. He slowly led the internal qi and Mysterious Fire’s energy inside the External Elixir and a dense and soft swirl rolled up. Two energies with similar properties began to tangle, engulf and at last merged together. The swirl engulfed the whole space in External Elixir and was soon stabilized after a vibration. The energies turned into a dark golden internal qi and were once again circulating with the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique. This time, as the External Elixir absorbed spiritual qi of fire outside and the Qi entered the External Elixir, the Qi was turned into the same kind of dark golden internal qi. It no longer transmitted into Junior Leopard’s body as the two forms of energies was incompatible.
Junior Leopard sighed with relief and was to take back his divine thoughts. But at that moment, the internal qi in his External Elixir changed again. It was just stabilized; the intensively cleared internal qi shrank fiercely and stopped absorbing spiritual qi of fire from outside as if it met a bottleneck in this phase. While in contrast, the immersive internal qi exploded in the External Elixir, circulating faster and faster along the working flow of the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique forming a sea of fire. The External Elixir started to crazily absorb external spiritual qi again and the speed was at least ten times faster than before, which made Junior Leopard grasp more cold air and he worried again.
He was now in the center of the underground fire vein. The original energy of fire could be described as limitless. However, under the crazily absorbing effect of his External Elixir, the spiritual qi was rendered empty forming a vortex of spiritual qi of fire. Junior Leopard was right in the center of the vortex. Seeing immense spiritual qi being cleared into liquid form by his External Elixir, he didn’t even dare to move a little fearing that the so-called eye of eternity would explode, shattering his entire body.
“Bang, bang—!”
The internal qi of the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire in his External Elixir rolled up death-dealing waves, like a tsunami trampling over mountains. A quantitative change had reached the limit, and qualitative change was about to begin.
Junior Leopard sat down cross-legged with his eyes closed, focusing on the fire sea between his eyebrows using his divine thoughts.
“Hu, hua—!” With endless spiritual qi of fire’s nourishment, the intangible fire sea crashed like a sound of waves, overwhelming the heaven and earth and mesmerizing man’s mind.
Eventually, when the fierce wave of the fire sea reached its limit, a faint sound of a dragon started to grow. The sound was gradually developing, becoming stronger and foaming at the hub of the fire sea as if it was to break out any minute and emit an earth and heaven destroying power.
“Boom—!” A Fire Dragon soared up into the air with an ear-deafening sound, flying directly to the heaven. It was actually a real Fire Dragon with claws, horns, body and even elaborate scales purely made of flame. The dragon formed this time was much more authentic and more ingenious than the one Junior Leopard cleared.
At this moment, Junior Leopard’s heart also couldn’t help startling because the dragon born from the fire sea was quite similar to the one he imagined. But after scrutinizing it, he found a few differences: its body was actually bigger than an ordinary dragon; its tail wasn’t a tale of a dragon but was rather similar to a wolf’s tail.
Its appearance was odd, but it was lively and energetic especially its eyes. They were so bright and it was as if it had its own thoughts.
“This is…!” Junior Leopard’s heart trembled, “Collapsing Mountain, one of the nine dragons. This is the form of the dragon that appears when the Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire Technique clears to the most perfect phase. Lion!”