A fierce battle broke out in the grand hall. Soon, one of the silver pages was controlled by the six Pseudo-Core cultivators within the range of their battle. However, the six were mutually restraining each other, and no one could obtain that silver page.
As for the other silver page, the six also wanted to control it, but if they did, the other twenty-odd people would not be willing to fight for them for free. Although their cultivation was not as good as these six, none of them were willing to work for others for nothing.
Once the six circled the other silver page into their battle range, the twenty-odd people would definitely swarm over, and the existing balance would be lost.
Although the six Pseudo-Core cultivators were unwilling, they could only temporarily give up on the other silver page. At the same time, no one dared to rely on their own strength to go and snatch it. Not to mention that the twenty-odd people would not agree, it was estimated that the remaining five would not allow one Pseudo-Core cultivator to rely on their own strength to snatch food from the tiger's mouth. For a time, a strange situation formed here.
Seeing this situation, Bu Luo was naturally secretly pleased. Although he was arrogant, he had not yet reached the point where he dared to snatch food from the hands of six Pseudo-Core cultivators by himself. If he reached out, he would probably be discovered by the six who had their divine sense locked on the silver page before he even touched it. At that time, he would only be trapping himself.
But among the twenty-odd cultivators nearby, the highest was only at the Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment. Bu Luo was confident that he could snatch the silver page and run before the other party had time to discover him.
After making a decision, the rest of the matter followed logically. Bu Luo quietly approached the location of the other silver page. The result was exactly as he had guessed. Just as he suddenly stretched out his arm from the void and snatched the silver page, the moment his figure was exposed, the twenty-odd people were all momentarily stunned.
At the same time, Bu Luo stepped on the oilcloth from his bamboo basket, made a few rapid turns in the crowd, and had already flown out of the grand hall.
But this time, Bu Luo had poked the hornet's nest. His sudden snatching made all the cultivators here jump in anger. Because they sensed Bu Luo's mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivation, his cultivation was at the bottom of the pile here. This was undoubtedly a slap in the face to everyone.
If this matter were to spread in the future, that under the siege of more than twenty people, a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator had easily left, what face would they have to drink and boast with others from then on? A single sentence from someone could make them flush with shame.
Bu Luo fled quickly in front, but as the night slowly turned into a dark red glow, after more than an hour, Bu Luo gradually discovered something was wrong. New cultivators began to appear in front of him to block him. This made Bu Luo a little dazed. Could it be that this silver page in his hand really had a great origin?
In fact, what Bu Luo didn't know was that the problem was no longer the silver page in his hand. Although many people knew this silver page was a treasure, they didn't know exactly what its use was.
Perhaps only a very small number of cultivators could know its origin, because recently, this kind of silver page had appeared eight times and had been snatched by different people. That is to say, only eight people knew the use of this silver page, but these eight people had not revealed a single word, and instead were constantly searching for this kind of silver page everywhere.
But Bu Luo's actions had undoubtedly completely angered all the cultivators in the grand hall. So the cultivators chasing Bu Luo continuously sent out voice transmission talismans, telling their familiar friends nearby. What they said was no longer about the silver page, but that there was a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator who had several important treasures.
It was currently known that the person who snatched the treasure had a magical treasure that could hide his own aura, which even the six Pseudo-Core cultivators nearby could not detect. He also had a flying magical treasure that left all the pursuing cultivators farther and farther behind. At the same time, this person had also snatched a silver page.
When the time came, as long as they killed this book-boy carrying a basket, the treasures would naturally go to those who were capable. They even guessed that the bamboo basket the book-boy was carrying was an amazing magical treasure. Otherwise, who would be willing to carry it on their back all the time?
This news spread quickly. In less than an hour, Bu Luo had found himself caught in a net from which there was no escape. Because some of the news had been distorted, the bamboo basket he was carrying was not only a magical treasure, but there were many magical treasures inside the basket.
If Bu Luo knew about this, who knows what he would think. And until this time, he had not even reached the true destination of his trip this time, but had been desperately fleeing for his life.
In front of a burning mountain, Li Yan stood a hundred li away. The desolate hills here rose and fell, devoid of any grass. Each hill was dry and crimson. Looking from afar, the undulating hills, roasted by the high temperature emanating from the air, looked like fireballs. The gray clouds in the sky had also turned a brilliant red, like mushrooms dripping with blood.
The entire world was filled with a suffocating heat that made it impossible to breathe. The scenery here was distorted and deformed due to the high temperature. And in the distance, there was a mountain peak spouting flames. The peak was more than six hundred zhang high, which was not very high for a cultivator, but this was a mountain of flames. The flames at the edge of the mountain rose dozens of zhang high.
Looking at all this, Li Yan let out a long breath of turbid air from his chest.
"This mountain is recorded in all the classics about the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda. I wonder how many years it has been burning, yet it still lasts without extinguishing."
Li Yan had finally arrived. This was the place where Blood Leaf Adept had discovered the Crimson Mother Essence. This real "volcano" would also periodically erupt with lava, but for a very short time. Sometimes, what erupted was not just lava; there might even be some magical treasures or fire-attribute medicinal herbs and materials mixed in. But the probability of this was very, very small. Almost ninety-nine percent of the time, it was just lava.
This was one of the two perilous places in the palace at the bottom of Red Maple Pool, the "Flame Palace."
Apart from cultivators who came here to seek a breakthrough on the line between life and death, almost no other cultivator was willing to come here. Because there was no point in entering here. And for cultivators below the Golden Core stage, the survival rate after entering the mountain's interior was less than twenty percent.
The cultivators who finally walked out from inside, whether they had truly broken through their own shackles or not, were unwilling to mention anything about their experiences in the "Flame Palace" from then on. They were even unwilling to mention these three words, as if it were a nightmare that haunted their midnight dreams.
Li Yan stayed a hundred li away, constantly sizing up the "Flame Palace."
"When I descended from the sky just now, there was no deep crater on the top of this mountain left by an eruption like a normal volcano. But there are caves of various heights on the mountain body. So these are the so-called 'fire eyes'."
Under the flickering flames on the mountain in his divine sense, there was a cave of varying size at every certain distance on the mountain body. Li Yan could clearly see that inside these caves, there was golden lava churning. The temperature emanating from it, even from a great distance, would cause a trace of burning pain to his divine sense.
After observing for a while, Li Yan flew up again. He finally found a higher desolate hill about twenty li away from the "Flame Palace" and landed. These desolate hills, according to Li Yan's judgment, should have been formed by the cooling of erupted lava. The desolate hill he landed on was already a hundred zhang high, the highest one in the vicinity.
There was one thing Li Yan couldn't figure out. Logically speaking, this "Flame Palace" had existed for such a long time, and it had been erupting lava for a long time. Logically speaking, the cooled desolate hills here could have been as high as ten thousand zhang. Although the classics said that each eruption was very short, the highest desolate hill here was only a hundred zhang.
But soon, Li Yan knew the reason. After choosing this desolate hill to land on, he first used his divine sense to scan the "Flame Palace" several times again. Although it was expected, he was still a little disappointed. He did not find any Crimson Mother Essence, only dry, crimson desolate hills one after another.
Two hours later, the entire body of the "Flame Palace" was like a squeezed sieve. Under the dozens of zhang of flames, streams of golden lava shot out from the cave openings. But it did not bring out any mountain dust. Apart from the temperature getting higher, the line of sight was not blurry.
And when those golden lavas gushed to every place, several streams of lava quickly came to the desolate hill where Li Yan was. After the golden lava was blocked by the desolate hill, it began to surge upwards amidst puffs of green smoke, fast and extremely quick. In the blink of an eye, it had risen dozens of zhang, like golden giant pythons winding their way up. Seeing that it was about to surge to the top of the desolate hill, Li Yan did not immediately fly up, but stared with unblinking eyes.
Suddenly, Li Yan's expression moved. The spirit light on his body flashed brightly, and his body was already in the air. Because from the distant sky, a gust of yin wind suddenly blew up. Amidst Li Yan's vigilance, things with large heads and small tails appeared in the distance. Their flying speed was incredibly fast. One moment, Li Yan discovered them a hundred li away, and the next moment, these things had already arrived in front of him.
At this time, Li Yan could see clearly. These things with large heads and small tails were about a foot long, dark gray in color, like tadpoles magnified countless times. They had clear facial features on their heads, the same as humans, but their eyes were empty, as if they had no intelligence. But the moment they saw the golden lava, they seemed to have been stimulated and directly rushed towards the lava on the ground.
In the next moment, to Li Yan's astonishment, the lava was decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye. It was actually sucked into the abdomens of these things in one gulp. And the temperature of the lava was enough to melt gold and iron. Even a person with a strong physical body like Li Yan would not dare to touch it.
But it did not cause any harm to these things with large heads and small tails. On the contrary, after they sucked it in, puffs of gray smoke came out of their bodies, and their faces showed a look of pleasure.
Li Yan observed everything that was happening in front of him closely.
"They are soul bodies? Could this be a demonic beast formed from a kind of vicious soul in the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda? But they actually have no physical body; their shape is still just an illusory state. What kind of monster is this? No wonder the desolate hills here can't form too high."
Li Yan watched as in less than a dozen breaths, the "Flame Palace" mountain in the distance had stopped erupting. And the large patches of golden lava just now were almost completely absorbed by these unknown soul bodies in a very short time. If there was any left, it was a trace of lava that had begun to cool in the nooks and crannies before these unknown soul bodies arrived.
"Monsters!" This was Li Yan's feeling now.