Grandmaster Dan Chen’s mocking laughter echoed off the volcanic basalt walls of the grand hall.
In the tiered stone galleries, two hundred demonic buyers and black-market cartel bosses joined in, their sneers dripping with cruel amusement.
The Blood-Crow deacon clapped his withered hands, cackling with glee.
“Well said, Grandmaster Dan Chen!” the deacon rasped, his raven feathers rustling. “An alchemist without an alchemy flame is like a plucked duck without wings! Chairman Lin spent fifteen million stones buying three hundred mouths that cannot even boil clean tea!”
On the platform, Master Yao looked down at his trembling, blistered hands, a flicker of deep sorrow passing through his aged eyes.
Dan Chen was a ruthless monster, but his cruel words held an undeniable truth in the brutal culture of the immortal mountains.
Without an innate alchemical spirit flame, an alchemist was entirely dependent on subterranean volcanic magma vents to heat their crucibles.
Dan Chen had already locked the sect’s master geothermal valves, hoarding the mountain’s magma channels exclusively for his inner disciples.
