The roaring wall of ancient fire-wyrm dragon flames roared across the limestone clearing, devouring the humid mountain air in a single starving gulp. The heat was so terrifyingly intense that the bedrock glowed dull cherry-red. It bubbled into glassy black glass pools. Meanwhile, the blast wave of sound rattled the teeth of the students kneeling a hundred yards away.
Gu Long squeezed his eyes shut, anticipating the charred stench of burned up beast-flesh.
Envoy Lu Yunzhi braced his heels against the stone ledge, his argent robes snapping in the blistering hurricane as his flying sword formed an arc of defensive frost before his chest.
Young Master Yan Zixuan threw his head back, his face twisted into an expression of rabid, blood-soaked ecstasy. “Turn to ash! Burn in the inferno of my ancestors!”
Yet, directly in the path of the world-ending blaze, the little blue slime didn’t flee.
With a soft, elastic thwip, Lin Xiao tightly packed his semi-clear body into a flat disc against Xiao Hei’s crown. Then, with the explosive release of a high-tension high-pressure spring, he launched himself into the center of the flaming whirlpool!
BOING!
He didn’t tumble. He didn’t burn. In mid-air, Lin Xiao’s azure form shot up fast.
His semi-clear sapphire jelly, normally sixteen inches in width, swelled outward like an unfurling parachute. It stretched to three paces across, then five, then ten! At the very center of his fluid sphere, where a core of condensed light normally rested, a swirling vortex of deep, iron-hard darkness tore open reality itself.
It was the [Primordial Chaos Devouring] maw. The deep-sea event horizon born of the chaos before heaven and earth separated!
The sixty-foot wave of ancient dragon-fire, capable of burning to ash an entire mountain battalion, struck the expanding blue sphere.
Instead of an explosion, there was only a wet, slurping GULP.
The twenty-four-hundred-degree roaring inferno didn’t scorch a single cell of Lin Xiao’s non-Newtonian boundary. The moment the white-hot dragon-flames touched his surface, the vortex’s huge gravity suction seized the elemental energy. It pulled the entire sea of flames directly down his gullet like a thirsty hiker chugging cold iced lemonade on a scorching August afternoon.
In less than half a heartbeat, the roaring wall of fire simply vanished.
The gorge fell dead silent. The blazing giant fire that had threatened to burn up the northern mountains had been sucked fully dry. That left only a faint, pleasantly warm draft that smelled faintly of toasted cinnamon and caramelized sugar.
Young Master Yan Zixuan’s manic laughter choked in his throat. His bloodshot eyes bulged as he stood trembling in the melted gravel. His hands grabbed the naked, blazing Crimson Flame Sword.
“Where... Where did the fire go?” Yan Zixuan whimpered, his voice barely louder than a dying ember.
Before his fractured mind could process the disappearance of his sect’s ultimate strike, a shadow fell over his face.
High in the air above him, the blue blob was not falling. It was diving.
Seeing the creature plunging straight toward him, Yan Zixuan’s survival instincts took over in a burst of uncoordinated panic. He thrust the Crimson Flame Sword upward with both arms, pouring every drop of his leftover Foundation Establishment spiritual qi into the fiery blade.
“DIE, MONSTER!” Yan Zixuan shrieked. “PIERCE ITS GUTS!”
The four-foot blade of scarlet crystal shot skyward like a crimson bolt of lightning, aimed dead-center at the dropping blue sphere. The blade buzzed with razor-sharp sword-qi capable of slicing through three-inch spirit-iron plates like warm butter.
Lin Xiao watched the blazing sword hurtle toward him.
Nice speed, Lin Xiao evaluated casually in his mind. Clean wind-cutting taper, beautiful ruby luster, and streaming a wonderful aroma of fiery minerals. Tie Shan always says a good blade needs plenty of star-iron in the core. Let’s see how chewy this one is.
As the tip of the flying sword reached within two inches of Lin Xiao’s front mantle, the slime didn’t try to dodge.
Instead, his semi-clear body elongated into a wide, rubbery bell. With a sound like a wet suction cup snapping against glass, Lin Xiao wrapped around the tip of the blade!
SQUELCH.
The razor-sharp point struck Lin Xiao’s inner fluid boundary. Instead of piercing through, the impact-hardening non-Newtonian lattice instantly transformed from soft liquid to an iron-hard, diamond-thickness gel. The huge striking force of the climbing flying sword was absorbed and scattered laterally across four thousand fluid shock-absorber channels in zero-point-two split seconds.
The sword came to a dead stop in mid-air.
Yan Zixuan wildly tugged on his spiritual tether, trying to recall the blade to his grasp. “Return! Crimson Flame, RETURN!”
The sword didn’t budge.
Lin Xiao sprouted four thick, muscular pseudopods from his azure sides, each limb glowing with the semi-clear refraction of deep ocean sapphire. Wrapping two fluid limbs firmly around the midsection of the blazing blade and two around the heavy gold crossguard, Lin Xiao gave a firm, playful twist.
CREEEEAK.
The four-foot old family spiritual ancient object—forged from fiery iron-hard metal that had survived three thousand years of high-grade tribulations—screeched in deep metalworking protest. Its defensive ward glyphs flared with wild crimson pulses, attempting to burn up the intruder with packed fire-mana. Yet against Lin Xiao’s ancient chaos thickness, the ancient runes dissolved into harmless static.
The blade bent like a warm strip of baker’s dough under Lin Xiao’s easy grip. With three deft, practiced motions of his jelly-like limbs, Lin Xiao twisted the divine weapon back upon itself, looping the tip through the handle knob ring and knotting the glowing metal into a neat, even figure-eight loop.
It looked remarkably like a giant, glowing, scarlet pretzel fresh out of a tavern hearth.
Protector Wu, still pinned against the limestone by Xiao Hei’s gravity, managed to roll one bloodshot eyeball upward. He witnessed the heirloom sword of his grand sect master twisted into an appetizer knot. Then, his leftover sanity evaporated.
“The... The sword of the founder...” Wu wheezed into the mud, his voice cracking. “He bent it like candied sugar...”
“My... My sword...” Yan Zixuan whispered, his knees trembling so wildly that he nearly collapsed into his own vomit. “He bent my family’s heirloom... Into a snack...”
Lin Xiao opened his cavernous void maw wide.
SLUUUUUUURP!
With a ringing, wet gulp that echoed across the entire valley, Lin Xiao sucked the folded scarlet pretzel sword right down his jelly-like throat!
The three-foot length of twisted fiery steel slid smoothly down his azure gullet, sinking straight into the endless underground depths of his Void Dantian frozen stillness chamber. As the crossguard vanished past his lips, Lin Xiao gave a firm, rubbery snap of his jaws, sealing the event horizon with a cheerful pop.
Inside the void pocket, the connection between the sword and the mortal world was instantly cut by three thousand layers of space-folding spatial mist.
Back on the ground, Yan Zixuan felt a painful tearing sensation rip through his spiritual soul sea.
“PUUUUUUH!”
A fountain of dark, rusted blood sprayed from Yan Zixuan’s mouth. The life-bound soul connection he had forged with his father’s old family ancient object was snapped as cleanly as a dry twig. The spiritual backlash blew up within his chest, shattering four major qi-spirit veins and sending him crashing backward onto his spine.
Across the limestone ledge, Envoy Lu Yunzhi fell to his knees in pure, paralyzing horror.
The Heavenly Sword envoy’s hands shook wildly. His hovering sword clattered against the limestone, its edge chipped as the envoy lost all concentration.
“He... He ate it,” Envoy Lu babblingly whispered, his high-born dignity fully crushed. “A Grade-4 ancient spiritual sword... Infused with Fire Wyrm marrow... He folded it with bare fluid, chewed its core array into pieces, and swallowed it whole! What kind of ancient chaos fiend is this?!”
A crisp, celebratory chime rang through Lin Xiao’s mind:
“Ingestion successful,” the Dao Spirit reported, her cool man-made voice sounding almost impressed. “The target ancient object has been safely compartmentalized within the sub-void processing chamber. Core heat of the object is stabilizing at four hundred degrees. The ancient fire-wyrm leftover piece will has been fully suppressed by ancient chaos breakdown.”
Nice, Lin Xiao thought happily. That went down much smoother than I expected. A little crunchy on the intake, but the aftertaste is surprisingly pleasant. Like a spicy cinnamon biscuit fresh from the oven.
With a gentle, airy flutter, Lin Xiao dropped from the sky.
BOING.
He landed square on all fours—or rather, on his bouncy, ball-shaped base—right in front of the numbed, bleeding young master. He gave a cheerful little wobble to settle his balance. His semi-clear sapphire body glowed with soft, pulsing ruby embers that danced harmlessly beneath his skin.
Xiao Hei trotted over. His eight-foot frame cast a massive, terrifying shadow over the trembling fighters. Then he sat down obediently beside his little blue master.
Lin Xiao looked down at Yan Zixuan, who was staring up at him with the wide, empty eyes of a man whose entire concept of reality had just been thoroughly shredded into confetti.
Inside Lin Xiao’s semi-clear belly, the knotted pretzel of scarlet steel drifted into a pocket of swirling indigo light. The fiery heat of the weapon, which could have melted an iron gate, was fully tamed, streaming only a gentle, pleasant warmth that felt remarkably like a hot water bottle pressed against an aching stomach on a chilly autumn evening. The little glowing embers drifted lazily through his blue jelly core like captive fireflies dancing in a glass jar.
Lin Xiao patted his stomach with a small, squishy slime arm, thoroughly enjoying the comforting sensation of a heavy, stone-dense snack.
BURRRRP.
A ringing, bubbling burp escaped his mantle. A tiny, delicate puff of fragrant pink smoke drifted from Lin Xiao’s lips, wafting gently across the clearing to brush against the scared young master’s trembling face. It smelled faintly of toasted cinnamon, refined copper, and mountain honey.