Ten thousand hundred-foot Rank 5 Fire-Rock Pythons lunged out of the boiling underground sea at once, their molten crimson scales lighting up the two-thousand-mile-deep cavern like a tidal wave of liquid fire.
Atop the jagged obsidian spire half a mile ahead, the gaunt Blood-Sea Beast Tamer blew a second shrill blast on his bone-carved Upper-Realm Soul-Whistle. Dark crimson slave-runes flared across the foreheads of every serpent in the sea, swelling their fire-cores toward suicidal detonation.
“Blow them to slag!” the Beast Tamer howled, his voice echoing madly across the magma waves. “Even a Rank 6 flying boat will sink straight to the mantle floor if ten thousand Fire-Rock Pythons self-destruct against its nose!
Buy General Blood-Claw time to drain the dragon egg!”
Inside the [Rank 6 Gu Family Earth-Core Camper Van], the dashboard proximity alarm gave a polite chime as the temperature outside the triple-layered star-quartz windshield spiked past four thousand degrees.
“Dad!” twelve-year-old Ye Xiao called out from the co-pilot chair, his fingers flying across his brass abacus. “The camper’s adamantine hull can easily tank the explosion without a scratch, but the blast shockwave will collapse the magma shelf and slow our descent speed by twelve minutes!”
Eleven-year-old Gu Nian stood up behind the driver’s seat, his hand already gripping the strap of his heavy cast-iron wok lid over his yellow bunny apron. “Twelve minutes is too long. Little Fifth’s vitality is already down to nine percent.
