Chapter 310: The Bewitching Lotus of Fire and Ice, Flying Through the Earth
Jiang Chen’s situation became quite awkward in this regard as he could neither retreat nor advance.
He would come face to face with the Fire Raven King if he went out with a nine out of ten chance of dying, or have no chance of living at all.
If he didn’t go out and remained where he was, Jiang Chen didn’t think that he’d be able to shoulder the burden of the temperature of these flames and the ever encroaching fire.
He thought of the Rat King. However, he wasn’t confident himself that the Rat King being able to create a tunnel within the cliff in such a short amount of time.
The fire was so close at hand that it was practically singing his eyebrows.
Summoning the Rat King would also surely alert the Raven King.
If the two creatures at the peak of the spirit rank met in battle, the situation would become even more chaotic.
“No, the Rat King is timid and he will surely be shocked when he feels the aura of the Raven King. His battle capabilities will also be greatly affected as a result.”
Jiang Chen thus dismissed the thought of summoning the Rat King.
“The Lotus?” Another idea popped into Jiang Chen’s mind.
“Yes, the Bewitching Lotus of Fire and Ice!” Jiang Chen suddenly thought of how he made use of the six Lotuses in the second trial to protect his body in the cavern with the spirit vein of heavenly fire, preventing the fires from rampaging into his body.
However, the current fiery situation was noticeably tenfold more frightening than that in cavern at least.
After all, the cavern was just a testing site and the fires were under control. They weren’t ravaging wildly like the fires in front of him currently were.
These fires were now purposefully set out of control by the Fire Ravens, continuously moving forward. The degree of their destruction was absolutely more than even the tenfold estimation he’d previously made.
His thoughts racing, Jiang Chen immediately deployed the Bewitching Lotus of Fire and Ice.
The immensely strong Lotus vines continuously explored beneath the ground.
Now that he’d broken through to the earth spirit realm, he could control twelve lotuses at any given time.
Half of the vines were of fire, the other half of ice.
The fire lotuses were on the outside, and the ice lotuses on the inside.
Jiang Chen curled himself up and jumped into the petals.
The twelve vines burrowed into the ground, going deeper and deeper.
He could still feel the heat from the outside world in the beginning, like it would burn through through the earth’s surface and spear through to the land’s core. As the Lotus continued to drill down however, the searing feeling faded and things became much easier to bear.
“Hmm?” The Raven King’s conscious suddenly flickered, seeming to detect something. His savage gaze shot in Jiang Chen’s direction.
He investigated carefully, but he didn’t find anything.
“That’s odd, I felt a ripple of something just now, why isn’t there anyone there?” The Raven King also felt that it was odd.
However, the Raven King was also highly proud and he paid no heed to it. He thought that it was some armadillo type spirit creature that was drilling deep below to flee for its life.
The Raven King was conceited by nature and naturally, he disdained further investigation of what was going on.
In addition, although the Fire Raven tribe was strong, their advantage was still in the air after all. The Fire Ravens would be unable to deploy any of their strengths once they entered the ground.
Jiang Chen was safely enclosed in the midst of many petals as he sat cross legged on an ice lotus, safely in the depths of the earth.
He didn’t know how far down he was either. He only knew that it was quite dark and cool all around.
Jiang Chen knew that he’d most likely arrived at a place very deep in the ground as he couldn’t sense the strong heat waves from the outside world.
“The Fire Raven tribe is indeed brutal and savage. I wonder how many candidates will die from the fires burning for a hundred li? Of the eight thousand who entered the realm, I’m afraid that at least a third or even half of the group will be burnt to ashes...”
Jiang Chen also sighed inwardly when he thought of the cruelty of this spirit creature race.
However, he wasn’t the sort to be so emotional as to grieve over the pa.s.sing of spring. Although he felt a bit sad at the downfall of his own kind, the path of martial dao has been this harsh since ancient times.
This trial tested fortune.
One could only say that the pract.i.tioners in that radius lacked sufficient luck.
“Judging from these fires, they’ll burn out in about three days and nights. I’m in no hurry to go out, but that Cloudflame Flower… ”
Jiang Chen still felt a bit of regret when he thought about the Cloudflame Flower.
However, the Fire Raven King wasn’t budging at all, and so Jiang Chen had his hands tied.
Although he had countless methods and all sorts of divine arts, it was almost impossible to steal the Cloudflame Flower out from beneath the Raven King and the Fire Raven army.
Even if he got lucky and somehow obtained the flower, one mouthful of fire from each of the Fire Ravens in the army would be enough to reduce him to cinders where he stood.
As strong as one person’s strength was, there was no way for him to fight back when he was faced with thousands of opponents.
It was only possible when he had overwhelming strength and could kill all the Fire Ravens with a flip of his hand.
If he really did have that kind of power, then he wouldn’t necessarily be interested in the Cloudflame Flower.
Jiang Chen thought for a moment and he felt that he had no clues as to how to resolve this situation. He decided to throw it all to the back of his head and sit down with aplomb, meditating with crossed legs.
The air was thin below the ground, but with Jiang Chen’s level of training at the earth spirit realm, he didn’t have a constant need for fresh air like ordinary people.
In the earth spirit realm, a pract.i.tioner wouldn’t have to worry about the thinness of the air even if they were living below the ground for ten days or half a month.
After all, they would be able to breath in their spirit ocean.
This was how pract.i.tioners with a high level of training could meditate for months on end. They would’ve transformed external breathing into internal breathing as they meditated, eliminating the need for outside air.
Jiang Chen cautiously arrayed the twelve lotuses in formation around him, so that he’d be able to protect himself if anything happened.
“I hadn’t thought that I’d be surrounded by danger in this trial of fortune. Does this mean that I have large amounts of luck, or lack of good fortune?”
Jiang Chen felt that he couldn’t draw one overall generalization when it came to fortune and luck.
He could only say that fortune and disaster went hand in hand.
When the Cloudflame Flower had appeared, many pract.i.tioners had felt that this was an enormous stroke of luck. Even Jiang Chen’s first thought had been so as well.
However, the Fire Ravens’ appearance and their actions in setting a radius of a hundred li on fire had turned this fortuitous occurrence into disaster.
Therefore, Jiang Chen’s understanding of fortune and luck had deepened by quite a bit.
“Just as I’d thought, what looked like fortune actually concealed disaster, every cloud has a silver lining for what appears to be danger. I am currently forced to flee for my life, but who knows when things may take a turn for another in this situation?”
Jiang Chen’s thoughts traveled down this path, bringing a better mood with them.
It was a fiery ocean in the outside world right now anyways, he decided to ignore everything, throw all stray thoughts to the side and organize his gains and losses over the past couple of days.
Overall speaking, Jiang Chen’s gains had been enormous after entering the legacy territory.
He’d trained his strength of heart on path of rebirth and pa.s.sed the most arduous test of mental strength.
If you are not reading this novel on Wuxia World, translated by etvolare, you are not reading the most complete or update to date version of SOTR.
In the caverns of heavenly fire and ice, Jiang Chen had used the Bewitching Lotus of Fire and Ice to absorb boundless spirit power.
He’d become the greatest winner in the third trial and refined the entire golden magnetic mountain. Although it didn’t seem that useful now, it was without a doubt, an enormous treasure, and its uses would become more apparent when he grew in strength.
It could be said that in the long run, the benefits from the magnetic golden mountain wouldn’t be any less than the Lotus.
In the fourth trial, Jiang Chen had broken through the shackles of martial dao in practical combat and entered the earth spirit realm. This was naturally a significant gain as well.
And now, in the fifth trial of fortune, he’d collected the sap of the Divine Tree of Dreams at the very beginning, adding this to the long list.
Therefore, Jiang Chen didn’t lose hope even though he was trapped underground right now. He wouldn’t give up this easily unless the Cloudflame Flower had been thoroughly devoured by the Fire Raven King.
Jiang Chen sank into a state of meditation after going through all this.
He’d been on the move since entering the earth spirit realm and he had lacked the time to meditate. His various martial arts techniques hadn’t had time to be consolidated with his new level of training.
Jiang Chen took advantage of these three days to thoroughly meld them together.
There was no concept of the pa.s.sage of time below the earth.
Three days pa.s.sed silently.
When Jiang Chen emerged from meditation, he had gained a lot again.
“I wonder if those incredulous fires in the outside world have retreated?” Although Jiang Chen had been in a meditative state for these three days, the unending darkness still gave him a bit of a stifling feeling.
“I need to go out and take a look. If the Fire Raven King is still present, then I have no hope of taking the Cloudflame Flower and I should stop wasting my time here.”
Jiang Chen settled on this notion and he located the appropriate direction beneath the ground. He continued to drill into the rocks with the Lotus.
He suddenly felt the rocks around him start trembling with a roar.
The fact that such a strong vibration was occurring in the depths of the stone rather surprised Jiang Chen. His first thought was that underground lava was about to erupt.
However, he quickly realized that these ripples weren’t from beneath the earth, but from the rocks surrounding him.
Although the vibrations were rather large, they were a bit of a distance away from him, and so even though Jiang Chen could sense the strength of this movement, he couldn’t detect any immediate danger.
“Can it be that a strong underground creature is pa.s.sing through?” Jiang Chen guessed.
He took a close read of the situation and reaffirmed his belief in this speculation.
“That’s right, the vibrations are so frequent that an underground life form must be pa.s.sing by, and at a high speed at that. It can move at such high speed through the rocks, and a bit faster than the Rat King’s drilling speed at that! In addition, this momentum is like a fierce dragon fording a river. Its aura and presence isn’t similar to the Rat King’s cautious style at all. Just what kind of strong, underground creature is this?”
Puzzlement weighed heavy in Jiang Chen’s heart. He felt this all a bit hard to understand.
This place should be the Raven King’s territory, and so logically speaking, there shouldn’t be another strong life form around.
However, the violence of these tremors were obviously from a strong life form, and Jiang Chen could be certain that this kind of creature that could fly through the ground was definitely not the Raven King.
One Raven King was already enough to give Jiang Chen a migraine. If he added another creature moving through the earth like it was on flat ground, then even with Jiang Chen’s methods and countless trump cards, he’d be in for a world of trouble!
Jiang Chen immediately stopped the Lotus’ explorations and retracted all signs of his presence to avoid disturbing this creature.