Chapter 17 The Li Huo Mystic Mirror

• Tan Xuan shouldered the corpse and melted into the briar-choked undergrowth, each step crushing ferns that exuded a resinous stink. His boots sank into moss so thick it swallowed the sound of his passage, while overhead, ancient vines dripped viscous sap like congealed blood. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned a rippling curtain of mana to shroud the body, its watery veil beading with frost where it met the putrid air. The corpse's fingers, still curled in death, brushed a fern frond that immediately withered, its green turning to ash.
• "ROAR!" The howl came from a shadowy form lumbering through the mist—a direbear with fur matted in dried blood, its tusks chipped like broken tombstones. Tan Xuan flattened himself against a lichen-crusted boulder, feeling the creature's breath—rank with rotting meat—wash over his neck. A nearby tree exploded as the bear's claw raked across its trunk, splintered wood raining down like shards of jade. "BOOM!" The earth split open at the valley's edge, spewing forth a geyser of molten rock. Tan Xuan shielded his face as a shower of burning pebbles rained down, each fragment hissing as it melted the moss. A thousand-year-old oak beside him cracked in half, its roots exposed like writhing serpents. The air grew thick with sulfur, making his eyes water as he peered through the haze. Above the chasm, the sky had become a living inferno. Flames the size of oxcarts spiraled upward, their edges licked by scorching tendrils that singed the clouds.
• At the vortex's heart, the Li Huo Mystic Mirror hung suspended—its obsidian surface rippling with golden runes that pulsed like a dragon's beating heart. When a stray spark touched the mirror, it flared like a sun, sending out a shockwave that reduced a nearby cliff to gravel. "A saint artifact!" The cry was drowned out by the metallic clang of a hundred swords unsheathing. A Godly Academy disciple, his armor inlaid with mother-of-pearl, rocketed toward the mirror. But as his fingers grazed its edge, a bolt of azure lightning arced from the sky, reducing his arm to a smoking stump. "Heretic!" screamed a Vault of Heaven elder, her staff unleashing a hail of ice shards that embedded themselves in the ground like crystalline daggers.