At the moment, the two huge beasts were too busy focusing on each other to notice Zen.
One of the beasts, the queen blade locust, had a broken limb from her earlier scuffle with Zen. In spite
of being at a disadvantage, the one remaining limb was still a powerful lethal weapon shaped like the
blade of a sword. Alongside her blade, the queen blade locust was a little bigger than the fire scorpion
lion.
Although the fire scorpion lion was smaller than the queen blade locust, it was nimbler. Further, since
the lava cave was the fire scorpion lion's natural habitat, it had an advantage.
As soon as the beasts collided in battle, the cave shook, rocks tumbled, and the cavern floor was
littered with rubble.
Rocks fell from high up on the walls of the cave, and fire spouted out of the earth's core.
"Crash, bam!"
"Ba-boom!"
Loud clashing sounds ensued as the fire scorpion lion threw the queen blade locust on the floor swiftly.
In spite of the aggressive attack, the queen blade locust forcibly stomped the ground with her hind legs,
thrusting the fire scorpion lion backward about one foot.
Immediately, the queen rushed towards the lion and flung her enormous blade at the fire scorpion lion.
However, the lion evaded her attack and snarled before retaliating. The locust, which could only survive
by slaughtering, was much more courageous and brutal than ordinary beasts.
"Skrressh!"
came the horrifying sound of the blade slicing into the flesh of the fire scorpion lion. Its heart and other
organs spilled out. The fire scorpion lion, mortally injured, wailed mournfully. At the same time, cocking
its nimble tail up, the lion slashed at the queen blade locust's head.
"Snap!"
The queen blade locust couldn't dodge in time, resulting in her head splitting and falling to the ground
because of the force of scorpion tail.
Without her head, the queen's body became limp, and the blade trembled for a moment before her
carcass slumped to the ground. The lion's organs were rent into pieces, and the large lion whimpered
before tilting his head and gasping his last breaths.
People became apprehensive at the mere mention of these two huge beasts. They would be awestruck
to see the two dead in this cave at the same time...
....
....
At first, when faced with the two beasts, Zen thought he was doomed to perish.
Earlier, he was roasted by Evil Lan's fire. Instead of being harmed, Zen became physically stronger,
thereby becoming comparable to a top grade mysterious weapon.
But, the fire from the earth's core was different from Evil Lan's grade two fire. It was many times
stronger than Evil Lan's fire.
After all, Evil Lan was only a half-step into the nature level. In the strictest sense, his fire evolved from
his life energy rather than life vitality.
However, the earth's core fire was much mightier than the fire produced by any nature level weapon
refiners even with life vitality.
Zen felt the sensation of burning as soon as he jumped into the lava.
He had experienced the same pain twice before, once in the cellar of the Luo family and the other was
in Evil Lan's weapon refining furnace, so, in this cave, it came to be that he felt it for the third time.
In his current position, he knew that aside from gritting his teeth and toughing it out, he was helpless.
He could pray to the God to bless his success against the earth's core fire, keeping his corporeal form
from being incinerated, but, there was nothing more he could do.
Slowly, his complexion started to change. Overall, Zen looked like a red-hot piece of iron, glowing dark
red.
As his body heated up and burned, countless little gold pieces appeared on his body. Subsequently,
they started to rotate.
As they whirled faster and faster, the gold pieces changed into golden eddies and began to absorb the
fire from the earth's core.
The fire that engulfed Zen was swiftly taken into the eddies and absorbed by Zen. However, the swirls
covering Zen's body were not satisfied. After absorbing all the fire surrounding Zen, the eddies
generated a mightier force and pulled the earth's core fire from farther away.
Wisps, streaks, and flakes of fire were sucked in by a gravitational force, madly rushing into Zen's body.
All the earth's core fire within the large lava lake rapidly converged in his body.
If anyone was present outside the lava lake at that moment, they would be astounded at the sight.
In the center of the lake where the lava had been boiling, the lava's color gradually changed from red to
black as it cooled. At last, the lava was pitch black and solid. As the pitch black area expanded, more
and more lava cooled, becoming solid carbon black rocks.
At last, the entire lake was a sizeable hardened rock.
Except for a few spots where the lava remained slightly dark red, the cave, which had been bright, now
was in complete darkness.
A long while later, the lava lake suddenly cracked in the center, and a hand shot out from the crack. It
was Zen's hand reaching upward, with a few pieces of gold foil glittering with a golden light. Afterward,
Zen hit the solid lava with his head, smashing it. He crawled out of the broken rock.
A sweet smile spread across Zen's face as it dawned on him that he had survived an impossible
situation.
Everything that had transpired was far beyond his ability to comprehend. When he jumped into the lake
of lava to escape from certain doom, shockingly, his body absorbed the earth's core fire in the lake.
Perhaps his physical strength was improved after being refined by the flames.
He looked down at his body and noticed that his chest had a wave-like texture to it.
Seeing the change, Zen was puzzled.
In the back of his mind, he felt as though he'd seen that texture, and he recognized the pattern from
somewhere!
After contemplating the design, it struck him where he'd seen it! Clapping his hands, he shouted, "Yes!
I remember now! It's a spiritual texture!"
Zen had seen such textures in the books of weapon refining techniques left by Evil Lan.
Weapons fell into a few classes. They were mysterious, spiritual, fairy, sacred and divine weapons.
Except there were no unique textures on mysterious weapons, special characters similar to this were
found only on treasures like spiritual, fairy, and sacred weapons.
For instance, spiritual textures were on spiritual weapons and fairy textures on fairy weapons.
A streak of spiritual texture showed up on Zen's chest, which meant his body had possibly entered a
different stage, turning from a mysterious weapon into a spiritual weapon!
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