The pond churned, a hundred-zhang-wide river of molten rock surging and crashing with a roar like a tsunami. The teleportation circle Gu Xiechen had just activated was embedded in a massive boulder, a hundred zhang in diameter, rich with Crimson Flame Gold—a rare metal capable of withstanding extreme heat, which was the only reason the array hadn't been destroyed by the surrounding lava and jade-like magma.

Near a small lava lake ahead, Rask, Basien, and three other members of the Blazing Flame Clan were being besieged by a group of two hundred odd ferocious beasts, resembling Qilin, entirely crimson in color. Each beast possessed the power of a Celestial Immortal. They lunged fearlessly at Rask and the others, occasionally spitting out a tongue of black-red flame, no thicker than a thumb. Wherever the flame landed, the ground instantly smoked, softening in the blink of an eye to become churning magma.

The one lying in wait by the teleportation circle to ambush Gu Xiechen was a skeletal monstrosity fifteen meters tall, entirely blood-red. This creature had thick, prominent joints, and in its hand, it clutched a massive battle-axe wreathed in firelight. It had just brought the axe down in a swift chop toward Gu Xiechen. Gu Xiechen’s movement skills allowed him to narrowly evade the blow. The monster’s axe buried itself more than two zhang deep into the ground, and now, grinding its teeth, it slowly pulled the weapon free and swung it down again toward Gu Xiechen.

With a cold snort, Gu Xiechen met the monster’s axe with a backhand punch. The aura emanating from the skeletal fiend was only at the Tribulation Crossing stage. Despite its huge physique, it didn't warrant Gu Xiechen's full attention.

A flash of fire erupted as Gu Xiechen’s fist slammed against the axe blade. The moment they made contact, Gu Xiechen cried out that things were not good. Although the fluctuation of the skeletal monster’s spiritual power was extremely weak, making it seem crushingly vulnerable, the sheer force behind its axe was outrageously potent. This strike was like Mount Tai pressing down. While Gu Xiechen’s fist sustained no injury whatsoever, his legs instantly buckled, and his body collapsed, sinking into the ground, the lower half of his waist instantly engulfed by the blackened, softening crust.

“Damn thing!” Just as Gu Xiechen prepared to unleash his sword qi to slay the skeletal fiend, a piercing scream suddenly echoed from the distance.

Rask, caught completely off guard, watched as the pale-white jade ring, palm-sized and used to shield his body, was simultaneously struck by the flames spat by over thirty of the strange beasts. The highly penetrating flames pierced the jade ring’s defense, converging into a beam of fire as thick as a bowl, which seared viciously into Rask’s backside. Rask did not possess the supreme protective garments of Gu Xiechen, nor did he have Gu Xiechen’s monstrous physical body. Where the flame grazed his buttock, half of it instantly turned to smoke, revealing the pale white bone beneath.

Having abruptly lost several pounds of flesh, even though Rask was a master Celestial Immortal, the pain brought tears to his eyes, and the immortal power within him momentarily became chaotic. The two streams of sword light circling and battling the beasts near him suddenly dimmed, their speed lessening slightly. In that split second, three beasts lunged forward. Two of them clamped down firmly on the two streams of sword light, continuously scorching them with black-red flames spat from their mouths, while the third opened its massive jaws and lunged toward Rask’s neck.

As Rask was about to perish under the horde of beasts, the sword casket behind Gu Xiechen shifted. A faint stream of black and white light flashed and vanished into the void. Then, without further sound or movement, the two hundred odd beasts surrounding Rask and the others dropped to the ground one after another. From the neck of every beast, a thin thread of fire slowly emerged, followed by an eruption of blood far hotter than burning oil, which scorched the nearby ground into a deep basin of lava.

A flash of white light appeared beside him, spewing forth an arctic chill. Gu Xiechen swept his hand out, unleashing a wave of Yin essence to push back the giant skeletal monster, then lightly floated upward on a cloud of water vapor. A streak of purple light shot out, and the Great Spirit God, miraculously restored to nearly eighty percent health, roared wildly, wielding its massive axe as it charged out of the purple light toward the skeletal fiend with supreme arrogance. The skeletal monster paused, then it too, with extreme excitement, swung its great axe to meet the Great Spirit God. The two behemoths began to clash with resounding clang-clang noises.

It was evident that the Great Spirit God was not only more than twice the size of the skeletal monster, but its strength was also incomparable. After eighteen consecutive devastating axe swings, the skeletal monster mustered all its strength to withstand the first three. Its own axe was cleaved into two pieces by the Great Spirit God’s Celestial Blooming Axe. The remaining fifteen blows struck the skeletal fiend entirely, shattering it into a shower of spraying debris.

“Roar, roar!” The Great Spirit God triumphantly raised its massive axe and surveyed its surroundings with an air of majesty.

However, Gu Xiechen didn't spare it a glance, and Rask and the others were busy tending to the wounded, ignoring the Great Spirit God’s recent victory. The depressed Great Spirit God sulkily walked over to the pile of bones left by the skeletal fiend, gritting its teeth and furiously hacking away at the remains. As it smashed, it muttered crudely, “If you have the guts, get out here and take another thousand swings from your master! Ah, a lonely hero, unrivaled in the world, eh? Gone after just eighteen swings?”

With resounding thuds, the Great Spirit God pulverized the skeletal fiend's bones into dust. It even split the head-sized crimson bone pearl found within its skull with a casual axe swing.

Gu Xiechen rushed to Rask’s side and casually produced two Muscle-Regenerating Elixirs, applying them directly to Rask’s buttocks. These elixirs were refined from rare Rongzhi fungus, possessing the divine effect of reviving the dead and restoring bone. A mist of clear energy enveloped Rask’s hips, and the muscle, meridians, and skin burned away into smoke rapidly regrew. The tingling, itchy sensation made him both uncomfortable and ecstatic. He hopped and skipped, yelling loudly, “My butt! My butt!”

Basien kicked Rask a considerable distance away, then eagerly pulled Gu Xiechen toward the five Blazing Flame Clan cultivators lying on the ground. He looked pleadingly at Gu Xiechen and wailed, “Grandson, you’re alive, but what’s wrong with these good-for-nothings? Can they still be saved?”

The other three clan members watched Gu Xiechen tensely, terrified he would say they couldn't be healed. Although these cultivation families of the Star Alliance had received orthodox Daoist inheritances, their knowledge was incomplete. Even the basic cultivation mantras left them dizzy; let alone the more profound and intricate arts of formations and alchemy. Their five blood relatives lay collapsed on the ground, yet none of them, including Basien, could truly figure out what injuries their kin had sustained.

Gu Xiechen glanced at the five clan members whose pores were oozing fine streaks of crimson blood, and nodded. “It’s nothing serious, just a bit of fire poison!”

His gaze swept the ground, and Gu Xiechen spotted a centipede-like beast, seven or eight zhang long and entirely fiery red, hundreds of meters away. This creature had already been chopped into seven or eight pieces and was long dead. Clearly, these five Blazing Flame Clan members had accidentally sustained poison damage from this beast, resulting in their current state.

While other poisons might require Gu Xiechen to use a bit of spiritual elixir, since this was fire poison, Gu Xiechen didn't even need to act. He merely snapped his fingers at the Fire Crow. The Fire Crow, which had been perched stupidly on Gu Xiechen’s shoulder pretending to be a sparrow, rose sluggishly. Opening its small beak, it gently sucked toward the five individuals. Silken threads of red light and radiant energy lifted from their bodies, continuously flying into the Fire Crow’s mouth, where they were transformed into its own Fire Spirit essence.

With the fire poison purged from their systems, these five Blazing Flame Clan members, all masters at the Celestial Immortal level, immediately scrambled to their feet.

Seeing their kin safe, Rask and the others burst into loud cheers. Amidst their laughter, they felt immense relief for having followed Red Dragon Blazing’s advice to invite Gu Xiechen to this desolate place. Had it not been for Gu Xiechen, not to mention anything else, these five clan members would certainly not have survived.

Gu Xiechen, however, frowned and interrupted their merriment, asking with puzzlement:

“Where are the others? Are you the only ones who made it here?”

He remembered that when they set off, there were thirty-eight people from the Blazing Flame Clan, including Rask. But there were only ten here. Where were the rest?

Rask spread his hands helplessly, a slight worried smile on his face. “Like you, we were scattered to who-knows-where during the teleportation. But since you managed to catch up alive, they should probably be fine too, right?”

Gu Xiechen’s lips twitched, offering no comment on Rask’s words. He had arrived safely here only due to sheer luck; otherwise, that Undying Heavenly Monarch could easily have beaten him to death. But the other members of the Blazing Flame Clan? They didn't have Gu Xiechen’s luck. If they didn't manage to avoid some ancient remnant, like the Undying Heavenly Monarch, they might not make it through!

Just as he was about to consult with Rask about waiting for the rest of the clan, the teleportation circle behind them suddenly erupted in a brilliant light, and over a dozen figures materialized on the array simultaneously.

Clapping his hands sharply, Rask roared with laughter. “I knew they were alright! They’ve caught up!”

As they were laughing, large magma bubbles simultaneously erupted from the lava river and lake near the teleportation array. These bubbles gradually swelled until they were several meters wide and several zhang high. Suddenly, a gust of hot wind carrying countless sparks swept across the area, and all four or five hundred of the bubbles burst open, revealing monstrously grim-faced skeletal figures entirely enveloped in crimson flames.

The shortest of these skeletal monsters stood about twenty meters tall, while the largest and stoutest reached over a hundred meters high. Its very bones had mutated to resemble a demon: its rib cage had fused into a completely sealed breastplate, all its joints were encased in thick, armor-like bone sheaths, and several-meter-long massive bone spurs protruded from its major joints like shoulders, elbows, and knees. Two thick beams of red light, about a meter wide, shot out from the deep sockets of the skeletal behemoth’s eyes, traveling far into the distance. Wherever the light swept, the earth softened and collapsed into lava, and where lava existed, greenish smoke billowed out, as the molten rock was converted into ultra-high-temperature, cyan-purple airflow.

As soon as it materialized, this hundred-meter-tall Skeletal Colossus lifted a colossal battle-axe, eighty-plus meters long and immensely thick, from the lava lake beneath its feet. It fiercely pointed the axe at the Great Spirit God and roared in a deep, booming voice: “You dared kill our brother! Fellows, chop him down! His bones look good; we’ll turn him into one of us to fill the ranks!”

With a mighty roar, the Skeletal Colossus swung its massive axe down fiercely toward the Great Spirit God.

The Great Spirit God shouted in excitement, hoisting its Celestial Blooming Axe with both hands and leaping up to meet the Colossus’s axe.

The light was blinding, and the immense sound made both ears ring almost to the point of deafness. Over a hundred miles of lava lake and river erupted with towering waves reaching a hundred zhang high. The giant stood his ground, but the ground beneath his feet had long since crumbled to dust. The Skeletal Colossus cried out mournfully; its axe was split in two by one strike from the Great Spirit God’s axe, and its immensely thick right arm was also shaken into powder. On its chest's sealed bone armor, a massive axe gash clearly split open straight into its thoracic cavity, from which wisps of black energy and firelight continuously spewed forth.

After nearly a hundred dull impacts, the unsteady Skeletal Colossus staggered backward nearly a hundred steps before collapsing heavily into a lava lake. It trembled violently. Accompanied by faint cracking sounds, countless small and large fissures spread across the Colossus’s bones. Its shin bones and thigh bones, in particular, were covered in dense, web-like cracks. Dozens of small bone fragments constantly spattered from its leg bones, falling into the lava with the sound of air splitting.

The Great Spirit God laughed wildly in triumph, shouting, “Little ghost, you are no match for your master!”

The Skeletal Colossus roared furiously to the sky. The other skeletal monsters that had erupted from the lava with it raised their differently shaped axes of various sizes and charged toward the Great Spirit God with heavy, rhythmic footsteps.

A few cleverer skeletal fiends, however, charged toward the teleportation array. Just as Gu Xiechen had experienced, these few fiends swung their great axes viciously at the Blazing Flame Clan members who had just emerged, still dazed from the spatial distortion of the teleportation array, before they could even take in their surroundings. These people were still slightly disoriented from the teleportation array’s power to warp space, and these great axes were about to fall directly onto their heads.

Rask broke out in a cold sweat, shouting urgently, “Not good… Dodge!”

Before his shout had even finished, Gu Xiechen had already instantly moved into the space above the Blazing Flame Clan members. With his hands behind his back and his head held high, he drove his forehead directly into the few descending axes.

With a loud clang, the few skeletal fiends shrieked and rapidly retreated backward like frightened rabbits. Their axes, struck by Gu Xiechen’s head, all cracked with countless fissures. Two of the monsters, who had swung with slightly greater force, had their axes simply explode into a shower of fragments upon impact with Gu Xiechen’s head.

“Seeing ghosts!” The few skeletal fiends cried out in unison, dropping the handles of their axes and fleeing in panic.

“Ugh…” Gu Xiechen was left speechless by these few skeletal monsters. He paused for a moment, then suddenly pointed a finger, spitting out a mass of red light. The Sun Profound Orb emitted several fire dragons from within the light, sweeping over and coiling around the fleeing monsters, forcibly sucking them into the Sun Profound Orb.

Gu Xiechen tentatively pressed the solar energy onto the skeletal fiends. To his pleasant surprise, although the solar energy caused them to howl and scream in pain, they actually absorbed a small amount of it!

“Excellent!”

Gu Xiechen burst into laughter. “Great Spirit, only injure the skeletal monsters, don’t kill them! I need them to be useful!”

Hearing Gu Xiechen command only injury and no death, the Great Spirit God immediately dropped its great axe and rushed toward the skeletal monsters, swinging its massive fists.

With a series of dull thuds like drumbeats, the hundreds of skeletal monsters were hurled high into the air by the Great Spirit God’s terrifying brute force. Gu Xiechen laughed heartily, summoning the Sun Profound Orb and sucking in all the screaming, cursing skeletal monsters.

In the blink of an eye, all the enemies, save for the largest Skeletal Colossus, were subdued by Gu Xiechen. The Skeletal Colossus, whose legs were gradually disintegrating, stared blankly at Gu Xiechen and the Great Spirit God, then suddenly shrieked at the top of its lungs: “Heavens! Master! There are outsiders bullying us! Come quickly and save us! Wuwu, they’re going to eat us!”

Large drops of cyan-purple lava spewed from the skeletal behemoth’s eye sockets, truly resembling tears.

Seeing this remarkably humanlike display from the Skeletal Colossus, Gu Xiechen and Rask exchanged uneasy glances, unable to speak.

The Skeletal Colossus’s cry was incredibly loud, and its sound resonated subtly with the surrounding lava and hot winds. Its voice instantly traveled tens of thousands of miles.

A muffled, thunderous roar echoed from an extremely distant volcano ahead, and a furiously violent divine sense surged out from within that volcano. A voice bellowed in anger: “Who dares insult the brothers of my Absolute Sun Bone Demon? Feel your heads—are they still there?”

Woooo~ This person’s divine sense was terrifyingly vast, condensing into a wall of divine might that slammed head-on into Gu Xiechen. The resulting violent wind let out a sharp whistle. The nearly tangible divine sense rapidly grated against Gu Xiechen’s body, even sparking large patches of fire and light on him.

“What a powerful being! What in the world is the Absolute Sun Bone Demon?”

Gu Xiechen spread his hands wide, the Yin and Yang energies supporting a massive Taiji vortex in front of him, firmly shielding the Blazing Flame Clan members behind him.

This tense standoff lasted for a full quarter of an hour. Suddenly, a red light shot up from the volcano crater, accompanied by grating obscenities and vicious curses. The Absolute Sun Bone Demon sped toward them at nearly instant speed.

Gu Xiechen’s eyesight was excellent. From thousands of miles away, he clearly saw the true form of the Absolute Sun Bone Demon, and then he froze.

This—this was the Absolute Sun Bone Demon?