Chapter 15
The moment Jiang Linxian's demon eyes made contact with the scene inside the cauldron, they contracted sharply.
What appeared from the outside to be a cauldron barely a Zhang tall contained an entire world within!
The vast space stretched beyond sight—beneath his feet was scorched, cracked earth; above his head, a twisted, churning sky. The entire world was saturated with a deathly silent black flame that licked hungrily at everything in sight.
What chilled the heart most was the 7 suns hanging high across the heavenly vault.
They were not real celestial bodies—they were the 7 Demon Cores, radiant and slowly revolving, emanating waves of pure energy that caused the soul to shudder.
These were precisely what the Seven Absolute Mountain had been transformed into.
This place was a vessel-world for alchemy—and a purgatory.
Countless demons large and small that had been drawn in struggled pitifully through the sea of black flame like ants on a burning pan, madly slamming against what appeared to be empty space but was in truth an unbreakable cauldron wall.
Roars, curses, and pleas all tangled together, converging into a tide of despair.
"Let me out—!"
"Help me break the cauldron! Help me break the cauldron!!!"
Yet their struggles were utterly futile.
Every cry of help me break the cauldron was answered only by a flash of dim rune-light along the cauldron wall—as though the desperate intent itself was being absorbed and converted by the strange Alchemy Furnace, feeding further power into the refinement process instead.
And the Mountain Soul's cold, majestic will—immovable as the earth itself—rang like an absolute law through every corner of the space:
"Deep-rooted…the torch is passed on…refine!"
A summary.
All demons: Help me break the cauldron!
Mountain Soul: Deep-rooted!
Each time the words resounded, the flame intensified by a degree.
The weaker Minor Demons were the first to have their demon bodies begin melting, dripping like candle wax before evaporating in the flame, dissolving into wisps of refined demonic energy that were greedily absorbed by the 7 Demon Cores overhead.
With each demon refined, the Demon Cores' radiance brightened by a fraction, their rotation quickened by a notch, and the pressure and temperature throughout the cauldron's interior climbed accordingly.
Even the previously imperious 3 Demons and 4 Fiends had by now lost the strength to struggle.
They endured through sheer accumulated cultivation alone, the ferocity in their eyes long since replaced by horror and despair—clinging desperately to the last ember of their spiritual light, yet their bodies dissolving slowly and inexorably.
Jiang Linxian was curled up in a corner where the flames were comparatively weaker, feeling his consciousness grow hazy in the intense heat.
His Demonic Energy poured out like a broken dam, flowing uncontrolled from every pore, evaporated and siphoned away by that terrifying black flame.
The Dragon Pearl within him spun furiously, releasing torrents of refined Spiritual Energy in an attempt to replenish what was lost.
But under the laws of this Alchemy Furnace, the rate of replenishment was nowhere near enough to match the rate of loss!
The one silver lining was that his serpent body had grown stronger—but inside the cauldron, that was little more than mending the pen after the sheep had already fled.
His cultivation level was plummeting at a pace he could clearly feel.
The hundred-year threshold had long since become an unreachable horizon.
His ninety-year cultivation shattered in an instant, followed by sixty years, then thirty—receding like a tide that could not be turned back.
In a brief span of time, he had been reduced to the very edge of barely ten years of cultivation, nearly back to the state he had been in just after Awakening!
The Dragon Pearl's Spiritual Energy surged and surged, yet it was like pouring water into a bottomless vessel—the vast majority scattered into the cauldron fire, feeding the flames instead.
"The cauldron will not open until the pill is complete…"
This understanding was carved cold and clear into the depths of his divine soul.
The Mountain Soul's purpose was unmistakable: to use the furnace full of demons—especially the 3 Demons and 4 Fiends and the other demons of centuries and millennia of cultivation—as kindling.
Using their flesh, Demonic Energy, and souls as fuel to temper the 7 Demon Cores born from the Mountain Soul.
To ultimately refine the divine pill it required.
Until then, everything inside the cauldron was mere dregs.
To wait was to be reduced to ash—to become part of the Demon Cores' radiance.
Futile resistance only seemed to accelerate the process.
Yet, just as his cultivation was about to fall below the ten-year mark and the scorching heat and weakness were about to swallow his consciousness whole—
If death was the outcome either way, why not try…
The thought cut through Jiang Linxian's mind like a bolt of lightning.
He no longer suppressed the plummeting of his cultivation. Instead, he took the remnant Demonic Energy he had left—barely around ten years' worth—together with the surging yet constantly leaking refined Spiritual Energy from the Dragon Pearl, and ignited and detonated them all in a manner that was nearly self-destructive!
BOOM!
His curled figure suddenly burst open, and he charged recklessly upward toward the 7 Demon Cores that hung high above, radiating devastating heat and light!
The act—like a moth hurling itself into flame—instantly seized the attention of every surviving creature inside the cauldron.
The remaining Great Demons and minor sprites watched him with expressions one reserves for the truly insane.
That was a path straight to death.
And the fastest, most complete kind.
As the distance closed, the temperature of the black flame surged at a geometric rate!
Jiang Linxian felt not like he was flying, but like he was plunging into the surface of a burning star.
The thin layer of Demonic Energy protecting his body evaporated in an instant; the barrier formed by the Dragon Pearl's Spiritual Energy was torn apart like paper.
The terrible heat and something that struck directly at his very essence began refining his demon body and divine soul.
Indescribable agony swallowed his consciousness in an instant.
Every cell, every wisp of his soul was thrown into the furnace of a smith, hammered again and again, stretched, torn apart, then permeated by that black flame, incinerated, and purified.
His demon body began to melt, twisting and warping like a wax figure—skin, muscle, and bone all threatening to dissolve into vapor.
His consciousness, too, was being slowly roasted over a low flame.
Jiang Linxian's memories, emotions, and awareness all grew hazy and turbulent in the heat, as though they would be utterly refined into nothingness and returned to their most primordial state of energy.
His cultivation had long since been reduced to nothing.
But the agony itself became the only proof that he still existed.
No one could say how much time passed.
Gradually, Jiang Linxian seemed to merge with the pearl.
It no longer released Spiritual Energy gently—it pulsed violently like a heartbeat, bursting forth with radiance unlike anything before.
This radiance barely shielded the last core fragment of Jiang Linxian's spiritual awareness from being extinguished, and like a magnet, it began actively drawing and pulling at the 7 raging Demon Cores surrounding him.
Devour.
One single, primal, savage impulse took hold of Jiang Linxian.
No more thoughts of cultivation methods, of realm levels, of gain or loss.
Survive. Devour the power before him—even as that power was destroying him!
He slammed into the core region where the radiance of the 7 Demon Cores intertwined.
There was no physical substance here—only seven-colored energy streams of absolute ferocity, and a black divine flame that seemed capable of burning the entire universe to cinders.
Devouring began.
The process was savage and agonizing. His fragmented consciousness, like greedy yet fragile tendrils, forced its way into the halos radiating from the Demon Cores.
Every wisp of seven-colored energy that merged into him was like stuffing a red-hot brand into his soul—bringing the dual agony of being torn apart and reforged.
What the Demon Cores contained was not merely vast and refined spiritual power, but the Earth Veins' will of the gourd-shaped mountain, the lingering resentment of those refined within the cauldron, and the refinement brand the Mountain Soul had imposed upon them.
He seemed to be shattering—then condensing again.
Each shattering and reformation was like dying once.
Excess remnants were being further refined and stripped away.
And the seven-colored Primal Essence of the Mountain Soul and the Spiritual Energy of the Dragon Pearl, within the consuming flame, fused in an utterly inconceivable way—forcing their way into that one inextinguishable fragment of his spiritual awareness.
Like forcing 7 immortal materials of different attributes into a clay vessel already on the verge of bursting.
Time lost all meaning here.
Only endless agony, and a slow—near impossible—fusion.
1 core, 2 cores…
Jiang Linxian, through sheer tenacity of will and the Dragon Pearl's last remaining protection, devoured and merged with the power of the Demon Cores bit by bit—like an ant consuming an elephant, piece by minuscule piece.
With each fraction merged, the remnants of his body solidified further, its color becoming chaotic—flickering with seven-colored luminescence at times, then shrouded by Spiritual Energy at others.
The screams of the other demons within the cauldron gradually grew sparse.
One by one they were fully refined, converted into streams of pure energy that flowed into the Demon Cores—indirectly feeding Jiang Linxian, who was in the midst of his frenzied consumption.
The 3 Demons and 4 Fiends finally could hold on no longer, and amid boundless hatred and bitter unwillingness, dissolved into the last several surges of immense demonic energy, absorbed by the Demon Cores.
Meanwhile, the Mountain Soul, presiding high above outside the cauldron, was savoring the satisfying sensation of the kindling burning within and the pill embryo gradually rounding and ripening.
The Seven-Heart Pill was near completion—it had taken ten-thousand years of resources and scheming before it had reached this point.
It was nearly spent.
The Mountain Soul was not immortal either—it too could die.
This Seven-Heart Pill was the life-saving elixir by which it would extend its existence, and perhaps ascend even further.