Netherflame Burns the Immortal Path

Snow had fallen on Kunlun Ruins for three thousand years.

As the horsetail whisk in Perfected Xuanqing’s fingers swept over the alchemy furnace, the seventh bolt of purple lightning struck the eye of the Immortal-Locking Array. He had thought that the calamity threatening the immortal sects, which he had guarded against for a hundred years, could finally be overcome with the Nine-Turn Resurrection Pill, preserving the last trace of the immortal lineage. That was, until a cluster of ghostly blue flames slipped through a crack in the furnace. It was neither the fierce heat of mortal fire nor the gentle warmth of immortal flame. This fire could cling to the soul and burn even immortal bones until they reeked of char.

The first to scream was the disciple guarding the alchemy chamber. When Xuanqing turned, all he saw was half an immortal body still burning. The flames climbed from the disciple’s waist, following the sect jade pendant, and devoured even the wisp of immortal essence sealed inside it. Xuanqing hurriedly formed a hand seal, but the Daoist sect’s finest Purity Mantra crumbled into dust the moment it touched the ghostfire. Flames licked at his sleeve, and a bone-deep chill crept along his meridians toward his dantian, colder than the deepest ice abyss of Kunlun.

“Perfected One! The array’s core has broken!” an elder shouted hoarsely from outside the mountain gate. Xuanqing looked up at the sky. The Immortal-Locking Array, which should have been wreathed in golden light, was now woven into a vast net by ghostfire. The flames surged endlessly from the void, burning down the flying eaves of the Spirit Sky Hall and melting the mountain’s towering pillar. Even the immortal mist that had shrouded Kunlun’s peak for years was turning into black smoke that reeked of burning.

He still carried the last Nine-Turn Resurrection Pill in his arms. It had been refined from the heart’s blood of three hundred and sixty disciples of the immortal sects, and should have been used to rebuild an immortal root and continue the path of cultivation. But as the ghostfire climbed up his robe, Xuanqing suddenly understood: this fire had never been meant to burn Kunlun Ruins