The flame covered his skin and started burning it before reaching his muscles and burning them as well. From those burns, he felt a certain energy entering his body and coursing throughout his body before entering his Dantain.
This energy flowing through him was the Essence of the Golden Flame. It constantly burned his body, which helped in smelting his flesh, removing impurities from it. This was a great opportunity for him to increase his flesh strength, though like always, the process was accompanied by a horrible pain.
His technique, Primordial Origin Art, made it easier to absorb it and integrate the energy into his body and his Dantian. But it didn't make it any less painful.
The energy was pure and scorching, after invading his body completely, it started flowing into his meridians and through them into his Dantian, gathering into a single point.
He felt that the process would take time, time that he didn't quite have right now. So he accelerated his speed of circulating the technique, hoping to finish the process as quickly as possible. Which did help as the flow of energy entering his body increased significantly.
But consequently the flame on his body also started burning with more intensity, fighting back, causing him a greater amount of pain. A painful grunt escaped his mouth as he endured the burning of his body with grinding teeth and continued absorbing the energy of the flame.
As time passed, the flame on his body thinned little by little and his body got refined by it before the energy got absorbed into his Dantian. Once the Flame Energy in his Dantain reached a certain threshold, it converged into a small golden seed right above his Qi River.
In accordance to the appearance of the Golden Seed, the flames that were still burning on his body, stormed in like they were being sucked into a blackhole. The flames directly invaded his Dantian and got drawn into the Golden Seed.
The moment the flame was completely absorbed into the seed, a crack formed on the surface of the seed. The cracks increased in a moment before they covered it's entirety. The next second, the seed bursted, causing two things to happen simultaneously.
Once the seed exploded, a shockwave expanded from it and a flame formed in it's place, the same Golden Flame, the Gold Incinerating Flame, was formed into his Dantian, exactly on the spot the seed had been.
While the shockwave that had erupted from the explosion, which was actually the final burst of Energy from the Flames, traveled throughout his dantian and was absorbed into his Qi River. This sudden influx of energy completely filled his Dantian, causing it to swell before it's boundaries shattered and it expanded beyond the previous limit.
Outside, Wang Feng's aura jumped up as the boundaries broke and he ascended to the 3rd Stage Qi Sea Realm. "*Hue* It finally finished.", he sighed and opened his eyes.
{A-Note: For those who don't know. The levels of Qi Sea Realm go as: Lake (1st), River (2nd), Sea (3rd), Ocean (4th) and Divine (5th).}
He lowered his gaze and looked at his arm. But unlike the scene he had depicted in his mind of burned skin and charred muscles covering him in black smelly soot.
He saw that all the burned flesh was gone along with any and all impurities, leaving behind pristine skin without any dirt marks. He looked down at his body and found that the same had happened to all of his body.
'did the flame burn them out?', that was the only thing that came to his mind and seemed possible. He then shook his head and just left the matter as is.
He stood up and felt the changes inside himself. Along with the fact that his Cultivation broke through to the 3rd Stage. He benefited greatly from the tempering of his body from the Flame's energy.
His skin and muscles had been burned and reconstructed again and again during the process which had made them more compact, flexible and pure. While on the inside, his meridians and innards seem to have also absorbed the fiery energy and gotten tougher.
He was elated as this would help him greatly reduce the time he will have to spend in True Body Realm, which involved tempering the body.
As he was going through that, he suddenly felt a chill all over his body. Why? Because he was currently naked! and he was currently standing on ice, which was generated from the pearl that Mian Dong had thrown and hadn't melted since.
Previously, the flames had burned the clothes he was wearing, leaving him in this state. Wang Feng quickly accessed his inventory before taking out a set of robes and putting them on, 'I need to work on fireproof clothes', he thought to himself seriously.
After getting dressed he sigh in relief and look around, finding that the environment was still the same. He got confused, 'how long was I even refining it?'.
He didn't know how long he had been refining the flame. But seeing that the surroundings were still as they were, he knew that a very short time had passed. Which he was correct about as only 30 minutes had passed outside.
It took him only 30 minutes to fully absorb the beast flame because of a few factors like, his technique, the flame being just a beast flame, the low cultivation of the Lion who bred the flame and the time the flame had to grow after getting free from the Lion.
He looked around to see if there was something of value around before he left the place. After leaving, he looked for a place to hide for a moment.
After searching for more than an hour, he finally found a small cave. He looked around and observed the cave for a few minutes, finding it empty. "Now, to check the loot."
The reason he was looking for a place was to take out the corpses from the inventory. Previously, he didn't have much time to search the corpses and had to leave that place as quickly as he could to avoid anyone else coming upon him after sensing the battle.
He took a deep breath and took out the two corpses. As he looked at them, expecting the same crunch in his stomach, he found that he didn't feel nauseous or anxious like before. The only thing he felt was a slight repulsion of getting his clothes dirty from the blood.
He shook his head before he started looking at the things that the two deceased had. From desciple Gu, he only got an Earth Grade Sword and a Tier 2 Monster Core, while all of his other things were of no value to him with some frozen to the point they became useless.
"Just what was that pearl? It even froze his Common Grade herbs.", Wang Feng muttered while looking at the frozen items with a frown. He thought for a while before putting the matter to the back of his mind.
His gaze then went to Desciple Mian. He searched him and found another Earth Grade Artifact, which was a spear. "For someone this scheming and despicable to use a spear. *Sigh*", he muttered while shaking his head and looking at the other things.
He saw a few Common Grade herbs, an Earth Grade Herb, some money and a red token. Wang Feng frowned and his expressions turned serious for a second.
Why?
Because he recognized the token as an Elder Token from Strom Manor. Now obviously this guy wasn't an Elder, so most likely the Token was given to him by the elder for protection.
At the same time, something clicked in his mind. "That pearl should have been his life saving method given by the elder...", he concluded. He stood up and threw the token on the corpses while securing the other stuff into his inventory.
He circulated his Qi into his hand and willed the Beast Flame in his Dantian to appear. The next moment, the Flame in his Dantian surged and a stream of fire combined with the Qi exited the Dantian and flowed into his hand, causing his hand to catch fire.
He looked at the blazing golden flame on his hand with calm eyes, 'so the Real Flame stays in the Dantian and only a stream of the flame combines with Qi exits the body. Though I have to say, it consumes quite a bit of Qi.'
Wang Feng could feel that the amount of Qi consumed to burn the flame for less than a minute was more than a Low-Earth Grade Martial Arts. Though it didn't bother him because of his great reserves that could top the reserves of nearly 15 Peak Initial Element Realm Cultivators Combined.
He shifted his gaze to the corpses and threw the flame onto them. He watched as the flames connected with the corpses and started burning them. Leaving nothing more than ashes of the two within a minute.
— 3 Days Timeskip —
Wang Feng could be seen holding a piece of paper in his hand while standing at the base of a cliff. "According to the map, the enterance should be here...", he said while looking at the place in front of him.
There was just one problem. There was no enterance there!
'it should be an array', he thought to himself while stepping forward and touching around the wall, trying to find some kind of a trigger.
During the last 3 days, Wang Feng had successfully entered the Core Region of the Black Wind Mountain. The journey had become much easier for him after his breakthrough, which had, according to the system, pushed his Battle Power to 9th Stage Qi Transformation Realm.
Today, he had reached the place where the supposed Treasure from the Treasure Map was located.
After touching around for a few minutes, he still couldn't find any kind of trigger so he thought for a moment before he placed the map on the wall.
The result was instant as the map shone briefly before getting absorbed into the wall. The next moment, piece of thin rocks fell from the wall revealing a deep, dark cave pathway.
Wang Feng grinned toothishly and stepped inside the pathway, his steps measured but hurried. For he didn't know if, and how fast, this cave could be found by anyone else, now that the restrictions on it have been lifted.
He thought about setting up an array here, but instantly discarded the idea as the current him doesn't have the expertise to make a strong enough array and that too quick enough to hide the cave from those of higher cultivation than Initial Element Realm or Tier 2 beasts.
So he chose the next best thing, he has to raid this place and leave as quickly as possible. So he rushed inside the cave with haste, but still on the lookout for any trap or such. Fortunately, he didn't get into a trap and after nearly a minute of rushing inside, he saw the end of the cave pathway.
Just from exiting the pathway and entering into the cave, he was assaulted by a weird mix of cold and hot breeze. He looked around and was stunned by the wide array of ores and crystals glistening in from of him.
He looked at the massive chunks of ores in front of him with astonishment, his gaze scanning them one after the other, "Dark Gold Yin Ore, Sun Glass Crystal, Flame Extinguisher Iron, Ice Glazed Crystal, Enflamed Yang Stones, ... Is that a Wood Bark Steel!?"
He saw many ores, metals and crystal, most of which were at least Mid-Earth Grade, with a few even reaching Low-Heaven Grade!
He quickly approached the first piece of metal near him and placed his hand on it before placing it into his inventory, making the meter long stone disappear instantly. He grinned, 'With this, it wouldn't take long.', and so he started moving towards the other metals and continued placing them in his inventory.
As he moved further into the cave, he noticed someone. He saw that all around him, the number of Ores remained the same, but their quality was steadily increasing and now nearly every material he came across was at least Peak Earth Grade. After some distance in, he came across a maltitude of Crystals that excluded Yang Energy.
He saw many Pure Yellow Crystals of varying sizes emblemed into the ground and walls of the cave. Each crystal excluding a potent Yang Aura. He felt aura and exclaimed, "this level of pure Yang aura is even more potent than Enflamed Yang Stones."
He stepped forward and grabbed a smaller sized crystal before pulling it out of the ground. He looked at the fist sized crystal and thought of viewing it's information.
The crystal was called Scorched Yang Crystal and they were formed in these caves after tens of years of exposure to intense heat and compressed Yang Energy.
Wang Feng paused, 'compressed Yang Energy?'. Although these crystals were an incredible find, the system's analysis portrayed that something even more precious might be in here.
But that wasn't all. On the side, he saw some blue crystals as well, excluding pure Yin Qi and after analyzing them, he found that they had almost similar description to Scorching Yang Crystals.
His eyes shined at this as he quickly stuffed every material into his inventory and dashed deeper into the cave. The closer he went towards the center, the more he felt the temperature fluctuate, from hot to cold and from cold to hot.
But all that didn't bother his as he continued moving forward for a few minutes. At long last, he reached near the end of the cave and came upon the object that was the reason of all these materials existing here and as soon as he saw the item, his eyes widened to the extreme before he started laughing loudly.