Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Four Troublemakers
Spiritual energy flooded into Hu Qing’s sea of consciousness.
The suction was terrifying. Her meridians trembled. Her dantian quivered. And worst of all, the pull ran straight along the light energy toward Spiritfire itself.
Inside her sea of consciousness, a fight broke out from all sides.
The space, Xue Sha Pearl, Emotionless Thread, and Devil Emperor Token each seized a corner and began to drain and divide the incoming power. Even the soul power that filled her sea like water surged into monstrous waves, demanding its share.
Hu Qing almost laughed from sheer rage. “Are you trying to kill me?”
The sea answered with cheerful white-crested waves—like it was acting cute.
The other four sent a unified message that was anything but cute: hungry, thirsty, starving.
Hu Qing: “…”
She was beginning to suspect everything in her head was shameless.
She knew they were incomplete. She knew they were desperate to patch themselves up. But did they really have to ignore the landlord’s survival like this?
Four greedy little disasters: We don’t care, we don’t care.
At least Juan Bu still had a sense of responsibility. He went pale with sweat. “This is bad. The four of them are trying to drag Scorching Sun Blaze straight into your sea of consciousness. Your body isn’t even Spirit Immortal-level.”
He gritted out the only option he could see. “Use spirit stones. Run every method you have. Pray the heavens bless you and you survive this.”
Hu Qing’s face tightened.
Spiritfire wasn’t something you could swallow carelessly. She’d studied subduing Spiritfire years ago. With her level and conditions, the safest route was to keep it in her dantian—or somewhere in her body, or inside an artifact—until it had fully fused with her. Only then would you move it into the sea of consciousness.
Otherwise, if Spiritfire entered the soul directly, the usual result was soul scattering.
And now? Those four incomplete things were practically dragging it into her head with both hands.
So what, she dies and they inherit her leftovers to “complete themselves” for someone else?
Dream on.
Hu Qing dropped into a cross-legged seat and drove her cultivation into a frenzy.
Spring god art. Goldfire secret method. Her body-refining technique.
Everything, pushed to the limit.
The moment she pulled spirit stones from the space, they were drained into powder—and before the powder could even settle, the golden light dissolved it away.
What Hu Qing couldn’t see was what Juan Bu did.
Wrapped completely in his veil, she had fallen into a blazing sea of gold light. In front of her hovered a small red flame, so close it was almost face-to-face. It flickered, curious rather than afraid.
From that flame, a thin red thread extended, piercing through Juan Bu, slipping through Hu Qing’s right eye, and sinking into her sea of consciousness.
It was only a thread—but to Juan Bu, it felt like standing beneath ten suns at once.
Pain tore through him so hard it nearly broke his mind.
He didn’t retreat.
Hu Qing, strangely, didn’t feel that same agony. She only felt a sharp stab in her right eye—so brief she didn’t even cry out before it vanished. For a moment, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
But inside her sea of consciousness, she could see everything.
Storm waves slammed against the sky. The four corners held their ground. From the space, Emotionless Thread, Xue Sha Pearl, and Devil Emperor Token, invisible power rose into four pillars. They met above the sea, and when the incoming energy struck that convergence, it transformed into rolling clouds of pale gold and deep red that spread outward.
Soon the sky over her sea of consciousness was nothing but cloud-sea—thick, heavy, pressing down toward the water.
White-crested waves leapt up and struck the clouds. Cold and heat collided. Fine threads of rain began to fall.
As the rain hit the surface, the sea calmed at once, settling like a cat after a full meal.
The rain thickened into a curtain. Splashes danced across the surface in strings, as if singing.
More rain. Thinner clouds.
And in the center—where mist and light swirled—a gentle red began to take shape.
Juan Bu nearly collapsed in relief. It was working. Scorching Sun Blaze was being pulled in.
Heaven bless us.
Father!
In the solar-essence space outside, the young red flame still bobbed in front of Hu Qing, flickering with innocent curiosity. It didn’t seem to realize its body was shrinking at all.
Maybe it was too newly born. Maybe it had never met anyone and didn’t understand how dangerous strangers could be. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t afraid of this weird intruder. It floated closer. When Hu Qing didn’t move, it extended tiny fiery hands to poke and pat her.
Hu Qing stayed still as stone.
The little flame got even bolder. It hopped onto her face and, through Juan Bu’s veil, smacked her cheek with a soft, crisp sound.
For an instant, Hu Qing thought she heard the laughter of a baby.
A face-slapping game—babies loved that kind of thing.
Without knowing why, she instinctively shaped the seawater in her sea of consciousness into a snow-white hand and laid it gently against the forming sun shape overhead, still incomplete.
Outside, Hu Qing didn’t move, but the corner of her mouth curved into a small, tender smile.
The young flame noticed.
It floated closer, stared through the veil for a long moment, babbled something in strange little sounds—and slapped again.
Smack.
Her cheek stung. Hu Qing’s smile twitched. [Brat.]
The flame brushed lightly over the corner of her mouth. Juan Bu bore that scorching temperature alone, teeth clenched—move away, move away, or I’m going to melt—
Then the young flame discovered something even more interesting.
It finally noticed the thin red thread drawn from itself.
It grabbed the thread with its tiny hand, tugged—
And shot along it.
Whoosh.
Inside Hu Qing’s sea of consciousness, everything exploded.
Waves surged like they were about to touch the heavens—then turned to steam an instant before they did. White mist burst outward. The space, Emotionless Thread, Xue Sha Pearl, and Devil Emperor Token all tumbled back, battered and messy.
The moment the young red flame entered this place, it turned vicious.
It expanded into roaring fire over the sea of consciousness, baring its claws, thrashing wildly.
It had realized it had been dragged somewhere bad for it—somewhere that felt dangerous, hostile. It panicked.
It wanted to burn everything around it. Burn this cage down. Burn its way out.
Outside, Hu Qing’s body flared with heat. A sharp sizzle sounded at her scalp—her hair blackened and burned. Then the smell of cooked flesh rose, and she was seconds from being roasted alive.
Juan Bu’s eyes went wide, but there was nothing he could do. He was burning too, his mind slipping.
Hu Qing saw her seawater—her soul power—drop by half in a heartbeat.
She shrieked, “Oh, no you don’t!”
And with that shout, golden light erupted from the depths of her sea of consciousness and shot upward in a spray of countless points, slamming into the rampaging Scorching Sun Blaze.
The golden light flowed over it smoothly.
The flame froze.
Then it softened, as if a calming medicine had entered its core. Its vast body shrank, shrinking, shrinking—
Until it became a small, round, glossy red ball.
Hu Qing’s burning heat vanished at once. Her breath steadied. Her spirit settled. It felt as if she had drunk a whole crate of cooling medicine and finally come back to herself.
The four troublemakers crawled out from their corners, each one silently thinking the same thing: thank goodness there was merit.
It was the merit Hu Qing had earned when she opened the Ghost Gate and, together with Shui Xin, sent the ghosts of three races into the Yin Realm, ending a great disaster. She’d always hoarded it, unwilling to spend it.
Now it had all flown out to soothe Scorching Sun Blaze.
Hu Qing felt her merit draining away and nearly wept from the pain of it. Still—still.
There was a tiny bit left.
And she had gained a wisp of Spiritfire.
That would have to be enough.