Ultragene Warlord

Chapter 1544: Unable to Accept This

The ancient palace transformed into a furnace. The stairs began to melt into burning-hot lava.

Feng Xian, shining with firelight, pierced through the storm of annihilation as she charged straight toward Sun Mengmeng.

"[Baptism of Hellfire: Meteoric Blades]! [Baptism of Hellfire: Phoenix Rising]!"

Sun Mengmeng's body lit up with roaring purple flames. The phoenix that formed around Sun Mengmeng transformed into a blazing tempest.

As Sun Mengmeng revolved, so too did the flaming tempest. A phoenix's flame took over the golden flames and transformed them into storms of hellfire. Phoenixes emerged from those storms, descending on the altar.

They swooped down like burning meteors.

Feng Xian's flames struck Sun Mengmeng's phoenix meteors. The clash of these ultimate techniques caused reverberations throughout the ancient hall, one wave after another. As Feng Xian fought off Sun Mengmeng, she absorbed the power of flame that the latter emanated, causing her own flames to grow stronger and stronger.

She absorbed Sun Mengmeng's black flames and transformed them into her own strength, then released a blow that caused the entire hall to quake.

An incredible firestorm burst from the point of impact. The fire-attuned genetic energy swept across the entire hall like a tsunami. The flames burned everything—material objects and even mental ones. The entire hall seemed to transform into a sea of flames. Only Zhang Lie and the man in dark green robes, high above them all, and the topmost portion of the altar, were safe from their incursion.

No one was able to remain unharmed under flames of such magnitude. This was what Feng Xian believed. She smiled victoriously.

Strange cries emanated from within the superheated flame.

Feng Xian's smile froze on her face.

A tremendous heartbeat could be heard thumping from within the flames.

Feng Xian blanched. "Impossible. Impossible!"

No one could survive with their mental and physical avatars burned, not even those skilled with and attuned to fire.

Swimmers disproportionately died by drowning.

Even those who controlled fire didn't have a body of flame. Against fire of sufficiently high temperature, all would be burned. Even control over flame had a limit.

Feng Xian shook. Her blood pulsed in tune with the heartbeat she could hear.

The sea of flame inverted, draining like a whirlpool. Something was sucking it all up—Feng Xian's phoenix flames, which could burn even mental energy, and Sun Mengmeng's flames, which emanated from her body.

Black flames seeped out from the cracks in Sun Mengmeng's armor, burning so intensely that the ground began to melt and turn red.

She looked like a warrior straight out of hell.

The armor, unable to resist such high-temperature flame, began to crack. It peeled off from Sun Mengmeng's body as flakes of ash, revealing her beautiful appearance. The image of a phoenix floated in the air behind her, its stellar wings outspread to protect Sun Mengmeng.

Underneath the chitinous armor was a dazzling dress fit for combat, beautiful and graceful, one that looked as though it had been stitched out of phoenix feathers. A radiant light glimmered from it. Sun Mengmeng looked like a queen, so beautiful she caught the eye of all cultivators present.

At the same time, it lent her a martial air, like she was a general of the battlefield.

Feng Xian's attention wasn't on Sun Mengmeng's clothes, but rather on the image of the stellar phoenix to her back. She cried out, "How did you come by a stellar phoenix's heart?"

Sun Mengmeng cocked her head, not understanding why Feng Xian seemed so agitated.

"A reward..."

One of the prizes that Bu Wentian's trial chamber had provided was a heart of unknown origin. When Sun Mengmeng came in contact with it, it hummed with a strange resonance and darted within her body. It had been inert then, and Sun Mengmeng wouldn't be able to sense the presence of an additional heart if she hadn't searched specifically for it. She paid no attention to that prize—not until just now, when she had been immolated in flame.

Given Feng Xian's expression, it looked like an incredible prize.

Sun Mengmeng thought back to the fragment of counteracting fate that Fang Yi possessed. They were likely to be the same type of object—something that the people of the Milky Way and dimensional realm were unfamiliar with, but well known to those cultivators of the fifth realm.

It seemed to be something with an illustrious history.

As for Sun Mengmeng's current clothes, they came from a soulshard, just like her chitinous armor. This was also a prize from the trial chamber, but the difference was that this was a disaster-grade soulshard—a disaster-grade phoenix soulshard, with particular resistance against fire, and which could absorb flames from her vicinity and convert it into defensive ability.

The stellar phoenix's heart, which Feng Xian had named, was able to absorb fire, but only that. Sun Mengmeng could sense that there was a wealth of untapped strength within it, but which she couldn't control. She likely didn't yet have the skill to do so.

Feng Xian pointed at Sun Mengmeng with a trembling finger. "That's impossible. You don't have a phoenix bloodline at all. How could you gain the recognition of a stellar phoenix?!"

Sun Mengmeng pointed at her chest. "I can't command the strength within it. All I can do is protect myself instinctively."

Clearly, the stellar phoenix's heart bore great significance to Feng Xian. "That's impossible. You shouldn't be able to link with the phoenix without a bloodline, let alone receive its protection!"

Sun Mengmeng was mystified by what Feng Xian was talking about.

Feng Xian's face turned dark. Her body trembled violently. "I sought it out for so long—but you stole it from me! I can't bear this!"

Overwhelming flame emanated from her body, a torrent of rage and incredulity.

"[Lunarflame Shot: Extirpation of the Garuda]!" Sun Mengmeng pulled her bow taut once more, infusing the rest of her genetic energy within. The image of a garuda materialized from thin air and, supercharged with Sun Mengmeng's energy, readied for a devastating blow.

Black flames gathered, lighting the very air itself aflame. The black flames formed a pitch-black abyss that no longer radiated light. Instead, it sucked in the light from all around like black holes and devoured everything in sight.

The devastating arrow struck Feng Xian's flames, which could burn one's mental and physical bodies alike, with overwhelming force. Another sea of flames swamped the altar.

The incredible heat of the flames burned through the ground. Even with Feng Xian's ability to absorb external flames and convert them into her own strength,

Sun Mengmeng's arrow represented the pinnacle of fire-attuned genetic energy, which gave off destruction in such tremendous bursts that Feng Xian was unable to absorb it whole. The arrow immolated Feng Xian's shields as fast as she could put them up. The two cultivators found themselves at a narrow stalemate.

"[Lunarflame Shot: Starburst]!"

Sun Mengmeng's hand blurred as she shot out an entire field's worth of arrows, each one like a miniature star.

They flared across the air, then landed in the form of a meteor shower, battering the altar and the stairs as the ancient hall filled with flame once more.