Chapter 155

Deep in the Purgatory Sulfur plane, at the foot of that huge active volcano, the Flame Lord's huge lava body was once again entangled with Jie Ming's short figure.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Only violent collision sounds and fire element explosions remained in the air. Jie Ming was like a black ghost, shuttling around the Flame Lord.

More than a year had passed since Jie Ming officially practiced the "Body Tempering Method". During this time, he would come to find this Flame Lord for sparring every once in a while.

The Flame Lord's offensive was still continuous, with lava boulders, scorching sharp claws, and even the scorching fire breath sprayed from its mouth, with all-around offensives from far, middle, and near surrounding Jie Ming, with strong momentum.

But after such a long time of training, Jie Ming was no longer as "fragile" as before, and even such a terrible offensive could not pose a fatal threat to him.

He clenched his fists, an uppercut, carrying spiral force, heavily smashed onto the Flame Lord's chin made of solidified lava.

The Flame Lord's huge body was shaken backward by this pure power, and the scorched earth under its feet cracked, making a loud "crack" sound.

Jie Ming took advantage of the situation to leap up, knees topped, elbows fell, every attack accurately landed on the Flame Lord's joints or the weak links of energy flow.

The Flame Lord let out a deafening roar, and the flames around its body surged, completely swallowing Jie Ming.

However, when the flames dissipated, Jie Ming stood in place unscathed; his robe had completely turned into ashes, revealing his skin that was flushed from the flames.

But it was just flushed, and after the flames, Jie Ming's skin returned to normal at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Even some wounds caused by the battle with the Flame Lord before were closing from the edge to the inside at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Some older wounds had even grown new skin.

Even the rich sulfur smell in the air seemed to be completely ineffective for him at this moment.

Jie Ming was still relying purely on physical strength to fight, without any wizardry protection, and it was still quite difficult to fight.

Every attack required him to mobilize all the muscles and bones of his body, and every defense had to be just right.

But he could barely fight back and forth with the Flame Lord, and even occasionally occupy the upper hand, all of which showed the substantial improvement of his physical fitness and close-quarters combat skills during this period.

This battle mode had become Jie Ming's daily routine for more than a year.

As long as the injury healed, he couldn't wait to go to the Purgatory Sulfur plane again, find this Flame Lord, and conduct one tempering after another.

The Flame Lord also seemed to be angry at this little bug that came to harass it from time to time, and every time it went all out.

In such high-intensity, unreserved close-quarters fighting, Jie Ming's understanding of the "Body Tempering Method" became increasingly deep.

He treated his body as a piece of raw iron that needed to be hammered repeatedly; every time he was burned by flames, every time he was impacted by lava, it was a tempering deep into the bone marrow.

The training effect in this way was excellent; in addition to physical strength and combat skills, the body's resistance to flames was also greatly strengthened.

At this moment, Jie Ming stood in front of the Flame Lord again; his body had completely immunized the Flame Lord's flame attack that was enough to melt gold and iron.

The scorching magma sprayed by the Flame Lord fell on Jie Ming, only making a "sizzle" steaming sound, but could no longer cause any damage.

Even the bombardment of the Flame Lord's huge lava arm could only make him retreat a few steps, but could no longer cause serious injuries such as fractures.

And his self-healing recovery speed was also greatly improved.

Earliest, after being burned all over, if he didn't rely on wizardry, Jie Ming needed a full ten days to recover from his injuries.

Now, even if he suffered serious injuries such as multiple fractures all over his body, after leaving the battle, his body only spent less than an hour to fully heal.

"Your flames are ineffective against me."

After being sprayed with flames again, Jie Ming shook his head and said softly to the Flame Lord.

Although he was still at a disadvantage in the battle, there was no fear in his eyes, but instead full of regret.

The Flame Lord obviously realized this too; it let out an unwilling roar, its huge body began to tremble, and the energy fluctuation became a bit chaotic.

It couldn't understand why this tiny creature in front of it could adapt to and immunize its power in such a short time.

Jie Ming felt the surging vitality in his body and the solid feeling of complete adaptation to flames.

He knew that his physical fitness still had huge room for improvement.

But since the Flame Lord's flames could no longer cause substantial damage to him, continuing to fight with it lost its original meaning.

He needed stronger pressure and more challenging elemental attacks.

"Trouble you for this period of time," Jie Ming nodded slightly to the Flame Lord, didn't entangle anymore, turned around, and searched toward the deeper part of the Purgatory Sulfur plane.

He wanted to find other powerful living beings that could provide, to see if he could "brush" his flame resistance even higher.

He flew on the land of the Purgatory Sulfur plane, searching toward some areas where the elemental concentration was higher than before.

The environment in this kind of place was worse than the previous area; in addition to the sulfur smell in the air, it was mixed with a pungent metallic scorched smell.

Jie Ming released his spiritual sense, carefully searching every inch of land in this unknown area.

Strictly speaking, this should be the first time Jie Ming searched his plane so carefully.

"Huh!"

Suddenly, Jie Ming let out a light huh and turned to fly downward.

In a lava river, he saw a group of crystal fish that were preying; they were composed of translucent red crystals and could shuttle freely in thick magma as high as several thousand degrees.

Jie Ming observed for a while, reached out and pushed away the heavy metal magma, and caught a few with his bare hands.

He discovered that their crystals contained extremely pure fire element essence, which was an excellent alchemy material.

Most importantly...

"This feeling... is a bit similar to the 'Fire Essence' mentioned in the Cultivation World; interesting, maybe it can be refined using the method of processing Fire Essence."

Marking the location of this area on his Magic Network terminal, Jie Ming left here with a few crystal fish, feeling satisfied.

However, with this discovery, he became interested in this plane that he hadn't searched carefully.

In order to search well, Jie Ming even simply bought some "memories" of the native living beings of the Aeluoxia plane cluster from the Magic Network.

Among them was quite a lot of information about the materials of the Purgatory Sulfur plane.

Soon, under Jie Ming's deliberate search, he discovered a plant called "Geocentric Sulfur Flower" in a magma cave.

This flower took root deep in the scorching rock wall; the petals were dark purple, emitting a peculiar fragrance, and could absorb sulfur and toxins escaping from deep underground, transforming them into a substance that had a weak nourishing effect on spiritual power.

After finding relevant information about this flower in the memories of those native living beings, Jie Ming's eyes lit up.

For the natives of the Aeluoxia plane cluster, the most useful thing about this flower is of course the substance it secretes, but for wizards like Jie Ming, the most useful thing about these things is the flower itself!

"Relying only on the operation of its own organs to transform toxins into beneficial substances, this group of ignorant guys, wasting natural resources!"

Looking at the memories of those natives, Jie Ming was so angry that he beat his chest and stamped his feet.

Those guys, in order to collect more secreted substances, basically crushed the picked flowers directly, and no one thought about what the principle behind this was.

Jie Ming carefully collected some samples and put these complete plants into the space expansion bag, preparing to cultivate and study them in the Golden Garden.

In addition, he also discovered some strange metal minerals.

Every time Jie Ming discovered one, he would collect samples and conduct preliminary analysis using alchemy; these unique materials would undoubtedly bring new inspiration to his wizarding tool manufacturing and alchemy.

However, it was a pity that he didn't find a more suitable practice object.

Although the living beings here were more powerful, most of the fire element attack intensity they could release was similar to the Flame Lord.

Just when Jie Ming was a bit disappointed and ready to return to the previous area, he discovered a volcano with a special situation.

The volcanoes of the Purgatory Sulfur plane were basically active volcanoes, and the vast majority even had flowing magma in the crater, emitting rolling heat waves.

But this volcano was dead silent.

The entire volcano mountain body presented a weird pitch black, as if its vitality had been completely drained by some force.

It had no magma flowing, nor did it have a trace of steam or smoke sprayed from the crater, as if it had really died.

In the scorching and violent scene around, this dead silent black volcano looked out of place, emitting a cold and oppressive aura.

Jie Ming carefully landed on the periphery of the volcano and unfolded alchemy to check.

But soon, he discovered the abnormality of this volcano.

The slopes of this volcano and the surrounding ground were actually covered with a large number of animal corpses!

These corpses were not naturally rotten, but presented traces of being torn, burned, or frozen by powerful energy, obviously dying in a fierce battle.

Many bones still had corrosive mucus or transparent crystals remaining, proving that it was not just fire-attribute living beings that participated in the battle.

What surprised Jie Ming even more was that he discovered that the earth vein connected to this volcano had actually been cut off alive!

Deep in the volcano, where scorching geocentric energy and active fire elements should have been surging, it was now a void, as if all its vitality had been sucked away by something.

This was the fundamental reason why this volcano had become a rare dead volcano.

(End of chapter)