Chapter Ninety-Four: The Crimson Flame Rampaging Beast

Seeing that, Gu Weiyu understood that Little Sprout could feed itself, so she let it be.

The piece she had just obtained had been swallowed by Little Sprout, and she planned to gather a few more.

“Master, take some of that lava with you too,” Little Book rarely spoke up in her sea of consciousness. “That stuff can improve the quality of elixirs.”

It could improve elixir quality? That was certainly a treasure.

At those words, Gu Weiyu drew out her wooden sword and executed a few moves of the first thunder-sword form, successfully carving a pit more than ten meters deep into the ice.

She put the wooden sword away, then activated Swift Wind Step and slowly climbed down the walls of the pit.

A hard surface met her feet. Beneath the rock wall, she could already see the crimson stone exposed through the ice below.

Gu Weiyu crouched down, took out the delicate little dagger her master had given her, and scraped it across the crimson rock.

The supposedly tough stone was immediately cut with a deep gash. She made a few more cuts, then reached out and broke off a slab nearly half a meter wide.

She stored it away and raised the dagger again to cut more crimson stone.

“This is much more comfortable here—” Little Sprout, which had been lying on the ice, slid down along the wall and chose a spot beside Gu Weiyu. Its tender leaves spread out and swayed lightly.

Little Sprout sent its roots into the crimson stone below and began drawing out the energy within. The tender leaf above its head also seemed increasingly lively as it swayed.

Gu Weiyu dug out more than ten slabs of crimson stone and tossed them into her storage space, then took out a jade bottle and filled it with a bottle of lava before climbing out of the pit.

“Little Sprout, let’s go!” Gu Weiyu called to the little plant that was still lying on the crimson stone.

Seeing that Gu Weiyu was about to leave, Little Sprout was somewhat reluctant, even though it had already absorbed quite a bit of the stone’s energy.

Gu Weiyu could not help but say softly, “Little Sprout, too much of a good thing is still too much. That won’t do.”

Little Sprout seemed to understand vaguely. It toddled back into Gu Weiyu’s dantian at a leisurely pace, chose a comfortable corner, lay down again, and began digesting the crimson stone energy it had absorbed.

The path through the ice cave wound on and on. As Gu Weiyu walked, she could not help but frown.

Why did the road in this ice cave seem to slope farther and farther downward?

More than that, the surrounding ice and snow seemed to be growing scarcer, while the temperature kept climbing higher and higher. Could this be a passage leading to subterranean magma?

Though puzzled, Gu Weiyu had no intention of stopping here.

She had long understood that opportunity and danger always went hand in hand.

The path of cultivation might be smooth or rugged, but if she did not go forward and see what lay ahead, she would never have a chance to know.

She composed herself and continued descending. Not only did the temperature within the ice cave rise step by step, but the path beneath her feet also became steeper and more treacherous.

“How long have we been in this place?” Gu Weiyu stopped and asked Little Green Book in her sea of consciousness.

“About a little over an hour, maybe?” Little Green Book sounded uncertain as well.

A little over an hour? Gu Weiyu roughly calculated. It would not be long before she could leave this place again.

In other words, if she truly encountered danger, as long as she could hold out until the two hours were up, she would be able to escape the peril.

That was also why, even knowing there might be some unknown danger below, Gu Weiyu still wanted to go down and investigate.

A place this strange surely had an unusual reason for existing.

Thinking of this, Gu Weiyu no longer hesitated and lifted her foot to continue downward.

A bubbling sound of lava rolling could be heard clearly from ahead. Gu Weiyu turned a corner along the cave wall, and a river of lava appeared before her.

A scorching wave rushed over her face, and bubbles kept surfacing from below on the crimson river.

She stood by the lava river and quietly sent her divine sense into its depths.

She had already probed the lava once before, but unfortunately the ice and crimson rock had blocked her view, so she had not seen clearly.

Now, with the river right before her eyes, she could clearly perceive every tiny detail within the lava.

“Hm? What is that?” Gu Weiyu soon discovered, at the bottom of the lava river, crystals shaped like pebbles, delicate and translucent.

Carefully, she used her divine sense to draw one out and placed it in her palm for a close look. “Could this be… crimson crystal stone?”

She vaguely remembered seeing an introduction to crimson crystal stone in a jade slip before.

“That’s right, and it’s top-grade crimson crystal stone,” Little Book’s voice sounded at just the right moment in her sea of consciousness.

Gu Weiyu’s eyes lit up. If she remembered correctly, crimson crystal stone seemed to be a rare spiritual material. Top-grade crimson crystal stone in particular would definitely fetch a great many spirit stones.

Thinking of the piles of spirit stones right before her, she grew excited and began using her divine sense to scoop up the crimson crystal stones from the bottom of the lava river.

But she soon realized that collecting them one by one with her divine sense was far too troublesome. In a flash of inspiration, she turned her divine sense into a net and swept up every crimson crystal stone she found, gathering them all in one fell swoop.

“There are so many crimson crystal stones in this lava!” Gu Weiyu muttered breathlessly as she collected them.

Most of the crimson crystal stones were a light red color, translucent and clear inside. There were also a very small number whose colors were extraordinarily gorgeous; Little Book said those were top-tier crimson crystal stones.

But they were few and far between. After so long of gathering, she had only managed to obtain a mere handful.

Just as she was busily collecting them, faint crackling sounds began to rise from the bottom of the lava.

Gu Weiyu’s divine sense had been closely monitoring the movements within the lava river all along.

Though the sound was slight and not very noticeable amid the bubbling, she still caught it at once.

Her divine sense immediately extended toward the place where the sound had come from, and only then did she discover that, at some unknown point, a long, narrow crack had opened at the bottom of the lava.

Why had the bottom of the lava suddenly split open? Gu Weiyu was puzzled for a moment, then went back to collecting crimson crystal stones.

Still, she had become more restrained and paid even closer attention to the movements around her.

Crack—

Crack—

A continuous series of cracking sounds rang out, and Gu Weiyu could not help but stop what she was doing, keeping her divine sense fixed on that fissure.

The thin crack grew wider and wider. It was as though some enormous creature from the depths was about to emerge.

The fissure split open completely, revealing a large black gaping hole. Lava poured into it, and a deep, heavy roar echoed up from the depths below.

Boom—

A thunderous rumble shook from beneath the ground, and then the entire cavern began to tremble.

Gu Weiyu, standing by the lava river, nearly toppled into the molten flow from the force of inertia. She hurriedly reached out to brace herself against the stone wall beside her, just barely managing to steady herself.

What kind of demonic beast was hidden below? Gu Weiyu’s curiosity only deepened.

Boom— boom—

The ground trembled more and more violently, and something enormous and thick was reaching out from the cavern below.

Heavens above!

Gu Weiyu’s eyes widened.

A gigantic claw slowly extended from the underground cavern!

That huge claw looked thicker than her entire body!

With the appearance of the giant claw, the once relatively calm lava river was instantly stirred into a churning frenzy.

This was no place to linger! Gu Weiyu thought to herself that it was time to leave.

Suddenly, she felt her entire body stiffen. In some unfathomable way, it was as though some colossal behemoth had locked onto her.