Chapter 1068: Falling into the Fire Sea

While it's easy to defeat a profound practitioner with spiritual power, overcoming a true dragon with it is almost impossible.

However, as the sovereign of all dragons, whose lineage traces back to the Age of Ancient Gods, the deterrent power of its dragon soul over other dragons far exceeds its effect on humans!

As the dragon soul erupted with a sky-shattering roar, all lingering light in the ancient horned dragon's eyes instantly dispersed, turning into a crimson hue. Its blood-stained body froze mid-air, and its final desperate power rapidly disintegrated as if swept away by a gale.

With profound energy at the Divine Origin Realm, he repelled the power of a Divine Master dragon.And with spiritual power at the Divine Origin Realm, he intimidated the soul of a Divine Master dragon.Yun Che poured out his everything, using his minuscule existence to ignite the sole flicker of hope he had grasped.

Although the ancient horned dragon was already on the brink of death, it was, after all, a Divine Master dragon. This miraculous dragon soul deterrence lasting even for a few moments was already its limit.

Mu Xuanyin picked up Yun Che's unconscious body, slowly turning her palm towards the ancient horned dragon and releasing her final, dazzling ice gleam.

The ancient horned dragon's desperate final counterattack was already accelerating its demise. Under the dragon soul's deterrence, its last vestiges of power disintegrated. When the ice gleam touched its body, the enormous dragon body, utterly without resistance, became a medium for ice-cold condensation. In but a blink of an eye, its entire body was covered in a layer of ice.

Its residual dragon power could no longer break free.

Its last breath of life also vanished into nothingness under the pervasive chill, and its dragon eyes finally lost all their luster.

With this, both ancient horned dragons were annihilated.

Mu Xuanyin's arm slowly lowered. As she released her final reserves of power, her long hair completely turned black. There was no longer a trace of coldness on her body; instead, a burning sensation, unlike anything she had felt in ten thousand years, emanated from her.

Her aura was so faint she could no longer perceive it herself, and even the arm supporting Yun Che was too heavy to lift. Severe poisoning, grave injuries, and depleted profound energy—as the ancient horned dragon's life ended, her consciousness, which had been blurring, quickly succumbed to darkness.

"Ah, where is this?" A groan from his soul echoed from the depths of Yun Che's consciousness.

"No, I can't pass out! The ancient horned dragon is still there! Master will die!"

"Wake up!"

"Wake up, now!"

His consciousness was unprecedentedly hazy, blurry, and accompanied by intense, piercing pain—just like the soul-rending agony he had endured before the Netherworld Udumbara Flower in the Devil Moon Demonic Den back then. But his eyes suddenly snapped open, as if pricked by needles.

He felt a soft arm moving away from his body. In his blurry vision, he saw a snowy silhouette, mostly stained with blood, silently falling downwards.

Below him was a blurry red world.

The God Burying Inferno!

His mind felt as heavy as if crushed by ten thousand mountains, but his hand instinctively reached out, grabbing the white silhouette that had just fallen from beside him and holding it tightly against his chest. Its aura was so faint it was heartbreaking, yet it brought an extraordinary sense of peace to his wandering soul.

In the distance, a colossal ice-encased shadow was plummeting downwards.

The dead ancient horned dragon!

Yun Che hugged Mu Xuanyin, biting down hard on the tip of his tongue. His remaining consciousness propelled his body, plunging rapidly towards the colossal shadow in the hazy, disoriented world.

"This is a result my master exchanged with her life; I absolutely cannot let it disappear in vain into the God Burying Inferno like the previous one!"

Although his consciousness was on the verge of collapsing, his profound energy was still present. As the ancient horned dragon rapidly approached in his blurry vision, his left hand reached out and touched its corpse, instantly drawing it into the Sky Poison Pearl.

A slight relief washed over him, and his consciousness instantly sank. His body immediately lost all control, plummeting with Mu Xuanyin into the endless inferno below.

"No, Master in this state absolutely cannot endure the inferno..."

The Primordial Profound Ark!!

The Primordial Profound Ark had always been floating there; even the power of a Divine Master had failed to damage it. Yun Che desperately gathered the soul power needed to enter it.

One breath... two breaths... three breaths...

Just as his body was about to touch the flames of the inferno, the thought of entering the Primordial Profound Ark was finally complete. A flash of white light, and Yun Che and Mu Xuanyin instantly vanished into the vast inferno.

His vision had turned completely white, unable to see anything, and his five senses were so faint they were almost nonexistent. Realizing he had entered the Primordial Profound Ark, and feeling the faint sensation of Mu Xuanyin beside him, his consciousness relaxed, and he instantly fell unconscious.

As his consciousness completely subsided, the Primordial Profound Ark, having lost its soul connection, immediately plummeted above the inferno, falling straight into the vast flames and disappearing in an instant.

After a long while, the churning inferno finally truly subsided, becoming much calmer than usual.

"Yun Che!!" A frantic roar rapidly approached as Huo Rulie rushed over anxiously. But within the vast inferno, there was no longer any trace, nor could any aura be detected.

"What exactly happened?" Huo Rulie's gaze swept around quickly, his face filled with surprise, doubt, and agitation.

After escorting Yun Che for nearly three hundred miles, he turned and ran. But as soon as he turned, he heard the ancient horned dragon's pained shriek, followed by a wave of powerful aftershocks that swept over and forced him back nearly a hundred miles. Then, a dragon roar, clearly not from the Primordial Azure Dragon, made his ears ring. When he finally caught his breath and regained his senses, he realized all auras had vanished.

He quickly rushed over, but Mu Xuanyin, Yun Che, and even the ancient horned dragon were nowhere to be found. Only the lingering power embers and an extremely thick stench of dragon blood remained in the air.

"Could they all be dead?" Huo Rulie muttered in disbelief. He looked down, then frowned, suddenly diving into the God Burying Inferno.

Huo Rulie relentlessly searched the inferno, desperately hoping to find something. He reached the maximum depth he could penetrate and swept across hundreds of miles of the inferno, but found nothing.

When he finally gave up and emerged from the inferno, he saw that Yan Wancang, Yan Juehai, and a group of high-ranking elders had already arrived. Nearly a hundred people stood staring blankly at the unusually calm inferno.

"Sect Master Huo, did you find anything?" Yan Wancang asked.

Huo Rulie shot up and roared, "What in the world happened? What occurred here? I merely turned my back for a moment, where did they all go? Where's Yun Che?"

"That horned dragon died," Yan Juehai said, his voice rather weak.

"How did it die?"

"Alas, if you hadn't witnessed it yourself, you certainly wouldn't believe it if I told you," Yan Wancang sighed. The scene of Yun Che felling the ancient horned dragon with a single sword strike resurfaced in his mind, still greatly unsettling his soul. He had never imagined that he, a top figure in the Flame God Realm in terms of status and profound energy, would one day be so shocked by a junior who had only recently entered the Divine Way.

"Simply put, its dragon's vital point was pierced by the Snow Song Realm King's sword," Yan Juehai said. "Although it was certain to die after its vital point was pierced, its death throes..."

Before he could finish, Yan Juehai shook his head heavily.

As the Vermillion Bird's projection suddenly shattered, no one saw what happened next, but they could fully imagine it. After Mu Xuanyin used her last remaining strength to thrust out the Snow Princess Sword, it would have been impossible for her to withstand the ancient horned dragon's final death throes. Without a doubt, both master and disciple met their end under the horned dragon's claws. Then, the horned dragon's life ended, and the two individuals and one dragon fell together, to be eternally buried in the inferno.

The first horned dragon, killed by Mu Xuanyin's forbidden formation, was already buried in the inferno, and surprisingly, so was the second.

Both ancient horned dragons were dead, but they gained absolutely nothing.

Huo Rulie remained silent for a long time. After a long while, he whispered, "To think something like this could happen... I searched the inferno below for a long time just now and found nothing, including the horned dragon's corpse. It seems to have fallen into a deeper part of the inferno and will completely vanish soon."

"This is fate," a Golden Crow elder sighed.

"For now, we should first figure out how to explain this matter to the Snow Song Realm," Yan Wancang said gravely.

In their wildest dreams, they never could have imagined such an anomaly occurring during this horned dragon hunt.

Two horned dragons actually appeared in the God Burying Inferno. Ultimately, although both horned dragons perished, they didn't even obtain a single dragon scale. Instead, they lost the Snow Song Realm King, Mu Xuanyin, and her personal disciple, Yun Che.

"I'm afraid this time, the Snow Song Realm will be relentless towards us," a Vermillion Bird elder said with a bitter smile.

Mu Xuanyin came to the Flame God Realm this time to help them hunt horned dragons, but ultimately perished in the God Burying Inferno. Mu Xuanyin's status and reputation in the Snow Song Realm were undeniably immense; if the Ice Phoenix Divine Sect learned of this, one could imagine their grief, anger, and outrage.

And it wasn't just Mu Xuanyin. If Yun Che had been unharmed, with his elemental talent surpassing even Huo Poyun's, and under the full cultivation of the Ice Phoenix Divine Sect, the Snow Song Realm would very likely see a second Mu Xuanyin in the future. But even Yun Che...

As for their Flame God Realm, although their dreams had fallen through, they hadn't actually lost anything.

"What is there to fear from the Snow Song Realm without Mu Xuanyin?" a Phoenix elder said.

"It's not a matter of fear," Yan Juehai said, feeling helpless. "A major reason the Snow Song Realm King and her disciple met with such misfortune is that we didn't believe Yun Che. If we had even just sent a slight sound transmission to warn them, the outcome wouldn't have been this, alas."

Yan Wancang: "..."

"Th-this isn't our fault; who would have believed such words at that time?" the Phoenix elder said, lacking confidence.

"I don't think there's any need to worry about this," a Golden Crow elder said. "Without Mu Xuanyin, the Snow Song Realm isn't even worthy of being compared to our Flame God Realm; they probably won't even dare to question us. If they actually demand an explanation, we'll just blast them back. Although we didn't get the horned dragon, Mu Xuanyin's death is by no means a bad thing for us."

"Nonsense!!" As the Golden Crow elder's words fell, Huo Rulie's brows furrowed in rage. "When did the people of our Flame God Realm become such despicable and shameless individuals?! Regardless of any past grievances, Mu Xuanyin came because of us and died because of us. We must provide an explanation to the Snow Song Realm no matter what! I, Huo Rulie, am still a man of honor!"

"Y-yes, this old man spoke out of turn," the Golden Crow elder quickly bowed his head. But inwardly, he grumbled, "The Sect Master used to despise the Snow Song Realm, especially Mu Xuanyin, to the point of grinding his teeth. How has he changed so much in just two days?"

"The fall of a Divine Master is a major event throughout the entire God Realm, and it will spread quickly," Yan Wancang said. "If we don't provide an explanation to the Snow Song Realm, I'm afraid we will be looked down upon by the various realms of the God Realm."

"Sect Master, what should we do now? Should we immediately send a sound transmission to the Snow Song Realm?" a Vermillion Bird elder sighed.

Yan Wancang pondered for a long time, then shook his head. "Today's events will be kept secret for now. We will decide how to handle the Snow Song Realm's wrath in a few days, then send a sound transmission."

Yan Juehai nodded, and Huo Rulie also did not object.

These top figures of the Flame God Realm left the God Burying Inferno with incredibly complicated feelings. As they exited the inferno area, Yan Wancang suddenly stopped and sighed deeply, "No wonder the Dragon God Realm can be the sovereign of all realms. From now on, never easily provoke the dragon race again."