Chapter 16: The Fire-consuming Animal Bone (1/2)
Chapter Sixteen: The Fire-consuming Animal Bone
Nie Tian had obtained that piece of animal bone at the lot-drawing convention when he was one.
Ever since he chose it, his grandfather and aunt had hoped that one day his spiritual energy would resonate with that piece of animal bone.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been any sort of interaction between him and the bone till now, and he had already given up.
Yet he always had the animal bone with him. Sometimes, deep into the night, he would take it out and fiddle with it, hoping to sense any miracles that were hidden within.
Over the years, nothing seemed have happened to the bone.
However, something was different today.
He took a closer look at it, and saw the animal bone seemed to be emanating rays of red light.
His waist, where the animal bone was located, started to feel an increasingly strong burning sensation. As the red light flickered, the heat grew more and more unbearable.
“Strange…”
Nie Tian’s face was full of confusion as he put the animal bone in his palm and began to probe it with his inner spiritual power.
As he examined it with his heart and awareness, he saw numerous fragmented red fireballs, which radiated reddish-orange flames inside the animal bone. It seemed as if it were burning on the inside.
His expression flickered. “Reddish-orange flames! When I was fighting Yun Song, didn’t he condense fireballs of the same color?”
By this point, he had temporarily retracted his awareness from the animal bone and refocused on the details of the fight between him and Yun Song.
It suddenly came to him that when he broke through those reddish-orange fireballs, flames had exploded out of most of them.
However, those which hit the location of the animal bone, didn’t explode at all.
From the look of it, part of the flames were permanently stuck there…
“Could it be that those reddish-orange flames were absorbed by the animal bone?” Nie Tian gradually had a clearer grasp of what happened.
As he was speculating, the animal bone grew more and more scalding hot, and changed from its original dark-brown color to a bright red. The entire bone was now glowing like a piece of hot steel.
The unusually high temperature hurt his palm, forcing him to stand up and drop the animal bone onto the stone table.
As he looked on with wide eyes, he realized that the bone was apparently being forged, with bright flames flashing inside every now and then.
The miraculous state didn’t last long. A moment later, the animal bone once again turned dim and lifeless, as if the flame contained inside it had run out.
Only after it cooled down, did Nie Tian dare to reach out his hand and touch it with his finger.
He shut his eyes to probe it closely, but he could only perceive a few remaining flames flickering inside.
A while later, the those few flames also disappeared, and the animal bone returned to its normal color, as if nothing had happened at all.
Nie Tian kept fiddling with it for a while in hope of grasping its secrets, but he found nothing.
No new changes occurred with the bone after quite some time, so he reluctantly gave up and put it away.
However, after that incident, he generally paid much closer attention to it.
In the following days, Nie Tian was strictly forbidden to leave the Nie clan because Nie Donghai had found several unfamiliar Qi warriors wandering around their household.
Nie Donghai was sure that those unidentified Qi warriors were either sent there by the Yun clan or guest elders who answered to Yuan Qiuying.
Even the Yun and Yuan clan didn’t dare to openly lay their murderous hands on Nie Tian in Black Cloud City.
All they could do was to find some new faces to do their job, then wash themselves of the evidence by commanding those men to leave Black Cloud City for good afterwards.
In order to keep Nie Tian out of danger, Nie Qian watched his back all day long and prohibited him from taking even one step out of the Nie clan.
As the result, Nie Tian didn’t leave the Nie clan for the following three months. During this period, he concentrated on practicing the Qi Refining Incantation, hoping to make further improvements in a short time.
Three months later, those strangers gradually retreated from the Nie clan after failing to find any opportunity to make a move.
“I’m so exhausted.” Nie Qian’s face was full of fatigue as she walked into Nie Tian’s room and casually threw a cloth bag on the table. “After three days of hard work, I’ve finally finished a thorough accounting of the flamecloud gems the clan has mined over the past few months, and presented most of them to the Cloudsoaring sect as tribute. Another large portion of the remaining flamecloud gems was shipped to the clan storeroom, so I only got this many for myself.”
Nie Tian returned to reality from his cultivation as the red light of the sun setting shone into the room through the opened door. “Are those flamecloud gems?” Nie Tian curiously looked at the handful of gems that rolled out of the cloth bag.
“Yeah, these are flamecloud gems, spiritual materials of the fourth Elementary level.” Nie Qian picked up a fist-sized gem and tossed it to Nie Tian. “Spiritual materials are special objects used to refine spiritual tools or form spiritual formations. Qi warriors start to work with them when their cultivation base reaches one of the three Heaven stages. Come, have a look.”
Nie Tian extended his hand and caught the flamecloud gem with great precision, then looked down to study it closely.
The flamecloud gem was the size of a fist, with a dark-red luster on the outside, and red, cloud-like vein patterns running through it. Apparently, it contained fire-attributed power.
Nie Tian examined it for a while, then as an idea suddenly struck him, he took out the animal bone.
While Nie Qian watched, he slowly moved the flamecloud gem closer to the animal bone, attempting to channel the flame power contained in the flamecloud gem towards the animal bone.
Last time, when the flame power of Yun Song’s fireballs entered the animal bone, it later caused a miraculous change to the bone. He kept that in mind.
He wanted to see if the bone could continue to absorb the flame power like last time.
BZZZ BZZZ!
When the animal bone touched the flamecloud gem, sparks immediately erupted out from the point of contact, and the dark-brown bone turned the same red color as the flamecloud gem.
Nie Tian opened his eyes wide as he sensed rays of flame power flowing from the flamecloud gem into the animal bone.