Chapter 213: The Flaming Girl
Damon led Alena through the wilderness, his Incubus Celestial Eyes fixed on the fire qi signature to the east.
The forest thinned as they walked, replaced by rocky terrain and patches of scorched earth.
Alena kept pace beside him, her hand still warm in his.
After a few minutes of silence, she spoke.
"Your harvesting technique earlier," she said.
"The way you used the Spirit Gathering Knife. Where did you learn that?"
He glanced at her.
"By someone I used to know."
She studied his face, looking for deception.
He met her gaze without flinching.
"That’s how you knew about the Frost Lotus Petal in the trial," she said slowly.
"That’s how I knew."
She started walking again, and he fell into step beside her.
"What else do you know?"
"About alchemy?"
"About everything. Herbs, pills, formulas."
He thought for a moment.
"I know the properties of every herb in the Eastern Continent. I know how to refine pills from Mortal Grade to Heaven Grade. I know the exact temperature and timing for over three hundred formulas."
She stared at him with those sharp forest-green eyes, the analytical precision in her gaze momentarily abandoned in favor of sheer disbelief.
Her lips had parted slightly, as if the words had arrived before she’d had time to properly form them.
"That’s impossible," she said flatly.
"No single cultivator knows every herb on the Eastern Continent. There are over four thousand catalogued species alone, and that’s before accounting for the undocumented variants growing in restricted wilderness zones."
He shrugged, unbothered by the challenge in her voice.
"Then consider me the exception."
She studied him for another long moment, the way she might study an unfamiliar specimen she’d pulled from the soil — with intense, probing curiosity rather than doubt for its own sake.
The wind lifted a loose wave of her rich brown hair across her cheek, and she brushed it aside absently, her thoughts clearly elsewhere.
She was quiet for a moment, processing.
The faint sounds of the forest filled the silence between them — the dry creak of branches, the distant call of something unseen moving through the undergrowth.
She seemed to be turning his words over in her mind with the same meticulous care she would apply to a difficult formula, testing each piece of information for inconsistency, weighing it against everything she already knew.
Then she asked, "Do you know about the Azure Vein Blossom’s secondary property?"
He nodded.
"Most alchemists use it for spiritual healing pills. But if you combine it with Frost Lotus Petal and a drop of Phoenix Tears, you can create a pill that purifies meridians instead of healing them."
Her eyes widened.
"That’s... that’s a lost formula. The Phoenix Tears pill was destroyed during the Alchemist Wars five hundred years ago."
She grabbed his arm.
She released his arm but stayed close.
"Can you teach me that formula?" she asked, her voice carrying a rare, naked eagerness that she seemed entirely unable to suppress — the voice of an alchemist who had just glimpsed something she’d spent years believing was lost forever.
"I can," he said simply.
Her forest-green eyes searched his face for a moment, as though checking whether he truly meant it, before she gave a small, almost imperceptible exhale of relief.
"When?" The word came out faster than she’d intended, and the faintest color rose along her cheekbones.
"After we find the others," he said, his golden eyes already sweeping the tree line ahead.
She nodded, her mind clearly racing with possibilities.
They walked in silence for a while, crossing a dry riverbed and climbing a gentle slope.
The air grew warmer as they climbed, the change subtle at first — a faint, dry pressure against the skin that had nothing to do with the midday sun overhead.
It was the kind of heat that seeped upward from the ground itself, carried on a still, breathless air that tasted faintly of char and mineral ash.
Alena noticed it first.
She slowed her pace slightly, pressing two fingers against the bark of a nearby tree as though reading something in its texture. Her forest-green eyes narrowed.
"Do you feel that?" she asked, glancing back at him.
He nodded, his golden gaze already moving ahead toward the ridgeline.
"The heat," he said. "We’re getting close to something."
The temperature rose with each step until the undergrowth vanished and soft earth gave way to pale, cracked stone, bone-dry and bleached.
The trees had long since disappeared, replaced by jutting shelves of pale rock that offered no shade.
They crested the ridge together and stopped.
Below them, the valley stretched wide and deep, framed by sheer stone walls that funnelled the heat upward in shimmering waves.
Across the entire floor, the ground burned — not like a wildfire, but in steady, rooted columns of living flame, ancient and purposeful.
The scene was surreal, almost dreamlike in its impossible scale.
The entire valley floor was covered in flames.
Not fire from burning trees or grass, but flames that rose directly from the earth itself, licking at the air in waves of orange and red.
The heat was intense, even from their position on the ridge.
Sweat beaded on Alena’s forehead.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"Some kind of fire zone," he said.
"The realm has different environments. This one is clearly aligned with fire affinity."
He activated his Incubus Celestial Eyes and scanned the valley.
There.
In the center of the flames, a figure sat cross-legged on a stone platform.
The flames parted around her like they recognized her presence.
She had fiery red hair that cascaded down her back, and her skin glowed with a faint orange light.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing steady.
She was cultivating.
"That’s her," he said.
"Who?"
"Flare. One of the tournament participants."
Alena squinted against the heat.
"She’s sitting in the middle of a fire. How is she not burning?"
"Fire affinity," he said. "High grade. The flames probably fuel her cultivation."
He started down the slope toward the valley.
Alena followed, her robes already damp with sweat.
The heat grew more oppressive as they descended.
By the time they reached the valley floor, the air shimmered around them.
Alena coughed.
"I can’t go much further," she said. "My affinity doesn’t handle this kind of heat well."
He stopped and looked at her.
"Wait here. I’ll go talk to her."