Outside the mountain…

“I’m going to kill him!”

“You’re going to do what?”

Crystella’s gaze burned into Kywen’s.

“It was you who told him to take the lead, so he did. You wanted a free ride into the mountain as well? If you hadn’t opened your mouth so brazenly, maybe he would have given us all passage. But now you have the audacity to blame him for it. I’m disappointed, Kywen. This is why I would never choose you.”

Crystella’s stern reprimanding, coupled with her completely expressionless visage, turned Kywen’s face completely red. But within, his simmering rage only grew several times higher.

‘You **ing slut. I’ve been by your side for thousands of years, yet you see a pretty face and a decent talent, and you immediately sell yourself off without hesitation. We’ll see how you fair without my family’s support. The Dark Flame World isn’t going to be the Nightwell Clan’s forever.’

A venomous snake hid within his gaze. 𝘳.𝑐𝘰

Crystella ignored both Kywen and Tedric. Opening her hands, several paper talismans appeared, shifting in the air to form an array of their own.

After sensing around for a bit, they found a good location to enter and pressed down. But, their speed was incredibly slow as the mountain face below their presence slowly became transparent. At such a pace, it would take at least an hour before they could follow Dyon.

Feeling the irritated glances he was receiving, Kywen clenched his teeth and stared forward without a word, his resentment growing.

Within the mountain, Dyon, who had surfed down for a while already, entered a giant underground world of lava. There was something oddly beautiful about the reflective red and gold.

The space was inconceivably bright for an underground world and far hotter than anything one could have found on the surface.

From where he stood, Dyon could see numerous whirlpools of lava that told him there might have been several holes beneath them.

Above him, there were countless waterfalls of lava that spewed outward, constantly replenishing the lost molten rock that whirled down to what must have been a lower level.

The world was more massive than even the surface bubble world. It wasn’t that it was a warp of space, but rather that it had so many levels that the surface areas couldn’t even be compared.

‘There’s a source to all this heat hidden somewhere. If I can find it and break it down into its fundamental runes, my strength will increase by another measure. After I’m done with it, I can probably use it to enter the body facet…’

Dyon could still not currently be considered an Overlord despite the fact his strength was beyond even normal Immortal Essence Realm experts after restructuring himself. However, it simultaneously made reaching the Overlord Realm even that much more difficult for him.

That said, he did have a plan, though. Well, he didn’t have much of a plan for his soul which seemed to not follow any laws of logic. However, he wasn’t very worried about his soul. As things stood now, his soul was still far beyond anything his qi and body could compare to.

However, what he did have was a plan for his qi and body.

His qi was the most straight forward. He wanted to find and collect the highest grade qis in existence, slowly examine them, break them down to their fundamental runes, and take them for his own. He was already capable of doing this for all mortal grade qis, he simply had to deepen his comprehension of immortal grade qis to start slowly taking control of them.

As he added more powerful qis to his repertoire, he would naturally be able to use them at will without the consent of the Heavens, and thus grow far more powerful.

Over the last few days, he had already begun analyzing the fundamental runes of this bubble world. Comprehending Immortal grade qis was more difficult than he had thought. If he discarded the other facets of his world he had come to understand and focused just on his current comprehension of conventional Immortal Essence, he hadn’t even reached 1% in his understanding.

That said… He had only been here for a little over a week. His progress was still blazing quick.

His second plan was related to his body. When he thought of using Ri’s body as a furnace and concocting a pill within her, something clicked with him. He knew he could take this a step further and pioneer an unprecedented field in alchemy.

If he refined his body just as he refined a pill, reforming and improving each individual cell as he saw fit, just what kind of result would he have?

However, in order to do this, Dyon needed resources, a massive amount of them, in fact. The higher the grade, the better. And whatever it was that was turning this world of ice and snow into a fiery hell definitely fit that description.

In fact, whatever it was would be enough to shake the core of anyone who stood here. Yet, Dyon felt that it was only enough to help him reach the Overlord realm. It was clear how daunting his path was.

“Did you figure out what this place is yet?” Lilith’s voice drifted into his mind.

“Weren’t you ignoring me to cultivate?” Dyon teased.

“I’m bored of that.” Lilith said shamelessly. “Quickly, tell me.”

Saru giggled lightly, seemingly prodding Dyon along too.

“This place should have been purposely put here like I thought. The Dark Flame World has probably been coming here every time it erupts and they’re probably aware that there’s some kind of secret, but unfortunately for them, every time an eruption happens, a different vein is influenced, so the mapping they completed during the previous eruption might very well be useless if the new entry point doesn’t overlap.

“Because this underground world is not only as large as the bubble world above us, but also has several layers of equal size, it’s impossible to tell where a vein will lead you. So, they’ve probably been blindly coming here and mapping what they could before leaving.”

𝑖.𝘤ℴ𝘮