Mystic Ultimate Azure Flame

Lin Xiao was in the Artifact Refining Hall, working alongside Hu Liang to rush out a batch of spirit swords for Golden Core cultivators. It was a new product their sect had added this year.

Just then, a disciple came from outside to announce that Elder Xiaoluan was looking for him.

Lin Xiao went to the main hall in front of the Artifact Refining Hall and saw Little Luan standing outside the entrance, waving a wing at him and showing no intention of coming inside.

He walked out and asked, “What is it, Little Luan?”

Little Luan stretched out a chicken wing. “Give me a sword!”

“What sword?” Lin Xiao asked, completely baffled.

“A peachwood sword, of course!” Little Luan declared, lifting its head.

“What do you want a peachwood sword for?” Lin Xiao was even more confused.

Seeing that he clearly had no memory of the matter, Little Luan became quite dissatisfied. The tip of the large wing it had extended suddenly transformed into a tiny hand no bigger than a baby’s.

“Look! Can shapeshift now! You promised me a peachwood sword!”

Lin Xiao thought hard for a moment. It seemed that he really had promised something like that, but…

“You can shapeshift?” he asked, unconvinced.

Senior Liao had once told him that when a demon beast reached the Transformation stage, its realm would be even higher than that of a cultivator in the Void Returning stage. Little Luan was nowhere near that level. There was no way it could have silently advanced all the way to the Transformation stage over the past few years, could there?

So Lin Xiao carefully examined the small, pale hand at the tip of Little Luan’s wing.

Little Luan narrowed its beady chicken eyes at Lin Xiao like a tiny chick and held out its wing for him to inspect.

“This is a hand formed with spiritual power. Not bad, Little Luan—you can even develop new spells on your own now.” Lin Xiao praised it.

He was not saying that merely to make the child happy. What Little Luan had done was genuinely impressive. The hand it had formed with spiritual power did not merely look real.

It was a fully functional hand.

Many cultivators skilled in manipulating spiritual power could create something that looked like a hand, but very few could make a construct that functioned exactly like the real thing. And it was certainly beyond what a demon beast in the Core-Fixing stage—roughly equivalent to a human cultivator in the Golden Core stage—should have been capable of.

As with Little Luan’s hand, Lin Xiao could clearly sense that it was connected to the wing as one body. If the hand were cut off, Little Luan’s wing would be maimed as well.

There was almost no difference between this and true shapeshifting.

It really was remarkable.

Lin Xiao raised a hand and gave the little hand a gentle pinch. It was soft and warm, with a natural body temperature. Then he extended his pinky. “Come on, Little Luan. Let’s make a pinky promise.”

“What’s that for?” Little Luan asked, puzzled, but it still imitated him and hooked its short, chubby pinky around his.

The next moment, a flash of white light suddenly flowed from Lin Xiao’s fingertip into Little Luan’s hand and entered its body.

Following the white light, Little Luan looked inward toward its dantian and cried out in surprise, “What is this?”

A small blue-green flame had appeared inside its dantian.

Lin Xiao released its pinky and smiled. “You’ve almost finished eating that Silverfrost Python’s demon core, haven’t you? Here’s something new for you.”

He pointed at Little Luan’s belly. “This flame is called the Xuanji Azure Flame. Its outer flame should be delicious to you as well, but don’t eat the inner flame recklessly. You’ll need to refine that slowly.”

The Xuanji Azure Flame had been one of the rewards granted by the system’s hidden bonus when Xiushui City was completed. Lin Xiao had already been considering giving it to Little Luan, but he had been too busy to do so. Today, however, Little Luan had come to him on its own.

The Xuanji Azure Flame was different from the Red Lotus Molten Flame currently used in the sect’s alchemy rooms and Artifact Refining Halls. The entire flame had to be refined before it could be used by others.

The outer flame contained abundant spiritual energy and could help with cultivation. However, the disciples of the Lingxian Sect all practiced the sect’s advanced cultivation methods, which placed greater emphasis on cultivating the heart and comprehending the Dao. A demon beast like Little Luan, which had long relied on consuming external objects to aid its cultivation, was not suited to that method.

That was why Lin Xiao had decided to give the Xuanji Azure Flame to Little Luan.

After all, demon beasts were different from human cultivators. Without outside assistance, relying solely on their own cultivation, they needed far more time to advance than cultivators did.

Besides, Little Luan had performed very well over the past few years. It had kept the Beast Garden in perfect order, and there had never been any trouble in its management. No one else had needed to worry about it.

One had to remember that Little Luan was a chicken.

For it to be so sensible was genuinely gratifying to Lin Xiao, so he felt that giving it the Xuanji Azure Flame was only right.

After hearing Lin Xiao’s explanation, Little Luan blinked its beady eyes twice, then glanced at the tiny blue-green flame in its dantian.

“Oh-ho,” it exclaimed, opening its beak and making a sound it had apparently learned from someone.

It tried communicating with the little blue-green flame inside its body, but the flame did not react. Only its pale blue outer flame swayed slightly.

Little Luan seemed to figure out the trick. It swept its spiritual power rapidly across the pale blue outer flame, wrapping up a thin wisp of blue-white smoke.

The spiritual power bundled the smoke into a tiny ball and brought it out of its dantian. Little Luan opened its beak, inhaled, and swallowed it in one gulp.

“Burp~”

That single mouthful was enough to make Little Luan, who normally had a hearty appetite, let out a satisfied belch.

Then its eyes lit up. It stared at Lin Xiao with shining eyes and exclaimed, “So tasty!”

This was ten thousand times more delicious than that giant python’s demon core! Little Luan wanted to eat this flame from now on—every day!

But then it frowned with what was barely a brow and asked Lin Xiao, “How long can I eat it? It’s too small!”

Lin Xiao smiled helplessly. “Don’t let its size fool you. This Xuanji Azure Flame will last you a very long time. Once you completely refine it, it will become symbiotic with you. It will grow stronger as you circulate your cultivation method. In short, once you fully refine it, you’ll be able to keep eating from it forever.”

“Oh-ho!” Little Luan’s beady eyes shone even brighter. “Little Luan likes this! Little Luan will refine it!”

“Good. Do your best. Go back and take your time eating and refining it!” Lin Xiao said with a smile. He patted Little Luan on the head and prepared to return to the Artifact Refining Hall to continue what he had been doing.

But the moment he turned around, Little Luan tugged on his sleeve.

“Wait!”

“A peachwood sword!”

Lin Xiao turned back awkwardly. Seeing how stubbornly Little Luan was clinging to the idea of a peachwood sword, he realized he could not escape and spread both hands in confession.

“We’re out of peachwood swords.”

“Huh?” Little Luan was deeply puzzled. It pointed its wing toward the ten-li peach blossom tree in the distance.

It could not understand. The tree was still alive and well, so how could there be no peachwood swords?

Lin Xiao: …

There was nothing he could do about it. He simply had not known how precious the ten-li peach blossom tree was. Later, after hearing from He Yi that the tree was actually the legendary Illusory Spirit Immortal Peach Tree, a species that barely existed outside of myths in the cultivation world, he had no longer been willing to pluck branches from it to make peachwood swords.

It hurt too much to see.

“Ahem, Little Luan,” Lin Xiao coaxed, “this peachwood sword isn’t very useful. Wooden swords are for children to play with. We’re adults—or rather, a grown-up chicken. We should use an iron sword. I’ll make you a big iron sword right now, all right?”

Little Luan, however, was a chicken of principles.

“You promised me a peachwood sword!”