Chapter 333: Conquering Hellfire

Stabilising the Enlightened Core with an Extreme Yang body was more difficult than most people understood. Not even Yan Ping could help the poor boy. Yihao had to struggle and overcome it by himself or die trying. She had already shown him the ropes and opened his meridians. It was up to him to create the stabilising ecosystem he needed in his barren inner world.

Ever since Anji disappeared and the strange, injured elder met up with Anji’s teacher, Yihao felt uneasy. His sister and older brother were in trouble. Yet, nobody was making an attempt to rescue them all because Yan Ping said no. He once fought with the blind old coot and was only shamed verbally when he could not back up his bravado.

"The weak can only grovel to the tyranny of the strong," she told him.

That brutal reality reminded Yihao why he followed Bai Dajin and learned from the most powerful martial artist alive instead of his own father, who was hailed as the war hero of the century. Strength was might, and it was true he was still weak.

Yihao remained meditating in the artificial waterfall, replaying the words Yan Ping said to him. It fuelled him on endlessly in the scorching hellfire terrain of his inner world.

"It’s been a month," Noble Consort Liu whispered in a pavilion so far away that Yihao only appeared as a spec of blob in her vision. "Is there nothing else we can do?"

Unlike the others, Noble Consort Liu was most familiar with the pain of living in a scorched world. Although Yihao’s extreme yang energy build was different from her Heavenly Phoenix body tampering, she understood his suffering best.

Yan Ping hummed.

"We could use the ice chamber, but he would melt everything in under an hour. This is the best solution. Water is more easily renewable than ice. I’ve done what I can. The rest is up to him."

Nobody said conquering hellfire would be simple. In fact, it would be impossible for most people. However, Yihao was nothing but stubborn. He was constantly parched. The thirst was worse than hunger. In the inner world full of nothing but fire, he ended up drinking his own blood to quench the barest of thirst and continued digging the hardened soil.

There was no rain. No relief. Everything was baked and dry. The heat came in all directions, and even the earth provided minimal relief from his environment. Yet, the deeper the hole he dug, the easier it became to bear that heat. He still had no idea what taking root in his inner world meant. Anji’s teacher spoke in riddles, but the only useful thing he understood was to keep digging holes in the ground. Any farm requires ploughing as a critical first step. Even a fool like him knew holes were the foundation of farming and making wells.

Every single day he spent in his scorched inner world, he dug a deeper hole. Inch by inch, the hold became deeper. The width remained the same, but he moved from one hole to another. And another. And another. Until he had over a hundred holes in the landscape that burrowed into each other.

The underground network of holes and tunnels proved to provide better relief than a dry-bricked house above the scorching ground. Yihao still had no idea what he was looking for or what roots he had to plant. Yet, he continued digging deeper in the burrow he had created.

Until finally, he hit the bedrock of his inner world. There, he found something different. Something that was not fire.

Something finally clicked in his mind. The Extreme Yang body was not merely built from the fire element. There was also earth in the mix. The scorched earth was a representation of an underdeveloped earth element that he neglected. How else did his Iron Body skill come about? Wasn’t it from the constant tampering of the Earth using fire?

He had been too focused on increasing the destructive properties of fire previously that his body could no longer withstand the pressure of his cultivation. Now, it was time to nourish and strengthen the body instead of the cultivation.

When understanding finally clicked, the change was instantaneous.

Yan Ping and Liu Guiya glanced in the same direction at the same time. They could sense it, the rise of a new cultivator achieving a difficult breakthrough.

Crack!

The boom of a lightning striking the imperial private garden sent guards and servants scrambling. Noble Consort Liu sighed.

"I’ll have to go take care of the internal affairs," she pardoned herself. "It looks like he is finally qualified to challenge the tribulations."

Yan Ping barely nodded. However, the shadow of a smile told Noble Consort Liu everything she needed to know. Yihao’s conquering of hellfire was no coincidence. He was merely another piece on her chessboard, a powerful pawn who had turned into a real general.

Truthfully, she had created her trap using Yihao as the anchor to her spell to catch the enemy who was plotting to attack soon. She had seen the signs in the stars, even if most of the constellations were clouded. The spirits were becoming restless, and her successor was also closing in on her physical limits.

During such unstable times, Yan Ping needed the seeds she had sown to grow into strong trees. Yihao would turn into a magnificent tree now that he understood the symbiotic relationship between elements in cultivation. Fire was never meant to be a destructive force for Earth. It was a nurturing one that represented the furnace of life. All Yihao had to learn was to redirect that life force to become something more powerful than he ever thought was possible.

With the help of heavenly tribulations, Yihao watched the holes in his inner world take root like Yan Ping claimed they would. Lightning that struck his body continuously created a rich atmosphere in the otherwise dead soil. For the first time in his inner world, plants grew in hell. It was a tiny life form. Nothing more than fragile sprouts watered in his blood. But the sight was so precious that Yihao immediately set about nourishing it.

Unaware of the chaos he caused in the physical world, Yihao focused on stabilising his inner world. For the first time in his life, understanding came to him naturally in a way reading books never did. Conquering hellfire seemed possible even in a desert-like landscape. The first form of life took root, and soon, the first rain appeared in his world, providing balance and a sense of relief as the Enlightened Core finally stabilised to achieve true harmony.