Rise Of The Worm Sovereign

The first team lined up at the entrance of the temple and started to go down the stairs. Since the stairs were relatively wide, two files of them were able to move rather smoothly and did not face any problems.

But half way through, they could feel the increase in temperature as the air got hot. By the time they actually reached the bottom of the stairs, they were already sweating like an Eskimo in the Sahara.

"This is way too strong." Someone among the team said as they wiped the sweat from their face.

A few of the cultivators who could use the water attitude Qi techniques used them to cool down themselves and their companions, but it was mostly fruitless. Against the power and heat of the Vermillion flames, no common water would be enough.

"Let's just do our jobs quickly so this stops." The leader of the team said.

"YES!" they all replied in unison.

"On my mark, 1… 2… 3… NOW!" The Nascent Soul realm leader shouted as he created a flat barrier in front of him.

The others did the same and poured their spirit Qi into the technique that the leader was using. 

~shua~

The barrier started to expand and soon covered the entire front part of the stairs. 

"MOLD IT!" The leader shouted.

The two files flipped tier hands in the opposite direction and the flat barrier bent backward. It now looked like a snowplow and had a triangular shape. 

"TEAMS TWO AND THREE GET READY!" The leader shouted before pushing the triangular barrier with all his force.

~Whoosh~

The Barrier started to separate the flames and created a temporary path in between. But it would not be long before the flames would gather back again.

"Erect the corridor!" The next command came, this time from Jiao Fan.

He, old Man Tiandi and the other two Nascent Soul realm cultivators came to the front and created two barriers, one on the left and one on the right. The area in between was now safe from flames as the barriers prevented them from progressing.

"ACT NOW TEAMS TWO AND THREE!" Jiao Fan shouted.

"Yes, mayor Jiao!" They said before pouring their spirit Qi into the barriers, stabilizing them. Soon the barriers started to spread apart and a wider area was now available to them. Before, the space between barriers was only that of half a foot. But now it was a meter wide.

"Stabilize it now!" Jiao Fan gave the next order.

Everyone started to rush forward and took their places against the barriers. The Nascent Soul realm cultivators were on the two ends of the corridor that was erected, while the weaker cultivators were in the middle.

They were now individually reinforcing the corridor walls that were just barriers. With them pouring their spirit Qi into them, the barriers started to stabilize. Before they were being constantly damaged by the Vermillion flames, but now they were somewhat able to maintain their integrity.

After about a minute, they had reached an equilibrium and the rate of repair and damage had reached a plateau. Jiao Fan and Old Man Tiandi looked around and saw that they were relativity fine now.

"To the next step now," Jiao Fan said before turning to the right.

This was one of the main problems that had come up during the formation of the plan. The damaged and broken statues of the Vermillion bird were not in a location that could be accessed by them by going in a straight line. 

Rather the closest broken statue was to their right and they would need to change their direction mid way if they wanted to access it. But this was where the technical problem came. If they tried to change the shape of the barrier, there was a great chance it would lose the equilibrium and end up collapsing.

This was the same as if someone built a tunnel in the middle of the sea and tried to make a branch on it without creating defensive scaffolding around it. The water would simply rush in and destroy the entire tunnel.

Because of the complexity of this task, this ended up falling upon the heads of Jiao Fan and Old Man Tiandi. They were the only two people who had the power to forcibly do something like this.

"Ready, 1… 2… Attack!" Jiao Fan uttered as he punched forward.

~BOOM~

Old Man Tiandi did the same, and the force of the attack was enough to push the flames back. But this also allowed them to test the defense of the statues themselves. This kind of an attack should have easily shattered steel, but if one looked at the statues, one would see that they were completely unaffected.

There were defensive runes surrounding them, and they had dampened the power of the attack as if it was nothing. Still, since the flames were not solid, they were pushed back by the force of the attack, which ended up creating an empty area in between.

This was similar to when someone jumped into a puddle of water. The force of the impact would push all the water aside and create an empty dry area temporarily. But once the impact was dissipated, the water would rush back would force.

And that was exactly what was happening now. In fact, the force was far greater than it should have been.

~Huala~

Red runes suddenly appeared around all of the statues and spirit Qi fluctuations arose from them. 

"What's happening?" The cultivators who were reinforcing the barriers asked, feeling anxious.

"Oh no… it can't be… ACTIVATE YOUR DEFENSES!" Jiao Fan yelled urgently.

The cultivators all activated their defensive skills and techniques, along with various spirit tools they had. Some of them directly pulled out spirit stones so that they could maintain the barrier at the same time.

But even with all this… it was not enough.

~boom~

~Crack~

As soon as the flames hit back at the barrier, it cracked. Lin Wu who was watching all this, smirked.

"Tch~ And here I thought they would last longer…"