Fire Tribulation (Part One)

They crossed the Shamang River without incident. On the other side, a vast stretch of earth greeted them — land that looked as though it had been scorched red by flame since the beginning of time.

This was the North Corner of the Blazing Plains: a mysterious, largely untouched territory where human footprints were few.

Hunter-mages were scattered across every corner of the country, and most of the famous Demon-Beast zones had been combed through again and again by their kind. Actually finding resources or treasure in those well-trodden areas had become extraordinarily difficult.

The North Corner of the Blazing Plains, however, had been cut off by the vast Shamang River, isolated in its own geographic corner. Few Hunter-mages had ever managed to reach it — making it something of a promised land, full of unknowns and rich with rare resources that might tempt even the most cautious Hunter-mage to risk their life.

The full extent of the North Corner had yet to be mapped. According to information Mo Fan had paid nine million for, the Flame Queen made her lair somewhere in the central reaches of the North Corner.

The terrain of the entire North Corner was shaped like a basin. At first glance the ground appeared flat, but earlier explorers had already charted its contours — the deeper you went toward the center, the lower the elevation dropped, until the whole thing resembled a giant fire basin. The soil and gravel along the outer edges were a deep reddish-brown, and by all accounts the very heart of the North Corner was a landscape of open flame.

Fire burned up from the parched, cracked earth, scattered across the land in sparse clusters — like red shoots of grain standing here and there, a patch in one spot, another somewhere else. Anyone without strong fire resistance couldn't even walk through it.

The reason the entire North Corner could be called China's fire basin likely came down to what lay beneath: some extraordinarily high-grade fire source hidden deep underground.

Even setting aside the legend of an earth-born fire source, a region with such concentrated elemental character would inevitably nurture Spirit Seeds — and the emergence of a Soul Seed was far from impossible.

Mo Fan knew that some of these elemental Spirit Seeds were a matter of chance, not effort. Many powerful mages had come here before him and still never found the legendary fire source. What hope did he, an Intermediate-Level Mage, have of tracking it down?

Better to stay focused on the practical goal: finding the Flame Queen. If they could actually capture her, this expedition would already be an enormous success.

Now that they had entered the North Corner, it was Lingling who called the shots. She flipped through her notebook, working through calculations that looked cryptic and strange to everyone else.

"You lot — run an errand for me. Bury these in the ground." Lingling reached into her bag and produced four cone-shaped devices.

The instruments resembled spinning tops, but were encased in metal and had an unmistakably technical look to them.

"Aren't these element Survey Devices? They measure elemental concentration across a region." Zhang Xiaohou's military background showed — he recognized the instruments at once.

"I've studied the Flame Queen's habits from the records," Lingling said. "They prefer to inhabit areas where fire elemental concentration is at least five times the norm. But when they're preparing to give birth — to ensure the newborn awakens with powerful fire affinity from its very first moment — the mother Flame Queen will settle near a fire-element Spirit Seed. So if we can locate the fire Spirit Seed, we should be close to the Flame Queen."

Mo Fan gave a quiet nod. The fortune he'd spent hadn't been wasted — it had done a great deal to narrow down the search area, and Flame Queens were creatures of fixed habits. They didn't move around without reason.

Spirit Seeds were singular things as well. Any given region typically held only one.

Find the fire Spirit Seed in the area, and you'd found the Flame Queen. It was the most direct approach imaginable.

And the element Survey Device was perfectly suited for locating Spirit Seeds and Spirit Seed Fragments. By sampling the elemental concentration drifting through the air, it could pinpoint where a Spirit Seed might lie hidden.

Following Lingling's instructions, the group buried the Survey Devices at their designated positions.

These instruments were useful, but every deployment carried real risk — much the same as when they had surveyed Demon-Beast density in Jinlin Desolate City. The moment a Survey Device went into the ground, it was effectively broadcasting a signal to every Demon-Beast within range. Creatures with nothing better to do could easily home in on it.

Every deployment, in other words, became a desperate last stand. The whole thing came down to timing — how long the scan required, and what was lurking nearby. Many Hunter-mage teams had been wiped out entirely because they'd miscalculated one or both.

Fortunately, a survey for elemental concentration didn't take long. As long as they pulled back before the Demon-Beasts came swarming in like a flood tide, they wouldn't find themselves in mortal danger.

This initial survey was only a preliminary probe. But a truly accurate search for the Spirit Seed would inevitably demand a proper fight — there was no getting around it.

The longer the devices stayed buried, the larger an area they could sample. Only by expanding that coverage could they hope to locate the Spirit Seed, which lay concealed somewhere beneath the earth. Without this method, they'd be searching for a needle in the ocean.

"Head this way — quickly. Some creatures are already picking up the signal." Lingling set off without waiting.

The group packed up the instruments and followed. As they moved, Mo Fan noticed Chenying retrieving her Survey Device with deliberate, unhurried slowness. A flicker of puzzlement passed through him.

Chenying was Zhao Manyan's cousin. The fact that Zhao Manyan had brought her along meant she had to be reliable and trustworthy. But there was one thing Mo Fan couldn't quite work out. Lingling, Xinxia, Zhang Xiaohou, Zhao Manyan — they were all his own people. This whole venture had been mounted purely to help him secure the Flame Queen, and even after a successful outcome, most of them stood to gain nothing.

Chenying, though, had turned up appearing to want nothing at all. Nobody does thankless, unrewarding work for free. As an Imperial Capital student, competition was fiercer than anywhere else — spending time on a Field Expedition where she'd walk away empty-handed was hard to justify.

Mo Fan didn't press her on it, though. She probably wouldn't say anyway. He'd just have to watch and see whether she showed her hand later. Maybe she had her own agenda — something she couldn't share with the group under the circumstances.

"Hey, look up ahead — something's on fire out there. And it's burning *really* high!" Zhang Xiaohou pointed toward the direction they were heading.

Everyone looked. The flames were exactly as he described — burning impossibly tall.

Except...

Why did they seem to keep growing? When they'd first spotted the fire, it had looked like nothing more than a distant cluster on the horizon — a small, lazy flicker. But now those flames rose like mountain ranges, sweeping and vast, stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Do you all feel like it's... gotten even bigger?" someone muttered. "It looks like it's going to reach the sky."

Mo Fan stared hard at the horizon. As the wall of flame climbed higher and higher with every passing second, something clicked inside him — and the color drained from his face.

"It's not getting bigger — it's moving toward us. **Run!!**"

The flames were a mountain. The flames were an ocean. At first, they had been nothing more than a distant shimmer of firelight along the far edge of the world — easy to dismiss, easy to underestimate. But then they swallowed the horizon whole, and came surging forward in a boundless, earth-shaking tide of fire, immense beyond comprehension —

Only then did the group truly grasp the scale of what was bearing down on them.