Descent of the Blazing Plains Queen (Part Two)

"A meteor!!"

"Run — a meteor is falling!!"

"My car won't start — ah, it's on fire!"

"All the factory lights are out — quick, someone get to the main breaker..."

All of Lehuo Town descended into chaos. Workers still putting in overtime at the factories had no idea what was happening; the lights simply flickered once, and then every bulb in sight shattered.

Countless machines powered by combustion ground to a halt in an instant, as did the vehicles moving through the streets. As the blazing meteor drew closer and closer to the ground, many machines powered by fire Magic Stones spontaneously burst into flames.

This district was dense with factories and thick with flammable materials, and so fire after fire erupted on its own. Ear-splitting alarms blared from every direction. The overtime workers fled in panic, abandoning all thought of the equipment — nobody looked back.

The fires weren't spreading fast enough to cut off their escape, which at least gave them time to run. But once they spilled out into the open and looked up, what they saw stopped them cold: above their heads hung a fireball so enormous it was as though the sun itself was plummeting to earth, scorching the very air into an ocean of flame. No one knew which way to run anymore. They just stood there, stunned senseless.

Fortunately, the meteor only grazed past the sky above Lehuo Town. Had it struck directly, the entire factory-packed town would have become an inferno — a living hell.

"Good God...!!" Zhao Manyan stared upward, his eyes refusing to believe what they saw.

The night blazed bright as noon, the entire mountain stained blood-red by firelight. Everyone had still been arguing that the Flame Enchantress couldn't possibly be here — and then they saw her. Atop that blazing meteor, unmistakable and utterly alone in her magnificence, was a woman's silhouette. She stood upon the fiery rock as it fell, this catastrophe for the town and everyone in it, descending through the dark sky together with the burning stone.

A Safe Zone?

A fortress?

When the Queen of the Blazing Plains truly raged, every human defense was nothing but a paper illusion.

This heaven-sent meteor was the most naked, merciless warning she could deliver to the humans who had dared to touch what she held sacred.

The blazing meteor slammed into the mountain flanking the city, leveling half of it in an instant.

The estate was shielded by a Barrier — had the meteor struck it head-on, the pale-blue arcing Barrier would have deflected most of the impact. So the Flame Enchantress simply redirected the meteor into the mountain itself.

Everyone inside the estate stood frozen, watching the mountain beyond the Barrier shatter completely, reduce entirely to ash, and vanish from the face of the earth.

That half-mountain must have held many patrolling Mages. They had likely evaporated along with the rock — unable to cry out, without ever understanding what had happened to them.

By the estate's pool, Mo Fan, Zhang Xiaohou, Lingling, Xinxia, Chenying, Zhao Manyan, and Mu Xiu and Mu Ting Le had all turned to stone, utterly unable to believe the scene playing out beyond the Barrier.

Half a mountain...

An entire half of a mountain, just... gone.

If that meteor had struck the estate directly, would that pitiful pale-blue Barrier have actually held? Would any of them still be alive?

A hollow wind moaned through the wasteland.

Scorched earth stretched as far as the eye could see — the lingering flames had replaced every trace of the dense vegetation that had once covered the mountainside, and through the Barrier came the overwhelming stench of destruction and death.

And amid this infernal panorama, the Queen of the Blazing Plains was already hovering above the estate. The estate looked well-guarded. It was nothing to her. Her eyes burned with roaring flames, yet from them radiated a cold light that held all living things in absolute contempt.

She had come after all. Just when everyone had believed she could never cross half of China to reach this easternmost point, she had followed them like a waking nightmare, and with her most terrifying destructive power she had painted this world-shaking spectacle across the sky.

Her rage had spoken plainly: someone would pay dearly for this.

**"Kreeeee——!!"**

The Flame Enchantress let out a piercing shriek, her gaze snapping to lock onto the position where Mo Fan and the others stood.

She stepped through empty air at will, trailing a blazing wave of superheated wind as she flew toward them.

Chenying saw it and collapsed to the ground, terror making her very soul tremble.

*It was she who had driven the cold-iron spike deep into the Blazing Plains Queen's back. She's come for revenge — she must have come for revenge.*

**"Kreee——!!"**

The Flame Enchantress hovered outside the Barrier. Her gaze sharpened and she extended one hand through the empty air, reaching toward Mo Fan's group.

Everyone braced for her to pass straight through the Barrier and erase Chenying on the spot. Instead, Xinxia — seated beside Mo Fan — was seized by some invisible force. Her frail body was suddenly wrenched upward into the sky.

"Xinxia!!"

Mo Fan's face drained of color. Without a second thought, he activated his Blood Beast Boots and charged through the Barrier after her.

Whatever force had seized Xinxia was pulling her rapidly beyond the laughable Barrier, sending her flying in a straight line toward the Flame Enchantress. Mo Fan sprinted in pursuit, fury igniting in his chest. Flames erupted in his hand and condensed into a roaring Blazing Fist, which he hurled at the creature hovering above.

The Flame Enchantress swept him with a cold, indifferent glance — and registered his incoming attack. Expressionless, she flicked her hand almost carelessly, deploying some power Mo Fan couldn't identify, and the Blazing Fist was effortlessly scattered to nothing.

*What was I thinking — Fire Element magic against the Queen of the Blazing Plains.* Mo Fan caught himself, seething. He was already reaching for Lightning Element power when a voice echoed directly into his mind — Xinxia, reaching out from the sky through her Mind Element:

*"Brother Mo Fan, she doesn't mean to hurt me."*

Mo Fan didn't stand down. He activated Shadow Fade alongside his Blood Beast Boots, moving with swift and fluid agility, and leapt up to a pine tree that had somehow survived the devastation.

Perched at its crown, he was still some distance below the hovering Flame Enchantress. He looked up at her — and up at Xinxia, held captive at her side.

"Let her go — she has nothing to do with this!" he roared.

His blood was at a boil, fury pushed past its limit. In the grip of that rage, Mo Fan didn't notice what was happening to him: the teeth along his upper lip were lengthening, and his short black hair was growing of its own accord — and in the flickering firelight, it was slowly, inexplicably turning white...

"I will not harm her. I only want back what is mine." The Flame Enchantress stood motionless in the air, haughty as a sovereign.

She had not opened her mouth — yet Mo Fan heard her voice.

He looked at Xinxia. It was she whose lips had moved, giving sound to words that were not hers.

"She is a Mind Element Mage. She will relay my words for me..." The Flame Enchantress moved her lips again, and again the voice that drifted down came from Xinxia's mouth.