# Chapter 499: Tribulation Fire, Dark Flame
The sea of flames kept spreading, rolling ever closer to the swimming pool area.
Mo Fan returned there carrying Xinxia, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness, only to find the place already glowing a deep, suffocating red.
Fortunately, the fire here was not as fierce as on the battlefield. With the Rose Flame, he could just barely hold it at bay.
He held Xinxia close and pushed through the wall of burning flame. At last he spotted Zhang Xiaohou and the others retreating step by step — unlike him, they had no fire resistance from a Fire Element Spirit Seed, and the blaze encroaching from the fire sea was still lethal to them.
"Is she all right?" Zhao Manyan asked the moment he saw Xinxia limp in Mo Fan's arms.
"She's fine. The Flame Enchantress's mental power is probably too overwhelming — when they were linked mind-to-mind, it was more than Xinxia could bear." Mo Fan said.
Xinxia kept murmuring. Her eyes were shut tight, yet her lips moved in a steady stream of strange words — like sleep-talk, like the tail end of a dream. Some of it Mo Fan could more or less make out, but other words were strange beyond understanding, and he couldn't tell whether they came from Xinxia herself or were the lingering emotions the Flame Enchantress had left embedded in her mind.
"Let's get out of here first. No point getting caught in the crossfire." Zhao Manyan was the first to suggest it.
Mo Fan agreed entirely. None of this had been their business from the start — and the Flame Enchantress's power was monstrous. If it truly lost its temper, they could be caught in the carnage without it even noticing them...
"Where's Chenying? I don't see her!" Mo Fan suddenly realized someone was missing and called out urgently.
"She went to find her parents, I think. Honestly, that Chenying — she wounded the Flame Enchantress, and that thing is absolutely going to hold a grudge. Running over there now? What can she even do? That's walking straight into death." Zhao Manyan muttered darkly.
"No... that's not it... that's not it..."
At that moment, Xinxia spoke in her dazed state.
She kept shaking her head, denying something, fighting desperately to convey something to them all.
But all she could manage was shaking her head again and again, lips moving in a broken loop, repeating those same strange words.
"Forget it for now — we move." Mo Fan stopped agonizing, pulled Xinxia close, and made to leave.
The instant they started moving, a blinding ball of fire streaked across just above their heads in a hair-raising near miss.
It had clearly spilled over from the battlefield on the far side, yet its power was staggering — it slammed into the rest house adjoining the swimming pool with a thunderous crash.
The rest houses formed a four-building ring around the open-air pool. But with the fireball's impact, the escape route they had just settled on became a wall of flame in an instant. The blaze climbed higher than the upper floors of the buildings. Forget pushing through it — they would be lucky if it didn't simply swallow this entire area whole.
"Damn it — we're trapped!" Zhang Xiaohou swore.
"Tidal Surge!!"
Zhao Manyan refused to give in. He thrust both arms high overhead and wrenched every drop of water in the swimming pool into a surging torrent, hurling it at the burning rest houses.
But the fire's ferocity exceeded anything he had imagined. The Flame Enchantress's blaze — whatever level it was — proved utterly unkillable. The water accomplished nothing; it evaporated completely within moments, leaving Zhao Manyan staring in blank disbelief.
"Save your Magical Energy to help us clear a path. This way's a dead end — follow me over here!" Mo Fan called to him.
With no other choice, Zhao Manyan fell in with the group as they picked a route not yet consumed by fire. It veered away from the battlefield, though, and there was no telling how long even that path would hold.
The sprawling estate was already two-thirds ablaze. Mage after Mage perished in the inferno that no one could extinguish.
The Flame Enchantress had finally let itself go completely. It showed not a trace of mercy, letting them all burn to ash in its fury.
It tore through every obstacle in its path and closed in on the building where Zhao Yulin and his wife were sheltering — step by relentless step.
It could sense the Fire Calamity Fruit on Jiang Feng's person. That insatiable woman intended to wring every last drop of value from the fruit at the exact moment it ripened, using it to reclaim the beauty she had been yearning for across more than a decade.
Zhao Yulin, for his part, was just as unwilling to leave empty-handed. He needed the Fire Calamity Fruit too desperately. Once he used it to forge a Soul Grade fire seed, he, Zhao Yulin, would ascend to a far more powerful position within the clan. He had no intention of answering to those brothers of his. The clan's wealth belonged to him by right — he should have been commanding the city's commercial lifeblood from the Lujiazui Mage Commerce Tower, not whiling away his remaining years in some backwater called Happy Living Town!
"Father! Mother!" Escorted by several guards, Chenying finally arrived at the building safely.
"What are you doing here?!" Zhao Yulin's brow snapped down and he turned on her with a flash of anger.
"I sent for her." It was the white-cloth-wrapped Jiang Feng who spoke.
Zhao Yulin had no idea what she intended. He let out a cold snort.
By this time, Shi Gui had managed to pull himself free of the sea of flames and make his way back. He was a wreck — his hair burned away entirely, his body covered in fire wounds, his Armor Enchanted Gear gone without a trace. He looked a complete and utter mess.
"Elder Shi — are you all right?" Zhao Yulin asked quickly.
"That abomination won't be strutting around for much longer. The Ice-Snow Demon-Sealing Formation is about to unleash its most devastating wave — it will freeze the creature solid inside an Eight-Sided Crystalline Ice Wall!" Shi Gui said, his voice like ice.
He had entered the fray personally earlier precisely to buy time. The Ice-Snow Demon-Sealing Formation held a tremendous advantage against Fire Element creatures. As long as the operators on the formation could safely weather this critical buildup period, its true demon-sealing power would be revealed.
"Excellent news. Once this matter is resolved, I, Zhao Yulin, will see you most generously rewarded." The grimness in Zhao Yulin's face gave way to the faintest smile.
"However — freezing it is only a temporary measure. During our clash, I found it extraordinarily powerful. On offense it deploys Tribulation Fire, but in a defensive posture it shifts to Dark Flame. Even if we freeze it, all we accomplish is suppressing the Tribulation Fire and keeping it from pressing its attack. But its Dark Flame will never dissipate — it has already formed a Domain around the creature that no ordinary person can approach." Shi Gui continued.
"So even if we freeze it, that Dark Flame Domain means we still can't get close enough to kill it. Then what was the point of all the preparations we made with the Cold Iron Phantom Blade?" The smile vanished from Zhao Yulin's face just as quickly as it had come.
"That's right. The Dark Flame is even more brutal than the Tribulation Fire — even I wouldn't dare go near it. This is a creature of truly extreme power." Shi Gui said.
Zhao Yulin's expression darkened. For a long moment he could think of no way to break through the Flame Enchantress's Dark Flame Domain.
This was exactly what made powerful creatures so terrifying — their unique Domains left Mages with no foothold to attack from.
"Elder Shi need not worry on that count. As long as you can freeze it, I have my own means of putting the enchantress down." At that moment, the figure wrapped head to toe in white cloth — Jiang Feng — finally spoke.
Beneath the white cloth, deep-set eyes gleamed with a cold, vicious light.