Soul Possession, Demon King! (Part Two)

"What are you standing there for — kill her!" Lingling shouted at Mo Fan.

Lingling was nothing if not a prodigiously sharp-minded girl. She knew perfectly well that the Ghost Woman possessed the power to manipulate minds and curse souls, so she had never planned to hold the net of light taut the way she had when they'd caught the Vampire before.

The moment she had stalled the Ghost Woman's escape, Lingling simply let go and sprinted away. Whatever Enchanted Gear she was wearing on that petite little frame of hers, it made her blindingly fast. The Ghost Woman turned, brimming with venomous spite, ready to deal with that infuriating little girl — only to find she had vanished completely.

Hunting her down was no longer an option, because a tsunami of fire was bearing down on her with terrifying speed.

Mo Fan couldn't hover in the air the way the Flame Enchantress could — but he could ride the crests of the fire waves forward.

Standing atop the roaring wall of flame, Mo Fan burned with savage, unrelenting intensity — every inch of him blazing like a demon king unleashed.

Whether it was Mo Fan's own fury or the Flame Enchantress's hatred, everything had fused into a single colossal battle-axe of fire that seemed to roll all the way to the horizon — vast enough to cleave the sky itself in two. Its might shook heaven and earth.

The axe of flame crashed down, and the very air ignited.

"No one else is dying today — only you, you viper!"

Mo Fan felt his emotions merge completely with those of the Flame Enchantress, his rage howling loose like a wildfire with nothing left to contain it.

The fiery axe became an executioner's guillotine, slamming down toward the Ghost Woman with brutal finality — to send that most vile of creatures hurtling down through all eighteen levels of hell.

When blazing fire concentrated to its absolute limit, it could become sharper than any blade.

The fire-axe fell — and amid the Ghost Woman's piercing shriek, it cleaved through her hideous body, splitting her clean in two.

Even bisected, she wasn't dead. Flames poured through the gaping wound, surging upward from her waist to her skull and downward through her legs, burning her until death itself would have been a mercy.

The Ghost Woman screamed and screamed. Fire was her greatest terror, and this death was as cruel as anything she could have conceived.

But no matter how she screamed, not a soul felt even a shred of pity. What was this brief agony of dying compared to the heartbreak that Jiang Feng and Chenying — that mother and daughter — had been made to endure?

Ordinarily, the Loach Pendant would draw in the souls of nearby dying creatures and refine them into Spirit Essence.

But today, as the soul of that hacked-apart, incinerated corpse rose and scattered into the air, the Loach Pendant remained utterly unmoved.

A soul this filthy was something even the Loach Pendant found deeply repulsive. Better to let it dissolve into the world and be forgotten entirely.

**Whoooosh—**

The flames roared on, their glow casting across the vast estate that had been reduced to nothing but rubble and ruin.

The Flame Enchantress slowly withdrew from Mo Fan's body. He felt no particular sensation from her departure — but when he turned, he caught a faint glimpse of her face, and it was haggard beyond reckoning.

She had taken a devastating blow at Flat-Topped Mountain, then crossed impossible distances in pursuit, and now survived this brutal battle. She was burning through her very life force to keep going.

Now that the Ghost Woman was dead, her own life was nearly at its end.

Mo Fan searched the Ghost Woman's remains and quickly found the Fire Calamity Fruit inside a Spatial Bracelet.

"Quick, save her," Lingling urged.

Mo Fan held the Fire Calamity Fruit out to the Flame Enchantress. She slowly extended both hands and cradled it with extraordinary care.

"Eat it, quickly," he told her.

The Fire Calamity Fruit was the only thing that could save her life. Now that the Ghost Woman was dead, all the Flame Enchantress had to do was eat it, and everything could be set right.

But the Flame Enchantress shook her head.

She held the Fire Calamity Fruit in her cupped hands, gazing down at it with an expression of tender, almost maternal warmth.

No one could make sense of it. No matter how precious the Fire Calamity Fruit was, surely it was worth less than her own life — was she really willing to die rather than eat it?

Mo Fan stared at her in utter bewilderment, but she only kept cradling the fruit in silence, as though waiting for something.

He was about to speak — but the Flame Enchantress parted her lips and breathed out a whisper of pale blue-green mist, soft as a lullaby, as if channeling every last remnant of her life's strength into that single breath and letting it drift gently over the Fire Calamity Fruit...

As the mist swept across the fruit, even Mo Fan could feel the last reserves of the Flame Enchantress's life force flowing within it. He stood frozen, too stunned even to try to stop her.

*Is she out of her mind?* Not eating the fruit to save herself was one thing — but why was she breathing out the very last thread of her own vitality? *It's just a fruit — when the next Heavenly Calamity fire comes, another will appear on the Star-Whispering Celestial Tree!*

"What are you doing?!" Mo Fan demanded.

The Flame Enchantress did not answer. She only held the Fire Calamity Fruit gently in her hands...

Then, suddenly, the impossibly hard shell of the Fire Calamity Fruit cracked open. A small piece broke away and clattered to the ground.

From within the shell, a tiny little arm reached out. Whatever was inside clearly wanted to see the world — the arm flailed and grabbed at everything, trying to smash away the remaining shell that blocked its view.

The little arm was no thicker than one of Mo Fan's fingers, yet it was made entirely of flame — faint as a candle's flicker, so delicate it felt as though a single heavy breath might snuff it out entirely.

"This is..." Mo Fan stared at the cracking fruit, shock splashed across his face.

The tiny creature had burst through its protective shell. Unlike most newborns, who arrive crying and fragile, this special little life — its entire dainty infant body formed from pale, gentle flame — was bursting with energy. The moment it broke free, it snatched up a shard of the broken shell and started gnawing on it like a baby squirrel.

Tiny arms, tiny legs, and a perfectly round little body — delicate and miniature as a porcelain doll. The sounds it made were nothing like a newborn's cries; they were closer to the contented mewling of a freshly-fed kitten.

"That's the Flame Queen," came Xinxia's voice, soft and unhurried.

Mo Fan's eyes went wide. He could barely take it in.

The Flame Queen he had searched for through so much hardship... had been hidden inside the Fire Calamity Fruit all along.

*No — wait.*

The Fire Calamity Fruit *was* the Flame Queen. The Flame Queen was a life born from within it.

Only then did Mo Fan suddenly remember — Chenying had said that one had to find the Fire Calamity Fruit immediately after the Heavenly Calamity fire passed, or it would disappear...

It hadn't disappeared at all. It had simply shed its embryonic shell and grown into a true living creature. That creature was the Flame Queen.

So what the Flame Enchantress had been guarding all this time was not a precious treasure — it was the continuation of life itself. A newborn child, coming into the world.

"The Heavenly Calamity fire only appears once every many years, and the Star-Whispering Celestial Tree only bears a single fruit-life each time it does — that is the unborn form of a Flame Queen. Jiang Feng once received the grace of an elder Flame Queen, who used an unborn Flame Queen — a Fire Calamity Fruit — to save her life..."