Translator: AnubisTL
Under the devastating heatwave from the Sixth-Tier Elemental Pool, the entire Abyssal Snow City transformed into a colossal sauna.
Steam billowed as ice and snow melted, reducing the hundred thousand snow monsters to limp, lifeless sludge, temporarily neutralizing their threat.
Jieming moved like an efficient harvesting machine, his figure blurring into streaks of afterimages as he swept through the city. Wherever he passed, he unceremoniously swept vast quantities of rare materials into his space expansion pouches.
High-energy Ice Crystal Ore, Ten-Thousand-Year Permafrost used by the snow monsters to build their city, the flesh and blood of the snow creatures they had "farmed"...
He even went to the trouble of precisely extracting the cold Snow Monster Cores from the melting bodies, knowing they were hard currency that could be exchanged for a fortune in military merit.
His actions were astonishingly swift. In just over half an hour, he had stuffed his several massive space expansion pouches to bursting, leaving almost no room for anything more.
Yet, after the frenzied looting, a trace of regret lingered.
He had scoured the entire core region of the city, but to his disappointment, he found no strategic structures like the lava giants' "hatcheries."
Moreover, judging by the materials they had scavenged, it seemed the high-tier snow monsters had already taken away most of the truly rare, top-tier materials, those of third-tier or even fourth-tier quality.
What remained in the city's treasury were mostly ordinary, low-grade materials of lesser quality.
"It seems they fled in a hurry, but still managed to take the important things," Jieming thought, understanding the situation. He wasn't overly disappointed.
After all, this haul already far exceeded his expectations.
Just as he was preparing to end his scavenging and give the entire city a final "clean-up,"
In a grand area on one side of the city that resembled a lord's manor, Jieming discovered a truly unexpected treasure.
It was the corpse of a fourth-tier lava giant, silently sealed within a massive ice crystal!
The lava giant had clearly been dead for a long time, yet its body remained remarkably well-preserved.
It was frozen in a posture of desperate struggle, its dark red rocky body riddled with frost-corroded cracks. The eyes that had once blazed with infernal flames were now completely dimmed.
Even after so long, a faint, almost imperceptible aura of a fourth-tier creature's power could still be clearly sensed, even through the thick ice crystal.
"A specimen... or rather, spoils of war?" Jieming instantly understood the corpse's purpose.
It was clear that the body had been specially preserved. The previous Snow Monster Lord had likely treated it as a kind of "specimen" or "trophy" to showcase his glorious victories.
When the high-tier snow monsters fled in haste, they had clearly left this useless "decoration" behind.
After all, for snow monsters, the materials of their sworn enemy, the lava giant, contained fire element energy completely antithetical to their own nature, making them nearly worthless.
"The remains of a fourth-tier being..." Jieming couldn't help but lick his lips.
To the snow monsters, this was trash, but to him, or any low-rank wizard, it was an invaluable treasure!
Its body, core remnants, and even every solidified rock shell were top-tier alchemy materials!
Without hesitation, he discarded the overflow of low-tier materials from his space expansion pouch until he had enough space to completely store this massive "specimen."
After completely stuffing the ice crystal into his space expansion pouch, Jieming felt a surge of satisfaction.
Just then, he sensed the air temperature around him slowly cooling.
The chill emanating from the depths of the city and the sky was rapidly neutralizing the heat generated by the elemental pool's explosion.
The snow monsters, sprawled on the ground, began to solidify again. Some, with tenacious vitality, even started to twitch slightly.
"Looks like I need to take care of these guys first," Jieming's eyes turned cold.
After a moment's thought, he decided to go all out.
After all, for wizards, eliminating enemies was a sure way to earn substantial military merit.
Even if the snow monsters in this city were generally low-level, their sheer numbers were staggering.
In Jieming's eyes, these snow monsters, on the verge of regaining their mobility, were no longer a threat but rather piles of living, walking military merit!
"Then... let's clear them out all at once!"
He soared into the sky, hovering above the city.
With a thought, the Great Light Phase unfolded once more!
Thousands of rune-imbued magical artifacts, like metallic halos, shimmered with a cold light under the dim sky, targeting the city below that was slowly reawakening!
BOOM!!!!
In the next instant, a beam of ultimate destruction descended.
A dense carpet of energy bullets unleashed indiscriminate, carpet-like bombardments, plowing through the entire city!
Thousands of energy bullets converged into a torrent of destruction, raining down from the sky and instantly devouring everything on the city's surface!
The explosions merged into a continuous roar. The melted ice water vaporized instantly, and the fragile snow structures crumbled into dust under the energy impact.
The snow monsters, just beginning to reform their bodies, were completely annihilated before they could even let out a single coherent wail!
Thanks to the Great Light Phase's extreme output capabilities, Jieming finally managed to eliminate all the snow monsters before they could regain their mobility!
However, the exaggerated bombardment had also completely destroyed the drained, hollowed-out Snow Monster City at the bottom of the lake.
The ground was now pockmarked with deep craters and scorched marks from the explosions, the original city's outline completely erased.
Continuing to search for any overlooked resources in this wasteland would be quite difficult now.
Jieming slowly retracted the Great Light Phase, landing softly on the ground. He surveyed the scene of near-total devastation, the earth itself ripped apart, and couldn't help but feel smug about his foresight—it was good he had plundered first before unleashing his attack.
Just as he was preparing to leave this self-made wasteland, a strange sensation suddenly emanated from beneath his feet.
Jieming stopped, his brow furrowing as he glanced downward.
It was an extremely faint, yet intensely cold aura.
Not something he saw or heard, but a primal intuition from the depths of his soul, acutely sensitive to energy fluctuations.
He sensed that the earth beneath his feet was somehow different from what he had felt before.
"Hmm?"
He focused, sinking his mental power into the ground, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
Jieming blinked, yet the strange sensation only grew clearer.
Suddenly remembering something, he abandoned his wizard's senses and channeled his true essence into his eyes!
As the true essence surged, his vision transformed.
The chaotic ruins fell away, and the world's fundamental energy flows began to flow before his eyes.
At that very moment, he clearly saw the true situation beneath his feet!
Beneath the dozens of meters of overturned permafrost, faint wisps of malevolent qi were continuously seeping out.
These wisps of qi were a faint gray-black, almost blending seamlessly with their surroundings.
Without using his true essence vision, he would never have been able to detect them.
They were like rootless ghost fires, seeping from the depths of the earth and rapidly dissipating into the frigid air.
"Yin Fiend Qi?" Jieming recognized the type of malevolent qi and frowned.
Given that a hundred thousand lives had just perished here, the generation of ordinary malevolent qi was perfectly understandable.
However, Yin Fiend Qi was a special kind of malevolent qi.
Its defining characteristic was that it wasn't produced in real-time.
Yin Fiend Qi wasn't simply formed from the resentment of the moment of death. Instead, it required a massive accumulation of corpses in one place, undergoing an extremely long period of fermentation, decay, and precipitation. Only then, under specific conditions, could the related "concept" be born!
This meant that beneath the Snow Monster City, there was likely another, even larger and more ancient... mass grave!
Moreover, judging by the quality of the Yin Fiend Qi seeping out—though extremely faint—its essence was exceptionally pure, carrying a bone-chilling coldness that could freeze the soul.
This indicated that neither the quantity of corpses underground nor the duration of their burial could be insignificant!
At that moment, Jieming's breath quickened, and an unprecedented fervor erupted in his eyes!
In terms of soul-level lethality against high-tier beings, high-quality Yin Fiend Qi was no less potent than equivalent quantities of Mortal Dust Qi.
Moreover, its yin-aligned nature made it even more insidious, inflicting more devastating damage!
While Mortal Dust Qi primarily corrupted the mind and shook the dao heart, Yin Fiend Qi directly eroded and destroyed the soul itself.
As a supplement and reinforcement to his "Profound Astral Red Dust Barrier," this substance was perfect!
Once refined and absorbed, his protective Gangsha would gain both the "Mind-Confusing" and "Soul-Annihilating" properties, its power multiplying exponentially!
This was an even greater unexpected boon than the remains of the fourth-tier lava giant!
From the current situation, it seemed this underground Yin Fiend Qi had been suppressed for ages by the thick Ten-Thousand-Year Permafrost, ice layers, and the ice element energy field of Snow Monster City itself, hidden deep beneath the earth.
Only his reckless, carpet-bombing had forcibly blasted away the upper layers of earth and ice, revealing faint traces of this ancient energy.
This allowed the Yin Fiend Qi, sealed away for countless millennia, a sliver of opportunity to escape.
"It must be an ancient battlefield..." Jieming mused.
After all, geological surveys indicated that the entire Flamefrost Plane had been a battlefield. It wasn't impossible for an ancient battlefield to lie beneath a city like this.
"In that case..." A bright glint flashed in Jieming's eyes. "Let's just excavate the entire area!"
(End of the Chapter)
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