Raging flames tore through the sky, blasting apart the dense cloud cover and exposing a stretch of eerily clear blue.

The scorching crimson glow was massive in scale. Adventurers several miles away stopped dead in their tracks and turned to look back.

"Wh-What is that..."

"Isn't that direction... where Xiaoyan is?!"

"Did someone break the seal?!"

"Forget it, run! It doesn't matter who broke the seal — right now we've got two giant elephants having a dance-off, and we're the ants under their feet. If we don't run now, it'll be too late!"

ROAAAR!

The demonic dragon's roar shook the entire forest.

The adventurers who'd been inching closer to get a look felt their hearts seize at the sound. Their faces went pale. Every last trace of curiosity drained out of them.

An instinct carved deep into their bones screamed a frantic warning: one more step forward and they'd be crushed as easily as stray dogs by the roadside.

At the center of the battlefield.

"Slash!"

Banxia sidestepped the savage breath attack. Before Xiaoyan could close its massive maw, he brought his hand down in a chop, and an endless storm of slashes poured over it like torrential rain.

"Is that all you've got, Xiaoyan?!"

He couldn't remember the last time a fight had felt this good. He cranked up the power and kept going.

"ROAR!"

Xiaoyan's fury snapped past its limit. Demonic flames erupted across its body and whipped into a surging firestorm, shredding every invisible slash flying in from all sides.

Heatwaves rolled. The air warped. Xiaoyan lowered its head, burning slitted pupils locked onto the human who had the nerve to challenge it with fire.

The message was clear: these slashes couldn't touch it.

"Impressive, truly impressive." Banxia chuckled. "Want me to give you a round of applause?" He formed a knife-hand with his right palm and drew it slowly back to his waist.

This time, he wasn't holding back.

"Slash!"

A massive strike tore through the air, completely different from anything before it. The atmosphere itself compressed into a visible dent in its wake.

"ROAR!" Xiaoyan tried the same trick. Flames surged across its body and kicked up a roaring firestorm that punched straight toward the clouds.

The storm split open like wet paper.

The blade light fell directly onto Xiaoyan's massive body.

In an instant, it was cut in two.

"Hmm?"

Banxia's brow furrowed slightly. "That didn't feel right..."

As if on cue, the severed halves were instantly swallowed by churning demonic flames. The wound sealed itself in the blink of an eye, knitting back into one.

"ROAR!" Xiaoyan threw back its head and let out a high, furious roar at the human who'd been making its life miserable.

Useless. None of this meant anything.

No matter how many times it got hit, it would not die.

"I see." Banxia watched for just a moment before he saw through it. "That massive body is nothing but an empty shell. What's actually keeping you alive is the flame itself."

He dropped his stance and stopped releasing slashes.

No wonder the village chief had insisted on using the ice-attributed Frozen Divine Sword.

Without completely erasing the "flame essence" inside Xiaoyan, this thing was unkillable. The Frozen Divine Sword was a perfect counter to both Xiaoyan's regeneration and its flame power. With that divine artifact in hand, taking Xiaoyan down would have been trivial.

But without it? Fine.

Winning by taking shortcuts was a loser's mindset.

"In that case..." Banxia raised his right arm. Crimson light gathered rapidly in his palm, and he pulled his arm back into a drawn-bow stance.

"Let's settle this with raw firepower!"

Seeing this, Xiaoyan, already supremely proud of its flames, wasn't about to be outdone. A scorching fireball began condensing in front of its gaping maw.

"This isn't going to work as is..."

Banxia sensed the quality of both flames and felt his confidence dip slightly.

Sacred Spirit Affinity was a cheat-level buff, and the Wrath of Finality it empowered hit far harder than it ever had before. But when it came down to it, Xiaoyan was the true master of flames. What he held was ultimately just an imitation spell crafted by human mages.

But so what?

Who ever said an imitation couldn't beat the real thing?

"System — dump all my remaining time into the Advanced Meditation Method!"

[Year one, you begin accumulating magical power.]

[Year eight hundred and eighty, your accumulation of magical power is complete.]

The moment the notification faded, the flame arrow in his palm exploded with power.

It had held four hundred years' worth of magical power a moment ago. Now a relentless torrent flooded into it like a river reversing course, surging and surging with no sign of stopping.

Xiaoyan finally sensed something was wrong. Its crimson slitted pupils snapped wide.

It spat the fully charged fireball in a hurry, trying to stop the god-slaying arrow before it could finish forming.

Too late.

Chhh!

A beam of blazing white shot from Banxia's fingertips. It punched straight through Xiaoyan's fireball without losing a shred of momentum and kept going.

In Xiaoyan's terrified, shrinking pupils, the arrow sank cleanly into its chest.

The entire world went white.

[Ding. Monster slain: Xiaoyan. Total lifespan: eight thousand years. Remaining lifespan: seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine years. Absorbed.]

"..."

Banxia stood still for a long moment. Then he exhaled slowly.

He looked down at the flame fragments scattered across the ground. The crimson pieces still pulsed, brightening and dimming, like hearts that hadn't been fully extinguished.

"There's still a life signature." He frowned.

No wonder Xiaoyan could always crawl back after enough time had passed. Vitality at this level wasn't something an ordinary person could wipe out completely.

But that raised another question.

The system had explicitly confirmed the kill. Yet the flames still carried signs of life.

The only explanation that made sense: every revived Xiaoyan was the same species, but not the same dragon.

Once that clicked, Banxia's mood lifted considerably.

He walked over to where his backpack was, dug out a glass jar, and carefully scooped the largest flame fragment off the ground into it.

Just like before Xiaoyan's birth, these flames kept all their heat locked inside, as if unwilling to waste a single shred of power, biding their time for the next rebirth.

He held the jar up against the light and studied it for a while. The crimson mass drifted slowly inside the glass like a captured sunset.

As a legendary demonic dragon, Xiaoyan was virtually immortal. Enough energy and it would revive, every time.

And right now, Banxia was holding that exact spark.

Find the right fuel, and he could keep spawning new Xiaoyans indefinitely. Endless dragons. Endless time.

"Something to keep an eye out for on the road ahead — anything related to flame energy."

One fresh Xiaoyan was worth roughly two renowned Great Demons combined. But Great Demons ran. They hid. Actually tracking down two of them was a nightmare.

The tinder in his hand right now was something else entirely.

Banxia, having just figured out his new time-farming strategy: "Heh heh heh..."

➤ Next: A Mushroom Girl Appears! (Bonus)

Chapter 70 - A Mushroom Girl Appears! (Bonus)

A massive rumble echoed from deep within the forest. Men and women across the village put down their work and crowded around the village chief.

"Could Xiaoyan have awakened early?"

"How could it? Without outsiders disturbing it, the thing might not wake for another few years."

"Even so, this is far too strange. Not even the records handed down from our ancestors mention anything like this."

Everyone talked over each other, unease spreading through the group.

The village chief stared toward the source of the sound. His heart lurched. His mind jumped, unbidden, to the young man who had left not long ago.

"No way... How long has he even been gone? It shouldn't be him..." he muttered under his breath.

He turned around, clapped his hands with forced composure, and pushed down the crowd's rising panic.

"Don't panic. I'll go ask the Ice Clan's descendant about the situation. Stay calm, everyone — we have the Frozen Divine Sword watching over us!"

At the mention of the Frozen Divine Sword, the one weapon made to counter Xiaoyan, many of the villagers exhaled.

Right. They had fed and pampered the Ice Clan's descendant with the finest food and drink precisely for a day like today, so someone could step up when things went wrong.

The great tree where the descendant of the Ice Clan lived was not far from the village.

The chief reached the door in no time.

He knocked.

Only after receiving permission did he respectfully pull the door open.

"Miss Mabel, how much longer until the Frozen Divine Sword is unsealed? The seal on Xiaoyan seems to have loosened..."

"..."

...

The girl's name was Mabel Laybelle, last descendant of the legendary Ice Clan, and guardian of the weapon capable of sealing Xiaoyan: the Frozen Divine Sword.

When she was nine, the previous guardian of the Frozen Divine Sword, her mother, abandoned her and ran off with a young man.

Mabel held no grudge. Even without her mother, the prestige of the Frozen Divine Sword alone was enough to keep her living like royalty in the village, with no need to worry about her future.

Just as her mother had always taught her:

"In life, be a parasite; in death, do not work. Living off the ancestors to this day — all thanks to the Frozen Divine Sword."

As long as their clan held the Frozen Divine Sword, there was no need to work at all. Fine food, fine drink, every day, from morning to night, lying flat and doing nothing.

Of course, that assumed Xiaoyan never truly revived.

If it did, they would have to do what their ancestor did four hundred years ago: fully unseal the Frozen Divine Sword and go subjugate the monster.

That was the clan's obligation.

Obligation... What a pain... She didn't want to move.

"...I understand." Mabel looked toward the village chief with eyes that gave away nothing.

"..."

The corner of the village chief's mouth twitched.

That was it?

Couldn't she at least make a gesture? Do something?

Their village had provided for the Ice Clan for generations. Not for a breezy, weightless "I understand."

He opened his mouth. Then swallowed the words back down.

Fine. Endure it a little longer.

Maybe the descendant of the Ice Clan still had some hidden card she hadn't played yet.

Just as he prepared to leave and go calm the villagers, the front door swung open again.

"The villagers said you were here, so here you are." The young man with an enormous pack on his back stepped inside, expression perfectly calm.

"...Are you the adventurer from earlier?" A note of hesitation crept into the village chief's voice.

"Why the hesitation?" Banxia retorted offhandedly, and held out his hand. "I don't work for free. Xiaoyan's already been eliminated. Return that gold coin you gave me earlier, and for my reward, I only want one magic book. That's not unreasonable, is it?"

"..."

The sheer absurdity of the words left the village chief frozen where he stood.

After a long moment, he asked, uncertain:

"Eh? You're saying... you defeated Xiaoyan?"

"Send someone to check the shrine and you'll find out." Banxia fished his nameplate from his pocket and tossed it over. "Though right now there's probably nothing left but rubble."

"Once you see that, you'll know I'm not lying."

"A Platinum-rank adventurer!?" The village chief fumbled to catch it.

The emblem on the plate was a genuine surprise. Someone this young had already reached Platinum-rank.

But that wasn't even the important part. Platinum-rank was no match for Xiaoyan.

What mattered more was the special marking on the plate. Two characters.

He looked closely.

"Ban... Xia? Wait — could you be the Hero who eliminated the Great Demon Geist down south before winter!?"

"Since you already know who I am, hurry up and settle the payment." Banxia took the nameplate back, a touch of impatience in his voice. "I still need to get moving north. There's something very important waiting for me up there."

"Xiaoyan... the one that plagued our village for so many generations... actually gone just like that?" The village chief was still dazed, his gaze drifting reflexively toward the ice bed.

"..."

The blue-haired girl silently shifted onto her side, turning her back to the two of them. Every trace of her cold, untouchable bearing disappeared as if it had never existed.

For the first time in her life, the chill wind of unemployment blew through this ice cave.

It cut deeper than anything the Frozen Divine Sword had ever put out.

"Thank you very much, Lord Hero. I will go prepare your reward at once."

"The sooner, the better."

"..."

...

That night, Banxia finally reached the edge of the Mushroom Forest.

"Ordinary adventurers really can't even make it to the outer perimeter." He took in the sight before him.

Dense green toxic mist blanketed every inch of the air. One look was enough to know it was a lethal cocktail.

No wonder this place was marked as a Human Forbidden Area.

Making it worse, the trees and vegetation were outrageously oversized. A single weed grew half as tall as he was, as if the entire forest had been soaked in some bizarre magical spring and left to grow wild.

"I wonder where the mushroom girls live." He stepped into the forest, anticipation brimming.

The toxic mist that would kill an ordinary adventurer on contact barely registered on him. Less than a massage, really.

Like a little kid thumping on his back, soft, gentle, no threat at all.

He walked for a long time. The moon climbed up over the treetops.

Just as Banxia was starting to wonder whether he'd be roughing it outside tonight, a soft woman's voice drifted over from nearby.

"It's already this late, little human. Where are you headed?"

Banxia stopped and looked toward the sound.

In the moonlight, an enormous mushroom clinging to a great tree slowly turned around.

Beneath the wide, hat-like cap, a woman's face emerged, and long hair the same color as the cap, staring at him with quiet intent.

"Oh, OH?! A mushroom girl appeared!"

...

...

"..."

...

➤ Next: Battle! Awesome!