Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The Flame Emperor was very excited. The flames that made up his body started burning more and more fiercely.
It took him a good while to calm down. Looking at Jiang Chen, he said with a puzzled frown on his face, “Have you never found anything odd during these many years that you’ve known me?”
“No. Never,” Jiang Chen said seriously.
“You have never noticed that the connection between the Vulcan Ring and me seems very weak?” asked the Flame Emperor.
Jiang Chen smiled awkwardly and scratched his chin. He shook his head from side to side.
“Oh, man!” The Flame Emperor controlled his impulse to curse. He then complained to Jiang Chen, “You’re really not treating your Flame Emperor’s inheritance very seriously at all.”
“That’s because you’ve never told me the truth.” Jiang Chen decided to tell the Flame Emperor everything he’d discovered. “The Flame Emperor’s inheritance is an inheritance for sure, but it’s not an inheritance of a Venerable Sovereign. Instead, it consists of the Flame Emperor himself.”
“You know that?” The Flame Emperor who was standing in front of him was very surprised.
“Yep, I do. In ancient times, the head of all the Heavenly Gods was called Di Qun. He was the Heavenly Emperor. The emperor—as in, Flame Emperor—and the emperor—as in, Heavenly Emperor—are similar concepts.”
Jiang Chen said bluntly, “But you have always told me that the Flame Emperor was the inheritance of a Venerable Sovereign.”
This was why Jiang Chen hadn’t been very willing to scramble for this so-called inheritance of the Flame Emperor with others.
If he hadn’t seen Xiao Hongxue wearing the Vulcan Ring, he wouldn’t have even known enough to have called the Flame Emperor out.
In the beginning, he hadn’t been strong enough, so he hadn’t questioned the Flame Emperor. He’d simply taken advantage of the Flame Emperor’s status of a Taoist Spirit and Demonic Seed to kill many people and gain the opportunity to revive in fire.
“The Flame Emperor you are talking about, maybe his title is a duplicate of mine,” this Flame Emperor said, feeling a bit guilty.
“Yeah? I’m as strong as a Venerable Sovereign now. I don’t need the inheritance of a Flame Emperor, who is only a Martial Sovereign.”
Jiang Chen was angry, and he’d decided to cut ties with this Flame Emperor.
“Wait!” The Flame Emperor hurried to stop him. He said, “Why are you so sure I’m not the Flame Emperor you are talking about?”
“Oh?” Jiang Chen thought about this for a while, but he decided to tell the Flame Emperor in the end. “Because I saw the Flame Emperor abandon the Black Yellow Great World and leave with other gods with my own eyes.”
The Flame Emperor’s fluctuating emotions could be observed from how the flames would surge and subside.
“Who the h*ll are you?” he shouted in surprise.
“It’s none of your business. Who the h*ll are you? I’m the one who should be asking the questions,” said Jiang Chen.
The Flame Emperor let out a long sigh after maintaining a long silence. He said, “The Flame Emperor has departed, but he didn’t take his mount with him.”
“You are the Fire Kylin?” Jiang Chen said in surprise.
He answered Jiang Chen with actions. His flames experienced more extreme changes, and then a Martial Soul exactly the same as Xiao Hongxue’s showed up in front of Jiang Chen.
“I’m kind of confused.”
Even though Jiang Chen was a knowledgeable person, he couldn’t figure out the relationship between this man in front of him and Xiao Hongxue.
“Xiao Hongxue is the son of Kylin, and he happens to be related to fire. So, he is kind of a reincarnation of me. I, who am speaking with you here, am only a residual consciousness,” the Fire Kylin said.
Jiang Chen thought of the clone of the consciousness of the Goddess of Empyrean that he had met in the Demonic Abyss immediately.
The thing about clones like this was that they had usually been left to finish some mission. Once the mission was completed, the clone would vanish automatically.
But this Fire Kylin had been dealing with him for almost ten years, and he was still here.
“My consciousness is kind of peculiar. As long as the flames are here, I’ll be able to last for a long time.”
Jiang Chen asked, “The flames in each Vulcan Ring?”
“Well, the correct way to put it is that there are flames in each Vulcan Ring.”
“What kind of fire can keep burning from the ancient times and never die out?” asked Jiang Chen.
If Fire Kylin was lying, the more he spoke, the more flaws he would expose.
“The Genuine Fire of the Sun.”
However, Jiang Chen had to believe him when he’d heard this answer.
The Genuine Fire of the Sun was the ancestor of all fires.
In ancient times, the Ten-headed Golden Crow had this fire. It could transform into ten suns in order to scorch the earth.
“In order to explain everything to you, I will say that it is true that I intended to introduce a new Flame Emperor into the world, but hundreds of years passed, and I started to think, why don’t I become the Flame Emperor myself?”
Fire Kylin was really going to tell him everything. He didn’t hold anything back.
“You are only a consciousness. So that means you wanted to seize someone’s body?” asked Jiang Chen.
“I can’t always be a mount, can I?”
Maybe he was desperate. He, a divine beast, had come down from his high horse.
Or maybe it was because Jiang Chen had become too sophisticated to be affected by him.
“I had a perfect plan. And I even almost succeeded a few times. There was even once when I was only one step away from success. But the invasion of the Blood Race ruined everything. And now I have had to start all over from the beginning again.”
“It has been kind of smooth this time. But somehow, from somewhere, my reincarnator showed up, and he’s got a Vulcan Ring, too,” Fire Kylin continued to complain.
“But you shouldn’t have been affected by that.”
“I wasn’t indeed. In fact, the appearance of my reincarnator even made me feel that this was my destiny. However, Xiao Hongxue is the problem. He is way too lucky a man. None of my schemes have worked. And he got the inheritance successfully in the end,” said Fire Kylin.
It reminded Jiang Chen of Xiao Hongxue’s previous lives and his current life that he had seen through the Wisdom Eye. He nodded his agreement.
“In short, you worked out some perfect schemes. However, in the end, you still failed, and the inheritance went to Xiao Hongxue. Am I right?” said Jiang Chen.
Fire Kylin remained silent. It seemed as if he was ashamed of his failure.
If he had explained honestly everything that had happened, the only thing Jiang Chen could do would be to express his pity.
“He hasn’t got the Flame Emperor’s inheritance completely yet, though,” the Fire Kylin said in a profound voice just when Jiang Chen was going to put the Vulcan Ring aside.
He finally looked like a divine beast at this moment. His fervent flames were soaring. His eyes flashed with many lights.
“The Genuine Fire of the Sun is indispensable to become the Flame Emperor. Thus, I separated the flame of the Genuine Fire of the Sun from the ancient scripture about the Genuine Fire of the Sun in the inheritance.”
Fire Kylin said seriously, “Xiao Hongxue has only received the ancient scripture. He doesn’t have the flame. It is going to be extremely difficult for him to get the Genuine Fire of the Sun.”
“What’s your point?”
“Xiao Hongxue killed everyone wearing the Vulcan Ring once he had received the ancient scripture. But since you’ve made changes to your ring, he wasn’t able to find you. Now you could use this opportunity to get the Genuine Fire of the Sun with your Vulcan Ring.”
Jiang Chen smiled coldly at him. He said, “You’ve failed to seize Xiao Hongxue’s body. So now you’ve cast your eyes on mine?”
“Noooo. I’d given up on this idea of becoming the Flame Emperor already. I only hope you can defeat Xiao Hongxue so that I can possess him.”
“He is only a reincarnator, and he is a human instead of a Fire Kylin. Even so, you still want to possess him?” asked Jiang Chen.
“Why can’t I? Do you want to mount Fire Kylin or what?” Fire Kylin said unhappily.
Shrugging his shoulders, Jiang Chen didn’t answer him.
The next question was simple: Where was the flame of the Genuine Fire of the Sun?
Without the flame, there was little he could do when he met Xiao Hongxue in the Spiritual Land Battle.
“Deal?”
Seeing that Jiang Chen had been kind of persuaded by him, Fire Kylin asked excitedly.
He would give the flame to Jiang Chen, and Jiang Chen would help him defeat Xiao Hongxue so that he could seize Xiao Hongxue’s body and go on living in a different way.
“Yeah, deal.”
Jiang Chen had no reason to refuse him. “Take me to find the flame.”
