The moment Li Yan finished speaking, the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant plunged into a "Fire Eye" without looking back. Immediately, that Fire Eye began to shake as if the earth was moving and mountains were swaying. The power of this was extremely fierce.
Li Yan sighed inwardly. If he were to fight this Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant head-on now, he could only flee in disarray. This was the power of a demonic beast's innate divine art; it didn't need to cultivate, only grow to be promoted.
Li Yan looked up again at the "Fire Eye" from which he and Bu Luo had just emerged. Yesterday, after dismissing his three junior brothers, Yiming had also entered the "Fire Eye" where Li Yan had been hiding. He didn't continue searching; he had already done that twice. Instead, he took a step into the rolling golden magma below the cliff of rock fragments and his figure disappeared.
This was also why Li Yan didn't let the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant enter the previous "Fire Eye."
'The monk Yiming is probably searching for a breakthrough while hunting me down,' Li Yan thought.
Time flew by. The sky turned dark, then bright, then crimson, then dark again. The leaden clouds slowly drifted into the distance, followed by another vast expanse of thick leaden clouds, seemingly endless.
In this oppressive environment, four months passed in the blink of an eye for Li Yan. During this time, several cultivators came, but with his powerful Divine Sense, Li Yan had long since avoided them before they arrived, only reappearing after they had left.
In four months, apart from seeing those monsters with large heads and thin tails constantly appear to devour the magma, Li Yan hadn't found even a single fire-attribute material in the magma. And in these four months, no cultivator had come out of the "Flame Palace," not even the monk Yiming, who seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Li Yan sat cross-legged on a desolate hill, motionless. Beside him lay the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. At this time, the body of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had shrunk by more than half, now only the size of a seven or eight-year-old child. But its muscles were bulging and knotted, and a hazy purple airflow circulated on its skin. Its aura had become long and drawn-out, but whenever it moved, the surrounding space would distort slightly.
After continuously devouring the golden magma for half a month, it had stopped growing and had condensed its illusory soul into a solid form. If one didn't specifically probe it with Divine Sense, one wouldn't think it was a soul at all.
However, after coming out of the "Fire Eye," it was no longer willing to stay in the small purple flag. Li Yan let it be and simply placed the small purple flag on the ground beside him.
He was bored being here all alone. In his spare time from cultivation, he would talk to it or occasionally use it as a sparring partner for his Qiongqi Purgatory Art. But now, even at full strength, Li Yan couldn't harm this Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant in the slightest.
Of course, this excluded attacks with his Divine Sense. The reason was simple: Li Yan had re-refined the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" inside the "Fire Eye" and had carved his Divine Sense imprint into the soul of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. Now, with a single thought, he could destroy both the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant and the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation," leaving not even a speck of dust in this world.
Therefore, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant would no longer resist any of Li Yan's commands.
Li Yan opened his eyes. Up to now, his mind was still as calm as still water. This situation was something he had long anticipated. After finishing his meditation, Li Yan slowly stood up. He glanced at the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant, which was lying on the ground with its eyes half-closed, looking lazy. He smiled slightly, walked to the side, and then began to make a series of strange and extremely awkward-looking postures.
Watching Li Yan's movements, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant, which had its eyes half-closed, slowly opened them. It moved its huge head from the scorching rock to one of its outstretched paws, and then stared at Li Yan without blinking.
The Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had long since gotten used to Li Yan's daily cultivation routine: meditation and body tempering.
Looking at this strange cultivation method, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant tried hard to recall, attempting to identify its origin. Its memories came from the fragmented memories instilled by those three Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants. But to its disappointment, its memories only contained some events from ancient times and the main memories about its own inheritance; there was no information about this cultivation method.
In its memory, human cultivators did not have such a powerful body refining art. The young master before it, although not as physically formidable as it was now, far surpassed all the cultivators of the same rank it had seen since its consciousness was born.
Although the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had never asked, it knew that this cultivation method was the reason for Li Yan's powerful physical body. Because whenever Li Yan practiced these strange postures, it could feel a trace of an aura from those postures that made it somewhat fearful. This was a kind of level suppression from its bloodline.
'Could this have been inherited from some ancient demonic beast? But in my memory, humans cannot cultivate demonic beast cultivation methods. The only consequence of that would be their bodies exploding.'
Li Yan could now withstand sixty percent of its attacks. This made it feel some recognition for Li Yan as its master. Although it was still not very satisfied, at least Li Yan's physical body was stronger than all the Foundation Establishment cultivators it had ever seen. Of course, it had never seen Gong Chenying or Zhao Min, otherwise, it wouldn't have thought so.
All of this was due to the innate abilities of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants. They were best at strength, so they were also worshipers of strength.
This Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had no physical body. It couldn't sustain this kind of high-powered, direct frontal attack for too long. And after every battle, it needed a long time to nourish its soul. So, unless it was absolutely necessary, this Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant was unwilling to clash head-on with an opponent.
It preferred to rely on the power of the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation." Only then could it display its currently strongest combat power and defeat a stronger opponent with a weaker force. The ten Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants that were once in the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" were all only at the third rank, with the strongest only at the human equivalent of the Pseudo-Nascent Soul realm. Otherwise, with ten fourth-rank Purple Divine Dragon-Elephants, it was estimated that even if the Nascent Soul cultivators of the current Four Great Sects joined forces, they could only flee.
Two months later, Li Yan had been under the Red Maple Pool palace for half a year. Li Yan looked at the retreating group of monsters in the sky and couldn't help but sigh. After half a year, he couldn't say he had gained nothing here. He had obtained a palm-sized spearhead and a second-rank "Earth Fire Grass." Both were items of extreme yang.
He didn't know what material the spearhead was made of. It had been in the magma of the "Flame Palace" for who knows how many years, yet it had never melted. When it appeared, the tip of the spear glowed with a demonic red light. After Li Yan collected it, he just held it up with his Spirit Power, without infusing any, and then let it fall from his hand.
With a soft "chi" sound, the entire spearhead plunged into the ground as if into soft snow, disappearing in an instant. It continued to fall downwards, leaving only a small hole the width of two fingers on the rock in front of Li Yan.
One must know that the ground here was formed from cooled magma. Its hardness was such that even the current Li Yan, with a single punch, would only be able to crack its surface and leave a pit half a foot deep. Yet this demonic spearhead, glowing with red light, was like a red-hot iron falling into thick snow, plunging into the ground without the slightest pause.
This shocked Li Yan, but at the same time, his heart filled with joy. He hurriedly retrieved the item from underground. Although this item wasn't of much use to him, he thought of a more suitable owner for it.
The second-rank "Earth Fire Grass" was also a relatively rare fire-attribute alchemy material. It could probably be sold for a thousand Spirit Stones.
Apart from these, Li Yan had gained nothing else. If it weren't for the appearance of that demonic spearhead, Li Yan would have wasted his time here for the past six months.
From this, one could see why no cultivator would be as foolish as Li Yan to stay here, just waiting for treasures to be spewed out by the "Flame Palace." It would be more reliable to go to other places.
At this time, the aura on Li Yan's body was even more vigorous. His magical power had reached the peak of Mid-stage Foundation Establishment, and there was a faint possibility of a breakthrough. This was the result of his arduous cultivation here for the past six months. Although the "True Scripture of Gui Water" was a water-attribute cultivation method, as long as an extreme of any attribute of spiritual energy existed between heaven and earth, it could be used. It was just that the effect was not as good as that of extreme water and ice attributes, but the Five Elements could be transformed.
The rapid progress of his fire-attribute Spirit Power would also drive the growth of the other four attributes.
At the same time, what satisfied Li Yan the most was that his Qiongqi Purgatory Art had finally broken through to the second layer. Cultivating here was several times more painful for Li Yan than before. Body tempering required a large amount of Spirit Power to travel through his flesh and blood, which had to be coordinated with his breathing.
Every breath he took was like working a bellows. His chest was like a large barrel full of flammable oil. When the fire spiritual energy of heaven and earth rushed into every inch of his muscles and bones, it made his flesh, blood, and bones feel as if they were being stabbed by thousands of fiery awls, stimulating his periosteum and muscles even more intensely.
On the other hand, it was thanks to that Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. Li Yan sparred with it almost every day, but it would be more accurate to say that he was completely abused by the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. In the early stages, every time they clashed, his bones felt like they were about to break, and the pain went deep into his marrow. This was with the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant using only sixty or seventy percent of its strength; otherwise, Li Yan would have been blasted to the point of broken bones and torn tendons.
After being completely abused, Li Yan would still drag his exhausted body to practice the Qiongqi Purgatory Art over and over again. He could now circulate the Qiongqi Purgatory Art for four heavenly cycles in a day. If Gong Chenying and Zhao Min knew about this, they would probably think Li Yan was boasting, aside from not being able to believe it. The two of them could only complete one and a half heavenly cycles a day now; any more and their Spirit Power simply couldn't keep up.
But as time went on, just a few days later, the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant was surprised to find that after Li Yan finished that set of strange postures, he only needed to meditate for an hour to be fully energized and continue sparring with it. And as time went on, the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had to slowly increase its strength to about eighty percent to completely overwhelm Li Yan.
The Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant felt the pressure mounting and began to complain to Li Yan. The reason was that whenever it used more than seventy percent of its strength, the consumption rate of its soul power increased exponentially. It had to repeatedly re-enter the "Fire Eye" magma to recover, which prevented it from staying outside to sleep leisurely for long periods.
It was fortunate that the magma here was endless; otherwise, the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant really wouldn't be able to maintain such a high-power output every day.
This matter also made Li Yan wonder if, without any heavenly materials or earthly treasures to enhance the Little Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's soul, he could store some magma to carry with him, in case it was needed to help the little elephant recover in a desperate situation. But no matter what method he used, even if he brought the magma into the "Earth-Spot," all he got in the end was a cooled, extremely hard piece of rock.
And those jade boxes and jade bottles for holding pills simply couldn't withstand the high temperature of the magma and would directly explode into a cloud of powder. In the end, Li Yan could only give up in frustration.