Chapter 159: Sudden Change

Sun Fei returned to the Mountain of White Bones. He saw Nun Auntie and the lewd old man halfway up the mountain, digging through it excitedly like stray dogs searching frantically for treasure in a garbage heap. Down by the mountain, he was surprised to find temporary tents had been set up without him noticing. Even a blacksmith’s stand stood before the tents, where Charsi the blacksmith, helped by several female Rogues, was swinging a hammer with sweaty intensity, forging something. A large pile of gleaming white bone weapons had already piled up in front of her.

The Magic Hammer, held firmly in Charsi’s slender hands, became a blur of dark light as she moved. This stunning blacksmith was now completely used to crafting with bone. Watching her swing the hammer looked like watching an elegant angel dancing. Her fiery red ponytail bounced lightly in the air like a playful flame spirit, creating an amazing beauty.

After Sun Fei cleared the seven classes, the skills of everyone in the [Rogue Encampment] had upgraded. Charsi’s blacksmithing, Acarra’s potion brewing and scroll crafting, the lewd old man Kane’s magical research and item identification skills, Fatty Gheed’s deception skills—all had improved. So it was no surprise to Sun Fei that she had adapted so quickly, forging the [Demon Bone] as gracefully as dancing. This blacksmith’s skill had risen at least one level; she could now create Magic Equipment and tools twice as powerful as before.

“Master Sun Fei, you’ve finally returned?” Seeing Sun Fei approaching from a distance, Charsi happily waved. “Nun Acarra and Master Kane have made new discoveries! Look around at these stone pillars; it’s incredible. They’re all made of [Essence of Black Iron] ore…” Charsi showed Sun Fei a piece of black rock in her hand. “See this? It’s this legendary magic metal. Though not as hard as [Demon Bone], it’s better for shaping into armor! Many legendary weapons on the Rogue Continent were forged from this rare metal!”

“Huh… I never imagined this space would be full of treasures everywhere. Truly worthy of being the legendary [Divine-Demon Ruins]! The treasure trove that can make countless super empires rise!” Sun Fei took the black rock, rubbing it with his fingers to feel its hardness and coolness, feeling pleasantly surprised. Then he asked, “By the way, how do we smelt this ore? Are there any strange additional requirements?”

“You guessed right this time!” Suddenly, the lewd old man Kane appeared behind Sun Fei, clutching a brand-new bone staff— newly crafted by Charsi. Sun Fei turned his head and nearly jumped. The old man was entirely white: white beard, white hair, white face, white staff, white robes. If he hopped around on two legs, he could start haunting people himself. His eyes glowed as he gazed at the massive stone pillars around them. “True, [Essence of Black Iron] is incredibly hard to smelt. To extract it from these pillars, we need a flame from the deepest pits of Hell—the [Heart of the Earth Flame]!”

“[Heart of the Earth Flame]?”

“Mmm, a terrifying flame said to be born from burning a demon’s power, possessing fearsome strength. It’s said to be able to burn anything in the world. Legend tells that far west of the [Rogue Encampment], in the place of [Pandemonium Fortress], there lies a river called the ‘River of Flame’. There, the [Heart of the Earth Flame] burns eternally. If we can obtain its flame, we can smelt this precious ore!”

“Sounds pretty complicated!”

Sun Fei habitually rubbed his chin. If he recalled correctly, in the [World of Diablo], there was indeed a place called [Pandemonium Fortress]. But that was the fourth-level zone, only accessible after clearing the first three zones: [Rogue Encampment], [Lut Gholein], and [Kurast Docks]. The second quest in that map was called [Hell’s Forge]. To complete it, one had to venture into a river called the [River of Flame]—a dark, sunless underground world filled with flowing orange magma. That must be Grandpa Kane’s [Heart of the Earth Flame]. But getting that fire now seemed like an impossible task. Sun Fei had only just entered [Lut Gholein], the second-level zone; reaching the fourth-level [Pandemonium Fortress] was still far too distant. An optimistic guess put it at least a year away.

“It is rather troublesome. Legends say almost no one survives the journey from the Rogue Continent to Pandemonium Fortress. But, hehe, in this so-called divine-demon ruin of yours, things aren’t looking quite so tricky anymore. Look here…” The white-bearded lewd old man poked the bone staff he was holding into a crack in the ground at their feet. “There’s something very interesting down there!”

The abnormality of the ground beneath his feet had caught Sun Fei’s attention earlier. The entire place was covered with finger-wide cracks, like a dried-up riverbed dotted with countless fissures. Within some cracks, faint reddish glimmers occasionally pulsed, emitting a little heat… Could these strange cracks be connected to the [Heart of the Earth Flame]?

“This truly is a strange space. I sensed the aura of [Heart of the Earth Flame] coming from these cracks. Legend says certain naturally powerful things complement and coexist with each other. With the massive amounts of [Essence of Black Iron] here, it makes sense its counterbalance—the [Heart of the Earth Flame]— exists too! But these cracks are too deep, and the ground’s rock is too hard. Guiding the [Heart of the Earth Flame] out would be no small feat!” White-bearded Grandpa stroked his long beard, waggling his head as he spoke. “However, I could attempt a small Magic Array to see if I can draw out just a trace of the flame.”

Requesting over a dozen gems of different colors from Sun Fei, White-bearded Grandpa Kane began using the bone staff like a pen, slowly drawing out a Magic Array directly onto the ground. This staff, made of [Demon Bone], was remarkably convenient: magic power flowed smoothly through it, even amplifying it slightly. The end glided effortlessly, etching intricate, fine patterns into the hard stone surface. Grandpa Kane’s expertise in Magic Array construction was absolute master-class.

This was a rare learning opportunity.

Sun Fei observed seriously from the side.

After studying under Nun Auntie recently, Sun Fei had gained substantial knowledge about magic, including understanding the basics of Magic Arrays. He wasn’t the complete magic idiot he’d been before—someone possessing all the skills but none of the underlying theory. Magic Arrays fell into six categories: Pentagram (non-elemental), Hexagram (elemental), Combination, Decomposition, Symbolic, and Mixed Material. Their power and purpose varied greatly. Because the [Heart of the Earth Flame] was a Fire Element-based power, Kane was currently meticulously carving a Mixed Material Hexagram elemental Magic Array. During this process, he shed his lewd demeanor and showed an unusual focus of concentration, taking extreme care to avoid a backlash from misalignment of the highly concentrated elemental forces.

Half an hour later, a complex Magic Array roughly one meter in diameter was finally completed.

The outermost layer was almost entirely circular. Circles represented circulation, preventing magical power from dissipating. Inside the circle were the Magic Circuits, pathways ensuring magical power could flow. More circuits meant a more elaborate, advanced array, requiring more magical power to operate. Generally, crafting a Magic Array required crystal powder ground from Magic Stones. But Kane, holding a [Demon Bone]-forged skeletal staff, could skip this step. Further, the potency of an array depended on the quality of the mage’s crystal powder and their personal magical power reserves. These fundamentals—whether on the [Azeroth Continent] or the World of Diablo—remained the core knowledge and principles behind Magic Arrays.

Exhausted like a dog, white-bearded lewd Grandpa panted, sticking his tongue out. After resting a while, he gingerly embedded six red [Flawed Ruby]s into the six points of the hexagram within the array. Then, he channeled a faint thread of magical power into it.

Then, something magical happened—

The Magic Array activated and hummed to life. Soft crimson flames shimmered on the rubies as magical energy pulsed strictly along the etched channels. Reddish glowing lines appeared on the ground, ultimately converging at the exact center. Then, the entire array radiated a brilliant scarlet light, shooting straight up! A powerful vortex force and suction emanated from its core, causing the ground to tremble slightly. Minutes crawled by… then, a wispy flame, faint and orange-yellow, slowly emerged from the central circle.

“It’s out… haha! Look! It really is the [Heart of the Earth Flame]!”

White-bearded lewd Grandpa hopped with excitement. But his joyous whooping abruptly cut off, like a rooster silenced mid-crow, its neck suddenly grabbed. Then, without warning, the Magic Array dimmed instantly on the ground. Its magical pulses stopped. That orange-yellow flame everyone had eagerly awaited… vanished with a tiny popping sound!

“Ah! The rank of the Magic Stones isn’t high enough…” Grandpa Kane went to inspect and found, much to his dismay, that all six [Flawed Ruby]s had lost their magic. They’d turned into plain gray rocks.

“Can’t be helped then. I don’t possess six rubies of a higher grade right now. I’ll attempt it again tomorrow!” Witnessing this scene reminded Sun Fei of the copied Magic Array diagram from the distant stone chamber. He immediately pulled it out to show the magic-obsessed old man.

“Eh? What’s this? How odd… these array lines look so familiar…”

Grandpa Kane’s professional obsession instantly flared. He had this habit—upon spotting something that captivated him, he plunged into an absorbed fervor, oblivious to the world until he’d thoroughly dissected the thing in his hands. So, promptly disregarding Sun Fei who was standing nearby awaiting results, Kane turned, vanished through the distant Portal, heading back to the [Rogue Encampment] to scrutinize the copied Magic Array diagram.

Sun Fei glanced back. On the Mountain of White Bones, Nun Auntie Acarra was still greedily digging through bones like a miner panning for gold. Shaking his head, Sun Fei also went back to the [Rogue Encampment] through the Portal.

The following five to six days saw Sun Fei’s exploration proceed steadily without fresh discoveries.

Back in the Rogue Encampment, he once again used the [Horadric Cube] to synthesize a sufficient quantity of perfect-quality gems. Returning to the stone chamber within the corridor in the distant rock face, Sun Fei placed a perfect gem atop all five small stone columns. As he predicted, activating all five smaller Magic Arrays triggered a new response. On the central blank stone tablet, a crystal-blue pattern emerged—one Sun Fei utterly failed to decipher. An initial glance suggested a huge Magic Array, but it clearly wasn’t. It lacked the outer circular containment ring fundamental to arrays. Moreover, the flow of its lines was entirely foreign; it resembled unfamiliar circuit diagrams. Intricate blue lines crisscrossed its surface like complex roads on a map nobody recognized, save one conspicuous little red dot flashing amidst the blue lines.

Sadly, this was the extent of his findings.

Sun Fei couldn’t make heads or tails of the pattern on the blank stone tablet. The five pillar arrays seemed designed solely to activate this image; irrespective of how he tried manipulating them further, nothing else changed. Lewd Grandpa Kane’s ongoing studies of the five copied array diagrams yielded only preliminary guesses—suggesting they might be auxiliary transportation arrays missing crucial components, rendering them currently unusable. Sun Fei had even brought Nun Auntie Acarra to study the stone chamber, hoping for fresh enlightenment. Yet, even her experienced eyes found no further insights. Sun Fei had no choice but to rein in his impatience and proceed step by step.

Over the ensuing two weeks, Sun Fei allocated half of each day to systematically exploring the countless corridors riddling the rock face, searching for the correct path through the rock wall and seeking whatever secrets lay hidden beyond this maze-like barrier. Progress remained slight, but he pressed deeper with tenacity. Sun Fei estimated he might actually discover the correct passage within a little over ten more days. Additionally, he meticulously searched the entire perimeter of the vast, mysterious space, discovering its three sides were vast, dark, bottomless chasms—icy, empty voids forming a horseshoe shape around an entrance connected only to the rock wall from which they’d arrived.

Exploration wasn’t Sun Fei’s sole activity.

In the [World of Diablo], he dedicated himself to demon-slaying and leveling-up. Fifteen days later, he’d completed the first two quests of the second difficulty map, [Lut Gholein], using all seven character classes: His Barbarian Character reached Level 27; his Sorceress reached Level 27; his Amazon reached Level 26; his Paladin reached Level 26; his Druid reached Level 25; his Assassin reached Level 26; his Necromancer reached Level 24. His strength had markedly surged. Combined with the formidable, elusive skill sets of his varied classes, Sun Fei’s overall combat power neared the lower Five-Star Mid-Level. He felt confident enough to challenge opponents at the Five-Star Peak!

Beyond leveling up, Sun Fei daily switched to [Assassin Mode]. Here, he meticulously studied the flow paths of his internal Qi energy, continuously referencing the Aura Manuals discovered in that Storage Ring, attempting to pioneer novel Qi Channels and ultimately forge unprecedented new Aura Manuals. Over these fifteen days, Sun Fei successfully improved the [Lightning Fist] manual for Lightning Elemental Combat Aura. Simultaneously, he created several entirely new manuals with distinct functionalities. Personally testing and refining them through cultivation, Sun Fei entrusted these manuals to Ileena, directing her to bring them back to [Hero City] for specific trusted followers to cultivate.

While Sun Fei worked diligently, others toiled just as tirelessly.

Also during these fifteen days, lewd Grandpa Kane employed five perfect-quality gems to activate a Magic Array. This finally extracted a sliver of the legendary [Heart of the Earth Flame] from the deep cracks beneath their feet and gave it to blacksmith Charsi for smelting the [Essence of Black Iron] rock. Success! Large quantities of pure [Essence of Black Iron] were extracted. This legendary magic metal proved the absolutely perfect complement material for the [Demon Bone]. Using the Essence of Black Iron like plating over bone, Charsi forged piles of solid dark armor and weapons, effectively eliminating the grim, skeletal aspect of the [Demon Bone]. This ensured the equipment wouldn’t horrify the soldiers and officers of [Shampoo City], preventing the region being decried as an Undead stronghold and targeted by the Holy Church. Crucially, the magical and Qi conductivity of the [Demon Bone] was preserved. All this inky black bone-plated armor was promptly stowed inside Sun Fei’s Storage Ring.

Lewd Grandpa Kane and Nun Auntie Acarra dedicated the bulk of their time to categorizing and grading the vast mountain of [Demon Bone]. The quality varied significantly between different skeletal pieces. Aside from traveling via designated summons to teach the first batches of university students back in [Hero City], the two elders worked tirelessly day and night, sorting by grade and storing properly categorized bones within the Rogue Encampment.

Days passed steadily. Just as Sun Fei had explored roughly two-thirds of the honeycomb-like corridors within the rock wall, the mysterious space abruptly shifted.

“What’s happening? I think… the temperature’s rising slowly?”

Blacksmith Charsi, extracting Essence of Black Iron with the Heart of the Earth Flame, aided by the Rogues, frowned in confusion. Her extraordinary sensitivity to temperature — honed as exceptionally gifted smith and craftsman— surpassed the average person. Even minute changes rarely escaped her.

Hearing Charsi’s words, the female Rogues assisting her paused their tasks. A little Lori with hair like seaweed-hued strands looked around suddenly, pointing to the innumerable cracks covering the ground. “Look! Steam’s bubbling up from here…”

They all turned their eyes downward. Indeed, faint wisps of steam were gradually escaping the densely packed cracks everywhere. Sun Fei gently slid his hand near one such crevice; he clearly perceived the warmth steadily intensifying from deep underground. The entire mysterious space began feeling close and sultry almost immediately. Simultaneously, Sun Fei noticed another strange phenomenon: thin white fog mist began forming in the air?!

“Fog? How can there be fog?”

Sun Fei felt confused momentarily. Then comprehension hit him like lightning. His expression changed instantly! BOOM! Stone shattered under his feet as his form shot forward like a launched missile towards the deep abyss bordering the distant edge of the space. Becoming only a blurred silhouette flashing across the ground, his voice rang crisp and clear in the ears of Charsi and the Rogues: “Collect everything instantly! You have ten minutes to return to camp immediately! Waste no time!”

Orders from their paramount leader brooked no disobedience. Sensing immense gravity in Sun Fei’s tone, Charsi and the Rogues swiftly gathered tents, completed armor and weapons, and numerous half-finished items strewn about, evacuating through the Portal back to [Rogue Encampment] in the World of Diablo.

Almost instantly, Sun Fei reached the vast chasm plunging into icy darkness at the space’s perimeter.

Precisely as expected: An overwhelming surge of bone-chilling, intensely damp cold erupted wildly from the utterly depthless abyss! This frigidness crashed against scalding jets of heat relentlessly gushing upward from the countless cracks underfoot. Instantly, immense clouds of thick white fog began forming as violently clashing currents of air whipped against each other… generating wind…

Wind?

Lightning seemed to flash inside Sun Fei’s mind. Almost instantaneously, he understood the terrifying suction force he encountered upon his first entry into these corridors originated precisely here! It puzzled him earlier — airflow moved freely here but never showed large-scale movement before. How could wind suddenly emerge? Now the problem’s root laid exposed before his eyes.

In the brief moments Sun Fei contemplated these thoughts, terrifying shrieks surged from the bottomless darkness below—as if countless primordial demons screeched, thrashed, and raged in agony. Sounds dreadfully horrifying echoed upward! Following those sounds, frigid air carrying countless shards of ice blasted outward! Sun Fei caught some tiny fragments, examining them closely—minutely fragmented ice crystals! Before he could comprehend the ice crystals’ origin however… THUD! THUD! THUD! A barrage of violent impacts! Massive rocks of ice… some as big as millstones, others approaching the size of small hills… screamed through the air out of the dark depths, smashing violently onto the earth beside him!

“Damn it!”

Too startled to react reflexively, Sun Fei desperately dodged.

Time rushed onward rapidly. Ice chunks spewed from the chasm grew progressively larger—transforming into boulders! An uncanny unseen force seemed to hurl them skyward! Alongside the ice shrapnel poured piercingly cold winds. Sun Fei’s eyebrows and hair frosted over thickly within seconds; even his nose hairs stiffened with cold! He urgently shifted into [Mage Mode]. Encased in the [Arcana’s Trajecto] gear set, delicate flame Magical energy flowed around his form. Only then was the paralyzing chill dispelled.

But the freezing aura intensified drastically! Sun Fei, with his strong Sorceress form at Level 27, actually found resisting this deep freeze increasingly impossible! Numbing cold threatened to lock his limbs! Sun Fei sprinted backward in retreat!

Simultaneously, fiercer blasts of heat flared from the earth’s cracks beneath him. Every fissure emitted fierce scarlet light; some even sprouted wispy tongues of yellow-orange flame! Scorching air masses collided head-on with waves of subzero cold high overhead… Instantly, enormous blankets of thick white fog appeared! Immediately afterward… torrential downpours of violent hail mixed with pea-sized raindrops drummed down violently from the skies! Within the mysterious space an incredibly heavy deluge poured!

KRA-KA-BOOOOOOOOMMMMM—!

Rolling thunder boomed intensely. Jagged lightning forks flashed intermittently amidst the thick white fog.

Instantly, opposing currents within the air across the mysterious space spun chaotically! Sun Fei rushed backwards, seeking shelter near a mammoth stone pillar close to the Mountain of White Bones. He craned his neck skyward. And what met Sun Fei’s eyes made horror drain the blood clean from his face…