Translator: StarveCleric Editor: StarveCleric

Earth Flame Heart is an ore formed at the very core of the earth flames after several thousand years of refinement and tempering. It contains an incomparable quantity of fire energy, and if an ordinary cultivator were to just touch it, they would be scalded.

Usually, 6-star blacksmiths would use it as a coal to process ores which are exceptionally resistant to heat. Who could have thought that it would be used as a core to the formation of this Chamber of Earth Flame?

Under his Eye of Insight, Zhang Xuan could see the incredible profoundness of the formation before him. It was crafted in a manner that allowed it to take in spiritual energy from the surroundings to sustain the emanation of heat from the Earth Flame Heart.

As such, despite the passing of many years, the Earth Flame Heart was still brimming with power.

"It would be cheating if I were to stop the formation... I should try to break the record openly instead!" Zhang Xuan thought after studying the formation for a moment.

Even though the formation was extremely complex, he could still stop it very easily.

Once he were to do so, the heat in the chamber would recede, allowing him to remain here as long as he could.

Just that, if he were to do so, he might be placed under the suspicion of cheating, and the Blacksmith School might not recognize his accomplishment if they were to notice it. After all, the main motive behind this challenge was to gauge the resilience of one's physical body, not to test one's ability to stop a formation.

Besides, did he really have to go that far as to cheat for a mere record?

Was he such a person?

"This will be useful to my Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body!" Zhang Xuan muttered with a smile on his lips.

The reason why he was delighted upon seeing the Earth Flame Heart wasn't due to him finding the core of the formation but that it was one of the materials required for the cultivation of the Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body's Second Incandescence!

Back then, when he was in the underground chamber, he had merged the Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body with many other physical body cultivation techniques he had obtained from Luo Qiqi. While he did manage to compile a complete Heaven's Path cultivation technique, it still had four flaws with it, each corresponding from the Second Incandescence to the Fifth Incandescence!

The flaw for the Second Incandescence was that he would require Earth Flame Heart to successfully cultivate it.

However, Earth Flame Heart was an extremely rare material that could hardly be found anywhere. Thus, Zhang Xuan could only stop right after the First Incandescence. However, since he had encountered it here, how could he possibly allow this opportunity to slip past his fingers?

Since the First Incandescence had boosted his physical body strength to 4,000,000 ding, would it be the same for the Second Incandescence as well?

"Let me give it a try!"

Without any hesitation, Zhang Xuan immediately dived into action. Dissipating the layer of zhenqi he had been using to protect his body, he opened up all of the pores in his body and began to absorb the spiritual energy from the surroundings furiously.

If it had been anyone else, even they had cultivated the Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body as well, they wouldn't dare to behave so rashly, especially when they didn't know where the Earth Flame Heart was.

However, Zhang Xuan was different. Possessing both the Eye of Insight and Library of Heaven's Path, the flaws of the chamber would literally appear before him. He could easily tell which regions were suitable for cultivating, allowing him to absorb the spiritual energy from the flames without hurting his own body.

Activating the Red Dust Heaven Ascending Steps, Zhang Xuan positioned himself in a sitting position above the center of the room with the four Earth Flame Hearts directed accurately at four acupoints in his body. With a massive inhalation, the flames in the surroundings began gushing into his body as though fire dragons ascending to the skies.

Pilipala!

Under the intense heat of the fire dragons, his muscles and bones began emitting loud cracking noises. At the same time, his face swiftly flushed crimson, and he clenched his fists tightly in agony.

Flawed cultivation techniques were indeed far more difficult to cultivate. Putting everything aside, just for this Second Incandescence, not only did he require the Earth Flame Heart, his body would also undergo immense pain as it was tempered by the flames.

If not for his strong mental resilience and soul, he might have fainted at this very instant.

Gugugu!

Nevertheless, despite the intense pain, the effects of the tempering was apparent. His physical body which had already reached an extremely stable state and was difficult to further strengthen was changing at a visible pace. Its stamina, durability, defense... every aspect of his body was being reinforced.

4,000,000 ding!

4,500,000 ding!

5,000,000 ding!

6,000,000 ding!

...

Time swiftly passed, and before long, he had already reached 8,000,000 ding!

At 8,000,000 ding, his physical strength was already comparable to a Perfect Harmonization realm primary stage expert!

In other words, just in terms of physical strength he could draw from his body, he could fight on equal grounds with a Perfect Harmonization realm expert. If he were to utilize his zhenqi and soul cultivation on top of that, he could match even an Ethereal Treading expert!

The enhancement he had received was indeed frightening!

Hu!

Breathing out a mouthful of turbid air, Zhang Xuan slowly descended to the ground.

With this, he had successfully cultivated the Second Incandescence of his Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body!

For the Third Incandescence, he would require Origin Heavy Water as a catalyst. Thus, he could only stop at this point.

"After cultivating the Second Incandescence, the heat here is no longer able to faze me..." Zhang Xuan thought as he glanced at his surroundings quietly.

With the advancement of his Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body, not only was his physical strength enhanced, his body had also become immune to the heat emitted by the Earth Flame Heart. While this place could easily burn anyone else to cinders, he could easily lie down in this area and sleep for as long as he could without suffering a burn.

"It seems to be a little too early to leave yet... I need to break the record in order to receive Academic Credits..." Zhang Xuan frowned.

As the Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body was a Heaven's Path cultivation technique as well, and he was only cultivating a fifth of it, it was unlikely that too much time had passed during his cultivation. Even though he didn't keep track of the timing, the chances were that he would fail the challenge if he were to leave now.

"Perhaps I can cultivate my soul in here while waiting!"

Since he had no choice but to wait anyway, Zhang Xuan decided to draw his soul out to cultivate.

The reason why the spiritual energy within the Cleansing Lake could be absorbed by his soul was because it had been refined and cleaned by the earth flame beneath it.

On the other hand, a formation augmented by Earth Flame Heart had been set up within this chamber. Under the intense heat, the spiritual energy here had also been refined, making it suitable for a soul to absorb.

Thus, disregarding his physical body, Zhang Xuan's soul floated in the midst of the chamber.

Due to the flaws in the Soul Guiding Formula, soul oracles feared sunlight, flames, and everything that was yang in nature. However, having cultivated the perfected Soul Guiding Formula, Zhang Xuan's soul possessed no such flaws. As a result, despite the overwhelming heat in the surroundings, his soul was still able to fly around freely without suffering any damage.

Even though he only had the Consonant Spirit realm Heaven's Path Soul Art, making it impossible for him to make a breakthrough, he could still absorb spiritual energy to enhance his soul, just like what he did in the Cleansing Lake.

Back then, due to his clone frenziedly wrestling spiritual energy from him, his soul wasn't able to reach ten meters. However, with the spiritual energy within this chamber, he could try to surpass that bottleneck.

Tzzzzzz!

The refined spiritual energy in the area began flowing swiftly towards Zhang Xuan's soul, nourishing it.

"As I expected, it works..." Zhang Xuan's eyes lit up with excitement.

As expected of one of the treasures required in the cultivation of the Quintuple Incandescence Golden Body. After many years of refinement under the intense heat of the Earth Flame Heart, the spiritual energy in the surroundings had become far purer than that in the Cleansing Lake, making it the best tonic for his soul!

"This time, I should finish absorbing my share before bringing clone out!"

With the prior experience at the Cleansing Lake, Zhang Xuan knew that his absorbing speed would surely be unable to compete with his clone, so he decided to take in whatever he could first before bringing that fellow out.

...

While Zhang Xuan was busy absorbing the spiritual energy in the chamber, there was a huge mess outside the chamber.

At this point, it had already been two hours since Zhang Xuan had entered the Chamber of Earth Flame.

Everyone thought that the fellow would leap out after a minute or two, but time continued to tick on, and before they knew it, it was already two hours... For there to be no signs of him after so long, had he already died in there?

"The mechanism in the Chamber of Earth Flame has the ability to detect the presence of life. If the challenger of the record were to pass away, he would immediately be sent back out..." Luo Yan frowned in confusion.

He had once challenged the Chamber of Earth Flame, so he had studied up on it and knew a fair bit about its inner working.

As soon as the mechanism detects the lack of presence of any life in the chamber, it would immediately deport the challenger back to the Passageway of Records.

Considering how that fellow hadn't been deported after such a long period of time, it could only mean that... he was still alive and kicking!

Did that fellow really enter the Chamber of Earth Flame?

Could he have run off to some other challenge to slack about?

Otherwise, to last for two whole hours... was this even possible?

And the truth was that he wasn't the only one who was getting frenzied over this matter. The others who had gathered around after hearing Zhang Xuan's arrogant declaration were also clutching their hair in madness.

Most record challengers would just aim to beat the record for a few seconds, or even at most, just a minute or two. After all, these records were made by the predecessors by pushing their bodies to the very limit. Yet, to surpass it by severalfold and still remain within... Was he planning to remain in there for days?

"The heat from the Chamber of Earth Flame is capable of melting even steel, and to stay there for two hours..." Luo Yan subconsciously swallowed a mouthful of saliva as he turned to Li Xuan.

"Are you certain that he's a freshman?"

"That's what he told me... I don't think he's lying. If he's a senior, we should have heard of him before..." Li Xuan hurriedly replied.

Her lips were also twitching in astonishment from what was going on.

Even though she was serving as the receptionist of the Blacksmith School, she was also a master teacher herself, and she possessed an eye of discernment worthy of one. Based on her judgement, she could tell that Zhang Xuan wasn't feigning his ignorance in their interactions.

For someone who didn't know the slightest thing about the records to challenge it, it was inevitable that she would regard him as arrogant. Who would have known that not only would he actually do it, he would even successfully surpass the existing record?

After all, this was a record which had remained unbroken for countless years!

"To think that I thought that he was being conceited..." Recalling how she had looked at the other party disdainfully, her face couldn't help but turn red in embarrassment.

That fellow did have the capability to back up his words!

Yet, her eyes failed to see through it...

"Freshman..."

On the other hand, having received the confirmation from Li Xuan, Luo Yan's eyelids began twitching.

All along, he had been proud of his record of remaining in the Chamber of Earth Flame for three minutes, and he had been bragging about it over the years. Due to it, he had won the admiration of respect of many. Yet, he actually mocked the person who had been inside for two hours and longer...

It would be difficult for even the Ten Great Master Teachers to break the seventeen minutes mark, needless to say, two hours!

Upon thinking of this, he couldn't help but feel a stinging sensation on his face.

"Senior, the Chamber of Earth Flame is incredibly dangerous. No matter how resilient Zhang shi's physical body is, it should be impossible for him to remain in there for so long. Could something have happened to him?" After waiting for a moment later, a master teacher suddenly spoke up.

Records were records for a reason. To surpass them was already an incredible feat in itself, but to do so with a gap of severalfold was unthinkable!

"Un, I also find the situation inconceivable... Wait for me here, I'll go and look for my teacher to ask him about this matter. Given how knowledgeable he is, he should be able to figure out what is going on." Luo Yan replied after a moment of hesitation.

With those words, he walked out of the Passageway of Records and soon, he arrived before a room.

"Teacher!" Luo Yan called out as he knocked on the door.

"Luo Yan? What's wrong?" The elder in the room raised his gaze and asked.

The vice-head of the Blacksmith School, Yuan Hong!

A 6-star pinnacle master teacher and blacksmith, his standing within the Blacksmith School was second only to the school head.

"Reporting to teacher, someone is currently challenging the Chamber of Earth Flame!" Luo Yan reported anxiously.

"Chamber of Earth Flame? The existing record of seventeen minutes has left many helpless in its face. It won't be easy for anyone to surpass that!" Yuan Hong remarked with a smile as he stroked his beard.

"Who is it? Lu Wu? Chen Hai? Or is it Du Jiu? The quality of the students in the Blacksmith School has been going down with each passing generation. In the current generation, they are the only ones who stand a chance for that record!"