Love Burning Amidst the Ashes. - Chapter 21 - Rise of the Slave Warrior
The stench of sulfur-wrapped corpses had seeped into the underground blood arena of the Thunder Prison Gate for a hundred years. Every breath felt like swallowing scorching iron rust, mixed with the sweet rot of old dried blood and the sour stench of freshly ruptured organs, clinging thickly to the throat.
The dim green glow of low-grade luminous stone cut through the beehive-like iron cages, casting the crisscrossing scars on Xu Qing Feng’s bronze skin into the shape of dark, poisonous vines. He crouched in the corner of Cage Ding Wei 76. Beneath the charred carbon layer of his right arm, spiderweb-like demonic black veins pulsed faintly with his heavy breathing. Each pulse released a needle-like chill, stabbing deep into his burning meridians.
“Ding Wei 76! Get out! ‘Scorpion’ is waiting for his meal!” A metal rod slammed brutally against the bars, sparks bursting out. The ear-piercing screech grated against the eardrums.
Xu Qing Feng slowly raised his head. Deep within his bloodshot eyes, a flash of silver lightning ignited—only to be forcibly suppressed. The lingering heat of the Blood Surge Pill surged through his veins like boiling oil poured into a dry well, forcibly squeezing out the last remnants of his life force while deepening the spiderweb-like cracks in his dantian.
Nine matches already.
Every step onto that black basalt arena, slick with human oil and brain matter, was a walk along the edge of hell’s blade.
He forced open his nearly pain-sealed eyelids and swayed to his feet. Iron shackles scraped against unhealed flesh, dragging intermittent dark red streaks across the freezing stone floor.
At the end of the corridor, the roars from the blood arena echoed like the growls of a starving beast. The air was thick with the sweet, metallic scent of fresh blood vaporizing in heat.
The enforcer’s cold gaze swept over his charred right arm, a faintly indifferent smile curling his lips.
“Tenth match. Win, and the Bone Continuation Ointment is yours. Lose, and the furnace at the Bone Refinery is waiting.”
The iron gate rose with a harsh grinding sound. A wave of thick blood stench slammed into Xu Qing Feng’s face like a physical blow.
On the arena, his opponent—“Scorpion”—was already waiting.
He was thin as iron wire, wrapped tightly in dark purple armor that revealed only a pair of long, snake-like eyes flickering with ghostly green phosphorescence. He carried no weapons, but each of his ten fingers had mutated into half-foot-long purple-black hooks, their tips dripping viscous green poison that corroded the black stone floor into curling wisps of smoke.
He paced silently, stepping over layered blood scabs as though a predator patrolling its territory. A faint, rotting herbal stench mixed with sweetness spread through the air.
“A lightning-rooted charcoal?” Scorpion’s voice was raspy, like sandpaper grinding against rusted iron. “Your heart and liver will make excellent medicinal ingredients.”
His tongue licked over the hooked claws, his green eyes locking onto Xu Qingfeng’s throat.
No probing. No words wasted.
Scorpion’s figure suddenly blurred.
Not speed—but distortion.
Three afterimages split across the arena, indistinguishable from reality, lunging from three lethal angles in complete silence!
Purple-black poison claws tore through the air with a piercing shriek, aiming for Xu Qing Feng’s eyes, heart, and dantian. Even before they arrived, the sweet stench had already invaded his nose, causing a wave of dizziness.
“An illusion clone?” Xu Qing Feng’s pupils contracted sharply.
The burning lightning power inside him roared instinctively.
He twisted sideways, his right fist wrapped in dazzling blue-purple lightning, tearing through the air as it smashed toward the left-side phantom claw.
Zzzzt—BOOM!
Lightning exploded. The afterimage shattered like a bubble.
A feint.
The real killing intent came from above.
Scorpion had silently inverted himself, clinging to the stone spires on the arena ceiling like a real scorpion. He dropped straight down, claws tearing through darkness, aiming directly for Xu Qing Feng’s skull!
Perfect timing. Perfect angle.
A fatal strike.
Xu Qing Feng had exhausted his force. New power had not yet formed.
In that split instant—
The demonic black pattern on his charred right arm suddenly pulsed.
A bone-chilling force surged upstream through his meridians, freezing his thoughts for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was enough.
Thud! Thud!
Two purple-black poison claws pierced deeply into his shoulder blades, sinking to the bone. Viscous green toxin flooded in instantly.
“Ugh—Aaaah!” Pain and paralysis exploded through his body. Xu Qing Feng staggered forward uncontrollably, blood foaming from his mouth, tinged with eerie green light.
“Your lightning can’t burn through my Bone-Eroding Poison,” Scorpion whispered coldly beside his ear, his tone filled with cruel certainty.
He licked the poisoned blood dripping from Xu Qing Feng’s neck, his green eyes blazing with satisfaction.
His remaining claws silently circled toward Xu Qing Feng’s back.
The crowd erupted into frenzy. Cheers, curses, and clattering coins filled the arena as bets poured in.
Cold death pressed against his spine.
And then—
Inside his dantian, the lightning that had been forcibly stirred by the Blood Surge Pill, now suppressed by poison and paralysis, completely went berserk.
BOOM!!!!!
Not through meridians—but from every collapsing cell in his body.
Silver-white lightning erupted from within Xu Qing Feng like a collapsing star.
His eyes were instantly consumed by pure lightning. His hair stood upright, writhing with electric arcs. Cracks of blue-purple light spread across his skin like a breaking earth crust.
The poison claws in his shoulder were instantly carbonized and shattered.
“What?!” Scorpion’s expression froze in shock.
Too late.
Xu Qing Feng twisted midair.
His charred right fist, wrapped in destructive lightning, ignored distance itself and slammed directly into Scorpion’s chest.
There was no sound.
Only a blinding sphere of silver lightning expanding and detonating silently.
BOOM.
Scorpion’s body flew backward like a broken sack, his chest completely collapsed. Blackened bone shards burst through armor. Where his heart had been, there was only a charred, hollow cavity the size of a bowl, edges still flickering with dying lightning.
His snake-like green eyes remained frozen in disbelief.
He crashed into the arena barrier, slid down slowly, leaving a trail of blackened and green-corrupted gore across the stone.
For a brief moment, the arena fell dead silent.
Then—
It erupted into even more frenzied, roaring chaos.
“Ten consecutive wins!!”
“That thing is a monster! A Lightning Spiritual Root going berserk?!”
“All my spirit stones… I bet everything on him!!”
Xu Qing Feng stood in place as the violent lightning glow slowly retracted into his body. The blue-purple cracks on his skin flickered faintly—each pulse bringing tearing, bone-deep pain.
The wound on his right shoulder, pierced through by the poison claws, had charred edges. Beneath it, new flesh was regenerating wildly under the stimulation of lightning energy, yet it was tightly suppressed by the injected dark green poison, producing a sizzling corrosion sound along with an unbearable itch and searing pain that pierced straight into his bones.
Even more terrifying was his dantian.
The backlash from forcibly unleashing his rampaging lightning power was like molten iron surging through his meridians. The cracks in his dantian walls were visibly spreading, accompanied by faint but horrifying “crackling” sounds.
The demonic black markings on his right arm, like a satiated venomous insect, greedily absorbed the escaping lightning energy and the lingering cold spiritual force from Scorpion’s death. They pulsed even more powerfully now, faint traces of dark red blood light flickering within them.
“Ha… ha…”
Xu Qing Feng gasped heavily. Every breath tore through his injuries. He coughed up a lump of blood mixed with dark green fluorescence and tiny sparks of lightning.
Through blurred vision, he swept across the boiling stands—and finally locked onto a shadowed area at the very top.
There, a figure in dark purple, lightning-patterned robes stood like an ice-cold monolith. Beneath the hood, a gaze pierced through the chaos and firmly locked onto him.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind him.
Two burly enforcers in black robes of the Thunder Prison Gate stepped onto the arena. Their eyes carried faint wariness and scrutiny.
One of them held a palm-sized black jade box. Though sealed, it emitted a faint but pure aura of life-force from medicinal herbs.
“Ding Wei 76,” the leading enforcer said flatly. “Ten consecutive wins achieved. This is Bone Continuation Ointment. It can restore your shattered meridians.”
Bone Continuation Ointment.
Xu Qing Feng’s blood-stained hand trembled as he reached out. The moment his fingers touched the cold jade box, an indescribable wave of emotion almost shattered his remaining composure.
He clenched it tightly, as if grasping a lifeline.
But at that instant—
A faint, icy sting pierced through his fingertip.
Like a cold serpent, it drilled into his arm’s meridians and shot straight toward his sea of consciousness, bypassing his lightning energy entirely.
“Ugh!”
Xu Qing Feng groaned. His vision went dark for a split second, as if his mind had been stabbed by an invisible ice spike.
The sensation vanished almost immediately, as if it had been an illusion caused by exhaustion.
He shook his head, forcing himself to recover, and tightened his grip on the jade box. It remained cold—but the strange sensation was gone.
The second enforcer stepped forward, holding a dark purple jade slip engraved with silver lightning runes, radiating a violent and savage aura that resonated with the prison’s own killing intent.
“This is the Lightning Calamity Art, Qi Refining chapter,” he said, his voice carrying a subtle temptation. “By order of the Gate Lord, those who achieve ten consecutive wins are granted this technique. By drawing prison lightning into your body, you can temper your bones, refine your body, and truly step onto the path of power.”
The Lightning Calamity Art.
Xu Qing Feng stared at the jade slip, eyes bloodshot.
The lightning within his body was like a cursed parasite—every eruption brought him closer to death. The ointment could only repair his body, but this technique… might be the key to truly controlling his power.
Or the key to his destruction.
He reached out with his other hand, stained with blood and charred ash, trembling slightly as he grasped the jade slip.
At that moment—
BOOM!
A violent, icy-cold and overwhelmingly savage force erupted from the jade slip, surging straight into his sea of consciousness!
“AAAAAH—!!”
Xu Qing Feng’s mind felt as if it had been split open by heavenly lightning.
His vision was swallowed by an endless storm of dark purple lightning and calamity energy. Countless twisted, shrieking voices filled with destruction and slaughter exploded in his soul.
It was no longer pain.
It was countless burning steel needles stabbing into every corner of his consciousness.
“Ughhh—!!”
He could no longer hold it back. With a beast-like roar, he dropped to his knees in the blood-soaked arena, his body convulsing violently.
Lightning inside him went completely out of control again, clashing fiercely with the invading calamity energy.
The demonic mark on his right arm twisted wildly, devouring the violent energy like a starving beast, its dark red veins spreading beneath charred skin.
An unprecedented murderous intent surged in his heart, threatening to consume his sanity entirely.
“Steady your mind! Only by drawing in calamity can you control calamity lightning!” the enforcer’s cold voice thundered through his consciousness like an anchor.
Xu Qing Feng bit down hard on his tongue.
Blood mixed with pain gave him a fleeting moment of clarity.
He forced his remaining consciousness to hold on, like a rock in a raging storm.
His brother’s face flashed through the chaos. The small silver knife at his waist seemed to carry a faint scent of medicinal herbs.
He couldn’t lose himself here.
He couldn’t die here.
With that single thought, he forcibly dragged the violent energy into his collapsing dantian.
Lightning, poison, blood pill heat, demonic corruption, and calamity energy collided violently inside him.
“PFFFT—!”
A mouthful of thick black blood erupted from his mouth, mixed with green poison, blue lightning sparks, and strange ice shards.
Pain swallowed everything.
Xu Qing Feng’s vision went black.
His body collapsed forward, falling heavily beside Scorpion’s still-warm corpse, the Bone Continuation Ointment still clenched in one hand, while the Lightning Calamity jade slip lay in the blood beside him.
Above the stands, the noise slowly faded and new bets began.
In the shadowed upper tier, the purple-robed figure rose slowly. His gaze lingered on Xu Qing Feng’s right arm, where the spiderweb-like black mark pulsed faintly with dark red light.
“Demonic seed as the foundation… calamity lightning as fuel…”
A cold voice murmured into the darkness.
“This furnace… is burning well.”
Deep within the prison corridors, an old battle slave watched silently through the iron bars. His scarred face remained expressionless as he observed the unconscious Xu Qing Feng being dragged away.
Then, he slowly chewed a dark green root, its faint earthy scent mixing with decay in the air.
In Xu Qing Feng’s unconsciousness, chaos raged.
Lightning and demonic corruption tore at his soul like twin dragons.
And in the depths of this hell, only one faint trace remained—
The cold scent of a small silver knife hidden close to his body.
A distant anchor to something called humanity.