"If the mission records are correct, the leader of the organization is only at the 4° stage of the Qi Liberation Realm. It shouldn't be that difficult to deal with him," Ren Yao murmured.

"Don't be one hundred percent confident in this. Sometimes the information can be wrong." Yanyu said with a somewhat worried expression.

Kyrian didn't respond as he continued to stare at the sky and the orbs, his face expressionless.

He didn't know why he had chosen this mission or why his thoughts had become more restless after seeing the formation.

It wasn't out of heroism. He didn't believe he had to save everyone or avenge those who were killed.

It wasn't out of anger either, because he knew that everyone in that world sought the same thing, power. Regardless of the method, for many, only the result mattered. And Kyrian didn't think much differently.

Perhaps it was simply the discomfort of being reminded of his own weakness from the past.

The weakness that still echoed in the memory of a boy standing before dried corpses.

Two hours passed quickly as they followed the ash orbs.

Twenty cores now floated ahead of them, flying together like a silent swarm.

The air below them was heavy and hot, tinting the ground red wherever it passed.

Finally, the mountains began to appear. And at the base of one of them, the terrain changed. It was dry, rocky, without trees, a dead valley, devoid of life.

Kyrian raised his hand, signaling for them to stop. They hid behind one of the many large rocks scattered there, watching from afar.

The cores began to descend, one by one. They moved toward a crevice in the mountain, where a large boulder partially covered an entrance.

Suddenly, the rock shifted.

A dull sound echoed, and a door opened beneath it.

A man wearing a black robe emerged. His face was hidden under a hood, his eyes glowing faintly red.

One by one, the floating cores entered the passage. The man extended his hand, seeming to guide them inside.

As soon as the last core disappeared, he began pushing the stone back to close the entrance.

But Kyrian acted, he blinked. His pupils, shaped like snowflakes, gleamed.

A chill swept through the valley, carrying shards of ice born from the freezing energy of his eyes.

The man froze in place. From the neck up, his head turned into solid ice, cracking with a dry snap.

His body fell without a sound, and Kyrian controlled the ice with his gaze, making the corpse drop quietly.

Yanyu and Ren Yao approached cautiously as Kyrian passed them with a cold look.

"Let's go in."

The stone was pushed aside with little effort, revealing beneath it a staircase that descended into a narrow corridor leading deep into the mountain, where a faint red glow pulsed.

Without another word, Kyrian took the first step into the passage. Yanyu and Ren Yao followed close behind, entering the narrow path.

Even with the cold emanating from Kyrian, the heat inside grew with every step they took toward the mountain's depths.

The corridor was carved from solid rock, rough and uneven, as if it had been dug hastily. The floor was covered with a thin layer of reddish dust, and black burn marks streaked the walls, as though fire had licked every surface.

Yanyu kept her sword ready, walking just behind Kyrian, while Ren Yao guarded the rear. But the space was so tight that drawing their swords here would be difficult.

The sound of their footsteps echoed dully, and the red glow at the end pulsed brighter the deeper they went.

Kyrian observed the surroundings calmly. The cold around him reacted to the heat, creating a faint mist in the air.

Two opposing elements meeting, constantly clashing.

The corridor suddenly opened into a vast, circular cavern, so wide the ceiling vanished into the darkness above.

The air, once merely hot, now felt almost solid, a humid, suffocating heat carrying the sweet, nauseating stench of rotting flesh and ashes.

At the chamber's center rested the source of both the stench and the heat.

It was a shapeless mass, the size of a small house, resembling a giant, necrotic heart.

Its surface wasn't flesh, but a black, dried, and cracked substance, like coal fused with pitch.

From the fissures seeped a dim red light, pulsing slowly and agonizingly.

With each pulse came waves of heat and a pure energy of decay, though it carried within it a distorted, artificial spark of life.

The ash spheres they had followed now orbited the thing slowly before being drawn in and absorbed by the black surface, feeding its dark rhythm.

The silence was broken only by a wet, low sound, like that of a massive muscle contracting in on itself.

The place seemed deserted, apart from that monstrosity.

"What the hell is that?" Ren Yao couldn't help but murmur aloud, his voice filled with disgust.

Kyrian watched with icy calm, his eyes analyzing every crack, every fissure, every pulse.

He released more of his freezing Qi, forming a subtle barrier against the oppressive heat, shielding them partially.

Then Yanyu, pale-faced, lightly touched Kyrian's arm. Her eyes were fixed on the heart of ashes, filled with incomprehensible horror.

"Kyrian… there's something alive in there," she whispered, her voice nearly fading away.

Kyrian turned toward her face, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"How do you know?"

She just shook her head, unable to explain.

"I just know. I can feel it. It's not… it's not just that thing. There's a presence inside. I can feel it watching us. It's trapped…"

The statement lingered in the air, making the atmosphere even more macabre. Before Kyrian could ponder Yanyu's feelings, voices echoed from the far side of the cavern.

Three figures, dressed in the same black robes as the man from the entrance, emerged from a secondary passage.

They walked absentmindedly, engrossed in their own conversations.

"Where's that idiot? He was just supposed to check the door and bring the cores. He should've been back by now," one of them grumbled, his voice coarse.

Kyrian noticed them instantly. Despite being only a few meters from that infernal heart, the three men seemed perfectly comfortable. Their cultivation levels, however, were unimpressive.

All of them were, at best, at the 3° stage of the Qi Accumulation Realm. But something about them protected them somehow.

The moment they entered the trio's direct line of sight, the action was swift and lethal, without hesitation.

Yanyu and Ren Yao, as if they had trained together all their lives, moved in complete synchrony.

They struck like a scythe. Two flashes of steel sliced through the cavern's sweltering air.

It was fast and silent. Two of the three men in black fell instantly, their throats slashed open before a sound of alarm could escape.

Blood sprayed vividly across the cavern, a shocking contrast against the pale stone.

The third man, the one who had spoken, froze in sheer terror. He didn't even have time to scream.

A chilling cold, far more intense than the cavern's heat, enveloped his limbs and mouth, a cold that froze the bones.

His arms and legs locked up, covered in a layer of instant ice that trapped him in place like a statue.

He was alive, conscious, but completely immobilized by Kyrian's eyes, who now approached with silent steps that echoed louder than any other sound in the cavern.

At that exact moment, the Heart of Ashes reacted.

With the death of the two cultivators, the thing pulsed violently. An almost physical heat burst from the black core, spilling from its red cracks, a blood-red flash that scorched the air.

Kyrian acted instantly, raising one hand. A translucent wall of ice, brimming with freezing Qi, materialized between them and the wave of heat, cracking and hissing upon impact.

But it protected Yanyu and Ren Yao from instant vaporization. The bodies on the ground, however, suffered a horrific fate.

Under that concentrated heat, the flesh and bones of the two dead cultivators didn't just burn, they disintegrated, turning into fine, dark-gray ash. This was immediately drawn in by the next pulse of the heart, making it seem a bit stronger, a bit more alive.

Kyrian, Yanyu, and Ren Yao all frowned, not just from the heat but from the horror of what they witnessed. It seemed that the heart possessed some form of thought. The moment it sensed dead bodies, it devoured them.

Kyrian's wall of ice dissolved into steam. He turned toward the last surviving man, whose eyes, the only part he could still move, were wide with terror.

The cold that held him in place was also the only thing keeping him alive, preventing him from being consumed by the heart's overwhelming heat, which had now subsided back to its steady rhythm.

Kyrian stopped in front of him, his expression hard, his eyes gleaming with a dangerous light.

"You, tell me, what the hell is that?" he asked, his voice low, cutting through the cavern's silence with an icy sharpness.

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