243: Chapter 235 The Spirit of Wrath 2

If things had just stayed that way, it would have been fine; as long as those fire creatures still carried its power within them, they would be a great help. At worst, it would just have to spend a bit more power and time to reactivate them.

If push came to shove, it could even use them as a life-saving measure during a life-or-death crisis, resurrecting within a host body after its main body dissipated.

However, after Xu Yan restructured those fire creatures back into bodies of flesh and blood, he directly captured those 'ingredients' and stored them within the Shadowlight Realm.

To ensure stability and safety, the eight secret realms chosen as the screening grounds for the preliminary rounds naturally couldn't have levels or statuses that were too high; their upper limit was only at the early Overlord Rank.

Furthermore, although they hadn't been fully developed, the process of entering the secret realms and clearing out their top-tier combatants had still caused significant damage to the realms themselves.

The current eight secret realms were at the very bottom of the rankings among Overlord Rank secret realms, and might not even compare to some deep-seated Quasi-Overlord Rank secret realms.

In contrast, while Xu Yan's Shadowlight Realm had only recently been promoted to the Overlord Rank, it had legitimately devoured an entire Overlord Rank demi-plane—one that was top-tier, with deep accumulation, and had been cultivated and managed for hundreds of thousands of years by a race possessing a Mythical existence.

The gap between the two sides was like a chasm. Even at its absolute peak, with the help of thousands of host bodies, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire could only barely touch the upper limit of the secret realm.

At its peak, it didn't even have the qualifications to break through the secret realm, let alone now, after being suppressed by experts sent by the University League organizers, leaving it heavily wounded and only able to lick its wounds inside the volcano.

Under such a disparity, when Xu Yan was collecting the ingredients, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire noticed that those who carried its power completely lost contact with it once they were taken by Xu Yan. No matter what methods it used, it couldn't sense them in the slightest.

This situation left the Spirit of Wrathful Fire, which hadn't seen much of the world, feeling both shocked and enraged.

It wanted to stop Xu Yan, but because of the rule set by the experts who had swept the secret realm's top existences—that 'bosses should remain in the final stage'—it was unable to leave the magma chamber.

It wanted to have the fire creatures avoid Xu Yan and the others to reduce its loss of power, but it found that no matter how it manipulated them to hide or evade, the man and his two beasts seemed to have a full-map hack. They didn't even need to get close; every fire creature across the entire volcanic cross-section where they were located would be completely subjected to Reversing Fire and then captured.

In this way, under the angry yet powerless gaze of the Spirit of Wrathful Fire, Xu Yan led his two spirit beasts and captured every single fire creature carrying its power without leaving one behind. This was on top of all its connections to the outside world being severed during the previous suppression.

It could be said that at this moment, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire had reached its weakest state.

Originally, according to the 'dungeon' set by the organizers, the contestants were supposed to enter the volcano, fight and defeat fire spirits one by one, and while their own anger accumulated, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire would reclaim power from the dead fire spirits.

By the time a contestant entered the magma chamber, the stacks of anger on them, combined with the Spirit of Wrathful Fire that had gradually reclaimed its power to return to the Overlord Rank, would be fully sufficient to act as the highest-difficulty dungeon boss of the secret realm.

As it turned out, because of the existence of the Shadowlight Realm and Xu Yan's series of operations, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire—whose strength should have returned to the Overlord Rank—now only had an aura that barely reached the Monarch Limit.

With all these factors stacked together, finally seeing Xu Yan, who had weakened it to this extent, the resentment and anger in the Spirit of Wrathful Fire's heart naturally maxed out instantly.

Without any concealment or testing, the moment Xu Yan and the two spirit beasts entered the magma chamber, the Spirit of Wrathful Fire directly triggered the Law it had comprehended after reaching the Overlord Rank: Wrath.

Under the power of the Law, endless wrath began to gestate in the chests of Xu Yan and the two spirit beasts. As it rapidly grew and surged, it also repeatedly hammered at their sanity, attempting to make them completely succumb as puppets of wrath under the Law's power.

Had it been anyone else entering this secret realm, even Lin Heng and the others who had also come into contact with Law power at the Monarch Rank, they would have at least suffered a major setback and let the enemy take the initiative, if not outright failing.

Unfortunately, the one who chose and entered this volcano happened to be Xu Yan. Even more coincidentally, the spirit beasts accompanying Xu Yan into the volcano were Chi Ming and Qing Lan, beings who had comprehended the Law of 'Incense'.

Calming the mind, soothing the spirit, cleansing dust, and purification were the inherent strengths of the Law of Incense. The erosion of wrath used by the Spirit of Wrathful Fire on Xu Yan and the two spirit beasts fell precisely within the scope that the Law of Incense could counter and handle.

Facing the nameless fire of wrath rising in his heart, at Xu Yan's command, Chi Ming and Qing Lan's powers merged. A much larger Suanni, with an aura that clearly broke through the Monarch Rank level, appeared beneath Xu Yan.

Along with the appearance of this giant Suanni, thin wisps of green smoke began to rise and quickly enveloped the entire magma chamber.

The concentration and scent of the smoke were extremely light, but the moment it appeared, the wrath surging in the hearts of Xu Yan and the two spirit beasts began to recede rapidly. In just a few breaths, they returned to a state of peace and calm.

Not only that, but the Spirit of Wrathful Fire—whose anger had reached its peak upon seeing Xu Yan and the two spirit beasts, and which had recklessly exceeded its own limit of bearable wrath after forcibly activating the Law of Anger, causing it to lose its sanity—was also gradually being suppressed.

The Spirit of Wrathful Fire, its sanity returning, looked at the man and the Suanni before it who were watching it calmly without any intention or movement to attack. Though it was merely a mass of flames, it exuded an extremely intense feeling of powerlessness and despair.

However, even this feeling of powerlessness and despair was rapidly fading under the shroud of the smoke.

For the Spirit of Wrathful Fire, which was born from wrath and had grown to its peak to occupy the 'Source of Wrath'—a concept that could barely be called a 'Karmic Rank' within the secret realm—it would rather burn itself out, be consumed by the Law of Anger, and become its puppet, than be in this controlled, safe, and forced state of sanity.

However, no matter how it tried to burn its sanity, trigger the Law of Anger, and let the fire of wrath fill its body, it could not cause any hindrance to the fact that its own wrath was receding.

The idea of using sanity to control oneself into becoming angrier was a joke in itself.

Under the effect of the Law of Incense, the wrath on the Spirit of Wrathful Fire began to dissipate rapidly. Its state went from losing its sanity, to sanity returning, to finally losing its sanity once again.

However, compared to the previous loss of sanity due to wrath, this time it was because its own wrath had been reduced to a critical point, and the entire mass of fire began to become peaceful.

For the Spirit of Wrathful Fire, which mastered the Law of Anger, becoming peaceful was a far more terrifying thing than being back-consumed by the Law.