Chapter 328 – Assassination Attempt, StolenFlame, Tranquility, Wolfmother, and Invasion - Part 3

One evening, Li Yuan felt hot,

scorchingly

hot.

It was nothing like compressing demonic beast meat in his stomach. The Everflame’s breath gathered in his

lungs

, not his gut, and every draw felt as if molten iron poured into his chest.

Yet Li Yuan forced it tighter still, chasing that single, decisive breakthrough.

Li Yuan kept stacking and squeezing the heat inside him. Fortunately, he had already maxed out the sixth rank

Five-Viscera Gold-Swallowing Art

at Master level while compressing demonic beast meat; otherwise, the burning air would have seared his lungs to ash.

Yet the hotter it grew, the more exhilarated he became. Calm flickered into frenzy. He gulped air in long, husky pulls, then exhaled just as slowly.

Time lost its name; in the Evernight of this frozen tundra, he could have spent two months...three...who could say?

Even in sleep, his body blazed. His skin hovered around 60 odd degrees celsius. In his past world, a body temperature of 40 degrees would kill an ordinary man.

Irritation mounted, nothing could cool him—nothing except Snow, who helped bleed off the fire. But at last even, she couldn’t ease the restlessness. He began to despair.

Then, one night, hope.

Deep inside, the compressed warmth seemed to change state, as though all that pressure had sparked a tiny flame of its own.

Li Yuan’s joy lasted moments. A savage fever struck, laid him flat.

Snow packed his brow with a slab of ice, nursing him night and day.

At first, the chieftain and elders visited out of concern, but the sickness was bizarre.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Another month passed, then two, and three...

Li Yuan only worsened. His muscles wasted; fingers barely moving. Pallid heat steamed from his pores, and a foul sludge oozed from his skin.

Solid food nauseated him. only goat’s milk would stay down. Within his special vision, his stats sank the way he had once seen in the dying.

Suljagar poured every remedy he knew into the Grand Elder; nothing helped.

After half a year, babies were being born in the tribe while Li Yuan still burned.

The custom of the Trueflame Tribe never allowed the weak to hold high rank; Shen’dai Urttai reclaimed the title of Grand Elder.

Li Yuan’s tent was shifted away from the bonfire.

The whispers got uglier.

Once, the petty brute Changar cornered Snow, crooning that Li Yuan had offended the gods, that he was was finished, and she should take a new man.

Snow only spat back her refusal, and Changar slunk off.

Another month passed.

Most of the tribe forgot the meteoric rise of the former Grand Elder, seeing only a dying cripple.

Suljagar, after several more futile visits, could only shake his head. This was no illness he understood, so he could do nothing.

Snow finally decided to leave. She smuggled Li Yuan out while few were watching, hauled him back to their mountain cottage, and kept him alive with hunted meat, fish, and spring water.

But Li Yuan kept weakening. He watched his stats tumble with helpless clarity. Stand, and he fell. Try to summon power, and blood burst from every pore.

A curse of fire? But I felt the success... Maybe this agony is part of succeeding?

Li Yuan could wait no longer.

One day, while Snow was out, he dragged quill through blood‑stained sputum and scrawled—

“My dear Snow,

Wait two years. If I do not return, assume me dead.

- Jen’gal Yuan”

Then Li Yuan tugged the thousand-mile thread and flashed to the tiny, off‑limits lodge that served as the Tang Sect’s restricted grounds.

He knew his own body. Death was distant, but if he didn’t counter the fever, every breath would cook him alive. His mind buzzed, skin the color of boiled shrimp.

A bright‑eyed girl in brocade sprinted up, stopped dead, and squealed, “Mister Li?! You look like you’re literally boiling!”

Through the haze Li Yuan still recognised Tang Pang...and managed a faint, crooked smile.

“Chubby, go get your master.”

The girl quickly bolted inside.

Moments later, a red‑robed woman reeking of wine staggered out.

One glance at Li Yuan sprawled on the ground sobered her; she scooped him into her arms and hurried down the hidden stairs beneath the lodge.

It was Li Yuan’s first look at the underground palace. He could make out the gilt pillars, silk lanterns, and a small court of pampered heiresses from every great clan.

Tang Nian laid him on a couch wrapped in thick white gauze so no one could see his face.

Doctors came and went, each feeling his pulse, each leaving in mute astonishment. None could fathom how he still clung to life.

A month slipped by, and the first snowfall of the year returned to Cloudpeak Province.

One morning, Li Yuan rasped, “Send me to the black market ghost domain.”

Tang Nian agreed. She personally drove a puppet carriage, delivered him to Yan Yu and left without a word.

The blue‑robed woman cradled him like a child. She drifted to an open square at the heart of the black‑and‑white ghost world, and settled, letting his fevered head rest on her cool lap.

Light snow sifted through the eternal twilight; vortexes of Yin energy curled around them, chilling Li Yuan’s blazing skin.

Yan Yu stroked his hair like an doting sister scolding a mischievous brother. “I knew you’d try something crazy.”

“Hahah...” Li Yuan croaked.

A year of triumphs and disasters ran through his mind.

Many of his plans had gone up in smoke. The tiger had wandered down the mountain, only to be bullied by stray mutts. Illness had overtaken him, and he had fallen from the mighty Grand Elder to a worthless cripple.

The Deathless Tomb remained unexplored, and the tribes of the Nine Flames would surely storm the Great Zhou without him.

The many mysteries of that frozen land were still left unsolved.

“Stop brooding. Just focus on recovering,” Yan Yu murmured.

Pale fingers combed through his burning locks; with every pass, a wisp of Yin energy seeped into him, quenching the flame and balancing the heat.

The inner inferno no longer roared. Rain had started to fall on the prairie fire. Yet the embers endured.

He had siphoned off the Everflame from the Trueflame Tribe, keeping it within his body.

“I should have returned to you sooner,” he said, smiling faintly.

“Silly, you belong to the living world, not to me,” she answered.

Peace like none he had known in months slid over him, and he drifted into sleep.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A single pillar of red flame burned against the perpetual darkness.

Ten silhouettes cast long shadows. No tents sat around the fire, only a ring of giant direwolves, a hundred strong, silent and watchful.

Li Yuan would have recognized one figure—Suljagar, chieftain of the Trueflame Tribe, a bone crown on his brow. But he was not the leader here.

That honor belonged to the maiden at his right hand, the Wolfmother. Her beauty was austere, almost sacred; eyes dark as hidden depths, lips thin as a blade, and a cloak of white pelts draped over her shoulders.

A huge man built like a bronze furnace rumbled, “Revered Wolfmother, six of our nine tribes have agreed to leave this frozen waste and break into the outer world. Winter snows have sealed the passes; no one can reinforce their settlements. It is the perfect time to strike. We await your word.”

The Wolfmother lowered her gaze, thinking. At length she raised her head; her voice was cold, solemn.

“Go, my friends. I will send my children with you. Bring me news of victory. Show me the world beyond. I shall remain and guard this land, so that whenever you tire of war, you may return in peace.”

The bronze giant slapped his chest. “Good! With the Wolfmother’s blessing, we muster every warrior fit to fight.” He swung toward three silent chieftains who had refused to march. “Stay, then. But don’t expect a share when we seize the land of those weaklings!”

Last, he eyed the bone‑crowned Suljagar. “I hear your tribe found a mighty Grand Elder. Where is he?”

Suljagar sighed. “He is...gone.”

“Some

mighty

Grand Elder,” the giant sneered.

“He

was

mighty,” Suljagar said softly. “A pity.”

Snowflakes whirled through the firelight.

Far away, a young man slept beneath a ghost’s gentle hand, nursing a stolen flame in the dark.