“You mean they’re deliberately luring us down?” Ye Liuyun asked Qiong Qi via mental voice.

“Very likely!” Qiong Qi confirmed.

“If the dragon soul can control the fire spirit, doesn’t that mean it’s extremely powerful?” Ye Liuyun pressed.

“Not necessarily. Those fire spirit have almost no intelligence—easy to herd. And I’m only guessing; it might not even be a dragon soul at all. But if there is one, hiding inside its own core flame would keep it perfectly preserved.”

Qiong Qi still couldn’t gauge the soul’s strength; he’d simply noticed the fire spirit behaving oddly and suspected a trap.

He kept reassuring Ye Liuyun: “With cultivators this powerful around, how could none of them have sensed the flame energy here?”

Only then did Ye Liuyun realize they hadn’t seen a single human cultivator since arriving. If the flame power were easy to claim, the top experts would have taken it long ago.

So the danger had to be far greater than what they’d seen—at the very least, cultivators at the seventh or eighth tier of Unity couldn’t retrieve this fire.

He himself had no good plan for the threats ahead, yet pulling back without seeing the truth down below would leave him unsatisfied.

His descent slowed, hesitation obvious.

Qiong Qi sensed it and comforted him: “I’m just warning you—don’t overthink. Down there we’ll mainly face flame energy and soul attacks. Those elite cultivators don’t dare descend, but we can handle both. As for other humans, we’ll deal with them after we leave; if it comes to it, we’ll blast them with the war chariot.” 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Ye Liuyun nodded to himself: he had the Myriad-God Token and two clones—his soul force was more than strong enough. And for flame power, all three of them could absorb it, plus Qiong Qi had his furnace; the risk should be manageable.

They resumed their former speed—and not a single fire spirit attacked again.

“Haha! The soul controlling them must have seen your hesitation and stopped the attacks, afraid it’d scare you off!” Qiong Qi laughed into Ye Liuyun’s mind.

The bottom of the magma cavern opened into a vast space. At its center pulsed a colossal blob of scarlet sea-core flame, inside which danced a gold-red core fire. Coiled within that gold-red blaze was a crimson dragon soul, eyes locked on the three newcomers.

Around the sea-core flame lounged far larger fire-spirit sea-beasts. When the red dragon soul saw Ye Liuyun’s group continue downward, it exhaled in relief.

A mental command rippled out; the fire spirit scattered wide. Several, shaped like dragons, radiated power equal to eighth-tier Unity cultivators.

Unhindered, Ye Liuyun’s party reached the cavern floor—yet their vigilance only sharpened.

He had already spotted the sea-core flame, its gold-red heart, and the dragon soul. While sweeping the perimeter he spoke again to Qiong Qi.

“Your guess was spot-on: the dragon soul and core fire are both nurtured inside the sea-core flame. I can handle the soul. But there are too many surrounding fire spirit, and they’re strong. If they rush us together, can your furnace hold?” He summoned Zhuque back into storage first.

“For the really powerful ones I still have to collect them one by one. But don’t you also have the Heaven-Swallowing Cauldron? It should store flame too—why not use it?”

The remark reminded Ye Liuyun that, since acquiring the cauldron, he’d hardly employed it.

He disliked over-relying on treasures, and had planned to reserve the vessel for alchemy; he’d never tested whether its grade was high enough to trap these spirits.

He produced the cauldron and studied it doubtfully.

“That pot could swallow the very heavens—surely it can hold a few fire spirit?” Qiong Qi prodded.

“I have to test it first.”

Unwilling to risk failure at a critical moment, he gripped the Heaven-Swallowing Cauldron and shot toward a sixth-tier Unity fire spirit, thrusting the mouth of the vessel forward and activating its suction.

Whoosh! Before the spirit could react, it was yanked inside.

“It actually works!” Delighted, Ye Liuyun felt the cauldron might be even handier than Qiong Qi’s furnace.The cauldron didn’t stop at swallowing fire-spirit demons—it even gulped down a good chunk of the surrounding magma.

Everything it took in was simply locked inside; nothing was refined. He could digest the captives at his leisure later.

“What grade is this thing, anyway? ‘Above divine’ is just a blanket term—there have to be more specific ranks above that.” Ye Liuyun made a mental note to find an expert once they got out.

The dragon soul in the flames froze. It had sensed earlier that Ye Liuyun seemed to spot it, but when he looked away the soul couldn’t be sure.

Now, watching him pocket an entire fire-spirit demon with a wave of his hand, the soul felt real danger. It roared—part directions, part command—ordering every fire-spirit demon to attack.

With the cauldron backing him, Ye Liuyun strode straight toward the dragon soul, Qiong Qi at his side. The beast hopped out of its furnace, wielding the stove like a vacuum, sucking demons one by one—slowly, two at a time at most—while Ye Liuyun’s Swallow-Sky Cauldron never paused, indiscriminately devouring demons and magma alike.

A visible vortex drilled downward; magma howled into the mouth of the cauldron. The shrieks of the fire-spirit demons set the entire lake of lava quaking.

Ye Liuyun saw several top-tier demons shaped like fire-dragons; even they couldn’t escape the pull.

He’d once promised the Dragon Clan: if this soul didn’t strike first, he would escort it to the Dragon Graveyard.

The dragon soul, watching the cauldron’s terrifying suction, grew anxious—afraid its own essence-flame would be next.

But the moment the last fire-spirit demon vanished, Ye Liuyun stopped. Qiong Qi followed him to the massive subterranean essence-flame, where the soul waited.

No longer hiding, the dragon soul burst out ahead of them, unleashing its soul pressure, trying to pin them down before they could raise cauldron or furnace.