As the crowd below began to disperse—one group trying to destroy the sources of the mist while the other defended it—Liu Xing kicked his shield and leaped high into the air. As he ascended, the black smoke hovering in the sky was all-encompassing, like a dark cloud. When gravity claimed him and pulled him down, he didn't fight it. Instead, he rotated his body, falling face-first toward an ascending dragon. Its twin heads regarded him with murderous expressions, their eyes shining brightly.

The dragon, made of fire yet as hard as rock, roared, creating hundreds of small fireballs that hovered around it like swarming flies. The human-headed half of the dragon shouted, and as if on command, each fireball shot hundreds of laser-like attacks toward him. He knew the fire dragon was trying to limit his movement. The lasers were fast, forming a deadly cage that would sever his limbs if he wasn't careful. Unfortunately for the fire dragon, this cage was nothing.

Liu Xing summoned his turtle statue and sent qi into it. As it grew larger and heavier with each passing second, its descent accelerated. The lasers tried to cut through the statue, and the dragon shot a jet of fire to push it back. However, the turtle was so heavy and so tough that neither the lasers nor the flames could stop it.

Soon, the statue's enormous size dwarfed the fire dragon, making it look like a mere lizard under an elephant's foot. The turtle fell with deceptive slowness, but it was actually plummeting like a meteor, hitting and then dragging the fire dragon down with it.

Liu Xing jumped off his turtle and ascended once more. The fire dragon roared, trying to shatter the statue, but he knew that at the last second, it would dodge to avoid being crushed. While fighting the creature, Liu Xing had been observing it, and he had come to a few key conclusions.

First, the fire dragon was neither smart nor strategic. It used various fire attacks, but ultimately, it only hurled fire at him—sometimes as a jet, sometimes as fireballs, and sometimes as condensed fire resembling plasma. Its attacks were easy to dodge, and its more elaborate tricks, like the recent laser cage, were easy to predict and counter. The dragon was certainly strong, and Liu Xing needed his entire arsenal to fight it. However, he was confident he could win.

Second, even though it was made of fire, it had a solid body. His palm strikes, crescent qi attacks, and his bullets all struck it as if it were solid. This raised a question. Why did it need to be solid, considering it was made of fire? There were several possible explanations, but his instinct offered a simple hypothesis. It needed a tough body to protect what was inside. And so, he suspected that inside it was some kind of core that sustained its fiery form.

As his turtle neared the ground, he saw the fire dragon roar, and instead of pushing the statue back, it flew to the side to avoid being crushed—the logical thing to do. Seeing this, Liu Xing's eyes sharpened. To destroy this fire dragon, he needed to destroy its core, and to do that, he needed a single, piercing strike.

Liu Xing didn't actually have that kind of attack, but that didn't mean he lacked an alternative. After all, he was holding his stone blade in his right hand.

When his turtle landed on the ground and sent a massive shockwave across the island, the fire dragon flapped its wings so rapidly that it shot toward Liu Xing, creating a huge boom in its wake. Liu Xing repositioned his body, summoned his shield—making the turtle statue vanish—and kicked it as hard as he could.

He and the fire dragon hurtled toward each other. To an outsider, it would have looked like a giant flame trying to attack the heavens, while the heavens sent down a single bolt of lightning to strike it down. Liu Xing shouted, his eyes focused, the wind whipping his hair. The fire dragon opened its mouth and created a fireball, but instead of shooting it, the dragon seemed to want to ram the fireball into him personally.

When the gap between them was mere meters away, instead of fighting head-on, Liu Xing re-summoned his turtle directly in front of the two heads. It was large enough to cover its heads, and its abrupt appearance made the fire dragon stumble into it like a speeding car hitting a wall. The fireball detonated, sending a huge jet of fire that shot the turtle statue toward him. Instantly, Liu Xing summoned his shield, making the hurtling statue vanish, and once again kicked the shield. The jet of fire was only centimeters from burning his feet, and while his skin could feel the heat, it didn't hit him. The dragon moved its head, trying to drag the jet of fire to hit him, but at that moment, Liu Xing swung his stone blade down.

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"Eat this!"

In an instant, his stone blade, shining with purple light, struck the lizard-shaped head. The impact created a deafening sound, but instead of slicing through, it just pushed the dragon down. His stone blade, as sharp as it was, couldn't cut it. Still, it was a full-power attack, and he could see a long mark on its head.

As the fire dragon fell, it flapped its four wings to arrest its momentum. Before it could fully stop, however, Liu Xing kicked his shield again, launched himself toward the dragon, and slashed down with his stone blade right on the mark he had created. This time, when the heavy, shining stone blade hit, he heard a faint crack amid the deafening sound and saw cracks appear around the mark. The dragon was pushed down again, this time hitting the ground and making the earth, surrounded by burning trees, surge as if it were water.

He launched himself at the fire dragon relentlessly. The dragon's movement speed was fast, but its large body was hard to maneuver. Before, Liu Xing had used large-scale attacks, but this time, he just swung his blade again and again, creating several marks on its body, then targeting them to crack the dragon's tough body. Several times he used his Exploding Fist bullets to push the dragon back or throw it off balance. His shark was nowhere to be seen, but he wasn't annoyed. Knowing Tide Walker, it was probably chomping on the necks of demonic cultivators.

The dragon struggled against him. It tried to ram him, create giant fireballs, and launch smaller ones, but Liu Xing was superior in maneuverability, and the fire dragon moved in circles like a dog chasing its tail.

Finally, after hundreds of attacks and with multiple marks marring its fiery body, he swung his stone blade down on the wide mark on its back. Instead of feeling like a stick hitting a boulder, his blade felt like a bat hitting a crumbling wall. It cut through, and shrapnel of fire flew around like fireflies. A moment later, he could see through a gap into the fire dragon. He wasn't surprised that the inside was hollow, but he widened his eyes slightly when he saw what it contained.

He had imagined a beast core floating inside, perhaps orange and fiery, or large and stone-like. But instead, through the gap, he could see a human body, charred beyond measure. It had two arms, two feet, and one head, but its skin was so damaged it looked like burned wood. Its eyes were red, like two pools of blood, its mouth open in an inaudible scream, and it clutched its face as if terrified. When it suddenly snapped its blood-pool eyes toward him, he was startled.

Liu Xing's instinct told him to kill it, and his body followed suit. He pointed his gun inside and pulled the trigger. An Exploding Fist bullet flew from his gun, entered the charred man's open mouth, and hit his charred black tongue. When it connected, an explosion so large detonated that it created a blinding light and a shockwave so strong he was thrown from his position. As he sailed through the air like a cannonball, wind rushing past him, his ears ringing, his eyes stinging, and his body aching all over, he realized the explosion was too powerful to be the result of his bullet alone. It was far beyond his expectations.

He pried his eyes open. The wind rushed in his ears, and he realized the resulting explosion had thrown him so far that the fire dragon looked tiny. Below him was a beach. He had been thrown from the middle of the island to its edge in a fraction of a second.

Realizing this, Liu Xing summoned his shield to stop his momentum. With a smooth motion, he used it to throw himself back toward the fire dragon. Even from afar, he could see that the creature still existed, which meant he had failed to kill it. Liu Xing gritted his teeth. He had never expected someone to be inside that dragon. He thought it was some kind of spirit beast, but it seemed to be a technique created by a human. Moreover, it had somehow countered his bullet and thrown him an incredible distance. Had it used some kind of technique to deflect and amplify the Exploding Fist bullet?

"That charred person..." he muttered, recalling the man's expression. He was an enemy, yet he had looked scared beyond measure, as if he were living inside a nightmare.

As the fire dragon grew closer, Liu Xing could see its form. While it was still alive, its body had sustained heavy damage. Its back was gaping, showing its insides to the world. The fire that composed its body had been reduced in intensity, its color a shade paler, as if the flames had grown weaker.

Liu Xing pointed his gun toward the fire dragon, contemplating whether to turn invisible, when his gaze fell to the side of his weapon. Six glowing stripes now adorned the side of his gun, and the bullets contained within the gun felt incredibly strong. Seeing and feeling this, his eyes widened slightly.

He was wrong.

It seemed he had actually killed that charred person, and his gun had absorbed his qi.

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