Western Desert Crisis Arc

Chapter 1200 ~ 1240 (LN)

When arriving back at base. Salan tortures the guy who tried to connect yiddish to xin xia, stating that he wanted to control the parthenon. But Salan objects, stating that yiddish can't be controlled, but lets him live due to good intentions. Later her adviser asks her about her daughter, Salan says he can do whatever he wants with her, but only after she reaches the age of 20 as she has promised to protect her. She later theorizes that the pope of the black vatican is behind the incident at the parthenon as the blood stone is something that you can only test for specifically and that more troubles are coming.

Upon arriving back at his apartment, he receives a phone call from his dad, but at the other end he idnetifies the caller as Yu Ang, he tells him that he has his father and that he is waiting for him on the mountain north of Bo and that he isn't allowed to call anyone for help if he wants to see his father again. Afterwards Yu ang infroms Yu Li, the brother of Yu yilin, the guy that mo fan killed, that Mo Fan is on his way. While Yu Li and his female assistant argue over whether or not all this is neccesary, Yu Li receives a call from his dad, Yu Hun. He tells him that this is to much, but Yu Li goes to fight mo fan anyway and has assembled 20 additional high tier mages to fight mo fan.

On his way to the mountain, Mo Fan is joined by Bora who sensed his master was in some trouble. When arriving at the mountain, mo fan lets bora loose and he instantly breaks 2 high tier mages and continues on. But then Yu Li arrives on the battlefield, he is observed to be a super tier mage. Mo Fan orders bora to fight him, he may break every single bone in his body but the guy must live. Mo Fan then goes to face the other high tier mages, some them start firing high tier magic at him but all of the attacks are stopped mid air with Mo Fan's time delay void magic and simply moves out of the way. Then the mind mages of the group fire a mental assault on him, but because there is a spiritual realm in between the mo fan and the mind mages (Mo fan is level 4 but the mind mages are level 3), the attack does nothing and mo fan whacks them all with void magic. At the rear, a hiding shadow mage tries to bind Mo Fan with mid tier shadow but mo fan appears behind him and gives him a taste of his own medicine and continues the assault. After 10 high tier mages were all defeated, Mo Fan went to Yu Ang who had been watching the fight. He begins pleading for his life but Mo Fan kills him instantly for causing the death of Xu Shaoting. Afterwards the female attendant appears and pleads Mo Fan to stop all this madness. Mo Fan interrups her and demands that they produce his father, she promises that his father is unharmed. Before she leads him off, Bora appears and is carrying Yu Li. As ordered, he has broken every single bone in his body right down to the pinkies and has cut every tendon in his body, but he still breathes.

When arriving at a brand new home, he finds his father alive and unharmed, but he had been heavily tormented mentally. His father seemed to have caught a whiff of what Mo Fan has done, he tells his father not to worry about it. Afterwards he and bora begin to bare down to the Lu compound. Many mages have heard what happened and have assembled infront of the mansion, but seeing that the guy carrying lu yi is a full monarch, they all get out of his way. Mo Fan breaches the compound and is faced with the head of the family Lu Hu. His sister pleads to kill them both outright but lu hu is hesistant as he has already buried his other son. They are interupted by a call from Shao Zheng. Afterwards Lu Hu promises not to go after mo fan again if he lets his son live and that he himself is responsible for both incidents has he hadn't been a good enough parent. Mo Fan and bora let lu yi go and simple get out of there.

When arriving back in Shanghai, Mo Fan tells ling ling the story of what happened at the parthenon and is immediately happy because when she isn't going on an adventure with mo fan, old bao requires her to go to school. She states that yan ji requires a strong source of fire to awaken yan ji from the fruit and that he is in luck. The master of the golden hunter group, the group that was slaugthered in mass on chongming island by salan's subordinates, is planning an expedition into an abandoned desert city with a nearby fire mountain and has been wanting to meet Mo Fan. She tells that they are going to need more than just the 2 of them so Mo Fan calls up mu nu jiao for support and has zhang xiou hou wait for them at the desert due to him being stationed at the other side of the country. At the airport, they are surprised to find that one of the hunters joining them on the mission is their old friend Jiang Shaoxu. She states that her brother dissapeared in the area and wants to take a look. On the plane, the veteran hunters of the golden hunter group question why some young guy along with 3 young women are coming with them and getting angry due to their arrogance. Mo Fan thinks that he has a point, as while the students have the international tournament, all the worlds hunters compete in the hunter games, something far more brutal and that hunting relies on experience more than cultivation. After getting of the plane near the desert, the veterans have reached their limit when they see that they are joined by someone who looks like they just left highschool, but when the pilots of the plane stand at attention and salute their superior officer zhang xio hou, the hunters are simply lost for words.

When reaching the desert, one of the hunters pulls out a monster scanner to determine their path forwards. He explains that there previously was busy city in the middle of the desert because there was a valuable mine in a mountain region in the desert, but a massive storm of desert birds destroyed the city. He warns them that the scanner takes about an hour to complete and that they would have to fight monsters for the entire hour. But to their surprise, not a single monster appears. They get information about the monster compositions for miles around. Ling Ling orders zhang xiou hou to do recon and he manages to lead a few monsters astray to clear their path, he finds a monster tribe in the way and the leader of the team, who is a super tier wind mage, leaves to deal with them. But when the sun starts to set, ling ling finds out why everything is so quiet. She realizes that the ground around them for miles is filled with giant plant traps, the same kind that mo fan and mu nu jiao saw in jin lin city, but they only come out of the ground at night.

One of the traps suddenly springs out the ground and the group has difficulty dealing with this one. Everyone knows they are in trouble and someone needs to find a way out of this mess. mu nu jiao volunteers and runs in 1 direction she believes to be save and all the young ones follow. But one of the veteran golden hunters doesn't trust it and follows in the other direction and suddenly finds him surrounded by 3 traps and is killed outright. mu nu jiao explains that she is capable of restraining the traps while they are still underground with the use of her plant magic and that she can clear the way for them and everyone follows her. After reaching a safe zone, the leader returns and finds that one of his best friends has been killed, but he decides to steady on.

The next morning they reach the side of an old river, one of the team members starts to sink into the ground, she is saved but they realize that the entire river bank is made of super soft sand and that everyone will slowly sink into the ground if they don't do something about it. Several plant, ice and earth mages manage to create a path forward but they eventually run out of power. To make matters worse, there are multiple monster tribes on either side of the river and there is a swarm of desert birds coming up right behind them. They are forced to use a bracelet that allows one to inject their magic stamina in someone else, regardless of the elements from which the magic is converted to/from, but it only has an efficiency of 30%. As such, only a few mages including mo fan have any magic.

After escaping from the river bed, the mages need to do another monster scan to find the next route and all the remaining mages get ready to fight. The golden hunters see this as an oppertunity to showcase their power and brag over their juniors. But it ends quickly when Mo Fan's mid tier level 5 magic boosted by a factor of 12 is more powerful than any of the hunter's magic and they all fall into depression. Afterwards Ling Ling calculates the next path and the magicians reach the abandoned city. While everyone takes a break, ling ling dispatches zhang xiou hou to do recon and to everyone surprise, he finds a survivor of the incident 10 years ago.

He appears to be a soldier from the military that stayed behind in order to complete his mission, but he refuses to divulge anything about it. Mo Fan asks about the fire mountain and the soldier tells him that he will take him to it, one of the other hunters asks the survivor about his sister, who was there the city fell and apparently knew the guy, the soldier agrees to show him something.

On the way to the fire mountain, the soldier tells them all that the mountain will light up in bright flames every night exactly at midnight and that for some reason they see that the desert birds fly into the mountain at this time for some unknown reason. Mo Fan leaves the group to climb the mountain by himself and the rest of the group is diverted by the military soldier. He takes them to his cave of where he was living for the last 10 years and showed them a grave, of where the hunter's sister was buried.

After waiting a whole day for the mountain to ignite again, mo fan takes out the fruit and leaves it on the center of the mountain and starts to cultivate in the giant flames. When the fire storm was over, he sees that the fruit hasn't absorbed enough fire energy yet and mo fan decides to wait another day. While he tries to cultivate, he is interrupted by a rather curious and young mutated desert bird who seems to be immune to the flame of the mountain. Mo Fan feeds it and suddenly starts to become attached to mo fan. At the next night, Yan Ji hatches from the egg and reforms its contract with mo fan. Afterwards Yan Ji absorbs some of the flame of the mountain to create another fire soul species that she and mo fan can use. When going down the mountain, he picks up an obsidian stone and scares away the bird that had been following them. But when he comes to the bottom of the mountain, he notices that something is terribly wrong.

Back at the gravesite, the entire team minus ling ling is surrounded and nailed in place with mid tier shadow. They are surrounded by a military major and around a hundred military mages. The golden hunter commander asks what the heck is going on to which the golden hunter who's sister went missing replies that he conspired with them to find the core of the earth, a priceless artifact and that nothing will stop them. The commander promises the major that he will not get away with this, but the major replies that he will, simply because the core of the earth is too valuable and that pretty much any crime will be let slide for something like that. The major says that only the soldier knows where it is hidden. He promises to lead them there but only if he lets the girls mu nu jiao and Jiang shaoxu. To everyone's surprise he lets the pair go.

When the duo returns to the run down city, they find ling ling, who went in to hiding before the soldiers went and grabbed them. She said that there is no way that the major would just simply let the girls go and has set some sort of trap for them. To her surpise she sees the swarm of desert birds coming towards them and suddenly realises, that the major is a super tier poison mage, that he has found a method of steering the desert birds around using chemicals and that he was probably the cause of the city disaster 10 years earlier. Seeing that there is no way that she can help them, she simply tells them to run and leaves them behind. She later runs into a shadow mage that was going around hunting down other survivors. She feigns ignorance to try to survive but he doesn't care and tries to kill her with shadow magic, but is saved by mo fan who sends him flying with void magic. He subsequently uses teleportation to catch up to the running girl duo and he combines with Yan Ji and uses her new high temperature fire (compared to the old medium temperature, high capacity) fire ability to burn the swarm and save the girls.

He and the girls return to try and save the rest of their team, but they find them in a pit surrounded by the 100 mages. Jiang Shaouxu analyses the situation with her spirit powers and finds that only 12 of the mages are in high tier. While the girls tell mo fan to slow down, he simply uses high tier summoning to summon his snow wolf and about 30 of his strong warrior brethren and lays down an assualt. While all the ~90 mid tier mages try to fight the horde of warrior wolves and fail miserably, 3 high tier mages try to attack mo fan. Mo Fan kills the first one outright with his lightning claws. The second one tries to use petrification to turn his skin to armor and then backs mo fan into a corner. But mo fan uses his shadow cape to dissapear into thin air and appear behind the charging mage and breaks him with high tier fire magic. The last high tier mage tries to back out but is struck by high tier plant magic by mu nu jiao.

After about half the mages were killed, they quickly surrendered and mo fan freed his captured comrades. He finds that both the soldier and zhang xiou hou is missing, the commander said that the major took them to find the core of the earth. Before the sets off to find them, he kills the remaining captured mages. Meanwhile the major a group of his closest allies, zhang xiou hou were lead to the core of the earth by the soldier and he produces it for them. The major sees that the core of the earth is out of energy and subsequently uses super tier poison magic to produce bee like beings to suck out the life energy out of the allies and feed them to the core of the earth. Afterwards he sends the bees towards the soldier and zhang xiou hou. The soldier sacrifices himself for xiou hou and mo fan manages to trap the bees in a cave to save xiou hou.

What's left of the team quickly leaves the desert and goes towards a nearby city and try to warn the local commander about what has happened. The team is kept outside on the grounds that the commander is busy and that a swarm of desert birds had appeared in a nearby town. But when the commander steps outside, mo fan and zhang xiou hou realize that the commander is none other than the girl that helped the both of them get mo fan out of rejection of the devil's blood crystal. She says that she understands the situation and tries to get them to help with the situation in exchange for dealing with the major. After arriving at the front millitary command post, they are in the command room and watch soldier preparing to enter the fray. They see that a city has been completely covered by the flying desert birds. The female commander explains that these events aren't that uncommon and that every city in the area has bunkers for such events and that all the citizens are probably safe, but the citizens have been down there long enough to the point where they have started to run out of food and water. So soldiers are about to be dispatched to deliver supplies to the bunkers. But upon the point of entry, all the mages try to use fire magic to burn the desert birds but none are killed and all the mages are killed instead. Mo Fan grabs the obsidian stone he picked up in the mountain and crushes it in his hands and finds a bird fetus in his hands and states that every single of the desert birds in that city is of the same species as the mutated bird that he found on the fire mountain.

Mo Fan heads towards the city, stating that his new soul fire species is capable of burning the birds and thereby create a barrier against the birds which would allow him to enter the city. He uses his own void pocket, capable of holding as much supplies as a truck. While he sets off for the bunkers, zhang xiou hou joins him in the field. When reaching one of the bunkers, he talks with some of the resident soldiers and they said that someone must have disabled the monster barrier and let the monsters in. He leaves behind the supplies and one of the soldiers leads him to the control center for the monster barrier. They arrive at the barrier and Mo Fan asks if he can substitute the fire source that they have been using for Yan JI, saying that his flame can burn all the mutated birds. The soldiers tries to set it up but finds that the barrier doesn't have any energy sources left to power it, concluding that someone must have sabotaged it. Mo Fan concludes that it was the military major and goes to find him.

Mo Fan finds the guy in a house on the edge of the city in a less than healthy state in a barrier made of poison creatures. He states that all the desert brids have been after the core of the earth aswell. The Major tries to shoo mo fan away but mo fan realizes that the sound of all he desert birds is preventing him from using super-tier magic. Mo Fan dons yan ji and starts to fight mo fan but the major's poison creatures are more than capable of holding of mo fan. But as soon as the major manages to make his way out of the bird storm, he is hit by the super-tier lightning of the female millitary commander and she thanks him for his assistance in this matter and confiscates both the core of the earth and apprehends the major.