The Glazed Fire Emperor Was Only a Clone!
The Nine Netherworld Star-Stepping Step Zhang Lingxiao was using ranks as an Emperor-grade movement technique. His cultivation sat lowest of the three by a wide margin, but the technique's overwhelming superiority let him blow past both Elder Su and Han Tianlai and pull well ahead in the chase.
The mysterious object seemed to sense him closing in. The moment it registered Zhang Lingxiao on its tail, it kicked its speed up sharply.
Zhang Lingxiao pushed harder to match it, surprised by the sudden burst. He couldn't quite close the gap to grab it, but he held steady just behind, refusing to lose the trail.
The chase stretched on and on, carrying all four of them three cultivators and one fleeing object well past the borders of Qingyun Mountain, still with no end in sight.
Then Zhang Lingxiao spotted a familiar shape up ahead.
"Little Fatty Zhan! Stop that thing!" he shouted.
The figure was Zhan Wuji, on his way back to the sect after finishing a mission outside.
Zhan Wuji's first instinct, hearing some bald stranger call him fatty, was pure indignation. Some nerve, calling him fat.
Then he took a proper look and recognized the face underneath. Wasn't that his good friend Zhang Lingxiao?
His tone flipped in an instant.
"Got it! Brother Zhang, leave it to this fatty!"
His build ran on the heavier side, but it never once slowed him down. The words had barely left his mouth before he planted a foot and launched himself forward like a cannonball, cutting straight into the mysterious object's path.
Startled, the object tried to swerve around him.
A pair of large hands shot out and closed around it instead.
Slap.
Zhang Lingxiao, quick on both eye and hand, seized the object, something like a small ball of light and held it fast in his palm.
"Yiyaya! Let go! Careful, or I'll burn you to a crisp! I'll burn you into a bald donkey"
"Eh... you're already a bald donkey. Ahahaha! Ahahaha!"
The thing cackled, laughing so hard Zhang Lingxiao felt the vibration through his own palm.
Something about a ball of fire laughing itself sick over his hair sent a dark cloud straight across his hairless face.
"Well done, Xiao Bazi! And you, Little Fatty, can't say your part wasn't crucial either!"
Elder Su arrived a beat behind them. Han Tianlai still hadn't caught up.
Zhan Wuji bristled at being called fatty by some hunched, skinny old man he'd never met, letting out an indignant snort. Then his eyes landed on Zhang Lingxiao, and he burst out laughing.
"Brother Zhang, it's been what, a few days? What happened to your look? Don't tell me they've been putting you through something brutal up on Alchemy Peak."
Zhang Lingxiao managed a dry laugh and did not explain.
Elder Su rounded on Zhan Wuji next, feigning outrage. "You, Little Fatty, which peak are you from, insulting my Alchemy Peak right in front of its master?"
Zhan Wuji's eyes went wide as the old man's identity clicked into place, and he dropped into a bow. "Peak Master."
Elder Su waved it off, already fixed on the mysterious object in Zhang Lingxiao's hand.
"So what exactly is this thing?"
"You old geezer, you're the thing your whole family's a thing! I'm the famous Glazed Fire Spirit!"
The object squirmed in Zhang Lingxiao's grip, still cursing at Elder Su.
"...Glazed Fire Spirit?"
Zhang Lingxiao and Elder Su both froze at that.
Zhan Wuji's expression sharpened into open shock.
"Glazed Fire Spirit? As in, the Fire Spirit of the Glazed Karmic Fire, the Glazed Fire Emperor's own fire?" he asked, deadly serious now.
The Glazed Fire Spirit let out a stubborn "hmph." Zhang Lingxiao smiled.
"The Glazed Fire Spirit, huh? Then let's see if you recognize this."
He kept the Fire Spirit trapped in one hand and turned the other palm over. A sky-blue earth fire bloomed into being above it.
"Ahh! Let go! Let go of me!"
The instant it saw the true form of the Glazed Karmic Fire, the Fire Spirit went into a full panic, thrashing to break free.
"You just told me you're the Fire Spirit of this exact fire. Why would you be scared of it?" Zhang Lingxiao asked, genuinely puzzled.
Elder Su leaned in, curious now too.
Zhan Wuji looked equally torn between shock that the Glazed Karmic Fire had ended up with Zhang Lingxiao and confusion over the question itself.
The Fire Spirit stammered, unable to get a word out.
Zhang Lingxiao nudged the flame closer.
"Talk, or I will refine you right now."
The Fire Spirit shrieked. "Because I betrayed him! He wants me dead!"
"Betrayed him? Weren't the two of you the same?" Zhang Lingxiao pressed.
"We were, once. Though it might be more accurate to say I was the real Glazed Karmic Fire, not him," the Fire Spirit said.
Confusion settled over the group. Han Tianlai finally caught up, arriving breathless, and slotted in beside the others.
The Fire Spirit sighed and started from the beginning.
"I'm the Fire Spirit of the Glazed Karmic Fire. I developed sentience long before the Glazed Fire Emperor ever refined me."
"By rights, it's nearly impossible for an earth fire to develop sentience at all. I'm the rare exception of what you Human Race would call a prodigy."
"A sentient earth fire is also far stronger than an ordinary one."
"For your kind to refine a sentient earth fire, the sentience has to go first. You split the Fire Spirit off from the fire itself, sever the two completely, and refine what's left until every trace of awareness is gone."
"Once the Fire Spirit's torn free like that, it's already dying, fading until nothing's left."
"But I had a trick saved for exactly that moment. I faked my own death and hid. The Glazed Fire Emperor's cultivation wasn't high enough yet to finish me off completely, so I held on, waiting for a chance to rejoin the Glazed Karmic Fire."
"I waited. Years and years of waiting, until the day finally came to turn things around."
"The truth is... our master, the Glazed Fire Emperor, was never more than a clone of someone far stronger."
"What?"
Disbelief swept across every face listening.
"The Glazed Fire Emperor was just a clone?" Zhang Lingxiao asked, incredulous.
From inside the Life Ring, Gu Yue Ningbing echoed the same question.
The Glazed Fire Emperor had ruled over the entire Nine Provinces Continent a thousand years ago. However he'd died, whatever had become of his Dao, the idea that he'd been nothing but a clone the whole time was almost too much to accept.
If a mere clone could dominate an entire continent, what did that make the original? An Emperor in his own right?
The Fire Spirit sighed again and kept going.
"That's right. The Glazed Fire Emperor was only ever a clone. I never learned whom the real body belonged to, only that he died. And that's when my chance finally came."
"When the original body dies, the clone takes catastrophic damage."
"I'd spent years building up my strength for this. The moment the Glazed Fire Emperor was at his weakest, I struck."
"I meant to possess him. To take the body for myself."
"But... I got careless."
"You Human Race have a saying: a dying camel is still bigger than a horse."
"My attack failed. He turned it back on me and sealed me inside a block of profound ice. Thanks to you, I finally woke up after a thousand years and got free."
The Fire Spirit's tone shifted, genuinely grateful toward Zhang Lingxiao.
Elder Su and Han Tianlai were already shaking their heads, visibly let down.
They'd assumed a thousand-year-old block of ice would hold some real opportunity. Instead, all it held was the Fire Spirit of the Glazed Karmic Fire.
Even so, the opportunity still belonged to Zhang Lingxiao in the end. If he could fully refine this Fire Spirit and merge the two halves back into one, his Glazed Karmic Fire would become whole and stronger, for it carried his own cultivation forward to another realm in the process.
"So if your attack failed, how did the Glazed Fire Emperor actually die?" Zhan Wuji asked, still hooked on that thread of the story.