It was well-known that "Where there is life, there is hope". As long as one was alive, he could obtain lots of treasures in the future. But if one died from greed, there was no use for more treasures.
Therefore, Junior Leopard decisively decided to leave.
That flame, however, seemed not to be willing to let him go.
It was really a short time between seeing that peculiar flame to deciding to leave and starting to get away. And in just such a short time that peculiar flame had reactions. It floated to Junior Leopard, rapidly and hastily. Junior Leopard wanted to escape but he was slower and less flexible than the flame. He was about to operate the Three Realms Division when he found that the sword he had swayed just now had expended all of his strength and Internal Qi. He couldn't operate the Three Realms Division successfully at all. Thus he just staggered twice and soon was caught by the flame.
"Ah — !"
It would certainly be no good to be caught.
The moment the flame touched Junior Leopard, he felt a stream of an unparalleled boiling flow rush into his body. Strange to say, however, that after rushing into his body, the boiling flow didn't burn as he expected. On the contrary, it blended with his Internal Qi.
When the black flame encountered the Internal Qi of Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire, it became disintegrated, as if one drop of water dissolving in the sea. But at present, no one could figure out which was the sea and which was the drop of water.
Junior Leopard was suffering great pain now.
The black flame entered into his body and became a stream of boiling flow, which blended with his Internal Qi of Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire.
It sounded like an amazing adventure that one gained a hundred years' inner force freely. At least the force of Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire increased greatly.
Actually?
Actually, Junior Leopard was on the verge of going crazy.
He was totally crazy now.
He imagined that a pot of boiling water was poured into him and was he forced to swallow it soberly!
Oh, what was this feeling like?
As a matter of fact, Junior Leopard was more in more pain than if boiling water was being poured into him.
Every tendons and meridian which flowed with Internal Qi was burnt. He couldn't bear such a high-intensive strength with his present body condition. But meanwhile, he couldn't gather this strength into his Dantian, either. Just in this motionless state, he felt great pain. Needless to say, if he reacted at all, he would have approached death!
Actually, the moment the black flame got into his body, Junior Leopard was brought into a trance condition. His consciousness started to break away from his body and he fell into darkness.
In other words, he was tortured by pain while in a coma.
To be more exact, his state now was in a vicious circle that whenever he was going to faint, he would sober up from the torture, then fainted and sobered up again. It turned into a seesaw battle in his mind. Again and again, he was totally in a trance. But what was amazing was that he still had one last thread of sanity. His sense of the presence of time was infinitely enlarged, with one single second seeming to last longer than a century.
"I'm going to die if I go on like this!"
That last sanity reminded him of the fact that if he did nothing, he would for sure be roasted like a suckling pig under the impact of the black psycho fire. "Damn it. How could I concern about so many things? Do or die!"
Bearing a huge torment, Junior Leopard gritted his teeth and got ready to gather the Internal Qi dispersed in the tendons and vessels together into his Dantian. In case something went wrong with this process, Junior Leopard opened his fantastic eye.
"Eh? Ah — !"
When his eyes were glowing with a red light, Junior Leopard was aware of some unusual reactions of the boiling flow inside his body. And then a great howl of pain was let out.
Before he could use this fantastic eye to research his inside condition, his Internal Qi began to travel as if it was attracted by something. It traveled towards his eyes through the tendons and vessels slowly.
Once again the boiling torment hit him. He still couldn't stand it and fell into the fine line between coma and soberness once again.
But this time, he could see clearly how his Internal Qi operated. It was traveling in a route which never appeared in his eyes.
With all his Internal Qi gathering in his eyes, the tendons and meridians were no longer fiery or painful. Junior Leopard gradually sobered up. His eyes, however, were swollen as if something was going to explode.
He couldn't see the fact that his eyes became totally transparent golden-red. The black pattern around his pupils became more and more clear. The air around his eyes was evaporated by the boiling heat as well.
None of this was seen by Junior Leopard. And then nothing was worthy of being expected. The Internal Qi inside his body was like waves, rushing up and down. His eyes then turned to be a solid dam. Having failed to strike the dan several times, his Internal Qi traveled back to the tendons and vessels along the original route, leaving Junior Leopard another pleasant bitter feeling.
The difference was that instead of staying in the tendons and meridians, his Internal Qi finally flowed to the Dantian bit by bit.
Junior Leopard had not figured something out until all the Internal Qi flowed back to his Dantian.
There used to be a small eddy made by Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire in the Dantian. Now in the center of this eddy, a tiny piece of black flame appeared. Occupying the center of the Dantian, it was about the size of a grain of rice, which was far different the black flame he saw just now. With its gleaming appearance, you couldn't even see anything without careful observation.
But changes did take place to his Internal Qi. The original golden-red Internal Qi of Nine Dragons Heavenly Fire turned gloomy after blending with that black flame, and dimly glimmered with a black light. Most important of all, Junior Leopard felt the power of his Internal Qi was strengthened after blending.
All of this happened in one moment. Because he soon fell into another coma from the torment inside his body.
He didn't know that the creature wasn't born to guard the rootless grass. It had found that rootless grass by chance, and the rootless grass was useful to it, as well. So it stayed there for several days to wait for it to mature, without predicting the possibility of an encounter.
This creature was a variation remaining from ancient times. Its name was Dragon Chimera, a famous fierce beast which took the dragon as its food. Being a bane of dragons, it had a small body. The biggest one of its race was shorter than 50 centimeters. But it had extremely hard scales, invulnerable and unassailable. Together with its rows of sharp teeth that could tear dragon's scales and shells apart easily, Dragon Chimeras would slip into a dragon's scale and into the abdomen and eat its body and drink its blood. At the same time, Dragon Chimeras also spawned inside the dragon, hatching its larvae with the dragon's endless vitality and nourishment.
Over the past tens of thousands of years, however, dragons had already died out. And so did the Dragon Chimera. It was truly shrewd, but its survival condition was harsher. Only being hatched inside of a dragon could increase its possibility of survival. If it were hatched in other creatures, it would probably die because the creature had already been drained before the hatching. Therefore, Dragon Chimeras disappeared together with the extinction of dragons.
Who knew where this Dragon Chimera came from. Sure, Junior Leopard was lucky enough to encounter it. Although this kind of ancient beast was fierce, the one he encountered just now was an offspring that survived by chance. Because of the extinction of dragons, this one was truly undernourished. With a low spiritual intelligence, it could only emanate less than one-tenth of its capability. Thus, it was spifflicated by Junior Leopard easily.
As for that black flame, it was an inborn technique of Dragon Chimeras. Only inside the body of a Dragon Chimera could this Mysterious Fire be gestated. But this Mysterious Fire could also not let out its power because of its lack of nourishment. As a matter of fact, this Mysterious Fire was only a small kindling inside the Dragon Chimera. And so, it could only spurt a small piece of flame and that would exert all its energy. On the contrary, if it didn't spurt that piece of flame, it may have continued chasing until now.
That was the so-called "It only takes one wrong move to end in total defeat".