Chapter 4：Abyss-Devouring Flame
Tang Xiao's hand, wreathed in deep blue-black cold, descended like a death-claw capable of freezing all things. Its whistling arc tore through the air, savagely aimed at Lu Chen's left wrist, where the Scar of Paradox-Light burned! The icy killing intent and ravenous madness instantly froze Lu Chen's thoughts!
*No escape! No defense!* The fragile equilibrium between light-fire, extreme cold, and shadow-magma within him, forcibly hammered into place by the Source-current's lament, shattered under this mortal threat! Lu Chen's pupils reflected the rapidly enlarging ice-claw; death's shadow had never felt so real!
Just as the freezing claw was about to touch the skin of his wrist—
The wildly twisting "frost-flame" on Lu Chen's left palm gave a violent *jerk*! Not an attack, but an instinctive, violent *repulsion* against the kindred cold! The pale flame at the frost-flame's core abruptly compressed and *detonated*; the outer layer of azure ice crystals thickened and sharpened in immediate response! The entwined filthy shadow and magma sparks, like provoked vipers, lashed out furiously!
*SKREEEEEEE—!*
Tang Xiao's ice-claw slammed onto the rapidly thickened azure ice!
No sound of rending flesh. Only an ear-piercing, teeth-grating shriek, like diamond scoring ancient glacial ice! Deep blue-black cold clashed and ground violently against the frost-flame's azure ice, exploding into a shower of fine, dark blue ice fragments!
A flicker of astonishment crossed Tang Xiao's ice-blue right eye! His claw, potent enough to freeze steel and plunder energy, was actually blocked by this seemingly fragile ice! More alarming, the cold radiating from the ice held a quality kin to his own, yet infinitely more chaotic and impure—even... a trace of the icy will carried by the Source-current's lament!
Yet, madness instantly crushed Tang Xiao's shock! His right arm muscles bulged. Deep blue cold surged like a breached glacial river, pouring relentlessly into the claw, striving to break through, to freeze the core flame!
"Strip it... from him!" he roared, dark red, icy blood seeping anew from his lips.
The frost-flame flickered and twisted wildly! The pale flame core guttered under the external cold's pressure; the azure ice groaned, fracturing under the assault of its stronger kin! The filthy shadow and magma sparks, provoked to greater ferocity, writhed like parasitic vines *up* Tang Xiao's ice-claw along the flowing cold, seeking to corrode and consume!
As the two powers locked in their deadly contest over Lu Chen's palm—
Another anomaly erupted!
The pure obsidian Abyssal Taint on Tang Xiao's left cheek, violently stimulated by the filthy shadow essence within the frost-flame, suddenly *boiled*! No longer slow erosion, but churning like ink brought to life! Viscous, filthy shadow-matter, like awakened venomous insects, burst forth from the tainted region! It ignored physical barriers, penetrating skin and flesh, carrying a nauseating aura of decay as it lunged ravenously at the nearby frost-flame!
This sudden, self-inflicted shadow backlash shattered the stalemate!
*SKREEEEE—!!!*
Frost-flame, Tang Xiao's extreme cold, and his own erupting filthy shadow collided between Lu Chen's palm and Tang Xiao's claw in a cataclysm far more violent and uncontrolled than anything within Lu Chen!
No thunderous blast. Only a soul-freezing, bizarre hum of matter and energy being violently torn apart, annihilated, and reconstituted!
A fist-sized, violently unstable vortex of energy materialized!
At its core, pale flame and deep blue cold raged against each other! Swirling around it, two streams of filthy shadow—one from the frost-flame's "vines," one from Tang Xiao's erupting "insects"—tore at each other, devoured, fused! Magma sparks danced and exploded at the vortex's edge like desperate fireworks!
Terrifying energy turbulence detonated instantly!
"URGH—AAAAAGH!!!"
Lu Chen and Tang Xiao screamed in unison! As if struck by an invisible battering ram, both were violently hurled backwards!
Lu Chen slammed onto the ice a dozen meters away. Ice cracked beneath him. Blood gushed from his mouth. Clothing on his left arm, from palm to elbow, vaporized instantly. His skin was a horror of fine, lacerated wounds, as if simultaneously flayed by countless ice needles and branding irons! The Scar of Paradox-Light hadn't extinguished, but flickered like a dying candle on his charred, cracked palm. Its core pale flame dimmed to ember-glow; its azure ice layer was webbed with cracks; the entwined shadow and sparks had nearly vanished. Worse, the fragile internal balance was obliterated. The three forces waged savage war within him once more, agony threatening to drag him into oblivion.
Tang Xiao staggered backward, crashing against a massive azure ice prism with a *CRACK* that shattered it! He fell to one knee, his right hand clamped over his left cheek! The erupting filthy shadow hadn't fully dissipated. Part of it, like frenzied vines, coiled around the right arm he'd used to grab Lu Chen, voraciously corroding flesh and the cold energy within, leaving trails of charred, rotting wounds. The rest retracted into the tainted region on his face, but the obsidian stain had visibly *expanded*, its pure blackness now tainted with a deeper, more ominous crimson beneath! The writhing azure ice on his face, fueled by the backlash and the shadow's erosion, surged more violently, spreading across his entire cheekbone below his right eye! Agony and sudden power depletion blurred his vision. He retched, vomiting dark blood mixed with ice shards.
Silence, thick and heavy, fell over the cavern. Only their ragged, pained gasps and the sizzling remnants of the annihilated energy vortex broke the stillness.
Then—
*"Oooooom—"*
The ancient Source-current's lament pierced the void once more, resonating clearly in the deathly silence!
But this time, its tone had *changed*!
No longer pure agony and sorrow. The low hum now carried a trace, faint yet unmistakable... of *astonishment*? And an indescribable... *anticipation*?
The lament's source seemed to pierce the thick ice-dome and churning magma, its "gaze" precisely fixed on the Scar of Paradox-Light, guttering yet stubbornly alive on Lu Chen's palm!
*Huuuuum...*
With this lament, imbued with complex emotion, a stream of power—weak, yet impossibly pure and cold—seemed to traverse space and matter, flowing directly into Lu Chen's nearly shattered body!
This power wasn't the chaotic dumping of before. It held purpose—acting like a master artisan, instantly slipping into the fissures between Lu Chen's three warring forces!
*Hiss! Crack! Sizzle!*
Lu Chen's body convulsed! The three raging forces within him, locked in mutual destruction, were suddenly "mediated" by this pure, icy influx! The conflict didn't cease, but the annihilative *impact* drastically lessened! Light-fire, extreme cold, shadow-magma still surged and ground through his meridians, bringing agony both scorching and freezing, yet it was no longer chaotic detonation. Instead, it formed an excruciating, yet relatively stable... *cycle*!
The core of this cycle was the faintly flickering Scar of Paradox-Light on his left palm!
But the more astonishing change occurred *outside*!
Beneath Lu Chen's palm, the small fissure oozing filthy shadow and magma sludge at the ice lake's edge reacted to the Source-current's strange field and the frost-flame's weak aura. The surrounding ice emitted faint *cracks*. Strands of *refined* filthy shadow energy and searing magma essence were forcibly "extracted" from the fissure's depths! Like summoned serpents, they slithered, *willingly*, towards the frost-flame!
The frost-flame *devoured* this pure "sustenance"! Like dying embers doused with oil!
*WHOOSH—!*
The guttering flame surged! Doubling in size! The pale flame at its core, though still cold, burned with a strange, newfound stability, no longer wild and explosive. The outer azure ice rapidly repaired and thickened, becoming more translucent, harder, radiating a deep, anchored cold. Most bizarrely, the nearly vanished filthy shadow and magma sparks transformed. No longer chaotic tangles, they became slender, fluid patterns—intertwining threads of dark crimson and pitch black, like living runes—etched into the boundary between pale flame and azure ice. They flowed slowly with the flame's pulse! A wave of power—cold, deathly, yet paradoxically hungry and consuming—rippled outwards!
Gasping in pain, Lu Chen looked down at the cluster of burning, rune-etched azure frost-flame in his left palm. Stunned disbelief warred with agony within him. The pain remained, but the relatively stable, agonizing internal cycle, coupled with this sentient-seeming flame "breathing" the surrounding tainted energy, gave him a sense of... *mastery*? However tenuous, however perilous.
The Scar of Paradox-Light... it had come *alive*? It was... *feeding*?
A dozen meters away, Tang Xiao, having barely suppressed his churning blood and the shadow's encroachment, snapped his head up!
His ice-blue right eye locked onto the stable-burning, rune-pulsing, cold-devouring frost-flame in Lu Chen's palm! His face contorted utterly! Shock, fury, incomprehension, and a sliver—unacknowledged, washed by the icy influx—of dawning clarity and... *dread*?
"The Source-current... *feeds* it?!" Tang Xiao's voice was a distorted rasp, carrying soul-deep horror. "This filthy... symbiont... it's become... the Source-wound's... *'scab'*?!"
He struggled to rise, but searing pain and numbness flared from the taint on his left cheek. The wounds on his right arm, self-inflicted by the shadow, worsened. The writhing azure ice stiffened half his body like stone. He could only stare, transfixed, at Lu Chen, at the burning frost-flame. The mad fire still burned deep in his ice-blue pupils, but it was momentarily banked by the icy power that had surged into him from the lament, mingled now with a profound, unprecedented wariness of this unknown force.
At that moment—
*BOOOOOOM—!!!*
An earth-shattering, mountain-rending roar erupted from the direction of the sealed magma fissure! The entire cavern heaved like a ship in a typhoon! Massive ice pillars plummeted from the ceiling; the ice lake surface fractured into a web of enormous crevasses!
The ice-dome's seal—Tang Xiao's life-draining creation of azure and deep black—now resembled fragile glass, covered in horrifying, gaping cracks! Viscous, filthy shadow-matter gushed forth like floodwaters breaching a dam! Alongside it, blindingly white-hot magma torrents erupted! Shadow and magma twisted together into a destructive river of murky crimson, savagely battering the crumbling seal!
An aura of terror—vastly larger, infinitely filthier, radiating endless destruction and ravenous hunger—exploded from the fissure's depths like an awakening primordial beast! It locked onto the only two life forms in the cavern!
The Source-current's lament soared, sharp and urgent! This time, the hum carried no astonishment or anticipation. Only crystal clear—
*Warning!* And... *Terror!*