Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex sat on his seat, confused for a few long seconds. He could still feel Scarlet’s location being in the exact place where it had been from the start, so the new Phoenix was most certainly not her.

He slowly stood up, wondering if the crow had made some mistake. Perhaps there was a different Feng Nuanhuo that he had ended up sending the message to. If that was the case, then Alex couldn’t imagine why the Phoenix would be angry with him at all.

It was just a genuine mistake after all.

“Greetings, Senior,” Alex said with a slight bow. “Yes, I am Alex, but I believe there’s been a mistake here. I didn’t call for you.”

Just as he said that, he heard the faintest of whispers from behind him as Bai Jingshen let out the words, “Oh crap!”

“So it really is you,” the Phoenix said, slowly stepping forward. “You’re the root of all my problems.”

“Huh?” Alex stepped back, both confused and worried. He couldn’t tell what the Phoenix was up to, but it didn’t feel right. He could almost sense the killing intent behind her words.

“Senior? Who are you? What are you doing?” Alex said, moving further away from the couch and back toward Bai Jingshen. Once he was next to him, he whispered for help.

“I’m sorry, but this one is all on you,” Bai Jingshen said. “I’m not going to help you deal with her mother.”

“Her… mother?”

“How dare you show your face here?” the Phoenix said loudly. “How dare you ruin my daughter’s life and then show up in front of our home. Do you think I won’t hesitate to kill you?”

Alex turned around, the words still taking a moment to make sense. “Umm, are you Scarlet’s mother?” he asked.

“Scarlet?” the Phoenix asked in an exasperated gasp that soon turned into anger. “Scarlet?! Her name… is Nuanhuo.”

The Phoenix raised her wings wide open, and Phoenix Flames sprouted out all around her. Tendrils of flame moved around the room, most doing nothing, but a set of them wrapped themselves around Alex, tightly gripping his arms and legs.

He was quickly lifted into the air, unable to break out of the binding.

“Grandpa!” Pearl said hurriedly. “Help him.”

But Bai Jingshen did nothing.

Alex felt the tightness of the binding flames, but surprisingly, they weren’t burning him at all. While they were hot, the heat seemed to be constantly counteracted by their own healing property.

So while he did feel pain from the burns, none of it could actually harm him.

That was not to say that the Phoenix was being lenient. She definitely had every intention to hurt Alex. In fact, she was trying to hurt him.

Only, Alex’s pain threshold had been so high to start with, and had grown even more after his trip to Hell. So no amount of punishment he was being dealt at the moment could do anything to him at all.

Alex struggled to get out of the flames, even trying to control them.

A flash of surprise passed across the Phoenix’s face for a second as she recognized his control over flames to be quite strong. However, he was too weak to steal control away from her own flames.

The Phoenix tightened the grip and waited for a scream that would never come.

Once Alex realized he wasn’t getting out of it — at least not very easily — he stopped struggling and looked down toward the Phoenix.

“Just to confirm, Senior, you are Sca— I mean, Nuanhuo’s mother, right?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” the Phoenix said. “I am Feng Xianhei. And you are the scum who bonded with my daughter.”

Her words were loud enough that many of the people in the building, including the crow from before, had come to see what was happening. However, when they saw that it was a Phoenix inside the room, they promptly left without saying a word.

Alex couldn’t tell what the issue was. Was she angry because he was bonded to Scarlet, or because he had left her alone for so long?

Surely it couldn’t be the latter.

“Senior Xianhei,” Alex called out quickly. “Please let go of me. If you think you can force me to drop my bond with your daughter, you can forget about it. That will not be happening.”

“What?” Feng Xianhei’s eyes widened in even more anger.

“If your daughter wishes to break off our bond, I am perfectly willing to do so. I won’t be happy, but I will do it. But you can’t force me to do it,” Alex said. “So, if that is all you have come to do, you can return knowing that you have failed.”

Alex’s words were more fuel for Feng Xianhei’s anger.

“You… little… human scum!” she shouted. “Not only did you take advantage of my daughter’s young age to form a bond when she didn’t know any better, now you dare claim that you won’t get rid of it?”

Alex paused for a moment. “What?” he asked. “No, I didn’t do anything of that sort.” ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novelꜰire.net

“Liar!” she shouted.

“It’s not a lie!” Alex shouted back. “She found me while I was unconscious. She was the one who bonded with me first. I didn’t take advantage of anyone’s young age.”

The feathers on Xianhei’s back seemed to glow brighter by the moment as her anger grew even more.

“You… continue to lie,” she said with a glare. “Do you want to be killed before you break off the bond? Is that it?”

Alex returned a piercing look to her, not giving up a single inch in their confrontation. He could tell Scarlet’s mother was ready to burn him up at any moment, but he wasn’t scared.

“Xianhei!” a low voice came from the door, carrying with it an authoritative might.

Scarlet’s mother froze for a moment, all emotions draining from her face. She turned around in a hurry. “Father?” she called out. “What… what are you doing here?”

The newly arrived Phoenix turned from his daughter over to Alex, and his eyes narrowed a little.

“I have seen you before,” he said. “Aren’t you the Sword God’s disciple?”