You promised to wreak havoc on the dungeon, but instead you've got Dragon Slime!

[Wang Ying is not dead, the fire gate is not closed.]

Viser leaned over to take a look, and his face turned completely pale.

“This is not the city-refining diagram, this is the control diagram of the royal furnace… If you take one more step forward, you will enter the ‘sacrificial mouth’ of the royal fire.”

"What, are you scared?" Ron looked at him.

“It’s not fear,” Viser gritted his teeth, “it’s that if we go any further, there’ll be no turning back.”

"We had no way back."

After Ron finished speaking, he put away the map, looked up at the Grayhound people, and asked, "Who is your leader?"

The group exchanged glances, then simultaneously looked towards a dilapidated building.

Half a corpse was buried there.

The skeleton of the gray scales, with lingering gray flames in their eye sockets.

Ron walked over, knelt down on one knee, and pulled the body out of the ashes.

Once pulled out, the bones automatically disintegrate.

Only one domino was still warm, with a single character engraved on it.

——【Alliance】

“They’re waiting for a new head,” Claudia said.

“Not a new one.” Ron looked up. “They’re waiting for someone who can reignite the furnace.”

"you?"

"I am not the head, I am the fire."

He held the dominoes in his palm, and as soon as the flame flickered, the dominoes turned red-hot.

The Gray Nest tribe members knelt down in unison.

“It’s not fear, it’s a sense of belonging,” Viser said in a low voice. “Ron, you’re no longer human.”

"I am fire."

Ron stood up and looked at the darkness at the end of the fire pattern.

"From this moment forward, Gray Nest obeys orders, and the dungeons are returned to the furnace."

Further down the dungeon, the paths are no longer for human use.

The fire patterns had faded, and the floor tiles underfoot had been replaced with bone bricks, which creaked and groaned when stepped on. They weren't stone, but made of pressed bone, and some still showed traces of bone structure.

Claudia cursed under his breath, "This isn't the ground, it's a pile of corpses."

“It’s the old sacrificial layer.” Viser touched the patterns on the wall, his fingertips brushing off a layer of ashes. “In the early days of the Empire, to light the furnace, you had to offer soul fire. Back then, the fire was unstable and uncontrollable, so they sent prisoners here.”

Why send it down?

"burn."

When Viser said those two words, he spoke very softly, but no one found it funny.

They reached the end of the well, which was sealed with an iron gate.

The well wasn't round; it was polygonal, with copper nails embedded in the four corners and three layers of fire-sealing talismans pasted in the middle. It was clear at a glance that this thing wasn't for preventing entry, but for preventing exit.

Ron placed his hand on the door, but the fire did not move.

But his heart skipped a beat.

It was as if something inside the door was pressed against him, listening to him.

Viser's face changed drastically. "Don't open it! This is the 'King's Fire Mouth.' If you open it and it's still alive..."

“It’s alive,” Ron said.

He doesn't just guess now, he knows.

The spark within him was stolen from this thing. Now, standing at the doorway, it's as if he's awakened the lingering embers of that old flame.

"Then why are you still driving?" Claudia glared at him.

"I want to go in."

"What are you going in for? The Alliance is unstable right now, the war with the Empire isn't over yet, and Grayhound just took over. Are you going to go in and get yourself killed?"

"This is the furnace core."

"Nonsense, I know that's the core of the furnace!"

"I want to know how it was made."

Claudia was about to curse again when she suddenly heard a sound.

thump—

The door moved by itself.

It wasn't Ron who did it.

There's something pushing the door out from the other side.

Viser stepped back and pulled out the talisman.

Ron took a step forward.

"You are crazy!"

“It doesn’t want to kill me,” Ron said calmly. “It’s hungry.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the door clicked open a crack.

Gray flames crawled out like snakes, darting upwards along Ron's arm.

Everyone else withdrew.

Only Ron stood still, the black and gray flames on his arm intertwined.

It's like two similar species, testing whether they can mix together.

He didn't cry out in pain.

The fire shot up his arm, up his shoulder, down his neck, and finally lit up his entire back.

The fire was gray, but it turned purple on him.

Viser was stunned.

"This isn't a pure spark... this is a dual-furnace system."

"Say it again?" Claudia didn't react.

“There are now two furnaces inside Ron’s body.”

"You're saying he has two furnaces inside his body?"

Chapter 175

“No!” Viser lowered his voice. “He became the conduit between the two furnaces.”

The moment those words were spoken, the surrounding air seemed to sink.

Ron stepped through the door.

“Don’t follow me,” he said. “I’ll go in alone.”

No one said a word.

The moment he stepped inside, the fire pattern behind the door lit up by itself, and the sound of the door closing was like an iron lid being slammed onto a coffin—thud!

Then the entire wall fell silent.

Ron entered the "King's Fire Mouth".

It's not a room, it's a passageway.

The walls were gray, with bone patterns, and beneath his feet was a long path forged from fire bones. With each step, flames would automatically leap up, casting a fiery shadow over his body.

But he has more than one shadow.

He is walking.

Even the shadow is moving.

One veers to the left, the other to the right.

He stopped.

The two shadows kept moving.

“…You are not me,” Ron said in a low voice.

The Hokage looked up at the same time and smiled at him.

It has no face, only a shadow.

But he knew—

This is the "other him" that the throne is meant to create.

Ron didn't say anything, but took out a bone talisman and stuck it directly on his body.

Fire patterns explode!

The Hokage exploded simultaneously, sticking to the ground and turning into two puddles of black ash, which were then swallowed by the fire pattern.

He looked up and continued forward.

At the far end, there was a huge stone tablet.

The stone tablet was densely covered with characters, but there were no pictures; it was all old text from the empire.

He read it aloud one word at a time.

The furnace originates from fire, not from man. The king is not seated by man, but chosen by fire.

[Offer 300 bones, and you'll receive one portion of the furnace. Offer 30,000 hearts, and you'll ascend to heaven in flames.]