A magical journey of a sharp-tongued woman and a goofy man

The moment the sulfurous odor exploded in their nostrils, Jiang Ye had already dragged Ye Shuli back three zhang away.

The black iron dagger was driven into the spot where they had just stood, and lava gushed out from the hilt, etching charred array patterns into the ground.

"The teleportation array's positioning error exceeds fifty meters." Ye Shuli stared at the melting dagger, her fingertips tracing the scalding rhomboid crystal inside the brocade pouch.

The quantum entanglement effect brought about by the time travel is intensifying. This crystal, taken from the core of the Ice Soul, resonates with the faintly visible gear-like phantom in the sky, making her hands go numb.

Jiang Ye spat out the candied hawthorn skewer from his mouth—which had been hastily made from a broken enemy blade—and suddenly reached out and pressed down on the back of her neck.

Warm spiritual energy flowed into her body along her Du meridian, forcibly severing her resonance frequency with the crystal core. "Let's deal with the immediate problem first."

The entrance to the Land of Fire resembles an inverted furnace, with crimson magma churning within a transparent barrier.

Ye Shuli's ice silk robe began to curl at the edges, and Jiang Ye casually tossed out three water spirit talismans, but the talismans vaporized into white mist the moment they touched the barrier.

The two exchanged a glance and simultaneously pressed the elemental crystal cores into each other's palms.

The energy fluctuations generated by the clash of elements tore open the cracks in the barrier, and a heat wave carrying sulfurous fragments rushed towards us.

Jiang Ye shielded Ye Shuli under his cloak, sparks crackling as they struck the silver threads embroidered with fire-repelling spells.

Blood seeped from the wound on his lower back, which condensed into reddish ice crystals in the high temperature.

"A mere beginner-level Spirit Master dares to trespass into a forbidden area?" The powerful sound waves caused a pillar of magma to shoot into the sky, and the Flame Guardian emerged from the boiling lava pool.

Its three-zhang-tall body is made of flowing obsidian, and what leaps in its eye sockets is not flame, but a white spiritual flame compressed to the extreme.

Golden light from Ye Shuli's fingertips illuminated the array-breaking technique, but her voice was laced with a sweet laugh: "Senior, you've misunderstood. We're here to retrieve the crumbs from under your fingernails." The six elemental crystals in her palm suddenly floated into a ring, and the refracted seven-colored light spots landed precisely on the crack in the guardian's chest.

The guardian's giant lava hand froze in mid-air.

The old wound inflicted by the ancient weapon began to seep out spiritual essence uncontrollably, and pure fire element transformed into a fine rain of crimson gold that fell softly.

Jiang Ye's black iron sword sheath had long since become a water container, making a cheerful clanging sound.

"The principle of modern prism refraction," Ye Shuli explained to Jiang Ye in a whisper, while her left hand, hidden in her water sleeve, pressed the Ice Soul Crystal into the ground.

The extreme cold air flowed upstream along the magma currents, condensing into frost traps that were barely visible to the naked eye beneath the guardian's feet.

The guardian let out a deafening roar, and the lava pool instantly increased tenfold.

Jiang Ye pulled Ye Shuli onto the floating obsidian fragments, the lava torrents grazing the soles of his boots and singing the ends of his hair a scorched yellow. "Attack interval forty-seven seconds!" he shouted in the howling hot wind, his swung ice spikes piercing precisely into the guardian's right shoulder ley line node.

Ye Shuli spread out spiritual energy threads on the bumpy obsidian, and the spider web-like detection network spread out along the heat wave.

When the eighth lava eruption arrived as expected, she suddenly clenched the silk thread in her hand.

Those seemingly chaotic energy fluctuations concealed a tremor that resonated perfectly with the gears of the sky.

Suddenly, a bright light burst from the crack on the guardian's chest, and the world-destroying fireball that was about to take shape was forcibly retracted into its body.

At this moment, Ye Shuli's Ice Soul Crystal emitted a buzzing sound, and the frost trap on the ground appeared, freezing the flowing obsidian body and creating three cracks.

"Now!" Jiang Ye's sword, imbued with the power of six elements, pierced the crack, but was melted by the high temperature the instant it touched the spirit core.

Ye Shuli suddenly threw the gold hairpin from her hair into the lava pool, and the ice core embedded in the hairpin reflected seven layers of light.

The guardian let out a painful roar as its massive body crashed into the lava.

As the surging red tide gradually subsided, Ye Shuli's embroidered shoes were stepping on the guardian's brow.

She bent down to pick up the flickering flame essence and suddenly discovered that deep within the other party's obsidian body, mechanical patterns of the same origin as the celestial gears were faintly emerging.

In the guardian's fading pupils, the last wisp of spiritual flame suddenly condensed into the shape of a clock gear.

As Jiang Ye chewed on his newly made flame-shaped candied hawthorn and came over, he saw Ye Shuli using elemental crystal cores to arrange binary codes on the surface of the magma.

The lava illuminated her solemn profile, and the floating reddish-gold spots gradually outlined the shape of the Big Ben clock face.

The floating spots of light on the surface of the crimson magma suddenly froze, and Ye Shuli touched the last two spots of light with her fingertip.

The phantom image of Big Ben's gears rose from the lava, perfectly merging with the afterimage on the horizon.

“Quantum entangled coordinates.” She suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye’s wrist. “The energy fluctuations during our time travel…”

Before he could finish speaking, the magma suddenly boiled and swirled.

Twelve beams of crimson gold flew out from the Flame Guardian's disintegrating body, intertwining in mid-air to form the phantom of a mechanical clock.

The clicking sound of gears meshing made Jiang Ye's eardrums ache, and the elemental crystal cores at his waist suddenly lit up.

Ye Shuli suddenly tackled the person to the ground.

The beam of light projected by the clock's phantom grazed their backs, etching a three-meter-deep trench into the rock face a hundred meters away.

When Jiang Ye turned over, he touched a hot piece of obsidian, which was engraved with symbols from the modern periodic table of elements.

"The energy tide is coming!" Ye Shuli pulled Jiang Ye and leaped onto the floating basalt.

A crimson-gold pillar of light rose from the center of the magma vortex, enveloping the two of them.

Jiang Ye's wolf tail braid curled up from the heat, but he saw countless tiny bronze gears floating in the beam of light.

Ye Shuli suddenly took out the Ice Soul Crystal Core and pressed it into the pillar of light. The extreme cold and the blazing heat collided and burst out with dazzling white light.

When their vision returned, they were already standing at the exit of the Land of Fire.

The lava pool behind them returned to calm, as if the strange event had never happened.

Jiang Ye spat out the sparks from his mouth and pulled out caramelized melon seeds from his storage bag: "So that thing is..."

"A trans-temporal energy anchor." Ye Shuli stared at the flickering flame essence in her palm, the gear-like patterns faintly visible inside the crystal. "Someone planted it before we even traveled through time..."

A sinister laugh suddenly came from all directions.

Countless crimson eyes emerged from the lava currents, each pupil reflecting the image of clock gears.

Jiang Ye scattered melon seeds all over the ground, and the Xuan Tie sword automatically drew three inches from its sheath.

Ye Shuli suddenly slammed the Flame Essence into Jiang Ye's chest.

A surge of fiery spiritual energy flowed into his body, temporarily suppressing the throbbing internal injuries. "Let's leave first." She flicked her water sleeves, entwining them around the nearest fire vines, and used the momentum to swing towards the icy teleportation array.

Jiang Ye turned around and threw out three ice talismans, but the talismans turned into steam the moment they touched his eyes.

Blood suddenly seeped from the unhealed wound on his lower back, which condensed into red ice crystals in the high temperature and fell into the lava.

Where the blood crystal fell, a strange, mechanical gear-shaped flame flower bloomed.

The moment the two fell into the teleportation array, all their crimson eyeballs exploded simultaneously.

A crisp sound of metal breaking came from the bottom of the magma pool, as if some ancient mechanism had been forcibly activated.

The last thing Ye Shuli saw was twelve phantom gears piercing through the barrier and soaring into the sky.