Chapter 275: Burning Mountain

The tree-heart flames, which now had their hands free, attacked one cluster after another. They surrounded and pursued Joo Joowon from all sides. Even when he went underground, they still followed him without the slightest hesitation.

Flames that could not be extinguished even in water naturally would be even less likely to be extinguished underground.

Relying on the special characteristics of his spirit body, Joo Joowon darted up and down throughout the mountain. Every time he was about to be caught, he would immediately burrow into places that placed some restrictions on the flames, such as underwater or into the mountain rocks.

The flames were, after all, still things of the material world. They could not yet move through everything as smoothly as he could while completely ignoring all obstacles.

And although Joo Joowon was playing with fire, he remained cautious. He did not go near places with a lot of grass and trees. His escape route also continuously followed directions where the rocks and water sources could provide him with some convenience.

After repeatedly jumping back and forth like this and challenging the flames’ patience, even the most good-tempered creature would find it difficult to remain completely calm. Not to mention that the flames themselves did not look like creatures with particularly good tempers.

Thus, Joo Joowon was fortunate enough to witness an extremely shocking scene next.

The land was burning.

Flames that came from somewhere unknown instantly engulfed the entire mountain. The vigorously burning flames were like the most magnificent and dazzling magic, making the originally somewhat desolate mountain seem to transform into the Flame Mountain from myths and legends, a mountain of fire that would never extinguish.

The scorching heat seemed to be so intense that it was almost going to bake the air itself until it melted.

Yet a look of understanding quickly flashed through Joo Joowon’s eyes.

So that was how it was.

Generally speaking, the tree-heart flames of a fire tree were usually a special phenomenon formed when lightning from the sky struck a tree. They were also the raw material for what was known in Taoism as a "thunder-struck tree."

At first, Joo Joowon had thought that these flames and the trees were one and the same, having formed some kind of symbiotic relationship in the apocalypse. The trees sought a way to survive despite being on the verge of death, while the flames, in order to avoid being extinguished, chose to reside within the hearts of the trees. The two sides benefited each other.

However, after being chased again and again, he began to feel that this guess was not correct.

Because if the two sides were truly in a symbiotic relationship, then it should not have been only the flames chasing him. The trees should have been chasing him as well.

Even if the trees did not have any effective attack skills, they should still have been able to cooperate with the flames.

But after they had chased him for such a long time, the other side had still never appeared. This could only mean that the other side did not exist.

This made him realize that the true supernatural existence was actually the individual flames. The thunder-struck trees had nothing to do with it.

If that was the case, then why did they create one fire tree after another?

Joo Joowon had been thinking about a countermeasure the entire time. In addition, his progress in casting Astral Combat had never been satisfactory, so he decided to provoke the flames even further.

Any living creature, as long as it could no longer remain calm, would immediately reveal a great deal of information that even it was unaware of, even if the target leaking such information was a cluster of flames without facial features or the ability to sense emotions.

First, he had left the mountain, confirming that the other party’s main body was indeed on the mountain rather than somewhere else. Then, he had returned in order to verify the slight urgency the flames had shown when they followed him underground and to further anger them.

That emotion was not merely caused by seeing him about to escape. It was an instinctive urgency, as if they did not want their secret to be discovered.

Before this, Joo Joowon had always maintained a certain distance while leading the other party along, giving them the illusion that they could catch up if they tried just a little harder. This ensured that the flames would most likely not call for reinforcements and have more flames surround him.

However, after he returned, that situation could no longer occur, and he did not care about it.

As it turned out, the flames were even more concerned about the underground than the water veins. Every time Joo Joowon burrowed underground, quite a few flames followed him inside. They did not use the same method as they had on the surface, surrounding and blocking him as if they were playing with a mouse like a cat. Instead, they acted with even greater urgency, as if they desperately wanted to catch him and burn him to death immediately.

It was as if the underground was their forbidden territory.

Thinking back to how this mountain, which should have been lush with vegetation, had always appeared so desolate, Joo Joowon gradually formed a guess about the origin of the flames.

Compared to tree-heart flames, there was actually another kind of fire in nature that was even rarer and formed only through a fortunate coincidence: "earth fire."

It was fire caused by underground humus unexpectedly catching fire.

Once this kind of fire spread, it was extremely difficult to extinguish. On the surface, it might appear to have gone out, but in reality, it would still be burning underground. It could continue burning on and off for several years without being extinguished at all.

Perhaps the people who originally lived on the mountain had already noticed that the land here was becoming less suitable for farming. On top of that, they would occasionally suffer attacks from wild beasts, which was why they chose to move away. Otherwise, considering how people in the past were reluctant to leave their homeland, there would still have been a fairly high chance that some of them would have stubbornly refused to move even after the government tried to persuade them.