Edited by FluffyGoblyn

After entering the cavern plaza, Xu Qi quickly retrieved the cauldron left behind by Venerable Ziyan, along with the materials necessary for refining the Essences of the five elements.

Pu, the golden All-tempering Flame burned atop Xu Qi’s palm once again. Looking at the golden flames, an unspeakable sense of pride welled up in him.

“This time, I’m sure to refine the Five Elements Wings successfully!” Xu Qi muttered, then lept up to the cauldron’s edge. After which, he carefully retrieved the Essence of Metal he’d refined previously from within the cauldron and slowly set it aside.

Next, Xu Qi controlled the All-tempering Flame, refining Essences of Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. He was exhausted again and again, but he persevered, time after time, finally successfully refining the remaining four elements’ Essences.

After going through all that, Xu Qi’s appearance changed into one of a raggedly clothed beggar’s. On several occasions, when handling the flames, his strength was insufficient to refine continuously. Thus, he lost control of the flames and caught himself on fire, turning into his current, sorry appearance.

Xu Qi stood on the cauldron. He took a deep breath and watched on excitedly at the Essences of the five elements in it. Each of the essences radiated a different colored light.

While refining of the five essences, Xu Qi suffered the most hardship while refining the Essence of Fire. During the process, he hadn’t thought that the All-tempering Flame would almost burn the blazing rock of fire to ashes. Luckily, he contained the flames, preserving the Fire Essence in the blazing rock. Near the end of the refining process, Xu Qi even took a risk, fusing a hint of the All-temper Flame’s golden Fire Essence into the refining process. Alas, the original fire caught Xu Qi’s clothing and burnt the better half of it to ashes, but the Essence of Fire, with a slightly golden hue, was successfully created.

“Now, I’ll have to start combining the five Essences,” Xu Qi stuck out his tongue, licking his lips. He forgot about his fatigue at the thought of the amazing Five Elements Wings.

The next moment, the All-tempering Flame burned once again in Xu Qi’s palm. He controlled the flames with one hand, guiding them into the cauldron, while his other hand emitted the rainbow energy, fusing the five Essences into one; his rainbow energy was the primer to the fusion.

The five elements follow the laws of: Wood restrains Earth, Earth restrains Water, Water restrains Fire, Fire restrains Metal, and Metal restrains Wood. Therefore, Xu Qi first fused the Essence of Fire with the Essence of Earth. This way, he would achieve a neutralized state. The fusion of the Essences of Fire and Earth went without a hitch and successfully fused very quickly.

Next, Xu Qi fused the resulting Essence with the Essences of Metal and Wood in one go, and he watched as the Metal, Wood, Fire, and Earth Essences combined into a colorful little ball. At this moment, he felt a sense of weakness in his body. Despite that, he persevered on and manipulated the Essence of Water, fusing it with the colorful ball.

“Not good!” Xu Qi suddenly cried. He discovered that the Essence of Water started shrinking the moment it came into contact with the other four Essences. If it continued on that way, the Essence of Water would evaporate before it could complete the fusion. He only obtained this Essence of Water after many troubles. He didn’t want to waste it just like that.

As such, he hastened the emittance of rainbow energy from his hand, enveloping the Essence in a thicker layer of rainbow energy. He hoped to borrow the strength of the energy to delay the speed with which the Essence of Water evaporated.

Unexpectedly, however, thickening the rainbow energy layer had no effect on delaying the evaporation. Feeling anxious, Xu Qi forcefully smashed the Essence of Water into the combined four essences with a palm. Then, he operated the All-tempering Flame to begin refining.

After forcefully mixing the two bodies of Essences together, the tiny colorful ball suddenly expanded, albeit slowly. Xu Qi could feel the energy within suddenly becoming violently unstable, and a trace of bitterness immediately rose in his heart. If it continued expanding, the process of fusing the five Essences might result in an explosion even he wouldn’t be safe from.

I’m all in! Xu Qi decided inwardly. He manipulated all the energy in his body, injecting it into the colorful ball and started suppressing the violent energy in it.

However, he realized that, after injecting his energy into the colorful ball, he was no longer in control of the All-tempering Flame. Alas, he had no solution for it; it wasn’t a situation he had any control over. He could only steel himself and hang in there.

After experiencing the surge in rainbow energy from Xu Qi, the swelled ball of Essences gradually reduced in size. As Xu Qi watched it shrink, a look of happiness showed on his exhausted face. However, he realized at that moment that he lacked the strength even to control his eyelids. His eyes were looking into the cauldron, but his vision of its interior grew blurry.

“It’s over; I can’t hold on any longer,” Xu Qi staggered and fell from the edge of the cauldron as he finished his sentence, falling to the ground. His arms still maintained their stance from earlier, as if still in control of the All-tempering Flame and rainbow energy.

In the cauldron, after the colorful ball was out of Xu Qi’s control, it rolled back and forth for a bit, then burst out in an eye-catching display of colors; though, no one witnessed the spectacle. The lights gradually faded and peace returned to the cavern plaza.

After an unknown amount of time, Xu Qi’s fingers, who lied unconscious on the ground, twitched. He then slowly opened his eyes.

“My god, how long have I been unconscious?” Xu Qi slowly sat himself up, feeling sore all over his body. It was his first time having such feelings since his arrival in this world. Xu Qi rubbed his body with his hands, massaging his sore spots.

“Ah, I almost forgot about my Essence of Five Elements!” Xu Qi remembered the reason he was in such state after recovering his senses; it was all because of the Essences of Five Elements. Thinking of this, he hurriedly stood and strained himself, jumping up the cauldron.

After jumping up to the cauldron, Xu Qi was immediately stunned by what he saw when he peered into the cauldron; there was nothing in it. The colorful, tiny ball was missing. His weak body, upon receiving such shock, swayed and fell to the ground once more.

Xu Qi ignored the pain in his butt and used his hands to support himself, sitting up. His dispirited look resembled someone who had lost his soul, muttering, “Gone, everything’s gone, my Essence of Five Elements, my blood, sweat, and tears!”

After some time, Xu Qi found an excuse to console himself, “This can’t be. I must have hallucinated due to my current weakened state. My treasure must still be in there, somewhere; I just haven’t take a proper look!” He crawled up again and leaped up the cauldron.

This time, Xu Qi widened his eyes and looked carefully into the cauldron. However, he still couldn’t see any trace of the colorful, tiny ball of essence and immediately felt as if he just fell into an endless ravine.

“Hm? Something’s wrong; what is that thing?” Xu Qi suddenly saw an object about the size of a leaf in the cauldron. He was too preoccupied with searching for a colorful ball-shaped object and failed to notice this thing.

He used his palm to grab the leaf-shaped object, and it landed lightly in Xu Qi’s hands.

Looking closely at the leaf-shaped object, it was indeed a tiny leaf; however, it was a five-colored leaf. It was extremely light, seemingly void of any weight.

Xu Qi’s gaze was on the five-colored leaf, thinking back to the scene before he fainted in detail. If he had truly failed in fusing the five Essences, the colorful tiny ball would have exploded. Then, he wouldn’t have slept through it without any injuries. Instead, he would have become a corpse.

“Could this be the Essence of Five Elements? But why is it so light? Right, I should test it!” Xu Qi mumbled to himself, and his eyes suddenly lit up.

With a flip of his palm, the golden-colored All-tempering Flame appeared once more, and Xu Qi tossed the five-colored leaf into the flames.

However, when the leaf was thrown into the flames, there weren’t any changes to it; not to mention burning to ashes, not even the color of the leaf had any slight changes.

Xu Qi extinguished the All-tempering Flame surprisedly, then took out his bronze sword and hacked at it. Unexpected, not even a scar was left on the leaf upon slashing it.

“Haha! There’s no mistake; this must be the Essence of Five Elements!” Xu Qi cried out in surprise. He was unable to restrain his emotions. He picked up the leaf and kissed it. Alas, tragedy happened due to his carelessness. The reason was he accidentally kissed the side of the leaf, and his lips instantly split open. Fresh blood flowed, and some of it dripped onto the five-colored leaf.

“Ouch, that hurts. Why is this thing so sharp?” Xu Qi cried out, but it was already too late. He was too excited and had forgotten about it having Essence of Metal among its composition.

At this moment, the five-colored leaf, stained with Xu Qi’s blood, shone a dazzling light; so bright that Xu Qi didn’t dare to open his eyes to look at it. When the light faded, Xu Qi saw that the five-colored leaf turned into a rainbow feather!

“What is this?!” Xu Qi called out in surprise, his eyes wide opened. Too many strange things had occurred today.

He rubbed his eyes and took time to collect himself. Then, he started searching for information regarding the Essence of Five Elements in his mind.

“It’s considered a small success when the refined Essence of Five Elements are five-colored, mid-grade if it’s six-colored. And when a high-grade Essence of Five Elements is born, it will be rainbow-colored,” Xu Qi found the records pertaining to successfully refining the Essence of Five Elements very quickly.

“Could it be that the object in my hand right now is the legendary high-graded Essence of Five Elements, rainbow-colored?” Watching the rainbow feather in his hand, Xu Qi mumbled to himself in doubt.

“I’ll ignore, for now, the number of colors or its grade. All in all, I successfully refined the Essence of Five Elements. Next, I’ll need to recover my strength and persist in the craft. I must successfully forge the Five Elements Wings,” Xu Qi said resolutely, looking at the rainbow feather in his hand.