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Therefore, without any worries, Chen Xuanfeng finally decided to leave the mountains and continue his unfinished mission after Jin Luosha's power reached a bottleneck.

Werewolf Hero Scroll, Chapter 19: The Phoenix's Wings Reborn from Sparks

As the morning light bathed the church steeple in Muluo Town's center, a series of clear and melodious bell sounds echoed one after another, marking the official start of a new day.

This was Lanjing Kingdom, one of the sixteen allied nations in the southern Mainland. Although it was not a protectorate of Saint Spirit Mountain, due to the king's devout belief in the Light God, it had become one of the dioceses of the Light God's Temple many years ago.

However, this morning, the townsfolk did not start their day as usual. Instead, they gathered together, whispering with uneasy expressions on their faces.

The reason for their fear was the strange event that occurred the previous night. In the quiet of the night, a loud explosion and the cry of a bird suddenly came from the southern mountains. As the drowsy townsfolk opened their windows, they were horrified to see a magnificent, seven-colored bird with wings spanning half the mountain, slowly ascending before vanishing in a towering pillar of fire. The townsfolk were clueless about the nature of the creature. They waited in terror until dawn, only to discover that the once lush mountainside had been transformed into a desolate, scorched expanse. Despite their panic, the townsfolk eventually dispatched a few courageous and swift young men to investigate the scene.

When the sun fully rose, the figures of those young men finally appeared from outside the town, running quickly into the small square in the center of the town, loudly announcing their findings.

"The mulberry forest on the southern mountain was completely burned down, even the roots underground are charred. The ground was scorched to glass-like smoothness, leaving nothing behind," a tall young man said loudly. "But strangely, we found that the fire seemed to be surrounded by a circular boundary. Everything inside the line was burned to ashes, but outside the line, there was no effect at all. Look, this is what I found."

What he held out was a leaf and a stone, or more accurately, half a leaf and half a stone. Both were ordinary leaves and stones, but the unusual part was that half of each was missing. As the townsfolk gathered to inspect, they quickly noticed that both objects had been neatly severed. If not for the scorched and melted marks on the broken edges, they might have thought the objects had been sliced by a sharp weapon.

The eerie atmosphere naturally spawned strange tales. From that day on, the town was filled with all kinds of stories—some said a demon king had been resurrected, others claimed a divine beast had descended, some believed a treasure had been unearthed, and there were even those who insisted that the Twelve Sages had been reborn here. While the rumors intensified the panic, they also attracted a large number of adventurers. They scoured the mountains in search of the cause of the disaster, but found nothing. However, the influx of people naturally boosted the town's economy, and the abundance of money in their pockets somewhat soothed the townsfolk's fears, gradually restoring a semblance of normal order.

Of course, all of this was later. On the day after the mountainside was burned, the culprit, a red-haired desert youth mercenary, had already left the cave where he had been hiding for several months with his companions, embarking on a new journey.

This person was, of course, Morova, who had inherited the "Ten Realms Crimson Lotus Sword."

Morova had no surname. He had been an orphan since birth, a war orphan. According to the old mercenary who adopted him, his parents' tribe had been massacred shortly after he was born. He was found in a pile of corpses by the old mercenary who happened to pass by, and from then on, he grew up in that mercenary group. The mercenary group did not support useless people, so from the age of five, Morova was wielding a small knife on the battlefield, cutting at the feet of enemies. By eight, he was using a short bow to snipe enemy scouts, and by ten, he could already face and kill black iron swordsmen—all without ever having learned any combat aura.

The desert was always a harsh survival hell. Even a skilled mercenary group could hardly guarantee its own safety. But Morova possessed an extraordinary talent for combat. When the mercenary group he was part of was wiped out, he managed to escape unscathed, even assassinating the leader of the enemy bandit group and stealing his flame combat aura technique.

After that, it was a constant journey of wandering, from one place to another, learning all the martial arts and even magic he could find, experiencing life-and-death battles time and time again. That ordinary flame combat aura, through repeated life-and-death epiphanies, transformed into a supreme martial art uniquely suited to him. At the same time, unbeknownst to him, the reputation of a strong and cold young mercenary, the "Flame Child," had spread throughout the desert and even the southern Mainland.

During one of his missions to eliminate bandits, Morova accidentally found a strange red stone sphere among the belongings of a wealthy merchant he had killed. Unexpectedly, the stone sphere emitted a powerful suction force that nearly drained all of his flame combat aura, and then inexplicably hatched a giant firebird. From then on, Morova was accompanied by a strange ninth-level phantom beast named "Feimi."

Later, Morova's talents caught the attention of the "Mercenary Empire." However, compared to the seemingly high position and rewards, the young mercenary cared more about whether he could control his own life. Surrendering control of his fate to others was unthinkable for someone who had grown up with death as a constant companion. Thus, in the end, he remained a mere mercenary.

After that came a great war between humans and orcs. As a human, he eventually joined the army as a mercenary and became the leader of a ten-thousand-strong mercenary force. It was then that he met the werewolf lord who could rival a sword saint at the level of a sword emperor, and also got to know those young human prodigies, including Xi Luo, the disciple the werewolf lord had taken while posing as a human Holy Grail Knight, and Xian Lan from the grasslands. He also witnessed the legendary "War of the Nine Saints."

Ultimately, overwhelmed by shock and helplessness, he retreated to the desert with the defeated human army.