Chapter 567 – The Codex of World Incineration

“It’s just so-so, I guess. Most red Dragons can handle spicy food pretty well! But we can eat non-spicy food too—it’s just not as satisfying.”

“Like hell peppers—I can eat a whole handful in one bite!” the red Dragon said.

“A whole handful in one bite?” Mo Lan silently super-doubled the amount of hell peppers in her Hell Lava Roasted Whole Bull recipe.

Hell peppers were a mutant variety of ghost peppers cultivated by Sylph—currently the spiciest pepper on the Continent of Valen. They were so hot they could make you breathe fire and could stir elemental force of fire.

Their seeds were incapable of reproduction. Only the hell pepper seeds condensed within Sylph’s Box of Ten Thousand Seeds, combined with her Hybrid Magic, could cultivate hell peppers.

The Hybrid Magic skill card for hell peppers hadn’t been listed in the Dawn Society’s Card Shop yet.

Most people simply assumed this pepper was a specialty from another world, unsuited to Valen’s ecological environment.

Members of the Dawn Society had developed multiple uses for hell peppers.

Some used them to increase the success rate of fire Elemental Magic casting, some to amplify the destructive power of flames, and others to poison their opponents.

That’s right—for anyone with insufficient fire-element resistance or affinity, hell peppers were a toxin capable of destroying the mouth, throat, and digestive tract.

No one had yet used them as a cooking ingredient.

Mo Lan had considered the red Dragons’ physical resilience and their mastery over elemental force of fire before choosing to cook with hell peppers.

Even so, she hadn’t dared to add too many—for roasting one volcanic rhinoceros, she had planned to use just five small peppers.

Yet this red Dragon before her claimed he could eat a whole handful of hell peppers in one bite—and a dragon’s handful, at that! How many would that even be?

Truly worthy of red Dragons, whose fire-element affinity was extraordinarily high, with nine out of ten having unlimited fire-element magic talent!

When she had originally developed the Hell Lava Roasted Whole Bull recipe, she had been far too conservative with the hell pepper dosage.

Five hell peppers probably wouldn’t even be enough for a red Dragon to pick his teeth with. Five hundred hell peppers would be more like it.

“I’ll add plenty of extra spice to match your taste,” Mo Lan said.

“That’s wonderful! I just had a meal, but sadly it wasn’t spicy enough—I was just feeling unsatisfied!” the chubby little red Dragon said with a beaming smile. “Oh, by the way, my name is Igniwa. I have a book here called the 《Codex of City Incineration》 that my dragon grandpa passed down. Could I trade it for one of those super-spicy Hell Lava Roasted Whole Bulls you mentioned? If that’s not enough, I have other books too.”

As Mo Lan took the 《Codex of City Incineration》, the Witch hat of the deceased atop her head suddenly gave her a flash of inspiration for the first time in a long while: “The 《Codex of City Incineration》 and the 《Codex of World Incineration》—is there a connection between them?”

“You actually know about the 《Codex of World Incineration》?” Igniwa exclaimed in astonishment.

The 《Codex of World Incineration》 was a work authored by His Lordship Garloths, an ancient red Dragon. It contained methods for destroying an entire civilization. Sadly, before the Dragon race descended upon Valen, this book had been lost somewhere in the cosmos along with Lord Garloths’ demise. Only fragments mentioned in inherited memories referred to the 《Codex of World Incineration》.

“I’ve heard elders in the clan mention it. They say it’s a world-shaking masterpiece of the Dragon race, but unfortunately no one has ever seen its contents,” Mo Lan deflected.

The inspiration the Witch hat of the deceased had just brought her was a passage from the 《Codex of World Incineration》: “To destroy a civilization, one must destroy the bodies and souls of all intelligent beings within that civilization. As long as souls remain, civilization always has hope of continuing.”

She now understood why Earth’s planetary consciousness had escorted the surviving souls away.

As long as the souls born from a civilization still existed, that civilization would never be truly destroyed.

“I’ve never even seen the 《Codex of World Incineration》 myself. This 《Codex of City Incineration》 is merely an imitation, recording some methods for destroying cities,” Igniwa said.

Mo Lan flipped open the book in her hands. It was indeed as Igniwa had described—just an imitation, its contents incomparable to the 《Codex of World Incineration》. As she turned the pages, she caught a faint scent of sulfur. Looking more carefully, she discovered that the book was actually made from volcanic glass crystal.

Volcanic glass crystal could only form deep within volcanic magma where elemental force of fire was extremely concentrated. It was an exceptionally precious magical material, rich in fire element.

Only the Dragon race would be so extravagant as to use volcanic glass crystal for book pages—and the book’s contents were just some unremarkable methods for burning down cities.

Still, she truly hadn’t seen this book before, and it was more than sufficient as payment for a meal.

Mo Lan accepted the book. “Please follow me.”

She had just lightly probed Igniwa with her psychic power.

As she expected, Igniwa showed absolutely no reaction to her psychic probe.

His rank was only Peak level, he had never been to the Well of the Sky, and he lacked those bizarre and unpredictable abilities from other worlds. His psychic defenses were virtually nonexistent—there was almost no chance he could resist her Psychic Magic.

The perfect subject for studying dragon-tongue magic!

Naturally, she had to bring him inside and give him a proper “welcome”!

After entering the courtyard, Mo Lan noticed Igniwa’s gaze lingering on the outdoor dining area. She quickly said, “The aroma that hell peppers release during cooking is overwhelmingly pungent. Let’s dine indoors so we don’t accidentally harm the surrounding neighbors.”

Most of Delicacy Island’s guests were dragons, but not a single one of the chefs was a Dragon.

The Dragon race loved to eat, but they had never been able to master the art of fine cooking.

Only then did Igniwa hold back the words about wanting to dine in the courtyard.

Mo Lan had also taken a page from Vasida’s book and reorganized the interior layout.

However, she didn’t need to win through sheer portion size, so she didn’t need cooking and dining areas as enormous as Vasida’s. She simply moved her more personal belongings from the first floor up to the second floor and renovated the first floor into a space specifically for entertaining Dragon guests. The kitchen and dining area were made slightly more spacious to better suit Dragon preferences.

Even when Dragons took human form, they disliked cramped, confined environments.

Igniwa wasn’t like Krotack, brimming with curiosity about her cooking process, nor was he particularly talkative.

He sat by the dining table the entire time, gazing expectantly toward the kitchen.

When he saw Mo Lan materialize a large basket of hell peppers, his eyes lit up and he gulped with excitement.

Then came the endless stream of impatient inquiries: “Is it done yet? How much longer? It smells so good!”

Gradually, he couldn’t sit still any longer and began pacing around outside the kitchen, as though every additional moment of waiting was pure torment.

At first, Mo Lan would say things like “just a bit longer” and “don’t worry.”

Later, she simply placed a magic timer on the bar counter and told Igniwa, “Dinner will be served in exactly one hour!”

Only then did Igniwa stop asking her. Instead, he sat by the bar counter, cradling the magic timer, staring fixedly at the time display, occasionally letting out impatient huffs—even shooting out sparks.

Fortunately, the magic timer was made of metal and heat-resistant. And since Igniwa wasn’t huffing and puffing in his dragon form, the timer survived. Otherwise, it would have been destroyed long ago.