"This cannot be!"
The chopped head let out an evil high pitched scream before shutting up abruptly.
Ye Chen shook his head. "If you knew this would happen, then why even try?"
Putting away the Sky Hunter Master's storage ring, Ye Chen flicked his finger. A beam of sharp green lotus sword qi shot out, cutting down the gold spikes on the wolf and freeing it. It moaned at Ye Chen, its wounds healing up at a rate visible to the naked eyes.
"You have done well. There will be rewards for you." Nodding satisfyingly, Ye Chen flew over towards Murong Qingcheng.
"Are you okay?"
She shook her head, "I am alright, but the Bear Tyrant is on the run."
The latter had been blown away by her Sky Demon Finger Attack and knew that it was not his battle, so he ran the second he got the chance. However, Murong Qingcheng had to take on the Sky Hunter Master, which gave her not much time to be distracted. So, she did not chase after him.
Ye Chen said, "It is just a beast, not that big of a deal."
No matter how powerful the bear beast was, it was just a beast after all. The intelligence was limited, and it wasn't as tricky as the Evil Demon Mater and the Sky Hunter Master. It was not threatening to Ye Chen at all.
"Let's go to the underground area."
The purpose of this trip was for the Phoenix Plume Tree. Ye Chen would not forget about it at all.
Without following the tunnel, the two humans and a wolf punctured through the ground directly, reaching six thousand meters deep underground. Sounds of running water could be heard, coming from a not so long dark river which was a hundred meters wide. Right next to the rocks by the river was a three meters tall colorful tree.
"This is the Phoenix Plume Tree?"
Their eyes landed on the colorful tree.
This tree was looking different. It looked like it was made of red jade, shining a vibrant colorful light. There were not many branches on the tree, but it was just the perfect number. Countless fruits hung on some of the joints. They were like bananas, but flatter; they had floral patterns on them, and the shockingly powerful spirit qi they released was making this place's yuan qi even richer. It would be a perfect place for training.
"Consuming one Phoenix Plume Fruit would be equivalent to about one thousand years worth of training. There are twelve of them, so they make up at least one hundred and twenty thousand years of training here."
Seeing that there were still some fruits on the tree, Murong Qingcheng let out a long breath; she was clearly quite happy.
Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!
The wolf shook its tail; although it was its first time seeing the fruit, that qi coming out of it was making it rather relaxed.
Ye Chen said, "These fruits can boost the physical strength while treating all kinds of internal wounds. At the same time, it will also nourish your body. Could you still not consume this?"
He wanted to let Muorng Qingcheng to train some Dragon Blood Plant and extract the dragon power from within, since Murong Qingcheng's demon body would be even more powerful than the spirit body. After all, a rank 2 demon body would be more powerful than a rank 3 spirit body, and it would be able to contain even more dragon power.
Murong Qingcheng said, "The spirit plants that are useful for human warriors would be useless for me. Only the ones that are close to demon race medicines might be able to help."
After knowing that she could not train the Dragon Blood plant, she knew that she had walked on a path that was drastically different from the human warriors.
"What a shame!" Ye Chen patted on the wolf's skull and then jumped into the air, landing right next to the tree.
"Up."
He made a waving motion with his right hand, causing a powerful qi to land on the tree and the area around it.
Boom!
Waves were brought up in the river as the tree, along with dozens of meters of ground around it, floated into the air. Meanwhile, the fruits on the tree stayed the same as if they were carved on there.
Break!
He held a fruit in his left hand before pulling with some power. That massive physical strength made an impact on the fruit, which was finally managed to be pulled down from the tree. At the same time, a sound of metal breaking was heard.
'Too tight! One hundred thousand pounds worth of power would only barely pull the fruit down.' Ye Chen thought to himself.
"Here!" Ye Chen threw the fruit that he had just gotten over to the wolf.
Awhoo!
The wolf jumped up and bit onto the fruit. Its wounds had not healed properly yet, which would need more time. With this fruit, however, it would not have to worry too much about it anymore. Plus, this fruit would make it even stronger than before and increase the condition of its qi and blood.
"This big of a tree can barely fit in a mid-rank ring. I guess I will need a top rank one after all. Otherwise, I will not have space for more or bigger things." Although the storage rings could be stored within storage rings, but the low-rank ones were too small, and would not be able to fit big things at all. It would be useless even if there were thousands and thousands of them, as they could only be used to store spirit stones. If he could manage to get one top rank storage ring, then all his storage problems would be solved. After all, a top rank storage ring was ten times bigger than a mid-rank one.
Ye Chen had dozens of mid-rank storage rings, most of which were obtained from his opponents. But, he had never seen a top rank one. They were extremely rare for a reason after all.
Putting away the tree, Ye Chen put his wolf back into the beast tag, allowing it to heal its wounds slowly. Once the wolf got better, he planned to give it the wind fire pellet.
"Now, there is only the Skull Flower left." Ye Chen let out a breath.
"Yeah!" Murong Qingcheng nodded, her face full of hope.
"The Barbarian race has risen up quite a bit. They seemed to be really good with long arrows and bows. Normally, they would dip the tip of those arrows in poison, which would be deadly. Perhaps I can find some Skull Flowers in the mountains here." Skull Flowers were different from other medicines, being extremely poisonous. The older it was, the more poisonous it would be. Skull Flowers that were over one hundred thousand years old were the most poisonous. However, they were extremely hard to come across. Luckily, they only needed one that was five thousand years old.
Leaving the mountain, the two flew toward the closest Barbarian race tribe.
…
"Here should be the poison mountain were the Barbarians grow their poisonous plants."
A man and a woman appeared secretively on the edge of a mountain with colorful smoke rising from it. They were indeed Ye Chen and Murong Qingcheng, who were on their quest for the Skull Flower.
There were countless big and small tribes here; the big ones had millions, or even more people living within, while the small ones might only have a couple thousand tribe members. The two chose one with around two hundred thousand members. According to the map, it was called the Iron Flower Tribe.
The Barbarians loved to dip their weapons in poison, but it did not mean that they were not afraid of it. After all, growing poisonous plants was not an easy job; they would have to grow thousands of them to be able to support the usage. Obviously, growing them would be really dangerous in the tribe. Therefore, they would normally pick a mountain in the neighborhood and grow the poisonous plants there. Once the plants gathered together, the poisonous qi would just accumulate and create a natural blockade to keep the beasts away.
But of course, there would be lots of guards around it as well. Even if one were not scared of the poison, it would still not be that easy to get in after all.
Not far from the two was a group of warriors patrolling about the area.
"The most powerful of them is only at the Astral Reaching Realm, while the others are at the Clasping Yuan Realm. Just to avoid alarming them, I think we should be careful."
Of course, they could choose to just rob the place, but it would not be a smart plan. Moreover, these people were innocent after all; they did not want to cost any troubles with them unnecessarily.
"Let's go!"
That colorful poisonous qi could not only get through the Sea of Souls Realm protective Zhen yuan, the two could sneak through it as well.
There was a building on top of the mountain which was covered by the light, with more warriors watching from there. Ye Chen and Murong Qingcheng could even sense a couple of Sea of Souls Realm warriors in that tower like building.
"Not here!"
"Nor there!"
"Let's check the other side!"
Ye Chen and Murong Qingcheng were really good at hiding, and no one had spotted them so far. Even if someone used their soul power to scan the area, Ye Chen would be aware of it way earlier in advance and use Murong Qingcheng's dark profound to make a pass.
After a couple of hours…
"Ye Chen, here!"
Murong Qingcheng had found what they were looking for in the middle of a mountain. There was a huge area filled with them, at least thousands of them. Skull-like flowers had black poisonous qi coming from within, forming into a massive Skull in the air.
Ye Chen rushed over.
"Let's see if there is one that is five thousand years old."
After another hour…
The two looked very disappointed. Amongst all of the plants, none of them had what they were searching for. There were thirty of them that were more than a thousand years old, but there was none that was older than two thousand years.
After taking twenty one thousand years old Skull Flower, the two left the mountain secretly and got out of the barrier.
Away from that tribe...
Ye Chen studied the plants in his hand and said, "That was only a small tribe. I think there is no choice but to go to those mid-sized tribes and check them out."
Since there were Skull flowers inside this small tribe, the other ones must have it as well. The only question was whether they would have that were older than five thousand years.
On the third day, they arrived at a tribe named Bronze Tiger.
There were three times more people inside this tribe than the last one, around seven hundred thousand or so.
There were thousands of warriors guarding around the mountain, each one of them holding a longbow and looking evil.
Inside the mountain, two shadows moved secretly.
"Still no five thousand years old ones. The oldest of them all are only two thousand and eight hundred years. Do we really have to go to those massive tribes?"
Ye Chen was quite threatened by those massive tribes. There were way more humans than Barbarian race people, perhaps one hundred thousand to one type of ratio. In other words, with all of the Barbarians added up together, there would only be one billion of them. But, although there were not that many of them the chance of them having powerful warriors was way higher than among humans. And in those massive tribes, there would very likely be Life and Death Realm king warriors.
"There are so many massive tribes. There won't be a Savage King in each tribe."
The Skull Flower was something that they really needed, and Ye Chen knew that he could not let it go so easily.
"Let's go…Let's go to a big savage tribe." He turned and said to Murong Qingcheng with determination.