Heaven Dou City lay in the northern hinterlands of the Douluo Continent.
An Aviation Soul Tool flew beneath the clouds, sweeping over the land.
This not only effectively kept it from being detected by the artificial satellites in the sky, but also let it use its own cloaking design to avoid being spotted from the ground.
After all, neither the Sun Moon Federation nor the Spirit Pagoda was a one-man show run by the Xu Family's Sun Lineage.
Looking down at the ocher earth, they headed farther and farther north in the Aviation Soul Tool, and the land below gradually took on a colder hue.
The drop in temperature grew increasingly noticeable, especially at the high altitude beneath the clouds.
From Aolai City on the East Sea to Heaven Dou City in the north, the distance spanned nearly two-thirds of the continent—much farther than a trip to the Federation's Ming Capital.
Along the way, whenever they encountered a major city like Shrek City, guarded by a Quasi-God powerhouse, they had to turn aside and detour through the air.
One could imagine how much time and Soul Power the journey consumed.
Fortunately, their pilot was Di Guangming, once a peak God King. Though he had lost his physical body and his divine position and Godhood had long since fallen away, his spirit-form strength still let him thrash a whole pack of top Quasi-Gods, even under the Douluo Plane's suppression.
As a result, the energy used to charge the Aviation Soul Tool along the way was practically negligible.
The Dragon Emperor, seated in the copilot's seat, only had to draw on his memories from tens of thousands of years ago to guide the Holy Dragon King in making slight adjustments to their course.
Another day-and-night cycle passed.
Only when the air outside grew cold enough and the land below turned gray-blue did the Holy Dragon King send the Aviation Soul Tool plummeting downward at full speed.
Hundreds of miles ahead and below, the outline of an ancient city appeared on the ground.
It was the first ancient city in the north of the Sun Moon Federation: Heaven Dou City.
But their destination was the wilderness to the east of Heaven Dou City: Sunset Forest.
The Dragon Emperor and the Holy Dragon King had come from the East Sea coast, so they could land without approaching Heaven Dou City and risk drawing the attention of the Limit Douluo guarding it from the Tang Sect.
As they swooped down to low altitude, the Flying Soul Tool vanished in midair.
The Holy Dragon King swept the small-bodied Dragon Emperor into his arms, then unfurled a pair of pale dragon wings symbolizing light and a pair of pure-gold dragon wings symbolizing holiness, gliding down through the air.
The intent of light twisted the rays around them, while the holy intent concealed them from spiritual detection.
Invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by spiritual power, the two descended from the sky into the protected wilderness of the forest east of Heaven Dou City.
Sunset Forest.
The Holy Dragon King did not choose to land and walk into the forest. Instead, he took the Dragon Emperor and dived straight toward the innermost woodland.
It was a hollowed-out mountain hollow.
"Is this the crater made when Younger Brother Fire and Younger Sister Water's bodies fell?" the Holy Dragon King sighed wistfully.
A layer of illusion formed from spiritual power covered the mountain hollow in a distorted halo, all three hundred and sixty degrees of it.
But before the intent of destruction and holy intent, this protective illusion was as good as nothing.
They passed through the illusory layer, and a dense, multicolored fog came into view, painting the forest below the hollow in every shade of the rainbow.
From the Dragon Emperor's experience, it was clear that the fog was the poison miasma emitted by the Jade Scale Seven Absolute Flowers.
But neither he nor the Holy Dragon King took any precautions. They went straight into the poisonous fog.
One of them had a divine-grade Lovesick Heartbreak Red as his true body, while the other had a temporary shell fashioned from Life Gold.
So neither had the slightest interest in resisting the "scent" emitted by the Jade Scale Seven Absolute Flowers.
They plunged another dozen meters, and the view ahead suddenly opened up.
A secluded mountain valley appeared before them.
The first thing to catch the eye was a spring-fed pool.
It lay in the very center of the valley floor, its surface divided into red and blue, the two colors neither mixing nor crossing into one another.
That was how the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well got its name.
The Dragon Emperor spoke without the slightest restraint. "Look, that's the corpse water that seeped out of the grave pit where Younger Brother Fire and Younger Sister Water were buried."
"Uh..." The Holy Dragon King clarified, "It should have gushed to the surface when the underground water veins were smashed open. After soaking the dragon corpses, it steamed with the aura of ice and fire dragons."
The two alighted lightly, and the medicinal herbs beneath their feet rustled.
One after another, the tangled intents scattered as if they had met their natural enemy. Like field mice, they bolted back into their "burrows" the instant the two touched down.
Though this was a Tang Sect legacy secret realm, protected from the outside by an illusory formation, there was no one staying in the valley itself.
Only the Tang Sect's inner circle could enter, and each century, they were allowed a single visitor, who could take no more than two medicinal herbs.
Yet around the twin-colored pool before them grew a dazzling variety of exotic flowers, rare herbs, and precious medicinal plants.
They flourished in grades one through twelve.
Anyone who had studied the Federation's pharmaceutical science knew this:
Medicines, like people, were divided into ranks and grades.
Grades one through three were common; grades four through six were rare treasures; grades seven through nine were precious medicines.
For example, the Nine-Grade Purple Mushroom that Tang San gave Yu Xiaogang two thousand years ago was a grade-nine precious medicine.
It was already the pinnacle of what the mortal world could offer.
Above precious medicines came grade ten: ordinary immortal-grade herbs.
Among these were all the herbs blooming with brilliant colors around the spots where the Dragon Emperor and Holy Dragon King had landed: the Singular Velvet Sky Chrysanthemum, Crystal Jade Muscle Bone, Eight-Petal Immortal Orchid, Gazing Autumn Begonia, Purple-Green Dragon Mushroom, Earth Dragon Golden Melon, Star-Net Spirit Pearl, Primordial Immortal Grass, and Fragrant Silk Luo Flower.
These ordinary immortal-grade herbs were the true treasures of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Each possessed not only its own unique medicinal effects but also a one-of-a-kind method of consumption.
The Dragon Emperor led the Holy Dragon King through the towering thicket of competing blossoms and reached the banks of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Beside the well's yin-pole spring and yang-pole spring grew two herbs nourished by pure auras of water and fire dragons: the Octagonal Mysterious Ice Grass and the Infernal Delicate Apricot.
Both were peerless herbs of the eleventh grade, known as peerless immortal-grade herbs for short. They held within them the extreme cold poison and extreme heat poison of ice and fire.
Not only did the two require unique methods of consumption, they also had to be picked in special ways.
Only by extracting Cold Dew and Blazing Glue through special methods could ice- and fire-attribute Soul Masters safely consume them.
But none of that was the Dragon Emperor's reason for coming here.
He came to the midpoint between the yin and yang poles.
There were "four" ideal planting spots in the garden around the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Two lay at either end of the springs: the yin pole and the yang pole.
But the growth conditions at those two yin-yang poles were extremely restrictive. They suited only peerless immortal-grade herbs like the Octagonal Mysterious Ice Grass and Infernal Delicate Apricot, which possessed only one attribute, either fire or ice.
The remaining two spots lay above and below the boundary between the springs, where they could both be nourished by the dragon aura formed through the balance of ice and fire.
One of those neutral spots lay right before the Dragon Emperor.
Author's note:
The Holy Dragon King was born with four wings.
The light, holiness, and fire of the Six-Winged Angel's three extremes served as a reference.
They corresponded respectively to the Two-Winged Light Angel, the Four-Winged Holy Angel, and the Six-Winged Seraph (Great Sun Angel).
Since the Holy Dragon King possessed the twin extremes of light and holiness, he should likewise take the form of a four-winged flying dragon.
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