Seeking

The next day, early morning, the sky was clear and bright.

Xu Bai walked out of the luxurious hotel, left Tiandou City, and headed straight for the Sunset Forest with a clear objective in mind.

He had spent a very comfortable night; it was simply the most pleasant day he had experienced since transmigrating.

One could only say that the imperial capital lived up to its reputation; the service quality of its tertiary industry deserved a perfect score.

Even while on the road, Xu Bai still felt a lingering attachment to the soft bed from last night.

"Extravagant, simply too extravagant. It's hard to imagine that people could enjoy themselves to such an extent; it truly opened my eyes."

He sighed inwardly, then lamented, "It's a pity I'm too young, and many places were off-limits. Otherwise, I could have satisfied the curiosity that has plagued me for two lifetimes..."

Yes, just pure curiosity, with no other intentions.

Of course, if there were an opportunity in the future, he would at most view it with a critical eye to properly evaluate it.

Shaking his head, Xu Bai suppressed the stray thoughts and focused on his journey.

The Sunset Forest was adjacent to Tiandou City, connected by a straight official road. The surface was well-packed, and it took less than half an hour to reach by fast horse.

Upon arrival, the first thing that caught his eye was a large town that had spontaneously formed outside the Sunset Forest, serving as a place for passing Soul Masters to purchase supplies or rest.

It was daytime, and the town was bustling with noise, with various hawking cries ringing out incessantly.

Xu Bai did not linger long and stepped directly into the forest.

Once he found a secluded spot, he opened his Beast Taming Space and released Eleven.

Upon emerging, Eleven moved with elegant strides and an aloof temperament. Its sharp, tiger-like eyes flickered with a cold chill; if anyone saw it, they would surely praise it, saying this beast was extraordinary and possessed the potential to become a Beast King.

However, this potential Beast King, upon seeing Xu Bai, immediately transformed into a resentful wife and began to complain:

'Eleven days, a full eleven days! I have never stayed in the Beast Taming Space for so long. Beast Tamer, do you know how I survived these eleven days!?'

"I know," Xu Bai nodded calmly. "Eat and sleep, sleep and eat. Although I can't enter the Beast Taming Space, I am perfectly clear about what happens inside."

'Uh...'

Eleven paused, its tiger head subconsciously drooping, its expression sheepish: 'You can really see everything clearly?'

Xu Bai chuckled. "You're quite clever, knowing not to pick on just one tree. You've eaten quite a few Clear Heart Oranges these past ten days, haven't you? How was the taste?"

Eleven's tiger body shuddered, and its expression became unnatural for a moment.

But soon, the awkwardness turned into a defiant, righteous indignation:

'I—I ate them, so what? Who told you to lock me in the Beast Taming Space for so long, and the things you left behind were so hard to swallow? What's wrong with me eating a little...'

"That's why I didn't point it out at first."

Xu Bai's tone was natural. "After all, I share some of the responsibility, so let's leave this matter here. Don't let it happen again."

Eleven was stunned. It hadn't expected the Beast Tamer to let it off so easily, and it felt a sense of pleasant surprise.

However, on the surface, it maintained an expression of "I did nothing wrong, and your so-called forgiveness is just your own wishful thinking."

As a Beast Tamer with the Telepathy talent, although Xu Bai couldn't fully grasp the nuances of Eleven's expressions, he was well aware of what it was thinking.

Xu Bai didn't pay it much mind; it was normal for a foodie to be resentful after not having good food for over ten days. He was a very broad-minded Beast Tamer, after all.

With that, he leaped onto Eleven's back:

"Let's go, Eleven. Let's test our luck and see how long it takes to find your new partner."

Eleven was now over four meters tall, with a body length reaching over ten meters. Standing on its back was effortless for Xu Bai; he could even roll around without any difficulty. It had truly entered the ranks of giant beasts.

However, compared to the giant tiger he had seen before, it was still a size smaller.

But that wasn't a big problem; this size gap would be closed once Eleven's age reached four or five thousand years, and it would completely surpass the other by seven or eight thousand years.

As for revenge, Xu Bai planned to wait until Eleven broke through to the ten-thousand-year level.

The racial potential of a Green-Red Tiger was a thousand years; even the clan leader couldn't possibly reach ten thousand years.

By then, they could simply crush them, saving both time and effort.

Below, feeling the slight weight on its back, Eleven's tiger ears twitched involuntarily, and its eyes narrowed, still basking in the joy of having escaped a disaster.

Hearing the Beast Tamer's command, it followed the order quite consciously.

But after taking only two steps, it suddenly realized a very serious problem.

'At the beginning, wasn't I the one scolding the Beast Tamer? How did it end up with the Beast Tamer forgiving me?'

Xu Bai's initial thought was correct; the Sunset Forest was vast. Just by wandering around the outer perimeter for a short while, he encountered no fewer than a hundred types of plant-based Soul Beasts, and countless other small Soul Beasts.

It was a pity that he had not yet become a formal three-ring Soul Venerable. Although the increase in his soul power level had raised his mental capacity limit, he was still far from a qualitative change.

Otherwise, he estimated that he could have pushed his mental power to a new limit in just this short time.

After wandering for the better part of the day, Xu Bai did discover quite a few Soul Beast cubs, but none of them caught his eye.

Their bloodline grades were low, and they weren't mutated Soul Beasts. The future investment cost of contracting such beasts would be too high; it wasn't worth it.

Most importantly, they all seemed a bit dim-witted.

It was just that their intelligence wasn't very high; they were muddled and confused, only slightly better than Blue Silver Grass.

Only now did he realize how lucky he was to have contracted Di Yi and Little Blue, regardless of their bloodline talents.

After a brief chat with a few Soul Beast cubs, he suddenly realized that the original work had mentioned the issue of Soul Beast intelligence: only when they reached ten thousand years of age did their intelligence become comparable to that of humans.

Soul Beasts like Di Yi and Little Blue, who possessed high intelligence despite having low-level bloodlines, could truly be called one-in-a-million geniuses among their kind.

Thus, several more days passed.

Xu Bai and Di Yi had gradually approached the inner circle of the Sunset Forest. Thousand-year Soul Beasts were now visible everywhere, and they had even spotted one or two ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts from afar.

Yet, the "dream Soul Beast" Xu Bai had in mind remained elusive. Even after lowering his standards to accept a lower bloodline as long as the intelligence was high, he still couldn't find one.

"Di Yi, the inner circle is just ahead. Let's go look somewhere else."

Xu Bai sighed softly. He knew, of course, that the deeper they went, the higher the quality of the Soul Beasts.

But the inner circle was still too dangerous. Although he wanted to go in and try his luck, his reason—much like Paimon—floated over to tell him, "We should explore the area ahead later...", forcibly making him abandon the thought of courting death.

Are we going somewhere else? But my skill tells me there seems to be precious metal inside...

Di Yi stopped in his tracks and asked.

Precious metal?

Xu Bai's brows knit together as he sat up. "How precious?"

I'm not sure, but it's very, very expensive.

"Is it far from us?"

Not far, it seems to be in that mountain ahead.

Xu Bai: Screw reason, I've already deleted Genshin Impact!

Of course, the main reason was that it wasn't far, and the potential gains clearly outweighed the risks; it was worth a gamble.

If the precious metal Di Yi sensed was on the same level as Cold Heart Refined Iron, then even a piece the size of a fingernail would be enough to purchase the materials for Di Yi's evolution.