Obtaining a Spirit Root, Encountering a Great Demon

Nuwa Sovereign Heaven.

After Nuwa attained sainthood, she established a dojo in Chaos, supported by the primordial world.

It was less a dojo than a newborn world. Countless streams of chaotic energy flowed and intertwined within it, transforming into dense innate spiritual qi.

In the void outside the dojo, aside from the Twelve Ancestral Witches of the Witch Clan, every renowned innate divine being of the primordial world was present.

The Three Pure Ones sat cross-legged at the very front. Laozi showed little expression, Yuanshi looked solemn, while Tongtian's sharp edge was on full display, his Sword Qi pressing down on all around him.

A little farther back, faint phantoms of golden lotuses and bitter bamboo appeared beside Zhunti and Jieyin, their eyes tightly shut.

Farther still, Styx Ancestor was shrouded in a blood-red glow. Zhenyuanzi sat close beside a middle-aged man in red robes, while the brothers Di Jun and Taiyi had also reined in the Sun Truefire around them, quietly listening to the Saint's Great Dao.

There were no heavenly blossoms raining down, nor did golden lotuses emerge from the void.

Nuwa's voice was like invisible ripples of water, washing over the dojo and resounding in the minds of every listener.

"Before the Primordial Unity was divided, qi first rang... The gate of the mysterious female, the court of creation..."

"A spark of spiritual light gives rise to creation... From this, the pivot of yin and yang is born..."

These were the most fundamental truths of a Saint's Dao of Creation, as the laws of the Heavenly Dao unfolded before them.

In the blink of an eye, a thousand years passed.

The sermon had long since ended.

One after another, those who had listened awakened from their comprehension of the Dao.

The Three Pure Ones slowly rose. After glancing at the place where Nuwa's dojo had vanished, they were the first to blur away, transforming into three streaks of clear light and flashing back to the primordial world.

Next came Zhunti and Jieyin's golden light, Styx's blood light... The void returned to the deathly silence of Chaos.

The shores of the East Sea.

Like a solitary shadow, Yellow Dragon traveled across the vast lands along the East Sea.

He passed mountains shattered by colossal beasts, marshes blanketed in poisonous miasma, and dried-up riverbeds.

Wherever he went, he upheld the principle that even a mosquito was still meat.

He combed through the earth veins, purified the poisonous miasma, cleared the river channels, and summoned sweet rain to nourish all things.

Beneath the dry riverbeds, waters of life flowed anew; blocked earth veins were cleared, allowing heaven-and-earth spiritual qi to circulate once more; mountain roots devastated by giant beasts were soothed, and struggling shoots of green emerged from cracks in the stone.

At the same time, he planted every seedling or seed of spirit roots and immortal plants he encountered within the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl.

This day, Yellow Dragon had just cleared a silted earth vein and was sensing the faint pulse brought by the renewed flow of earth qi, like a river coursing onward.

Suddenly, a deeply concealed anomaly appeared in the flow of spiritual qi within the vast earth veins around him—as though a hundred rivers were returning to the sea, vast amounts of pure spiritual qi were being drawn by an invisible force, silently flowing toward some unknown place in the distance.

This abnormal flow was exceedingly faint. If he were not an earth-vein spirit, able to perceive the circulation of earth qi as clearly as the lines on his palm, ordinary living beings would scarcely have noticed it.

"Something's strange."

Yellow Dragon's heart stirred.

Following that nearly imperceptible "flow," he drifted through one earth vein after another and began a long, meticulous search.

As the sun and moon turned, several years passed in this search.

At last, deep within a vast mountain range, Yellow Dragon halted before a valley that appeared entirely unremarkable. The terrain of the valley was peculiar: several inconspicuous low hills crisscrossed one another, forming invisible natural formations that cleverly concealed the anomaly within.

From the outside, this place was no different from the lands spanning tens of thousands of miles around it.

Yet the source of the "flow" Yellow Dragon sensed within the earth veins pointed directly here!

The spiritual qi in the earth veins seemed to be silently swallowed by this valley.

"Fortune and opportunity have arrived."

Golden light flashed in Yellow Dragon's eyes.

He did not rashly enter. Instead, he completely merged his body into the earth veins.

Relying on the innate affinity with earth veins granted by his earth-vein-transformed dragon nature, and with the Pure World White Lotus silently unfolding, a supreme, flawless spiritual radiance enveloped him, perfectly concealing his heavenly secrets and aura.

He merged into strands of earth-vein qi and, following the earth veins beneath the valley, entered it with remarkable ease.

The instant he entered the valley's bounds, the scene changed drastically.

The cliffs on both sides rose steeply, strange rocks standing everywhere.

Yet the valley was filled with violent fire-attributed aura, mixed with a strange sweet, bloody scent.

Deep at the valley floor, a spirit root was rooted atop a fire-attributed innate spiritual vein. Its entire body was dark red, its gnarled branches twisting together; its trunk, branches, and leaves seemed carved from blood jade, with what looked like blood flowing through their veins.

Its branches were laden with jujube-shaped fruits the size of pigeon eggs, scarlet as blood.

Judging by its aura, it was not much inferior to the Enlightenment Tea in Yellow Dragon's possession. At the very least, it was a postnatal mid-grade spirit root.

After carefully searching the valley back and forth, he finally confirmed that this was an ownerless spirit root.

Yellow Dragon's vigilant mind relaxed somewhat, and a wisp of his Primordial Spirit entered the spirit root.

"Blood Red Dates," a postnatal mid-grade spirit root. Every hundred years, it could bear several hundred Blood Red Dates.

Blood Red Dates contained the laws of the Dao of Fire and also nurtured vast essences of blood. They were of great use in comprehending the laws of the Dao of Fire and tempering the physical body.

Yellow Dragon barked inwardly, pouring every last bit of his mana into the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl within his sleeve!

A vast force of space erupted in an instant, like a miniature heaven and earth opening its enormous maw.

Its target was not merely the Blood Red Dates, crimson from root to crown, but also the innate spiritual vein in which it was rooted, along with the most refined soil within a radius of one li, soil that had nourished it for countless years!

Soundlessly, that stretch of land—together with the Blood Red Dates rooted within it and the fire-attributed innate spiritual vein—seemed to be gently "dug" from the primordial land by an invisible giant hand. In an instant, it vanished from where it stood, wholly drawn into the inner world contained within the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl.

All that remained was a massive pit with smooth edges and unfathomable depths, as well as a spiritual-energy storm that abruptly lost its balance and descended into violent chaos!

Almost at the very instant the spiritual root vanished, this special terrain was broken apart as well, and violent spiritual energy scattered in every direction.

Suddenly, a terrifying divine sense swept through the entire valley like a storm, catching the lingering ripples of the violently upheaving earth vein and that abrupt, enormous pit.

A savage, baleful aura appeared near the valley. It belonged to a colossal beast dozens of zhang tall, resembling a pangolin and covered from head to toe in dark golden scales!

"Roar—!!!"

An earthshaking roar echoed through the valley as it pounced at Yellow Dragon on a violent, blood-reeking gale!

The cliff walls on either side exploded with a boom, shattered stone raining down like a storm.

Taiyi realm! The aura it radiated was at least at the early Taiyi stage.

Yellow Dragon's Primordial Spirit shuddered. He had no time to think; his body instinctively turned into a streak of yellow light and burrowed into the earth veins, fleeing madly!

Suddenly, an overbearing wave swept over him. One earth vein after another snapped in an instant, and Yellow Dragon was jolted out of the earth veins.

Every earth vein within several thousand li had been shattered.

Had the Pure World White Lotus not protected him, Yellow Dragon would surely have been doomed.

Clearly, earth escape was no longer an option.

Yellow Dragon was forced onto the surface, speeding away close to the ground.

The pangolin beast pursued close behind him. Every step it took made the earth quake and mountains tremble, its foul breath nearly spraying onto Yellow Dragon's back.

"Ant, hand over the treasure, and I may spare your life!" A voice exploded within Yellow Dragon's mind.