Six-eared Spirit Python Empire

Clang, clang, clang, clang!!! For seven straight days, the sounds of hammering echoed continuously from within the cave, growing louder and louder until it seemed as though a volcano was about to erupt, shaking the earth and mountains.

"Lord Dragon King is trying to punch through the earth's veins!" Feeling the ground tremble, Xie Dong could not help swallowing. This pure physical strength was simply too terrifying!

"This is the Ancient Void Dragon clan, the race with the most terrifying physical talent among all magical beasts." A decrepit old man looked toward the crater, his aged eyes narrowing slightly. The Ancient Void Dragons truly had monstrous talent. As long as their nourishment kept up, even blacksmithing could improve their physical cultivation.

This old man was naturally the Ancient Dragon Turtle whom Zhu Jin had subdued. When he broke through to Dou Zun, he had relied on the Dragonblood Heavenly Fruit's power to obtain a fortunate opportunity and successfully transform into human form.

Meanwhile, inside the cave, Zhu Jin looked at the Four-mouth Black-Yellow Cauldron before him, radiating a black-yellow glow. This was not the Four-mouth Cauldron he had forged on his first day, but a Four-mouth Black-Yellow Cauldron he had personally created by imitating the blueprint.

Alchemists were valuable because they were exceedingly rare. Pill refinement was difficult and required a master's guidance, but artifact forging was far simpler. Zhu Jin had even begun designing his own cauldrons.

His dragon claws were stained with his own essence blood as he slowly inscribed a cauldron inscription onto the medicine cauldron. This was the final step in forming a medicine cauldron: using dragon blood and soul power to carve inscriptions, seeking the protection of heaven and earth and drawing in the qi of all directions to help the alchemist raise their success rate to a certain extent.

"Black-Yellow qi!" Zhu Jin took a deep breath, then blew a breath of Black-Yellow qi at the Four-mouth Cauldron as though blowing immortal breath.

As that breath of Black-Yellow qi entered it, the cauldron buzzed. Faint dragon roars sounded from within the Four-mouth Cauldron, and the inscriptions on its surface actually began to emit a dim glow. The medicine cauldron rattled, and a yellow dragon suddenly leaped from within it. In an instant, its roar shook the nine heavens. The yellow dragon let out a roar, coiled its body around the entire medicine cauldron, and a dragon pattern emerged.

Zhu Jin looked at the Four-mouth Cauldron he had created by imitating the design blueprint of the Four-mouth Black-Iron Red-Copper Cauldron, his face filled with astonishment. "Damn... a one-hundred-percent success rate."

Over these seven days, Zhu Jin had forged three cauldrons in total. He had thought the first two might have been luck, but this design he had come up with on a whim had also succeeded in one try. There was neither a cauldron explosion nor a single crack!

"Could this Black-Yellow qi give a one-hundred-percent success rate when forging anything... No way. If it had such a special effect, how could the Black-Yellow Flame rank dead last?" Zhu Jin looked at the three medicine cauldrons before him and silently suppressed the thought. This Black-Yellow qi was, after all, only a Yellow-tier secret technique. Besides, even if the Black-Yellow Flame truly had some heaven-defying effect, he had yet to obtain the Black-Yellow Flame itself. He had merely absorbed some scraps of it, evolving Dragon Flame into the Earth-tier Black-Yellow Dragon Flame.

"Mm, it must be because I'm the chosen one." Zhu Jin nodded heavily. This was definitely because of himself, not because of the Black-Yellow qi. He needed to look for the reasons within himself more often.

Zhu Jin put everything away. After eating and drinking his fill and restoring himself to peak condition, he left the cave.

Thump, thump, thump! The instant Zhu Jin stepped out of the cave, several hundred magical beasts dropped to their knees, lowered their heads, and shouted in deep voices, "Welcome Lord Dragon King out of seclusion!"

To outsiders, the cries of these magical beasts would only sound like growls and roars, but Zhu Jin was also an Ancient Void Dragon, so he naturally understood beast language.

Looking at the several hundred magical beasts kneeling below in worship, Zhu Jin saw that aside from the Purple Cloud Scorpion Serpents and Flame Wolf Unicorns, the other tribes of the Wild Mountain Range—the Heavenly Fox Spider Tribe, the Green-horned Tiger Tribe, and the Divine Eagle Deer Tribe—had all chosen to submit. He had now completely ruled the entire Wild Mountain Range and established his own tribe.

After all, they had no choice but to submit. Though the old turtle no longer possessed his former strength, he still had the power of a Dou Emperor. All who resisted had died. Moreover, the Wild Mountain Range was now merely a mountain range barren of spiritual qi. There were no high-tier spiritual fruits or medicinal herbs, and naturally no especially powerful magical beasts.

Looking at the tribe below, which had begun to take shape, and at his people, Zhu Jin casually tossed out several fourth-tier magical beast corpses as large as small mountains. "I'll be leaving for some time. Divide this magical beast flesh among yourselves."

Seeing the enormous fourth-tier magical beast corpses piled like mountains, all the people stared wide-eyed. To magical beasts, the flesh of high-tier magical beasts was a great tonic. It could not only fill their stomachs, but also rapidly increase their strength and aid cultivation!

Woo, woo, woo!! Seeing the Dragon King being so generous, some juvenile magical beasts that were merely first or second tier and had yet to mature could no longer hold back. They pounced forward and began tearing into the meat. Following Lord Dragon King, they could eat nine meals a day!

"Shi Yuan, Xie Dong, Flame Wolf, let's depart for the Six-eared Spirit Python Empire."

Unlike magical beast families such as the Purple Cloud Scorpion Serpents, which were only distantly related to the Nine Nether Deep Earth Python Clan, the Six-eared Spirit Pythons were true blood relatives of the Nine Nether Deep Earth Python Clan. Their status within the Nine Nether Deep Earth Python Clan was somewhat like that of the Ancient Dragon Bears. Though they were a vassal family, they had shed blood and rendered meritorious service for the organization. They belonged to the kind of family with merits to its name.

Spatial wormholes required Dou Zun experts to establish them and Dou Zong experts to maintain them regularly. A single spatial wormhole could draw in all the talent and profit from the surrounding area. One spatial wormhole alone was enough to support an entire family.

Even if Zhu Jin had never read the original work, he could understand the siphoning effect of spatial wormholes. Put simply, weren't they just like airports and high-speed rail stations? If you wanted to travel somewhere far away, you had no choice but to go there. The economic impact was unimaginably terrifying.

The Six-eared Spirit Python Empire was the closest place to the Wild Mountain Range that possessed a spatial wormhole.

"A spatial wormhole... If we could build one in the Wild Mountain Range, it should attract quite a few magical beast families to join our tribe, right?" Xie Dong asked curiously as he sat on the old turtle's back with Zhu Jin.

The old turtle shook his head. "Connecting two distant points in space requires an exceedingly delicate grasp of spatial power. Only experts above Dou Zun can create one. And beyond that, it also requires Dou Zong experts to maintain it regularly. The Six-eared Spirit Pythons may not necessarily have an eighth-tier magical beast, but they definitely have a seventh-tier one. If you were a Dou Zong expert, would you be willing to remain in the tribe forever just to maintain a spatial wormhole?"

Hearing the old turtle's words, Zhu Jin suddenly understood the benefits involved. "I get it. The eighth-tier experts of the Nine Nether Deep Earth Python Clan open a spatial wormhole, but they do not want to spend time and effort maintaining it. So, they have tribes with seventh-tier magical beasts maintain the spatial wormhole, while they themselves continuously earn money by taking a family cut. That really is a business that brings profit without investment."

The old turtle nodded. "This business is even more profitable than pills. The prerequisite is that you have sufficient strength. Not only must you open the spatial passage, but you must also have the strength to protect the city at the other end. As long as you have strength, money, resources, females—everything will be delivered to your hands on its own."