As they ventured deeper, the two passed through a narrow cave. Several thriving stalks of Gold-Eating Bamboo crowded the cave, standing straight and tall.
The tallest and thickest among them was fully twenty-five thousand years old.
"For most plant-type spirit beasts, you can tell their cultivation by looking at their appearance. Take this bamboo, for example."
The entire Gold-Eating Bamboo was pitch-black, its stalk slender and straight, as hard as iron. Xuan Zi lightly flicked the bamboo with a finger, and a deep, heavy metallic ring immediately sounded.
"Each segment represents a thousand years. It has exactly twenty-five segments, making it twenty-five thousand years old."
The edges of its slender leaves were as sharp as blades, glinting with a cold light.
A faint breeze swept into the cave, causing the bamboo leaves to rub against one another and occasionally spark tiny showers of fire.
The roots of this kind of spirit beast sank into underground mineral veins. It absorbed Soul Power by gnawing on ore, so wherever there was a patch of Gold-Eating Bamboo, there had to be a mineral vein beneath it.
Unfortunately, the leading stalk's cultivation was too high. The Soul Power of a twenty-five-thousand-year spirit beast was far too violent.
Yue Ling was only a level-forty Soul Ancestor. His body could not withstand it, and forcibly absorbing it would only make him explode and die. The two could only abandon the place and continue onward.
They continued until they reached the very center of the area, where a mound-like ant nest larger than any they had seen before appeared before them.
The soldier ants wandering around the nest were all larger, and the metallic gleam on their shells was heavier. They were much stronger than the ants on the outskirts.
Just as Yue Ling wanted to move