A Thousand Years of Expert Escaping

"Did you hear? Someone threw a fake match at the spirit arena just now! The two of them stood there chatting nonsense for ages without ever making a move. The spectators in that match were all demanding refunds."

Walking through the streets of Soto City, Xiao Wu animatedly told Tang San the gossip she had heard.

The Soto City Great Spirit Arena had a rule: each spirit master could only participate in one battle of the same type per day.

Having finished their one-on-one match and with no interest in fighting two-on-two, Tang San and Xiao Wu left the Great Spirit Arena.

However, after hearing the gossip Xiao Wu shared, Tang San guiltily looked away.

"How could anyone do something like that? That really is awful, hahahaha..."

Xiao Wu gave Tang San a somewhat strange look. His reaction felt a little like a guilty thief.

But Xiao Wu did not dwell on it and forgot all about it in the blink of an eye. On the way back to the hotel, she told Tang San no fewer than ten more gossip stories she had heard at the spirit arena.

The sheer density of information made Tang San wonder whether they had really gone to the same Great Spirit Arena.

Wasn't the spirit arena's process simply signing up and filling out a form, waiting in the resting area, going onstage to fight, then leaving after the fight?

At what point had she managed to make up so much gossip with other people?

After chatting all the way back to the hotel, Xiao Wu kicked off her shoes and socks and flung herself onto the bed.

With her cultivation as a Spirit Elder, tonight's battle could not really be considered tiring. Yet after doing so many things in one evening, throwing herself onto a soft bed still gave her a sense of happiness.

Lying on the bed, Xiao Wu had no mind to cultivate. She merely hugged her pillow and rolled around, occasionally chuckling softly, who knew what she was thinking about.

Tang San, meanwhile, returned to the sofa, sat cross-legged, and assumed a cultivation posture in an instant.

His breathing gradually steadied, his mind settled, and the spirit power throughout his body slowly circulated as he cultivated the Mysterious Heaven Method.

Although his spirit power rank had already reached level thirty and required a third spirit ring to break through, otherwise his spirit power would not advance in the slightest.

However, when a spirit power rank reached its bottleneck, the spirit power accumulated through continued cultivation would not vanish into thin air. Instead, it would be released all at once after obtaining a spirit ring.

Almost no low-level spirit masters knew this, but it was different among high-level spirit masters.

With so many spirit masters across the continent, they would inevitably encounter situations during repeated advancements where they could not immediately obtain a spirit ring.

Cultivation had already become a daily habit, and even when they had not obtained a spirit ring and could not enter the next stage, some still continued cultivating.

That was how this little-known fact had been discovered.

It simply was not widely known.

After all, most people would immediately go acquire a spirit ring the moment they encountered a bottleneck.

Tang San had reached level thirty long ago, but Fang Yuan had not hurried to have him obtain his third spirit ring.

On the contrary, Fang Yuan had chosen to let him settle and accumulate more, allowing his body—altered by two immortal herbs—to grow even stronger.

Star Dou Great Forest.

The air carried a rich scent of vegetation, while dense trees that blotted out the sky came in all sorts of shapes and colors.

Most of the trees in the Star Dou Great Forest were merely ordinary plants, but a small number of plant-type spirit beasts were mixed among them.

They blended in with ordinary trees and were exceedingly difficult to distinguish. Thus, when walking through the Star Dou Great Forest, one needed to be cautious even if there was no spirit beast aura nearby. No one knew whether a vine as thick as a bowl might stretch out from a roadside tree the next moment and drag someone into its maw.

These dangerous mimic predators, together with the countless ordinary trees, formed a green ocean that exuded a fresh fragrance.

The forest was usually very quiet, with only the occasional sound of spirit beasts appearing.

A rustling sound rang out, and a black shadow shot through the air like an arrow leaving the bow, vanishing in an instant.

Only after a long while, as footsteps drew near, did two figures arrive in the area the black shadow had passed through.

One of them walked in front, her eyes like roving hawks as she surveyed the surroundings above and below, attempting to find useful clues.

The other obediently followed behind her, gripping a rod-like object about two meters long and maintaining a wary posture.

The person in front searched the area for a long time before slowly straightening up and letting out a helpless sigh.

"Alas, we still lost it."

As she straightened, an aged face gradually emerged from beneath her hood. She appeared to be around sixty or seventy, and her silver hair was groomed with exceptional neatness.

The elderly woman was vigorous and full of spirit, though her eyes held a faint hint of disappointment. Her face was covered in wrinkles, but when she turned to look at the person behind her, those wrinkles seemed to become somewhat kinder.

Standing behind the old woman was a short-haired girl dressed in simple, fitted combat attire that tightly outlined her graceful figure.

She held a snake staff over two meters long. Though it seemed somewhat out of place for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl to carry a walking stick, it also lent her a hint of maturity.

Upon hearing the old woman's words, disappointment instantly appeared on the girl's face. She pouted.

"How could this happen? We chased it for so long, yet we still let it get away."

The old woman smiled. "After all, that was a Phoenix-tail Cockscomb Snake. This kind of spirit beast is famed for its extraordinary speed in flight. Although we happened to encounter one and injure it, that was largely due to luck.

"Even an injured Phoenix-tail Cockscomb Snake is faster than we are. All we could do was gamble that its injuries would become too severe and slow it down before it completely shook us off. But now, it seems the injuries we inflicted were still not enough."

The girl stepped forward and hugged the old woman's arm. "Then, Grandma, what do we do now without the Phoenix-tail Cockscomb Snake?"

The old woman said kindly, "Yiran, nine times out of ten, life does not go as one wishes. Finding a spirit ring that suits you is a matter of luck to begin with. If our luck is poor, there is still your grandfather. His cultivation is higher, and he is acting alone. Perhaps he has already found a suitable spirit beast for you."

The girl was named Meng Yiran. At sixteen, she had already reached the threshold of level thirty, so her talent could be considered quite exceptional.

Thus, she had followed her grandfather and grandmother into the Star Dou Great Forest to obtain a spirit ring for herself.

Her martial spirit was the same as her grandmother Chao Tianxiang's: a snake staff. Therefore, obtaining a spirit ring from a snake-type spirit beast was the most suitable choice.

However, the thousand-year Phoenix-tail Cockscomb Snake they had encountered during their earlier stroke of extraordinary luck was famed for its speed. Though it had been injured, it had still burst forth with astonishing speed and thrown the two of them off.

The two had tracked it all the way, only to regretfully lose its trail in the end.