Traces of Sky Cicada Wood
Xuan Ye said, "Fellow Daoist Guo, I'm going to remove the formation."
As soon as he finished speaking, Xuan Ye made a few hand Method Formula on the Formation Plate, and the crimson protective shield that had been covering the Snake Cave suddenly dissipated.
With a casual wave of his hand, Song Wen sent eight Formation Flags flying off the ground and hurtling towards him.
Song Wen slapped a Swift Movement Talisman on his body, then turned and fled.
Exhausted and weakened by excessive mental exertion, Xuan Ye patted one of the ghost-raising pouches at his waist.
Five little devils with snow-white skin and brightly colored clothes jumped out.
Five little demons lifted Xuan Ye, stirring up gusts of yin wind, and fled closely behind Song Wen.
The five ghosts were extremely fast and quickly overtook Song Wen in front of them.
Song Wen glanced at the increasing number of Black Viper approaching from behind.
Blood mist rose from his body, his speed increased dramatically, and in the blink of an eye, he surpassed Xuan Ye again.
An hour later, having shaken off the Black Viper, Song Wen and Xuan Ye found Xiao Shan to rest.
"Fellow Daoist Guo, there are three Snake-Scale Fruit here in total. How would you like to distribute them?"
At some point, Xuan Ye stopped calling Song Wen "Brother Guo Tao" and started calling him "Fellow Daoist Guo".
Snake-Scale Fruit can help Qi Refinement cultivators break through to higher realms. It is a rather precious spirit medicine. More importantly, it is basically priceless on the market, and very few people would sell Snake-Scale Fruit. Even if it is sold, it is mostly in barter for rare spiritual materials.
For Song Wen, the Snake-Scale Fruit was not something he urgently needed. Since he began cultivating, every breakthrough he had made had been smooth, and he had never encountered a bottleneck that he couldn't break through for a long time.
But now that Song Wen has the Snake-Scale Fruit, Song Wen naturally can't give it up.
"Just one is fine with me."
The Snake-Scale Fruit is only effective on the first use. Furthermore, Xuan Ye contributed more on this trip and should rightfully receive more Snake-Scale Fruit.
Xuan Ye nodded, placed a Snake-Scale Fruit into a pre-prepared jade box, and handed it to Song Wen.
"Thanks to you for this trip, fellow Daoist. Xuan Ye thanks you again."
Song Wen said, "Our cooperation is mutually beneficial, so there's no need for thanks. However, fellow Daoist, please don't forget your promise to accompany me to retrieve the Sky Cicada Wood."
"Of course. After I've rested a bit, I'll set off tomorrow."
The next day.
Song Wen and Xuan Ye returned to the cave where they had parted ways with Zi Yi, and continued along the cave passage.
After traveling several dozen miles, Song Wen was surprised to find that there were quite a few plants in the cave.
Most of these plants grow in damp corners, and some even emit a faint fluorescent glow, which is quite magical.
If these plants weren't completely devoid of any Spiritual Qi, Song Wen would have suspected they were some kind of special spirit medicine.
Song Wen once again marveled at the wonders of nature in the Cultivation World.
This may be one of the meanings of cultivating immortality, as it always allows people to witness some strange things that are beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
Song Wen, who was walking forward, suddenly stopped and said.
"Not far from the fork in the road ahead, there are two people hiding in a Xiao Shan cave!"
Xuan Ye was no longer amazed by Song Wen's extraordinary mental strength, and he asked.
"What kind of person?"
Song Wen's expression was somewhat strange as he spoke.
"A man and a woman, both with very low cultivation levels, one at the Qi Refining Fourth Layer and the other at the Qi Refining Third Layer. The man was also injured."
It was quite unexpected for Song Wen that a Qi Refining Fourth Layer and a Qi Refining Third Layer would dare to venture into the underground caves of the Ancient Battlefield.
Xuan Ye, however, seemed unsurprised and said...
"They were probably captured and used as scouts."
Late Qi Refinement cultivator's spiritual power can only detect objects within a hundred meters or so, which is sometimes simply insufficient in this dark and complex underground cave.
Therefore, some monks came up with the idea of using living people to explore the way.
As long as a mark is left on living people and their lives are controlled, these poor people who have been captured have no chance to resist.
Xuan Ye then said, "Let's go, let's go take a look."
Encountering living people in the underground cave, whose strength was weak, Xuan Ye had the idea of trying to obtain information from them.
Song Wen and his companion soon arrived at the Xiao Shan where the man and woman were hiding.
Upon seeing Song Wen and his companion's sudden appearance, the man panicked and shielded the woman behind him.
The man was about forty years old and dressed like a Rogue Cultivator. A large piece of flesh had been torn from his waist. Some time had passed since he was injured, and his wound had been bandaged and the bleeding had stopped.
The woman was in her early twenties and had an average appearance.
"Who are you people, and what brings you to this underground cave?"
Ignoring the panicked look on the couple's faces, Xuan Ye asked coldly.
As if afraid of being too slow to answer and displeasing Xuan Ye and Song Wen, the middle-aged man hurriedly replied.
"We are father and daughter, Rogue Cultivator living in Heavenly Origin Market. We were captured by three Late Qi Refinement Refining cultivators. They used my daughter's life as leverage to force me to venture deep into the underground cave to scout ahead for them."
Heavenly Origin Market is a small market established by Rogue Cultivator, located not far from the Ancient Battlefield.
"So how did you escape?" Xuan Ye continued to ask.
"As I was exploring the cave, I suddenly saw a pile of bones tens of meters high. At the very top of the pile grew two jade-like spirit trees, the taller one being over three feet high."
"Just as I was about to relay the message to the three people behind me, two vengeful ghosts rushed out from the pile of bones. The ghosts were extremely powerful, and the yin wind they generated easily injured me and sent me flying, crashing into the stone wall. I then lost consciousness."
"After waiting for about fifteen minutes, I slowly woke up, and the vengeful ghost had vanished without a trace."
"Worried about my daughter's safety, I rushed back. But my daughter and the three cultivators, who should have been only about two hundred meters away, had vanished without a trace, leaving only some signs of a struggle."
"I didn't find my daughter's body, so I kept searching with a glimmer of hope, and finally found her in this Xiao Shan. It turned out that while the three of us were fighting the vengeful ghost, my daughter managed to escape and survived."
What the middle-aged man didn't notice was that when he mentioned the 'bone pile' and the 'jade-like' spirit tree, Song Wen and Xuan Ye exchanged a glance.
That jade-like spirit tree was precisely the purpose of Song Wen's trip: the Sky Cicada Wood.
Through the middle-aged man's account, Song Wen also learned that the father and daughter's surname was Liu, the father's Liu Qiao, and the daughter's Liu Mu.
At the same time, Song Wen could roughly judge from his words that the three cultivators who faced the vengeful ghost had been defeated.
Because when Liu Qiao woke up, he found that the Sky Cicada Wood was still there. If the three of them won, they would definitely take the Sky Cicada Wood.
Song Wen looked the father and daughter up and down, but couldn't see anything special about them.
The father and daughter were incredibly lucky; they encountered a powerful vengeful ghost, yet inexplicably both survived.
Just then, one of the Beetle Gu that had been scouting ahead suddenly sent a message.
Song Wen said, "Someone else is here."
He hadn't encountered any outsiders since entering the underground cave, but unexpectedly, he encountered them twice today.
Who is it?
"There were three people in total. Two of them were Zi Yi and Lao Chun, followed by a male cultivator at the eighth level of Qi Refinement. That male cultivator was in very bad condition."