Black-and-White Fruit

The sunlight was especially dazzling today, but it was not as hot as yesterday. Like the stars, it shone gently, its presence unmistakable without overly disturbing anyone looking at it.

O'Connor closed his eyes, his nostrils twitching as he drew a deep breath of the barren scent on the wind. The next second, his eyes snapped open. With a flick of his hand, he drew the broad axe from his back, kicked off with both legs, and leaped into the air, looming larger as he descended.

Zeng Mu stood motionless and clenched his fist. Amid a flicker of light, a layer of black iron color coated his knuckles. As the rush of wind reached his head, he threw a fierce punch.

Clang! A crisp metallic ring sounded. The axe spun through the air above the ground for several seconds before crashing down with a thud, scattering gravel and dust.

Pfft! O'Connor collapsed to the ground and spat a mouthful of dark, clotted blood through bloodless lips. He stared in disbelief at the figure still standing before him, and the last flame that had flared in his chest went out.

Zeng Mu rotated his wrist, looking as though he had not quite had his fill, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.

This was the first time he had felt the power of this world's Elementalists, and the first time he had felt the strength of the metal element.

As Kanni marveled silently nearby, Zeng Mu walked over, bent down, and took hold of O'Connor's limp, trembling hands.

Crack! With a little pressure, O'Connor's left thumb and the index and middle fingers of his right hand bent sharply backward. At the same time, a bright red split opened across his knuckles.

"Kill me!" His cheeks spasmed as he roared, his voice growing weaker.

"Kill you?" Zeng Mu glanced at the design on his breastplate and chuckled. "That would be letting you off too easily. Besides, there's more to your identity than being a White-Pattern Leader, isn't there?"

"Bastard! Hurry up and kill me! You worthless piece of trash!" O'Connor shouted, a furtive glint flashing deep in his eyes.

Kanni walked over and swept his hand, bringing the Silver Sword down against O'Connor's neck. "Nameless, should we kill this useless trash? I'd be more than happy to cut down a leader-level figure. The satisfaction and honor it brings would outweigh killing a hundred enemies."

Having already noticed something suspicious, Zeng Mu gently pushed the blade aside and flicked O'Connor on the forehead. His head promptly drooped as he passed out. "Spare him for now. Perhaps the Knight Commander will be very interested in him."

In just a few days, Zeng Mu had already become familiar with his surroundings. Once someone truly accepted a new environment, they could quickly adapt and fit into it. His mind was now remarkably agile, and he thought far more deeply and looked further ahead than before. Of course, most of that had come from his advancement to an Elementalist.

O'Connor's warhorse was extraordinary in appearance. Compared with the warhorses that had fled, it was not particularly sturdy, and was even somewhat lean. Seen from a distance, it would surely have been mistaken for a Viking warhorse that had lost weight from starvation.

When the knowledgeable Kanni placed his palm on the horse's head, he felt vigorous vitality surging into his hand. That searing flow of energy was like the sun, endless and tireless, yet also swift and powerful as a flying arrow, poised to strike, with gentleness beneath its strength.

"Strong legs, sleek hair, tightly knit bones and sinews, and flesh brimming with vitality. It really is a thousand-mile horse. No wonder the other horses were breathing so heavily earlier. I knew they were nearly too exhausted to catch their breath. They must be fine horses themselves to have barely kept pace with this magnificent animal all the way here." Kanni lavished praise on the fine horse. It showed no wariness of strangers, exhaling gently and shaking its head as though agreeing with him.

"You said earlier that the more outstanding a horse is, the harder it is to make it accept a master. Even if it does, it rarely becomes truly loyal. Can you explain why now?" Zeng Mu asked, looking at him.

Kanni nodded. "Of course. Horses are the most spirited of land beasts, so they're immensely proud, even more so than talented people who never get their chance. They belong to nature by birth. Even if they're trained from infancy, the wild longing for freedom hidden in their blood cannot be suppressed. That's even truer of a thousand-mile horse."

With that, Kanni glanced sideways at O'Connor, whose limbs Zeng Mu had secured with iron rings, leaving him no different from a trussed crab. Contempt flickered in his eyes. "This fellow isn't worthy of being this thousand-mile horse's master at all. The horse only reluctantly carried him because of its circumstances. Deep down, it's delighted to see what's happened to him."

"Snort..." The horse breathed out softly, as though chiming in like a person.

"Then can we ride it?"

Kanni stroked it with his palm, and the horse whinnied again. The corners of his mouth rose. "Yes, but taking things any further would probably be very difficult. A spirit horse accepts no mediocre master, and a thousand-mile horse accepts no ordinary one."

Zeng Mu stepped forward and gently stroked the horse's cheek. The thousand-mile horse blinked obligingly. "Come on. Time to set off."

They laid O'Connor sideways between them, then cleaned up the battlefield. Just as they were preparing to mount with satisfied expressions, they suddenly heard a rumbling sound swirling in their ears.

The sound was not far away. Turning toward it, they could easily see a black "tentacle" pointing straight into the sky a little over two hundred meters away, swaying back and forth like a finger.

They jogged over. Kanni looked down at it and pondered for a while before muttering, "This... this looks like Dead Python Root?" His voice was uncertain and wavering, almost as though he were drunk.

He hunted Elemental Beasts and was thoroughly familiar with birds and animals, but he had little experience with unusual plants or elemental plants and could not readily identify them.

Still, after Cobert and Ma Linya's earlier explanations, he remembered Dead Python Root, which differed from Living Python Root only in its elemental energy and color. Judging by the eye-shaped spiral patterns on its surface, this "tentacle" should have been the tip of a Dead Python Root's main root.

But what made him sound uncertain was not the true identity of the "tentacle" before him. It was a baffling question he could not resolve-how could Dead Python Root grow where there was Living Python Root?

Life and death were opposite extremes. That was precisely where Living Python Root and Dead Python Root got their names.

Zeng Mu flicked his left hand from his waist. The Platinum Dagger hummed out of his sleeve, then rebounded into the air with a clang. It changed direction in midair, fell at an unbelievable angle and speed, and slipped gently and securely back into place at his waist.

"Sure enough, blades can't penetrate it, and its patterns resemble those of the Living Python Root from earlier. It's definitely Dead Python Root. But why does it move? Didn't you say this stuff was no different from tree roots?"

Kanni fell silent for quite a while before finally squeezing out a suggestion. "If we can't figure it out, let's dig beneath it. Maybe we'll find something."

"Scrape, scrape..."

As noon approached, the sun was white as a platter of luminous jade, and a single glance at its intense light could leave someone dizzy. Accompanied by scraping sounds, pile after pile of soil accumulated into two small mounds. Amid the constant digging and impacts, dry grit around the mounds rose into the sky with yellow dust and powdered earth. Carried by the wind, it spread and lingered like smoke from a beacon fire, dancing conspicuously over the gray-toned land.

An enormous, branching pit took shape. Kanni's and Zeng Mu's heads were now below ground level. Each held a shovel-like chunk of black iron, digging scoop after scoop into the increasingly soft, deep brown soil. Though sweat kept dripping from them, their hands never slowed, and the excitement and curiosity in their eyes were nearing their peak.

Viewed from above, the pit could be seen branching apart. The reason was that the two men were not its only occupants-it was filled with black roots.

The roots ran horizontally and vertically, coiling together like the enduring roots of an ancient, thousand-year-old tree. Their color was deep as ink, their grain tight as pine. A light sniff revealed a scent like roasted corn, only slightly saltier, and not with the saltiness of well salt, but sea salt.

The tip of the Dead Python Root's main root still swayed in the air, its speed and force now three times what they had been before. It whistled through the air like a long whip. Whenever bits of gravel mixed into the shoveled soil struck it, they were immediately knocked away with vicious force, enough to fell a sheep or stun a fish. Because of this, all the crawling creatures within a hundred meters huddled in their holes, not daring to poke out even half their heads.

"Quick, put a little more effort into it. We're almost there." Kanni's arms flew as he stared fixedly at the increasingly close answer beneath the roots.

To be honest, Zeng Mu was nowhere near as curious as Kanni. Had he known this fellow would become so impatient, and that it would take a full two hours, he would have preferred to ride back to the city.

But there was no undoing what was done, and no point regretting it. Besides, having come this far, he was increasingly eager to discover just what lay beneath this Dead Python Root.

The shovels moved faster and struck harder, breaking through every bit of grit in their way and pushing aside the black roots hidden in the silence.

Two minutes later, the dense tangle of roots narrowed to a single root. The two carefully dug along it toward its tip, their movements as light as those of lotus-root diggers, afraid that one careless move might damage whatever lay hidden at the end.

As the final shovelful fell and soil scattered into the air, a conspicuous speck of white came into view.

Their fingers brushed the soil away. Black covered the white, its edges curving into a circle, its surface smooth and free of any bumps or hollows.

At last, they could see it clearly. It was a fruit, a very strange fruit.

The fruit was the size of an apricot, perfectly rounded and smooth. Its exterior was a translucent, inky black, with a milky-white spot at its center. Branching strands from the root tip covered half the fruit, making it look as though a strangely shaped hand were gripping it from above and holding it suspended.

"What is this?" Naturally, Zeng Mu could not make sense of it.

Kanni shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. I've never heard of Dead Python Root or Living Python Root bearing fruit."

"What if the two kinds of python root came together?"

"As I said earlier, Living Python Root and Dead Python Root are two different plants, so that possibility doesn't hold up."

"Then how do you explain the Living Python Root we saw here earlier?"

Kanni was immediately at a loss for words. He fell silent, entertaining the same conjecture as Zeng Mu.

"Anyway, let's take this Black-and-White Fruit back first. Someone is bound to know what it is."