Night lay heavy.
A breeze swept past, and soft rustling came from the dense woods.
The group moved through the forest in formation, advancing warily toward Qilin Cave.
After the assassination attempt earlier, everyone watched the ground beneath their feet, afraid that someone skilled in the Earthwalking Technique might burst out and attack.
Suddenly, a strange look crossed Jiang Yuebai's slightly pale face. She gently tugged Cao Jinxing's sleeve beside her and said:
"Senior Brother Ji, look seven paces ahead to your right. Is that red thing Fire Ganoderma?"
Cao Jinxing looked where she pointed. Seven paces away, beneath the bushes, sat a red "mushroom" the size of an adult's palm.
On closer inspection, it really was Fire Ganoderma!
And it was far from young.
It was at least five hundred years old.
Cao Jinxing carefully sensed his surroundings. Once he confirmed that no one lay in ambush, he stepped out of the group and gently picked the Fire Ganoderma. He was about to return when something else in the bushes behind him caught his eye. The more he looked, the stranger it seemed. He lifted the foliage with his spear, revealing three hundred-year-old ginseng plants hidden beneath the green leaves!
"There's ginseng here too!"
"And over here, schisandra."
"Rhodiola, gastrodia, and astragalus-all over a hundred years old!"
"Eleuthero, gentian... There are so many precious medicinal herbs. This mountain is a treasure trove!"
Everyone looked around.
Treasures were everywhere.
The various spiritual herbs grew in complete disorder. This was certainly not an arrangement by the mountain dwellers to lure their enemies deeper; it was simply how things were.
Looking at the "Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures" covering the ground, Zhao Xizhen sighed. "If a place like this existed outside, people would fight themselves bloody over it."
Heavenly Secret Twenty-Five said,