A month passed, and the infighting within the Zhou Household raged fiercely, but none of it affected Lu Zhao. He was like a piece of spoils waiting for someone to claim him.
Nothing had happened to the Zhou Household, but a problem had arisen in Green Vine Ravine. All four of the Zhou Household's Guest Elders had gathered beside the underground river.
"Fellow Daoist Chen, have you noticed anything unusual about the snakes? Over the past half month, there have been at least fifty percent more than usual. Yesterday, the shed skins at the three marked locations in the northern ravine were piled more than three fingers thick," Lu Zhao said.
"Unusual? They're more than just restless! While patrolling the day before yesterday, I saw the underground river's water level plunge. Seven Ink-Scaled Snakes crawled out of cracks in the rock and even dared to invade a nest of gold-devouring ants." His Adam's apple bobbed. "This madness is nothing like their usual behavior."
Chen Moyang replied with some agitation.
Crack!
Yin Jiu snapped the Snake Bone in his hand, letting dark green marrow drip into a Clay Jar. "The ranked Snake Kings have been away from their nests for three days." The holes in his mask swept over the others. "They used to appear only once every month or so. Now, hissing rises from the bottom of the ravine every night."
Lu Zhao turned to Liu Fengchun, who leaned on his staff. "Elder Liu, you've been stationed here for six years. Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"Six years!"
An eerie light swirled in the Snake-Head Staff's jade-green eyes. Liu Fengchun scoffed. "There were only a few Bone-Eroding Orchids when I arrived. And how many are there now?"
"But this is the first time even I have seen these long worms go mad." His withered fingers stroked the relief carvings on his staff. "Still, I heard Elder Zhou mention something once. He said there was a snake tide twenty years ago, called..."
"The Green Vine Snake Calamity."
"The Green Vine Snake Calamity? What's that?" the three asked in unison.
Liu Fengchun shook his head and said irritably, "That old fox stopped halfway through. He only sighed and said, 'While the roots live, the snakes will never rest.'" He slammed the head of his staff against the ground. "Want to know? Go ask him yourselves."
A rank smell steamed from the rotting soil of the medicinal field. Zhou Qixing was hunched over, pushing the roots of a Bone-Eroding Orchid into a snake carcass. When the four broke through the mist, he did not even raise his head. "If you disturb the Bone-Eroding Orchid's feeding, you'll take responsibility yourselves."
Chen Moyang hurried forward. "Elder Zhou, the snakes have been moving in swarms lately, and even the Early First Stage Snake Kings we rarely saw before have suddenly become more numerous. We were worried something was wrong, so we came to ask your advice."
"What sort of Snake Kings are those Early First Stage ones? You'll soon see true mutated Middle First Stage Snake Kings."
Then his hand, like a dead branch, suddenly jabbed toward the cliff face. Deep within its cracks lingered marks left by blades, and they could vaguely make out traces of something snakelike having coiled around it.
"This place was originally called Qiulong Ravine." Zhou Qixing's voice rasped like a grinding stone. "A hundred years ago, a second-tier Qiulong Green Vine grew here. Magical Artifacts could barely damage its bark, and its sap could corrode metal and iron."
Zhou Qixing kicked aside a large rock at his feet, exposing something like black vine tendrils. "Back then, several Foundation Establishment Ancestors of the Zhou Household joined forces to lay down the Three Powers Mountain-Burning Formation. It took a month to burn through the main root, and it also reduced the originally first-tier superior-grade Spirit Spring to its present state."
With that, his withered fingers plunged into the rock and dragged out a web of bronze-colored filaments. "See these? Fine as hair, yet they bind the stone like iron. These are the tips of the remnant roots! Although the main root was refined into a second-tier Magical Artifact, seventy percent of the remaining root network is still buried underground. It's been rotting for nearly a hundred years."
Lu Zhao's pupils contracted sharply. "Then the Ink-Scaled Snakes' mutations..."
"Exactly. Monstrous things nurtured by rotten roots!" Zhou Qixing sneered. "The Green Vine Remnant Roots contain wood spirit essence. After the Ink-Scaled Snakes devour them, their bloodlines mutate, allowing them to break through the barrier of first-tier middle-grade.
"Otherwise, with an unranked bloodline like theirs, first-tier low grade would already be their limit. Where would first-tier middle-grade Snake Kings come from?"
If the remnant roots sprouted, they would release a scent ordinary people could not smell, but Ink-Scaled Snakes were extremely sensitive to it. "That is the fortune the Snake Kings are fighting over-new shoots must have broken through the soil at the bottom of the ravine!"
"Why hasn't the Zhou Household taken all the remnant roots?" Puzzlement showed through the holes in Yin Jiu's mask. "Or transplanted the new shoots?"
A rasping sound rattled in Zhou Qixing's throat, and his withered palm struck the rock wall. "Take the roots? Do you think we're digging up yams?"
The bronze-colored fossil did not budge; instead, the recoil tore his cuff. Lu Zhao drove his iron carving knife into the rock, and sparks flew as its tip struck the stone layer-the bronze-colored filaments had fused with the black rock.
"The remnant roots stretch for miles, buried deep in the earth's veins." Zhou Qixing stamped on the ground. "It took Foundation Establishment cultivators a month just to sever the main root. How much effort would removing every root take, and how much would we gain?"
"Besides, the spiritual energy in these root fragments has dissipated. They can no longer even be considered spiritual materials, so no one has designs on them."
"The newly sprouted young plants, though, will certainly have remnant roots whose spiritual energy hasn't dissipated. There might be some inside the Snake Kings' bellies too. This isn't something a mere Middle First Stage Snake King can digest quickly."
"But after a hundred years, most of their spiritual energy must have been depleted. They can no longer count as second-tier spiritual materials, and they aren't worth reporting to our superiors and going to great lengths to find."
He picked up a withered vine beside the medicinal field. "Transplant them? How do you know the Zhou Household hasn't tried? It's just that the results of several attempts were poor."
"The Medicine Hall tried one thirty years ago." "It used up an entire gourd of first-tier superior-grade spirit water and still remained half dead. Its spiritual energy didn't even compare to a first-tier low grade Spirit Plant."
"Once this green vine leaves this place, it's nothing but scrap!"
"As for growing it here, with the spiritual energy now reduced to first-tier low grade, the very most we could grow would be a first-tier middle-grade spirit vine. What use would that be to the Zhou Household?"
"No wonder," Chen Moyang murmured.
Zhou Qixing walked hunched into the depths of the mist. "As for the snake tide in a few days, just weather it. With the formation here, why fear these mere Ink-Scaled..." His trailing voice slowly faded into the thick mist.
Zhou Qixing's figure suddenly solidified beside the medicinal field, the churning mist reflected in his cloudy eyes. "When the new shoots emerge, the snakes will rise en masse."
He turned, a solemn look appearing on his deeply wrinkled face. "A Middle First Stage Ink-Scaled Snake's venom sac is worth ten Spirit Stones, its shed skin eight, and its Snake Bone another seven or eight."
His withered hand spread open. "The young plants are chicken ribs to the Zhou Household, but they're a decent body-refining spirit medicine for Qi Refining cultivators. They should be worth a few dozen Spirit Stones too.
"As for remnant roots whose spiritual energy hasn't dissipated..." He glanced at Lu Zhao. "They should make decent puppet materials, also worth a few dozen Spirit Stones."
Liu Fengchun's Snake-Head Staff hummed. "Elder Zhou, do you want us to take a gamble?"
"Whether you want to gamble is your own business. I don't have much lifespan left, so I won't be joining the excitement."
Zhou Qixing picked up the potted Ink Orchid dripping with blood. "But if you want to compete for this opportunity, remember two things: the young plants will certainly be in the strongest Snake King's nest, and you mustn't underestimate any swarms you encounter. These won't be the snakes we usually see. There will certainly be plenty of first-tier low grade ones."
"Those few first-tier middle-grade Snake Kings lurking deep in the underground river will emerge too. None of you are fledglings fresh from the nest, so I needn't say more."
The four stood in deathly silence amid the rank wind. Spiritual light flickered rapidly over Chen Moyang's Formation Plate, the centipedes in Yin Jiu's sleeves rustled as they crawled, and Liu Fengchun gripped his Snake-Head Staff tightly.
Lu Zhao stared at the cliff face, his mind filled with thoughts of the Green Vine Remnant Roots.
He recalled the description of a puppet in the first-tier puppet inheritance.
Vine Snake (first-tier middle-grade puppet): required one first-tier superior-grade spirit vine and a hundred jin of azure spirit iron. Its body was hard, unafraid of slashes from middle-grade Magical Artifacts. It could spit wood-aspected spiritual light up to a hundred zhang and fight first-tier superior-grade Demonic Beasts in close combat.
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