The Source of the River

"The Kingdom of Supi seems rather desolate!"

Braving the wind and waves, Zhang Xuezhou even prepared to perform a ritual dance, pretending to be a deity.

But after flying down four hundred miles, Zhang Xuezhou didn't even see a shadow of a person.

This differs somewhat from what Divine Lord Zhenyuan mentioned about three hundred li, and Zhang Xuezhou didn't feel comfortable urging him, only offering a brief reminder.

"The western regions are mostly pastoral areas, with few settlements or cities. They may have moved elsewhere," Divine Lord Zhenyuan said uncertainly. "If we search along the water and rivers, we're sure to find them!"

"The river is good!"

Zhang Xuezhou nodded in approval, his expression showing no impatience.

Divine Lord Zhenyuan pushed aside a wisp of white mist beside him and looked down at the territory below, a sense of unease creeping into his heart for no apparent reason.

Divine Lord Zhenyuan was the main force behind Feizong's support of the Empress Dowager and the main force in setting up the Nine Palaces Eight Trigrams Formation. He was responsible for tasks that required a lot of physical strength, so his energy consumption was quite high. However, his Grain Avoidance water method was not as good as Zhang Xuezhou's.

Zhang Xuezhou could still endure it, but Divine Lord Zhenyuan's belly was empty and his body was gradually weakening, making even flying somewhat difficult.

Actually, I don't think eating rabbit is entirely unacceptable!

Divine Lord Zhenyuan muttered something, and he even began to worry about the rabbits in Duanhun Ridge that Zhang Xuezhou had mentioned.

"There are several rabbit demons on Broken Soul Ridge who have left behind many offspring. I haven't seen any wild rabbits here," Zhang Xuezhou said, pursing his lips.

Having dashed the rabbit's hopes, Divine Lord Zhenyuan couldn't help but reach out and gaze into the distance, where the vast mountains and weedy grasslands stretched out before him.

There are few traces of humans here, and also few traces of other organisms.

This forced him to wave his large sleeves, losing the ease with which he used to Yufeng.

After flying another two hundred miles, Divine Lord Zhenyuan found himself starting to pant.

There's a river below!

After another strenuous wave of his sleeve, Divine Lord Zhenyuan flew another fifty miles, but even looking down, he felt a slight blurriness.

He only heard Zhang Xuezhou, who was leaping behind him, speak, and he couldn't help but quickly jump downwards.

The clear river water, like a ribbon, came into view, and Divine Lord Zhenyuan took several deep breaths.

Zhang Xuezhou could Grain Avoidance simply by consuming qi, but Divine Lord Zhenyuan wasn't that absurd; he needed to drink some water to recover.

Upon seeing the water source, Divine Lord Zhenyuan couldn't help but feel overjoyed.

After staggering to the ground, he ran a few steps, grabbed some water, and drank it.

"If we really can't find the Kingdom of Supi, we can grill some fish and eat it!"

Zhang Xuezhou looked at the school of fish in the river, which were large in size and thin in tail, about the size of a fingernail. He felt that finding food in this desolate wilderness was not as good as catching fish directly.

"There don't seem to be any big fish in this river!"

Divine Lord Zhenyuan drank water for several minutes before stopping. He felt the water sloshing around in his stomach and regained his strength, which allowed him to lift his head.

He gazed into the distance, his powerful Divine Sense constantly scanning the area, and found that the river was filled with fish the size of fingernails, with no trace of any larger fish.

No big fish?

Zhang Xuezhou looked up and gazed into the distance, then trudged across the river.

He looked over and saw schools of small fish in the river, but none of them were as long as a chopstick.

After removing the head and bones, there's hardly any meat left in this fish.

"This place is completely unsuitable for survival," Zhang Xuezhou said. "This fragile ecosystem is unlikely to form a strong enough ecosystem, and the conditions for a cycle cannot be established, so it's impossible for large animals to live nearby. We need to fly further away to look!"

"What kind of ecology... huh?"

Zhang Xuezhou's words struck Divine Lord Zhenyuan as somewhat difficult to understand.

He was about to ask some questions when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. The river water that had rushed into his stomach earlier seemed to be churning and shaking, or as if something was growing inside him.

"This river water is poisonous!"

Divine Lord Zhenyuan felt a chill run down his spine, then pointed at his body, and the Poison Avoidance Technique began to circulate within him.

As the water gushed out of his mouth, a group of tiny fish with large heads and thin tails also came out with it.

This made Zhang Xuezhou's heart skip a beat.

"There should be countless tiny fish eggs in this river, but these eggs hatched too quickly after entering your body," Zhang Xuezhou said. "Couldn't they have been digested and absorbed as food in your stomach?"

"Vomit..."

Divine Lord Zhenyuan was clearly unable to respond.

He kept spitting out water, and schools of fish kept gushing out of his mouth.

Zhang Xuezhou picked up a small fish and realized that although it looked tiny and cute, it had a large mouth on its big head, with hundreds of tiny, sharp teeth distributed inside.

These small fish couldn't even bite his finger, but if you magnified them, they would undoubtedly be an extremely ferocious species.

If they are in vulnerable areas such as their abdomen, these small fish may also have the ability to bite and damage.

There may have been other fish in the river in the past, but most of them should have been killed by these fish. Lacking enough food sources, these fish also became smaller and smaller in their evolutionary careers.

"These fish eggs could be hatched by the breath in my belly and then flood this river; there must be an external factor at play!"

Zhang Xuezhou was trying to figure out the cause of the fish in the river. After Divine Lord Zhenyuan spat out a large number of small fish, he felt that everything must have a cause, and that the fish could spread all over the river because there must be a guiding source.

"The source of these fish must be something that helps them hatch," Divine Lord Zhenyuan said. "It's most likely related to Law Power, or perhaps a highly poisonous substance, or maybe even an antidote!"

You mean there's treasure in this river?

Zhang Xuezhou asked in doubt.

The two found no food, but Divine Lord Zhenyuan determined that there was treasure in the river.

The river was obviously not very long, and even though Divine Lord Zhenyuan and Zhang Xuezhou were starving, they explored it without much effort.

"We're going to keep going no matter which way we go, so let's follow the river and see what's going on," said Divine Lord Zhenyuan.

"No problem!"

Zhang Xuezhou nodded.

His body floated lightly, treading forward against the direction of the river, while Divine Lord Zhenyuan stared intently at everything in the river.

The two did not deliberately search for strange, wondrous, or precious objects in the world, but if they encountered such situations, they would obviously not mind searching for them to see what was going on.

Traveling upstream for nearly a hundred miles, Zhang Xuezhou saw the source of the river appear, and heard the chattering of women.

He reached out and touched the ground, and there, in the center of the vines and trees, a spring was gushing out. Hundreds of women, young and old, were bathing in the spring, while dozens of strong men were kneeling beside the spring, praying respectfully.

"This is the source?"

Going upstream, the number of fish increased, almost completely filling the river channel.

Surprisingly, there were no small fish in the spring area formed by the source of the spring, which also provided a place for these women to bathe.

Zhang Xuezhou glanced at it but didn't say anything, while Divine Lord Zhenyuan swept his sleeve.

The spring water surged, carrying many women to the shore, and a milky-white cylindrical object emerged from the spring's source.

"It's the Spirit Root 'Suoyang'!"

Divine Lord Zhenyuan stared at him for a few seconds, then was overjoyed.