Chapter 4270 — Pulling Weeds
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Though the killing intent was fierce, the man in black had come far too late. Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao had already been gone for two hours, a good several dozen li away by now; no matter how extraordinary one's methods of detection, there was no finding them.
For all his formidable strength, the man in black did not even know who his targets were, let alone where they might be at this moment. What could he possibly do?
Seething with unwillingness, the man in black lingered in place for a while, but in the end could only decide to head back first. According to all previous intelligence, this was the only place in Lufeng Forest where infant ginseng grew; even if it occasionally appeared elsewhere, the odds were vanishingly small. To search aimlessly like that would be no different from fishing for a needle in the ocean.
What was more, infant ginseng had always carried a unique reputation—not in the sense that there was only one such plant in all the world, but that within any single region there could be at most one infant ginseng, and never a second.
The reason was that infant ginseng's growing conditions were exceedingly harsh: it required both abundant heaven-and-earth spiritual energy and abundant yin energy at the same time. The only places that could satisfy both conditions were the spirit beast graveyards of the great primordial lands, and Lufeng Forest had only this one spirit beast graveyard—barely enough to sustain a single infant ginseng. Even if someone deliberately tried to cultivate a second, it simply could not survive.
Therefore, for the man in black, who was desperate to find infant ginseng, rather than lingering in Lufeng Forest and wasting time for nothing, it would be better to hurry back; perhaps in some other primordial land there might still be a chance of finding some.
Yet just as the man in black, helpless with frustration, was about to leave, his gaze inadvertently fell once more upon the corpse nearby. Something stirred in his heart; he turned and walked over, bent down, and examined it closely.
The gray-robed man had died a wretched death, his face battered beyond recognition. Nearly every inch of his body was covered in wounds, and his head in particular was a sight too horrible to behold—anyone of weaker nerves would likely have been sick at a single glance.
"These wounds, how..." After examining for a good while, the man in black stroked his chin thoughtfully, standing frozen in place and making no move for a long time. Only after a moment did he seem to suddenly hit upon something; his figure flickered and vanished into the dense forest.
………………
"Xiaotao, let's stop here. If we go any further, we'll be getting rather far from the route Chu Bubai gave us—it could be dangerous." Wei Zhao, who had been weaving through the dense forest, suddenly halted.
"Oh, so we're just heading back like this?" Huang Xiaotao nodded and looked at Wei Zhao.
"Back? How could we just go back like this? Xiaotao, look around—aren't these all top-grade spirit herbs? With coloring like this, refining them into pills would guarantee a first-rate product!" Wei Zhao said with a smile, gesturing at their surroundings.
"Really? That's wonderful!" Huang Xiaotao's face lit up with delight. There were indeed quite a few spirit herbs around them at that moment; since Lufeng Forest saw no visitors for years on end, and this was a relatively core area besides, spirit herbs growing everywhere was only natural.
Still, though these too were rare treasures of heaven and earth, compared with the world's rare infant ginseng and the Wandu Golden Core Fruit, the value of the spirit herbs around them fell far short.
The vast majority of the herbs here were of the kinds that could be bought on the market with spirit jade; of course, compared with what was sold in the markets, the ones before their eyes were plainly of much better quality.