One side of the forest connected to the Pond of Life. Even inside the forest, Qianye could still sense that invisible boundary. There was no animal within a thousand meters of him, only a variety of plants that he could not name, weaving together to form a dense, near-impassable curtain.
The large aquatic beast in the Pond of Life had shown itself, but there was no telling if it was the most powerful being. The six-armed giant had sealed off the exit on the other side of the forest, and although Qianye had no idea what it was planning, it couldn’t be anything good.
However, the forest wasn’t a place he could remain in for prolonged periods. In addition to the tens of thousands of insects, the creatures living there weren’t easy to deal with, either. For instance, there were small snakes as thin as chopsticks that completely blended into the environment. They moved as quick as lightning, and even Qianye was bitten a couple of times.
These serpents possessed a powerful toxin that numbed Qianye’s entire body after just ten seconds or so. Even his blood core started beating slower, and his blood turned stagnant. Fortunately, the dark golden blood energy was the bane of all poisons. Auric flame blood surged out of his blood core and incinerated the venom in his system. The congealed blood was then expelled in the form of a mouthful of black blood.
Only after being poisoned did Qianye view these little snakes seriously. And this was Qianye—any other vampire, even one from the twelve old clans, would not last long under the effects of this poison.
In addition, these snakes were extremely resilient. Qianye actually failed to crush them on the first attempt after being bitten and had to exert a bit more strength before he was able to shatter the target.
These snakes were just one of the thousands of creatures in the forest, and they weren’t the most dangerous, either. Qianye had seen a small, glowing snake coiled up on one of the tree branches. Not only did the serpent not hide itself, but it had even made itself more eye-catching and visible from a good distance. Qianye naturally took the long way around this creature and avoided stepping into its territory.
In addition to snakes, there were lizards, rats, weasels, and all kinds of strange animals. The one thing they had in common was that they would be quite a bit of trouble when provoked, and most of them carried various types of poison. There was an unassuming weasel that wasn’t poisonous, but it could gnaw through anything as though biting through apricots, even leaving two deep fang-marks on East Peak. Thereafter, Qianye would always avoid this animal and try his best not to provoke it.
Qianye wondered whether the vampire Holy Son would be able to leave this place alive if he were to arrive here accidentally. Perhaps only an arachne like Basil would be suited to survive in this place. But then Qianye shook his head after recalling how big the spider was. Such a big target would be easily devoured by the insect swarms.
Qianye wasn’t having an easy time here, either. He finally found an empty space under a large tree, cleared away the shrubbery with his sword and sanguine flames, and finally sat down to rest. He had to maintain a thin layer of flames around his body to keep the insects away.
Qianye heaved a sigh of relief after finding a hiding spot; he would finally have time to observe his surroundings. Some insects started to gather around him before long, but they didn’t dare approach due to the flames. Soon, they had woven together to form a thick, furry layer on the ground.
Now, Qianye didn’t dare retract his sanguine flames. Fortunately, he had an abundance of essence blood at the moment, enough to last him half a month or so. Even if he didn’t have enough, the creatures in the Great Maelstrom were just full of essence blood if nothing else. A random Life Plunder would fill him up to the point of exploding.
Qianye noticed, after running through the forest for a good while, that the creatures he had encountered were different. Every small area would have its own characteristics—even the seemingly identical trees were actually different in structure and bark veins. After careful observation, one would find that there were actually two types of trees.
When Qianye’s eyes ran over a rock, he noticed that it was covered by a layer of purplish-green moss. He walked over and studied it carefully for a good while, finally confirming that this was Dragon Scale Moss, a key component of special military-grade stimulants. It was used in very small amounts but a key component nonetheless. This big patch of Dragon Scale Moss was enough to produce hundreds of special stimulants. Such drugs were only available to high-ranking officers from special forces like Red Scorpion. Other squads had never even seen them before.
This patch of moss was valuable, but not to the point of being priceless. Despite that, a patch this size would definitely fetch an extraordinary price.
The Dragon Scale Moss wouldn’t take much space, so Qianye carefully scraped it off and packaged it. He had used up some of his supplies while running from the six-armed giant, so there was now some extra space inside Andruil’s Mysterious Realm. After checking his spatial gear, Qianye placed the Dragon Scale Moss inside. This harvest would allow several hundred high-ranking officers of the empire to survive.
After stowing the moss away, a patch of berry trees with razor-sharp thorns caught Qianye’s eyes. He fished out his dagger and shaved off some of the bark, revealing a tender golden yellow underneath. The stalk of the plant was dotted with silver speckles, which confirmed that this was a famed medicine known as the Starry Sky. The soft branches of the Starry Sky could be refined into an extremely powerful anesthetic, and the plant itself was also a poison. Its main use was to extend one’s life. As long as the victim wasn’t dead, the medicine could keep his life hanging from three to five days. Starry Sky could be applied in a variety of situations and was definitely an herb on the same level as Dragon Scale Moss.
After these two discoveries, Qianye began checking his surroundings in greater detail. In the end, he found a dozen or so medicinal ingredients of differing effects.
One could easily tell how valuable the poison from those fist-sized mosquitoes from before was. It would surely be made into several medicines with powerful effects. As for the small snake that had bitten Qianye, its flesh, blood, poison, and gall were all invaluable. Even its spine was so sharp and hard that it could be made into spearheads. One could slap a metal barrel onto it and make it into a grade-seven gun.
In short, this forest was full of treasures at every step. Qianye would’ve discovered even more if only his experience and knowledge wasn’t limited to his training at Yellow Springs. He had never learned about medicines and minerals in-depth. He was quite good in biology, though, but that was for finding the most efficient way to kill.
Even so, Qianye had managed to recognize several medicines and resources. There was still a whole lot of them that he couldn’t recognize. Any random segment of this forest was home to thousands of different species. Who knew how many of them there were as a whole?
Here, small creatures like ants and bugs lived in clusters that were dozens if not hundreds of times denser than the outside world. It wasn’t just the bugs and animals; this applied to the plants as well. According to common knowledge, such distribution would make acquiring nutrition a challenge. The food chain dictated that everything would return to the soil in the end.
No matter how fertile the soil, it wouldn’t be able to sustain such a cluster of absorption. The land should’ve turned barren in just a few years. No one knew how long the Pond of Life had existed, but the Empire had found it fairly soon after arriving in the Great Maelstrom. Several hundred years had passed since then, but there was no change at all.
The only problem was that the Pond of Life was too dangerous, and it treated both the weak and the strong equally. After some initial attempts, the Empire would only come for the Marine Lotus and a handful of other rare medicines, leaving quickly afterward. No one had set foot before in this forest, and Qianye felt that it was a land of no return for both humans and dark races.
Qianye was the first to dive into this thicket. He really had no other choice with the six-armed giant hot on his trail.
This phenomenon was definitely abnormal, but then again, things in the Great Maelstrom could hardly be explained by common sense. Now that he had nothing to do, Qianye began to ponder: was this forest, and even the entire Pond of Life, naturally formed? If not, then what was the creator’s intention?
Qianye continued his search while thinking and found a fair number of strange things, things he did not know the usage of. He didn’t dare venture too far out because he would have to scorch every area he visited with sanguine flames. Even though this process would unintentionally destroy some of the treasures, he would rather risk it than get bitten by something hiding in the soil.
Every once in a while, Qianye would climb to the top of the tree and look around. He could still see the six-armed giant’s figure far off in the distance. It simply stood there, glancing over at the woods from time to time, and then back in a certain direction. It had to be a tough job for this violent monster to stand quietly for an entire day.
The giant’s state made Qianye rather uneasy.
Coming down from the tree, Qianye began moving toward the Pond of Life. The closer he moved to the water, the stronger his urges became. However, there were only snakes, rats, and insects here, and none of them were species Qianye could mate with. So, it became even easier to resist the temptation and pressure.
The Pond of Life was a dangerous place, but for humans, the forest was a holy land free from secular desires. The only issue was that only a handful of people would survive after entering the forest.
The aquatic beasts in the Pond of Life were rather gentle in nature, compared to the violent six-armed giant. The only reason they had started fighting was because the giant was being a nuisance with his hitting and smashing. Qianye wasn’t naive enough to think there was no danger in the water. Disregarding everything else, what was that enormous creature eating?
The Marine Lotus, reportedly, grew close to the shores of the lake. Otherwise, the specially-trained experts of the Empire would never be able to reach them. Since he had already arrived at the Pond of Life, Qianye decided to try his luck as well.
He had never seen the Marine Lotus. Qianye glanced at the scattered islands in the Pond of Life and felt a scorching urge in his heart, which he quickly suppressed. He hadn’t lived enough just yet, and had no intention to test whether he would make a sufficient meal for those giant creatures.
The six-armed giant didn’t have to remain in place for very long before countless two-arms appeared over the horizon. There were also hundreds of four-armed natives scattered among them.
As the tide of natives moved toward the forest, Qianye finally understood what the six-armed giant was waiting for. Its plan was to drown the entire forest with two-armed soldiers and have the four-arms hunt Qianye down.
This was doubtlessly a good move because Qianye had never seen so many two-armed people. They arrived like a black tidal wave, rushing resolutely forward and devouring everything in its wake.
