Page 13: Friends?

It has been two days since they entered the wilds. Although the place was teeming with flora, it still did not fail to reflect its name "dead land boundary". For the past two days, they have been moving carefully as to not rile up the surrounding beasts that are around. Also, the only food they can see and gather in here are just leftovers from a beast's meal.

There was one time a member had thought they were able to find some fruits but before they can get a lot of it, a flock of some flying beasts came and devour everything that was in there. That was their only lucky encounter with fruits as the succeeding hours till now, there had been no fruits encountered along the way. The group only did rely on the jerkies kept in their pouches while some resorted to hunting small beasts to eat something more fresh than the hard jerky stock.

Luckily, the journey has been smooth sailing from the start. There hasn't been any encounter with strong beasts thanks to the scouts of the team, either of the four from Ling Tian's team. Because they hold the greatest advantage in movement skills, they have volunteered to become an advanced party to find the best route and sometimes, kill any beasts that may seem to be possible to handle. Although this looks like they are being taken advantage of, there are benefits to it too. With strong opponents, they can raise their skills to a new level with constant practice. Besides, the experience they gain from such endeavor help them improve their strength by taking the cores and absorb them. The atmosphere indeed contained a little amount of essence but the beasts that hunt another beast have been able to enrich their essence cores.

From the 2 days observation, Long Bai was able to figure out the answer to a question that was bothering him for a long time. If the essence in the atmosphere is thin, how come there are still a lot of strong beasts that can content with a soul tempering cultivators? It so happens that they were able to encounter a pack of small beasts and saw them how they nourish themselves. With a number of more than 20, they bore small holes on the foot of the mountains and look for fire stones. The small lower grade beasts feed on crystals that are being formed underground. Whilst they feed this way, stronger and predators of small beasts feed on them which integrates a fraction of that prey's power into their own. The food cycle is simple but effective to grow stronger.

Long Bai speculated that although the atmosphere contains only a small amount of essence, the soil below surely has thrice or even more amount of essence that can be condensed into fire stones. If he will make a theory, this world mainly runs with fire essence and a fraction of it is converted into earthly essence due to cultivators. Since the natives of this place were able to develop ways on how to utilize the fire essence into their own, small amounts of those get released into the atmosphere. Considering the number of cultivators, the earthly essence should have increased dramatically over the years but still, the amount in the air was stale. This just suggests that the planet reabsorbs the earthly essence and breaks it into specific constituents, restocking the fire essence to the soil while the others are manifesting in other life forms such as poison plants and beasts, bodies of water, and many more. In general, this world is still young. If there will be an increase in the number of cultivators and improvement on their ways on how to use this world's fire rich essence, there will come a day that it might be able to attract heavenly essence and cause the cultivation limit to be breached.

Unlike the legend that is well known for the cultivation stagnation, this assumption is more acceptable for Long Bai since there are small clues around. Although the legend may also hold some possibilities, Long Bai will never know unless a thousand years will pass and live to see this world's condition.

Back to the current situation, the whole group just decided to rest up and make some food for an early lunch meal. With some few edible looking beasts that they were able to capture and kill, they're ready for some roasted meat. Some hungry members initiated to make the fire while some began fixing the area for resting. However just as they began being relaxed, some group of men, at least ten, appeared in front of them.

What showed up are a group of men who were wearing similar clothing. At the back, a man younger than the rest silently instructed one of his men to greet Long Bai's group.

"Vice chief, let's camp near them. I don't these fellow cultivators won't mind if we just do that."

"Young master, please wait. Let me check these people first. We can't risk your safety with these strangers."

"Vice chief, they look like someone of my age. They don't even look like someone from the Autocratic country of Nomkop."

For a moment, the man who was instructed showed some reluctance towards the younger man but gave in eventually after a few arguments. It seemed that the man in question was just concerned about the safety of his young master. The well-built man approached the group with a sturdy facade. With the common greeting from a cultivator, he introduced himself as someone from the Blackwood Pavilion from Carcino City.

"Fellow cultivators, we traveled for quite some distance and coincidentally stumbled upon you. Would be possible to camp near your place? We swear not to bother you. It's just that the more people in an area, it would increase the fighting power against possible beasts that may come here. How about it? It's not a bad deal right? We just need to rest for a while, we will be leaving mostly after an hour or two hours rest."

As the one with the most seniority in the group, Shoushan met with the man and returned the greeting. Since there was no feeling of hostility coming from them, he replied with a cordial smile and widely opened his arms to join them. With that, the group from Blackwater pavilion made camp just approximately 10 meters away from their campfire.

The two camps worked with their businesses. Some of the members from each group were guarding the perimeter while most of the members were busy preparing their food. At Long Bai's camp, they were just done grilling the three small beasts they caught a while ago.

[ Red Shell Gryllidae

Earth rank, mid-grade

*A fire stone eating beast. Burrows up to a meter deep on flame essence rich soils. They can procreate 10x faster than humans. ]

Just before they were supposed to crack open the shell of the beast, they heard someone from the opposite camp yelling trying to stop them from what they were supposed to do. Everyone was startled as the voice was loud enough for everyone not to hear.

"Stop! Are you going to eat that?"

Everyone looked at the source of the voice and saw that it was the young master. He came approaching the campfire with a worried face.

"What is it? Why are you trying to stop us from eating our food?" A member of the group beamed an irritated look at the approaching young man. It seemed that his hunger was taking over making him getting more sensitive.

"I'm sorry but are you going to eat that thing? That's not cooked you know? The shell is red because it has flame properties and using an ordinary flame to cook it won't just do. Aside from that, if you eat the meat of a beast that's not prepared well, you may get poisoned. In this case, your insides will suffer from fire essence poisoning. Your insides will feel like its being scorched from the inside since we cannot absorb the fire essence. Only when you cook it in a specific way that it would turn edible."

Everyone who heard that was stupefied, shocked by the prospect of experiencing the image they just thought. Suddenly, the personnel that was holding onto the skewered meat dropped them involuntarily.

"Is what you said is true?" Shoushan asked with doubtful eyes.

"Hey, if you don't believe me you can go ahead. Eat it but don't blame me for what's going to happen even though I already warned you." The young man retorted as he stepped back towards his tent.

"Wait, I'm sorry for doubting you. We are still not quite familiar yet with the beast in this area. I hope my brother will not take offense. Thank you for the information."

The man only replied with a smile and continued walking to his tent. Shoushan on the other hand immediately instructed the people who were handling the meat to throw the uncooked food and just settle with the dried meat they have. As minutes pass by, the young man returned to Shoushan's grounds and shared some of their food.

"Brother, how about we eat together? We have a lot here. We hunted quite a number on our way from here."

Shoushan looked at everyone and received a positive reply from them. Since it does not look like the man is carrying any ulterior motive, everyone agreed. They can't just say no to free and good food.

Everyone from the two groups came together and ate the whole food prepared. With some information exchange, they learned each other's names. There, they began to share some of their objectives.

"So brother Shen Zhu entered this lands in search of a certain herb. Well, I hope you will be able to find it. It must be important that you would even risk your life entering this boundary."

"Thank you, brother Shoushan. How about you? Your group looks like you came from the same place. What made you come to this dangerous area?"

"Brother Shen Zhu, we're somewhat lost so our goal just for now is to reach the closest city. I'm sorry if I can't say any more than this."

Shoushan didn't exactly lie when he said that they were looking for the nearest city since Carcino city is their destination and its the closest place according to the map they have. It's just that he just can't tell about them is currently being chased by some military personnel from Cinnabar City or they might be put in a difficult situation.

"It's fine. We have our own thing to do. It's nice meeting you here after all. Your people are a lively bunch. Sometimes I envy that kind of company. Haha"

"It's nice meeting you too. Here take this. It's not much but I hope you'll receive this token of gratitude. After all, we enjoyed the meal you shared."

Shoushan handed over a small vial that contained three pills of essence gathering pill. With Shen Zhu's curiosity, he opened the vial and was shocked by what he saw.

"What! Brother Shoushan, what is this? Why do you have such pills? Are you perhaps an alchemist?"

The surprised reaction from Shen Zhu alerted his companions but eventually regained his wits and immediately stopped them from taking action. Shoushan on the other hand was a bit taken aback with the reaction coming from Shen Zhu.

"Uhh...that's an essence replenishing pill and no, I'm not an alchemist but we have someone in our group."

Shoushan replied in a manner that sounded like he was talking to a child. In his mind, he was asking, 'what could be so special about it?'.

"Is that true? True? No wait..what does this pill do?"

Shoushan saw the sparkle in Shen Zhu's eyes as he was asking those questions. It was as if he was able to find a precious treasure. Since the man doesn't look like he wanted to do something bad, he gave the information he was asking. After a few exchange, Shen Zhu blurted out something that sounded graceful to their ears.

"Brother Shoushan! Would it be possible to hire the service of your alchemist? Please come with me to our place. I will pay you with whatever you want as long as I can."

Shoushan looked at Long Bai waiting for what to respond. Although it may seem forced, this might be some opportunity that they just needed. Long Bai looked at Shen Zhu who was sincerely bowing in front of them. He approached Shen Zhu and replied with a condition.

"Cultivator Zhu, we will accept it only after you hear my condition."

"What is it? Please do tell."

Long Bai saw the desperation in the man's eyes so he could tell that this was a sincere request.

"Alright. Decide after hearing our predicament. We are being chased by some people from Cinnabar City. Will you still take us with you even knowing that?"

Shen Zhu stood straight and looked at Long Bai in disbelief. The other members from Shen Zhu also gave similar reactions. This baffled Long Bai and the rest but they can't just ask why they are giving such a reaction.

"Seriously? I thought it's something ridiculous. Then there's no problem with us. You are even more welcome."

Long Bai was even more puzzled with the reply. Same with the rest who were standing behind.

"It seemed you are not from Magvel but if you made the country Nomkop your enemy, then you are our allies. Whoever hates the Nomkop country is our friend."