Chapter 4270 — Pulling Weeds

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.

Yet Wei Zhao was somewhat disappointed all the same. With the Tiandan Pavilion, that money-making machine, as his backing, he had no shortage of spirit jade at all; he could buy herbs like these whenever he wished.

As for the matter of quality, he had the jade pendant space, and the quality of herbs cultivated there from seeds was in no way inferior to what lay before him.

Even so, Wei Zhao nonetheless pulled Huang Xiaotao along, and the two of them set to pulling weeds around the ring of spirit herbs before them, sweeping through them like wind scattering the clouds.

"Uh... Wei Zhao, isn't it a bit much to just yank them out like this?" Even Huang Xiaotao, who had followed Wei Zhao long enough to be inured to all manner of wondrous things, could not help the corner of her mouth twitching at the sight.

"A bit much? There's nothing much about it. They're ownerless things anyway—finders keepers. And even if we left them unpicked, others may not necessarily come to this place." Wei Zhao saw nothing improper in it at all.

"That's not what I meant... I was trying to say..." Watching Wei Zhao's ruthlessly efficient technique, Huang Xiaotao said weakly, "Spirit herbs don't seem to be harvested like this..."

More than sixty percent of the trial missions Huang Xiaotao had taken on in the past had involved gathering spirit herbs, so she had a fair bit of experience with the process—enough to count as half an expert.

Spirit herbs were beings that absorbed the essence of heaven and earth; their requirements for growing conditions were far stricter than those of ordinary plants, and correspondingly, their vitality was far more fragile. Whether gathered in the wild or cultivated oneself, a considerable degree of professional knowledge was required.

Even by the most amateurish method, one still had to be gentle and careful during gathering, meticulously clean off the soil, and then store them in special spirit jade boxes for preservation—only thus could the herbs' vitality and freshness be preserved to the greatest extent.

Yet Wei Zhao's method before her showed no hint of care whatsoever. This was plainly the posture of pulling up wild weeds; he had not even prepared any special spirit jade boxes, just yanking them out bare-handed on the spot. Huang Xiaotao watched with cold sweat on her brow, and four words could not help rising in her mind: a wanton waste of heaven's bounty.

"Oh, that's fine." Wei Zhao shook his head dismissively, his hands not pausing for an instant.

"Um... actually, a lot of spirit herbs will wither once they've been out of the soil for long. Without special spirit jade boxes to preserve them, pulling up however many is useless..." Huang Xiaotao reminded him meekly.

"Heh, I know that. Don't worry, Xiaotao, I have my own methods. Just do as I say." Wei Zhao laughed at once.

Others indeed had to be careful when gathering spirit herbs, but he had the jade pendant space. However many herbs he pulled up from the ground, he need only plant them inside the jade pendant space and there would be no problem at all; within it was natural, boundless heaven-and-earth spiritual energy to sustain the herbs' continued growth.

Whenever he needed them in the future, he could simply fetch them from the jade pendant space, and their quality would be guaranteed to be only better than when gathered, never worse—an effect no amount of preparation by others could ever achieve.

"Oh, all right then." Seeing how certain Wei Zhao was, Huang Xiaotao nodded obediently and asked no more. She too took up Wei Zhao's example and began "pulling weeds" in this unprecedented, rough-and-ready style. (Summoning mobile phones and monthly reading votes~! Readers on mobile, please show your support! Qidian readers can cast some

...R752