Nine Star Hegemon Body Art

Long Chen almost shouted when he saw that marvelous blossom. That was one of the main medicinal ingredients required to condense the second star of the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, the Alioth Star.

Before leaving Phoenix Cry, Long Chen had already asked the alchemist guild and auction houses about the medicinal ingredients. Other than some subsidiary medicinal ingredients, he hadn’t found any main ingredients.

To refine the Alioth Pills, it only required second tier medicinal ingredients or perhaps some third tier ones, but those main ingredients were all extremely rare. Even the alchemist guild’s senior alchemists had never heard of many of them.

Long Chen had been extremely worried then. Now that he saw this Immortal Chrysanthemum, he required all his willpower not to shout out in shock.

“Nine leaves pointing to the sky like an Immortal pointing the way. Yes, this is definitely an Immortal Chrysanthemum.” Long Chen once more confirmed that he hadn’t been wrong. Long Chen jumped up the cliff in just a couple of steps, reaching the Immortal Chrysanthemum. But suddenly, he sensed a grave threat and dodged to the side.

A huge python shot just past Long Chen. If it weren’t for his quick reactions, he would have been bitten by it.

“There’s a Magical Beast guarding it?” Long Chen was surprised. Some rarer medicinal ingredients would always have Magical Beasts guarding them. He hadn’t expected such a situation to occur within the Xuantian Monastery.

Carefully examining this huge python, he saw that it was a foot thick and its entire body was gold-yellow. In fact, its scales even looked as if they had been forged out of gold. Having missed, it now turned to face Long Chen, menacingly sticking out its tongue.

Behind it was a cave that was hidden by a few short shrubs. When he had been climbing, Long Chen hadn’t been at the correct angle to see that.

“Gold Scale Python, an overlord amongst second rank Magical Beasts. It’s also extremely rare. I wouldn’t have expected to encounter one here.”

Long Chen’s heart shook slightly. During their trial, there were actually Magical Beasts present. That meant this was no ordinary trial; if you were defeated, wasn’t it entirely possible you could die?

Although everyone here was geniuses, their cultivation bases were only within the Blood Condensation realm. As for this Gold Scale Python, it was extremely powerful. The weaker participants could very easily lose their lives if they ended up encountering one.

As Long Chen was thinking, that Gold Scale Python once more shot over like lightning, trying to bite Long Chen. Its mouth opened to almost the same height as Long Chen, four long fangs protruding out with a translucent liquid dripping off them.

“Pill Blaze!” Long Chen coldly shouted. Extending his hand, a ball of flame formed in it. When that Gold Scale Python was about to bite him, he directly threw that ball of flame into its mouth, retreating at the same time.

BOOM! That ball of flame exploded within the Gold Scale Python’s mouth. Flesh and blood shot everywhere as its entire head disappeared. The remaining half of its body began to wildly spasm.

Long Chen’s expression suddenly changed, and he kicked away that corpse. Seeing that the Immortal Chrysanthemum was completely undamaged, he sighed in relief. It had almost been crushed by the Gold Scale Python’s body.

The Immortal Chrysanthemum had to be kept entirely intact. If part of it was damaged, the entire plant’s medicinal effect would sharply decline.

In reality, that Gold Scale Python was extremely strong. Its scales possessed incredibly powerful defensive strength such that even blades were unable to harm it.

Even an ordinary Tendon Transformation expert would find it difficult to break through its defense. Furthermore, it could even spit out poisonous gas, and once you were enveloped by that poison gas, even if you did stop breathing, you would still be poisoned. That poison was extremely difficult to treat.

But Long Chen had been lucky this time. Most of its powerful defense was focused on protecting its outer body, while Long Chen’s flames had been tossed into its mouth. Even if it had ten lives, it shouldn’t have been messing around like that.

Carefully digging away the mud, he extracted the Immortal Chrysanthemum, leaving behind some mud on its roots.

Carefully placing it into a jade bottle, he put it into his spatial ring. Glancing at the Gold Scale Python’s corpse, he decided not to bring it.

The Gold Scale Python’s power was mostly focused on defense, not its poison. So its poison was not as powerful as that of the Huge Desert Scorpion.

And snakes without powerful poisons didn’t fetch much of a price on the market, not even their gallbladder^[1]. So, Long Chen still decided to just leave the corpse there.

Looking around, he saw a piece of flesh had landed in the underbrush. From that piece of flesh, he extracted a palm-sized crystal core.

The crystal core contained the full essence of the Gold Scale Python and was extremely precious.

Whether it was as medicine, to be refined into pills, or to be used as a weapon, anything was possible. That was especially true for using it for weapons. By embedding the crystal core into a weapon, it was possible for that weapon to become much stronger. Those kinds of weapons were called spirit weapons.

Spirit weapons could only be made by a powerful Forging Master. With the power of runes, they were capable of activating the Magical Beast’s crystal core to increase the power of the weapon.

But such weapons were extremely rare. Even up until now, Long Chen had never seen one in person.

This level of crystal core was still too low to be forged into a weapon. But it should still be worth some money. Putting the core away, Long Chen continued forward, following a small brook between two mountains.

Long Chen knew that it was this kind of place that was close to the water that was most likely to contain precious, natural treasures. Having found the Immortal Chrysanthemum, Long Chen became much more lively.

As he followed the water, the small brook gradually widened, the water gradually growing calmer as it eventually formed a small river.

After walking another two hours, loud crashing sounds came from the front. Walking closer, he saw a waterfall flowing down like a white ribbon. Millions upon millions of water droplets splashed out as the water cascaded into the rocks below. Under the dazzling sunlight, those water droplets practically looked like pearls, incomparably beautiful.

At the bottom of the waterfall was a natural pool around five miles wide. The water was extremely clear. He could easily see dozens of meters into the water.

The waterfall was like a ribbon while the pool was like a mirror reflecting the picturesque mountains, an absolutely enchanting sight. Long Chen was stunned by the beauty of it all.

“Oh, there’s fish in this water?”

Long Chen suddenly noticed that there were figures moving in the water. They were probably fishes, but he couldn’t tell what kind of fish yet.

The water rippled as one fish stealthily swam to the surface to swallow a floating fruit.

“Wonder Carp?!”

Now Long Chen had managed to recognize it. That fish was around the size of a palm, its body covered by four-colored scales. After swallowing that small fruit, it quickly swam back down.

The Wonder Carp wasn’t a Magical Beast but a kind of delicacy. Its taste was divine, and it was said that after eating it, you had to be careful not to swallow your own tongue down with it. 

Although that was a kind of exaggerated jest, the Wonder Carp’s taste had already become a thing of legends, praised as a delicacy for immortals.

But the reason Long Chen wanted it wasn’t for its taste but for its value. Below the Wonder Carp’s cheek was a lump of flesh. Hidden within that lump was a small, pebble-like ball.

Almost everyone thought that ball was just some kind of stony bone and would throw it away, thinking it was trash.

But Long Chen’s Pill God memories told him that that was the Wonder Carp’s essence. It was a treasure that could nourish the soul.

The strength of one’s soul was essentially set with one’s birth. Things that could nourish the soul later were extremely rare. Furthermore, the majority of people weren’t even aware of most of those treasures.

It was just like the Night Devil skull Long Chen had obtained from the Huayun Pavilion. Within the Night Devil skull was not just its crystal core, but also its essence.

Long Chen had used the Night Devil’s essence to refine a soul nourishing pill. Later, he had given that soul nourishing pill to Lu Fang-er to give to Meng Qi.

He was unaware that after Meng Qi had consumed that soul nourishing pill, her Spiritual Strength had grown tremendously. That kind of change was enough to shake the world.

Meng Qi’s Spiritual Strength had already been special before. Now with Long Chen’s soul nourishing pill, her potential soul energy explosively grew, shocking the entire Wind Spirit Pavilion.

Both Meng Qi and Lu Fang-er had refused to tell anyone about his soul nourishing pill. Even they themselves didn’t know what exactly that pill had been, and they were afraid to implicate Long Chen.

That was something Long Chen had no idea about. Looking at the fish in the water, his heart pounded joyfully.

The Wonder Carp was not the same as the Night Devil. The Night Devil was a demonic creature whose innate nature was violent and tyrannical. In order to refine its essence into the soul nourishing pill, the majority of its energy had to be discarded, leaving behind only a small portion of purer essence. It was extremely wasteful.

But the Wonder Carp lived in pure waters, naturally absorbing spiritual qi from heaven and earth. There were no impurities, and so the Wonder Carp’s essence could be directly absorbed. Furthermore, there were no negative side effects.

“Rich, I’m rich!”

Long Chen was overjoyed. This Xuantian Monastery was truly a good place; treasures could be found everywhere. It had definitely been worth it to come.

He examined the large pool and began to ponder. First, he needed to test the water’s depth and then think of a way to catch the fish.

Taking out a strand of black silk, he tied a stone on top of it and threw it into the water. The stone slowly descended.

“What, it’s this deep?!”

The three hundred meter silk he held in his hand had reached its end, but he still hadn’t reached the bottom.

“With such a deep pool, even if I make fishing nets, it would be extremely difficult to catch anything. Furthermore, the Wonder Carp’s swimming speed is famously fast. It’s just impossible.

“A fishing rod isn’t a bad idea, but the efficiency of hooking a fish is too low. I can’t just stay here the whole time. Making some fishing traps is a better idea.”

Long Chen finally decided to make some fishing cages. The fishing cages were simple to make. Everything was already ready except for some ropes he had to tie.

When he had been young he had manufactured such things before, so he was very familiar with the process. He tied a bunch of sticks into a bucket shape, the two ends taking the shape of inverted horns.

This way, the ends were large on the outside but small on the inside. When fish swam in, it would be extremely difficult for them to find the exit again. Then, they would be trapped in the cage.

In less than an hour, Long Chen made two fish cages. Thinking about it for a moment, he took out his pill furnace from his spatial ring and began to refine medicinal pills.

Fifteen minutes later, he easily finished his refinement. Those weren’t true medicinal pills. There was no pill formula either. Long Chen had just refined a couple of medicinal fruits and blossoms which smelled good together to form a kind of good-smelling pill. It didn’t have any effect other than being the fish bait.

Taking out two long ropes, he cut off sections around one hundred meters long. Tying one end to the cages and placing the fish bait inside, he selected two spots and threw the cages into the water, the other end of the ropes tied to a tree.

After setting up those traps, Long Chen found a nice rock to rest on. Now he just needed to wait. Would his bait be appealing to those Wonder Carps?

An hour later, Long Chen gently pulled up one of his traps. Slowly raising the cage out of the water, he saw movement from within.

Taking the cage out of the water, he saw there were surprisingly three, palm-sized, colorful Wonder Carps.

“Hand over the Wonder Carps.” A pleased voice rang out.

^[1] Snake gallbladder is used in traditional Chinese medicine. 

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