Chapter 71: Eerie
The Golden Tortoise slightly raised its head, its eyes revealing a somewhat distrustful expression as it said:
“Is that so?”
“Be happy as you like.”
“When you encounter trouble, just use this old tortoise’s tortoise shell—it’s absolutely rock hard!”
The Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm fiercely knocked on the Golden Tortoise’s head in the sea of consciousness and said:
“Yu Hao definitely won’t have any problems!”
“Don’t say such unlucky things.”
“And you, don’t slack off—study alchemy seriously for me!”
“Look at our team—isn’t it just you slacking off all day!”
“Everyone is working hard, and as a member of this team, you’re from the luck clan—how can you be so lax!”
“Even if it’s just a tortoise, it should have aspirations to take off!”
How could the proud luck clan endure such provocation.
Flames ignited in the Golden Tortoise’s golden eyes, and it lowered its head to continue studying alchemy.
Because it had no spiritual attribute, it learned with great difficulty, often taking days to memorize a single inscription.
Meanwhile, the Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm and Ilex had already begun perfecting the inscription system.
The Golden Tortoise felt that the gap between them was even greater than that between an ant and Di Tian.
Now, just seeing those numbers made its head swell.
To speed up its learning, the Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm used the Tian Meng processor to compile a large pile of exercises.
There was mathematics, as well as alchemy.
After all, to form a complete incantation, precise calculations were needed to ensure the inscriptions were positioned correctly.
The Golden Tortoise only regretted why its parents hadn’t passed down a spiritual attribute to it!
And those damn numbers always played hide-and-seek with it.
Often, after racking its brains on a problem, it would end up solving for the given conditions.
After evolution, the Golden Tortoise’s Xuanwu form had two heads—a tortoise head and a snake head—both wanting to tear up the test questions in front of them.
However, under the gaze of the Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm and Ilex, it didn’t dare to do so.
Huo Yuhao ignored the Golden Tortoise’s words and looked toward the entrance of the Disaster Mountain Range—Catastrophe Mountain Range—then walked straight ahead.
No large-scale cities were built around the Disaster Mountain Range, only some small towns.
These towns mainly relied on adventurers mining mineral resources from the Disaster Mountain Range and transporting them to Star Luo City to exchange for money.
Perhaps because of the thundercloud, there were many rare metals here.
This gave rise to a profession similar to gold prospectors from his previous life, but prospecting for rare metals.
Huo Yuhao had no intention of going to the towns to rest; there was no need.
The purpose of this trip was very simple: to obtain information on the Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff.
Unique trees grew at the entrance to the Disaster Mountain Range.
These trees had black trunks that seemed to absorb all light, with branches growing in a very twisted manner, irregularly crisscrossing to form black palms that oppressed the minds of visitors.
Because of these trees, Huo Yuhao felt a sense of oppression as soon as he stepped in.
That feeling was hard to describe.
It was like Tang San had learned a cloning technique and surrounded him, smiling at him from all sides.
“Black Thornwood: Grows in mountainous areas with poor light. The heartwood inside the black trunk is highly nutritious and edible. Through evolution, the branches of the Black Thornwood take on a twisted state to protect itself…”
Fortunately, the recording ability kicked in, directly stripping these trees down to their underpants.
Huo Yuhao spread out his spiritual power, capturing every change around the forest.
For unknown soul beasts swept by his spiritual power, Huo Yuhao would probe them carefully, then record them in the illustrated record.
The outer perimeter soul beasts were quite common—nothing more than wind wolves, grass pigs, Mandala Snakes, horned horses, and the like, low-level soul beasts.
As the terrain rose higher, the Black Thornwood gradually thinned out, and normal trees appeared in view.
Rare soul beasts began to appear occasionally here.
These rare soul beasts were mostly gemstone-type and star-pattern-type soul beasts.
Adhering to the principle of “since we’re here,” any soul beast Huo Yuhao hadn’t seen before would be thoroughly investigated by his spiritual power.
Until recorded in the illustrated record. Seeing the illustrated record fill with more and more soul beast species brought a sense of achievement like completing a pokedex.
At this moment, the moon was high in the sky, countless stars twinkling on the black screen above, with the brilliant Milky Way spanning the horizon.
Huo Yuhao lit a campfire in a cave and began grilling the fish he had just caught.
Over the entire day, Huo Yuhao had recorded over a hundred unknown soul beasts in total.
The vast majority were low-level soul beasts, with only a small portion being advanced soul beasts.
What puzzled Huo Yuhao a bit was that although he had traversed more than half of the Catastrophe Mountain Range, and his spiritual power had nearly swept every corner here.
He hadn’t seen a single ten-thousand-year soul beast. During the Peerless Tang Sect period, the density of soul beasts was still quite high.
Ten-thousand-year soul beasts weren’t particularly rare, and the Catastrophe Mountain Range wasn’t small—it was impossible for there to be no ten-thousand-year soul beasts.
At this moment, the Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm spoke up.
“Yu Hao, there are two possibilities for not seeing any ten-thousand-year soul beasts.”
“Either humanity killed them all, or there’s a beast king-level soul beast clearing its territory!”
“This is very common in the soul beast world, whether in the Extreme North or the Star Dou Great Forest.”
Huo Yuhao thought for a moment and said: “From the information we currently know, very few soul masters come here to hunt soul rings.”
“The Nine Treasures Glazed Sect has long shifted the focus of soul ring hunting to the Star Dou Great Forest.”
“The Star Luo Star Crown lineage only has a few people; they couldn’t have hunted so many ten-thousand-year soul beasts.”
“Gemstone-type martial souls and star-pattern-type martial souls on the Douluo Continent can be called rarely seen.”
“And the only one here that can be called a beast king is the Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff.”
Huo Yuhao pondered for a while and asked the Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm:
“When a beast king soul beast clears its territory, does it choose to kill all other threatening soul beasts?”
The Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm hemmed and hawed, unable to respond—he wasn’t too familiar with this.
The Golden Tortoise spoke up instead.
“This old tortoise knows. I am a beast king, and I used to have good relations with a few other beast kings.”
“Beast kings generally choose to subdue with strength when clearing territory. Soul beasts willing to submit can stay in the territory.”
“Those unwilling to submit are either killed or expelled.”
“In any case, they wouldn’t exterminate all the ten-thousand-year soul beasts in the territory.”
“Beast king, beast king—without subjects, where does the king come from?”
“For the situation in the Catastrophe Mountain Range, this old tortoise has heard of similar cases.”
“Dark Demonic Evil God Tiger!”
“The Dark Demonic Evil God Tiger hunts all soul beasts; submission doesn’t exist in its presence.”
“Just like the evil soul masters among you humans, it does this to devour those soul beasts and grow stronger.”
Huo Yuhao watched the grilled fish, oil dripping continuously, the branches crackling and exploding.
His gaze was slightly unfocused.
“There are no Dark Demonic Evil God Tigers here.”
“The only one capable of doing this is that Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff.”
“Why is it doing this?”
The Golden Tortoise’s golden head nudged the somewhat unwilling dark snake head, making it continue doing exercises.
Then its golden eyes looked toward the top of the sea of consciousness and said:
“It feels threatened and wants to grow stronger, obviously.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Huo Yuhao picked up a fully grilled fish, took a bite, chewed the fish meat, and said indistinctly:
“A thirty-thousand-year Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff—in close combat, unless you’re a Limit Douluo, you can’t steadily kill it.”
“There aren’t even any hundred-thousand-year soul beasts here—who could threaten it?”
The Golden Tortoise shook its head, indicating it didn’t know.
The Heavenly Dream Ice Silkworm thought for a moment and said: “Is there a possibility that soul beasts from the core area are threatening it?”
“I remember in the story, that Super Douluo also encountered it when entering the core area.”
“In other words, that Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff is running outward!”
“It wants to escape the core area!”
Huo Yuhao’s eyelids drooped; he also wasn’t sure what exactly was in the core area that made even the Golden Mane Lion-Mastiff want to run.
Just as his hand touched the second grilled fish, it suddenly paused.
“Tian Meng Ge, someone’s coming.”
“My spiritual power senses a powerful aura—should be a Titled Douluo.”
“Hasn’t reached the Super Douluo level—far inferior to Lin Huiqun.”
“Heh, the target is very clear—it’s the cave on our side.”
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