17. Stage 5 Level 5

The mercenaries retreated, hands pressing against their chests. Ye Lan, at this moment, found it hard to control herself with the swirling spiritual power. The smell of blood excited her to the extent that her eyes turned burning red and the higher level of spiritual animals came from all the directions following the smell of blood as expected. Ye Lan’s spiritual wings suddenly opened and fluttered, its color being fiery red, beautiful but melancholy!

The flowing fireflies circling around Ye Lan had now lost the loveliness with the drive of spiritual power and the increasing circling was indicating the imminent threat!

Whoa! Ah! There came waves of spiritual animals’ angry roars and growls in the wood and the mercenaries gathered together and said, “Crap, crap! Chief, we are being surrounded!”

The mercenaries looked around and found some spiritual snakes twining around the trees, their tongues hung out, twitching. It filled people with horror at seeing their blood-red eyes and emerald bodies wriggling around now and then. Yu Jue felt it hard to simply stand stable with her calves shivering after seeing the snakes!

Seeing the gathering spiritual animals and feeling the mix of the strong smell of blood and spiritual breath, Ye Lan was getting more excited! This saved her some time of searching the animals by herself, but still, she needed to finish them as soon as possible. She didn’t lose her consciousness as she knew this would attract more higher level spiritual animals she wasn’t able to deal with. Her power at the present stage was indeed too weak even though she had overcome the bottleneck and made it to stage five and level three.

With the vibrating of her burning spiritual wings, Ye Lan made a quick jump into the air. She read the spell in her mind with her hands quickly forming different gestures while she was in the middle of the encirclement. The old man in white came out of the ring as he couldn’t resist the loneliness and gasped at seeing what Ye Lan was doing. This little girl was literally afraid of nothing! He then decided not to go back as he wanted to see what this freaking little girl was capable of and that he had never seen. How can a stage five soul become so unbridled in face of such cruel and vicious beasts in the wood!

Ye Lan pursed her lips. A mere garment of a single layer couldn’t hide her seductive charm; she had now become even more sexually tempting with her blood-red coquettishness!

With the folding of her spiritual wings, the blood of beasts splattered and their broken limbs flew in the air, mixed with a strong smell of blood, which made people sick. In no time, the whole place was turned into a pit of corpses, with a blood shower pouring down fast! The surrounding trees couldn’t get away with this, and their leaves, trunks and brunches all turned blood-red! The mercenaries were all astonished to see everything became so red and all they could see now was the light radiating from the magic core among the blurring red, a pair of fiery red wings bathing in the blood and a coquettish lady slaughtering beasts with a sword in her hand!

Finally, when the slaughter was settled and among the mist of blood, Ye Lan bent her knees and slowly stood up. She wiped the blood on her face with one of her hands and the other holding the Qingliu Wanyue! The anger inside her eyes had now quieted down. She felt her hands feeble and her body was too weak because of lack of training. This was not even close to what she would be like in the 21st century! And was way behind the unknown spiritual cultivators on this continent!

“What are you doing there? Waiting to get killed? Get whatever you need, time to go!” Ye Lan turned around and looked at this bunch of mercenaries, thinking how funny they were. She had returned the favor since they stayed for her support though she sounded very straightforward.

“Ah! Oh! Yes! Yes!” The chief went back to himself at hearing the yelling from Ye Lan. He soon called upon his men to collect the magic cores after realizing that this was not a moment to relax. They were in a state of ecstasy while collecting and felt they got dumb luck this time as they may rest for a couple of years with this huge collection of magic cores!

The head looked at Ye Lan carefully while collecting the cores and saw that she grabbed a deer easily and then skinned it effortlessly. The perfect deer skin was used to wipe out the blood stain on her dagger and she tossed it aside after using it!

It filled the chief’s mind with admiration, but at the same time he was more scared of Ye Lan after a few days of being in the same team. They would do different things on their own. While Ye Lan was searching for the medicine, the mercenaries collected the magic cores. Though they had been fighting together for the last few days, they never bothered each other. If it were not for the presence of Ye Lan, the mercenaries would die without having a whole corpse! All of a sudden, the chief thought he should have thanked himself for staying there to protect Ye Lan’s life just now, which was also a life-saving move for himself!

The chief stopped next to a saber-toothed tiger whose blood was drawn by Ye Lan just now. He immediately backed up as the tiger was not stone dead and had a sudden movement. All the men were mentally fragile after the cruel slaughter just now and couldn’t afford to be intimidated like that.

“Haha!” Ye Lan sneered, revealing an undisguised sense of mockery. Her face also showed obvious contempt!

Ye Lan gently moved toward the tiger and hit its head with a powerful smack of her palm, ripping its head right off, and the warm blood even fell on the chief’s face while he was conscious as well as scared! What she did just now would rival that of a demon from hell!

Yu Jue finally couldn’t bear to watch this move and threw up while leaning on a tree, however, she almost vomited up the bile when she found her hands full of blood!

After Ye Lan’s hit, a pure magic core, which was a thumb-long hexagon gem glistening with various colors, slowly rose up from inside the tiger. Ye Lan reached out to get the core and tossed it to the chief, “Should you be mercenaries with such little guts! Better go back home!”

“You…” Some of the mercenaries were about to complain but retained their temper after having thought what just happened.

“Yes, you are right, miss!” The chief of mercenaries were very humble thinking that based on what his men did, they were really unqualified mercenaries.

“All right, let’s go!” Ye Lan kicked aside the body of the tiger in her way and left gracefully. Her slim figure left people in awe!

The mercenaries followed her quickly and all the people left with a bunch of dead corpses!

Everyone of them was now back on their way. Just as the saying went, a day in the mountain, a thousand years in the world!

Before she knew it, Ye Lan had spent a month in the wood and was able to find quite many priceless treasures. The rare herbs and medicines that were highly priced could be found anywhere in the depth of the mountain, and the deeper she went, the more she could harvest!

Meanwhile, Ye Lan’s spiritual level was also raised up and she finally made it to stage five and level five. With the help of the old man, she could even turn the herbs collected from the real world into some panacea in another space! Except that the first batches of the panacea didn’t look good and wouldn’t sell for a good price. But practice makes perfect, after several times of making the pills, she could make better ones time after time, and the quality was getting increasingly better as well!

The old man was then sitting next to Ye Lan and was surprised to see her making so many pills and eating them like candies, “What a freak you are!”

Ye Lan, who heard what the old man said while her eyes were closed, was then concentrating on making the panacea but wondering in her mind that if it were not for the fact that the furnace he took out turned out to be one of its kind in the world, she would let the old man shut up immediately!

The high quality medicine plus the furnace, which was one of its kind and was reluctantly sponsored by the old man, called Xuanyuan Cauldron (an ancient cooking vessel with two handles and three or four legs.)!

The imperfect products made by Ye Lan were still quality stuff in the outside world!

Ye Lan was making the panacea in another space at night while half the mercenaries were on their night shift! This had helped eased her work so that she could fall in sleep free of trouble.

After another pot of panacea being made, Ye Lan relaxed and switched her mind from the other space to cultivate her own spirit. She had been very steady with her cultivation and was very cautious about every move she made! She would realized her goal if she could make it to the level six from level five.

The best person on this continent should be someone who was at the top level, namely stage nine and level nine. Legend went that it was an unreachable goal. But Ye Lan wouldn’t buy this as she knew she could do just that!

As Ye Lan had a different way of cultivation, what she was capable of now was better than the team of mercenaries, in other words, the whole team could cause no harm to her! In Ye Lan’s eyes, it was deemed as true defeat only if she could beat her rival easily! Not even a close win! She didn’t need luck as she never believed any; what she needed was power, absolute power! The power that made her the strongest rival before any demons and monsters, an unrivalled power!

It was finally the time for them to say farewell as it was the furthest the mercenaries could go. If it were not for Ye Lan’s help, they probably wouldn’t even make it here, let alone the fact of no casualty and every one of them ended up in the heartland of the Forest of Beasts in one piece.

“Miss Ye, it’s time for us to say goodbye! We are going out of the forest from the other side and you shall be on your own in the next leg of your journey! You must be careful, Miss Ye!” The Chief said all this sincerely as he knew from the past few days being together that Ye Lan was not some kind of girl who was easy to approach, but it was unignorable that they owed her one as she once saved their lives.

Maybe it was them who became a burden for the girl but he held his tongue when it was time to spit it out.

“By all means!” Typical response of Ye Lan, expressionless and always remained grim. She shot a glance at the chief.

“Miss Ye, the deeper you go to the bottom of the forest, the more treasures you will get! We appreciate your saving our lives though we don’t know what you are here for. But mark my words, you must be careful! Here are the magic cores we collected. Thanks to your help, we managed to get most of them. I saw you were gathering Juling Grass the other day, here’s a level five middle-class magic core which might help you get to a higher level and better the herb’s performance. Please accept it if you don’t mind!”