As I fly over the giant maw of the Fangs of Surakang and enter it's belly, I see a ring of forest along the edge of the surrounding mountains and a central plain of grass and lakes. Before I could explore my divine sense picks up a spiritual plant I can use and fly over and disembark from my flying throne and pocket it back into it's crystal garage.

I head on down to find a Embarca Flamemoss growning a top of a giant Flecio Barreltree, it's has one of it's long roots soaking in the barreltree's liquid sap. It's a mid stage eight spiritual herb with mastery in fire affinity. As soon as I come in range it begins tossing fire techniques at me. It's surrounded by the corpses and old bones of the demonbeasts trying to gain it's spiritual essense.

So it's no slouch in battle and never hesitates throw attacks at me just to keep me a bay. It gives me area of effect attacks mixed in with direct fire attacks. Looking at empty circle around it and the barreltree, it must have a trump card to stop anyone from entering that zone. I dodge it's firebolt techniques as I fly over the short field of bones and close in on the piled circle of bones and rotting corpses around the barreltree.

My divine sense filters through the earth below me looking for trouble, I notice the barreltree's roots have extended this far to absorb the nutrients of the dead demonbeasts. So that is why the barreltree is so big. Even though the Embarca is drinking it's store of sap, it's gaining as it absorbs the dead demonbeast essence surrounding it.

Realizing the trouble I send in an illusion of myself while I make myself fade invisible as if I was an after image. As soon as my illusionary self is about to enter the forbidden zone, an earth barrier explodes from the ground and encapsulates the entire barreltree. The Embarca unleashes it's trump card and causes the entire barrier to explode forth with raging flames to burn to my illusionary self into qi fallout.

As they stare wondering at the qi fallout I unleash Heavenly Decent a late tier eight spiritual battle technique and the entire sky drops down on them in a form of a spiritual crushing attack. Both reel in pain and shock as I feel their souls get flatten by the powerful soul attack. I don't hestitate to unleash another gravity blast to their very souls.

I see the Flecio leaves wilt a little as the soul attack slams home a second time and it's soul falls unconscious. The flamemoss however has a sleightly better mental defense and hangs on as I feel it's divine sense radiate nothing but hate at me. I do feel sorry for it, but it's just too useful of a spiritual herb for alchemy.

Especially for me because it's one of the ingrediants for a tier eight foundation pill which I have not even used yet for myself. I harvested the subdued spiritual plant and carefully stored it away in a high jade storage case and put it next of my two Light of Divine. Then I drain the Flecio of it's store of useful sap into a several empty cultivation wine barrels. I watch my newest spiritual herb in a multi layered sphere get a double dose of vitality from the Light of Divine and hope I can get more.

This kind of greed is not too bad to have as I watch possessively at the energy brimming spiritual herbs around the Lights of Divine. I've taken the habit when I am about to craft pills to leave the ingrediants around the Lights of Divine to get them brimming with energy. The pills I now make cost me less energy to make and a whole new level of strength.

Seriously, it's easy to get five pattern pills now, and I just need to put in a little effort have six patterns. Since the herbs bathed in revitalizing light from both Light of Divine, they some how develope a minor affinity to each other. This has made fusing their essence a whole level easier than it should be. So much so that spiritualizing the pills has become so much easier.

The pill spirits are even abit subdued, they no longer instantly try to escape after forming. So it's now a simple matter to store them in a soul cleansing storage vials. Not many people can get their hands on two of them at the same time to experiment with the effects of having them on their stock of spiritual herbs. This leads me to wonder if the ancients alchemists did this to make their pills.

So I put in that I still need more of them and the world goes bonkers wondering why I need still need more. Well I need two for master and two for Mara I explain silently to myself, I'll only tell my secrets to those I consider family. I hear funny stories of cultivators on their misadventurers searching for my needs.

After being publicly supported by the War Council, my needs for raw materials end up being delivered rather quickly these days. So my alchemy has finally broken through to early tier eight, finally I can start probbing early stage nine recipes to make. My natural talent for alchemy and master's foundation techniques allows me to make pills one tier higher has made alchemy so much more fun to do.

I can't imagine if I was still stuck tier early tier eight pills, I don't think alchemy would be as much fun. I would be near the top of the pecking order, but not as outstanding as I am now. When I put in word for early tier nine ingredients of well know recipes, the whole cultivation world went crazy.

Later I found out everyone thought my alchemy was my secondary profession and thus should be the weaker skill. But I turned that viewpoint upside down when I ask for those ingredients, it proved that alchemy is my primary profession. Which meant I was just playing around with artificing, and that really bothered everyone in the artificing world.

I really have to say my artificing is a cheat, when the bloodline spirit saw how powerful my spiritual force was. It decided to download into my spiritual force my ancestor's entire memories on artificing. All I had to do was to train my body to be able use all those intricate refining technique. Those hand signals are a pain to learn, but never took more than a few days achieve mastery equal to my ancestor.

After refining all the data store in my spiritual force, I was able to satisfy my crafting needs and only limited to my cultivation. As my cultivation advanced, I could start practicing new artificing techniques stored in my memory.

As I traveled though the outer ring of forest of Surakang, I stop reminiscing when I sense that I was being stalked. Just a feeling as well as at the edge of my divine sense recieving vague intrusions. Whatever demonbeast is stalking me is very good at stealth tactics, since I could never get a handle on what ever it is. Despite setting up a few traps, but none of them was sprung, which leads me to believe it can detect my formations traps.

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So I ended up using my trump card and I toss a feint formation trap followed by and another with a stealth formations to see if that would work. It did, and was surprised to see trapped in the formation cage a Hydroxian Venomfang who was attacking the restriction with all it's might to escape the trap. It's a vicious demonbeast with water and wind affinity that breaks out of the formation cage just as I arrive to see what I caught.

It's looks like a hyena hybred with its longer front legs giving it about five feet tall at it's shoulders, and the head is close to seven feet tall. It's has armored fish like scales covering the front half of it's body and crocodile like skin for the later half of it's body. It's looks tough and many scars cover it armored hide, but most of the scars appear to be nothing more than scatches rather than actual wounds.

It's very angry at me and blurs towards me enraged, having already activated my gears earlier I match it for speed. It attempts to bite my head off with it's first move which I avoided by jumping to my right. I then gave it a slash towards it's side, but it becomes insubstantial and my sword flash though it's suddenly incorporal form. It then twist around in a surprising quick turn around and attempts to bite my left leg off just below the knee. I jump over it's low striking form and stab downwards to give it a new scratch to remember me by.

Those overlapping fish scales are extremely tough and durable as I feel the tip of my blade slide around it's armor hide without drawing blood. I twist in the air to land on my feet and continue exchanging lightning fast moves with this challenging adversary with exceptional defenses. I notice it's drool cause the ground to sizzle and various plants to decay and turn black from poisonous rot.

I keep my qi barrier at full strength to avoid the constant flying drool as it dances all over the place trying to land a successful bite on me. It's obvious a top predator here and not used to stuggling so much for a meal. For my part, it's not an edible creature and it's also rather disgusting in both appearance and smell. But it does provide an interesting challenge, so I put up with it and do my best to enjoy the battle.

It's not everyday I can fight something tough enough to withstand my basic attacks. So I begin testing mid stage eight techniques for flaws. After several full exchanges I feel my battle techniques have become a bit smoother and the delay between moves are shorter. It's only a small degree, but a battle between experts, these small improvements would go a long way.

It's a very cocky demonbeast and it's drool is more troublesome than I thought. I get a few splatters on my qi barrier where it sticks and sizzles and tries to eat though my qi barrier. I am force to spend additional qi just to keep the corroding drool from eating though the barrier. It never gives up attacking me, I feel it don't like losing and continues to go all out trying to turn me into it's dinner.

I avoid becoming it's meal and eventually decided that my antics so far has given me all the benefits I could get. So I send qi into my sword and bring the game to a whole new level of play. It's not happy to see my sword burning with excess fire and sword qi, but it's does not back down and continues to try to make me it's dinner. However, it now avoids my Burning Rage like it's life depends on it.

Our battle has turn into a battle of misses as we continue with more exchanges and nothing to show for it. This has turned into a battle of speed, and neither of us has manage anything note worthy to be proud of. However, I am learning to mix and match my defensive and offensive skills more effectively. I don't fight nearly as much as I want lately, so I am getting a little rusty. So this demonbeast allows me to get back into my battle groove, and I am starting to appreciate the ugly beast for it's endeavor on my behalf.

When I finally had enough of fooling around with it, I finally go on the offense and begin tossing battle skills at it. Until now I been simply blocking it's battle skills to make the battle last. However, it's instincts are superb, and after tasting a couple of my battle skills it high tails itself out of sight. It used some kind of wind escape technique that I dare not follow in this place where stage eight demonbeast lurk every where.

Our battle has no doubt attracted unwanted attention from demonbeast wanting to try fishing for an easy meal, so I obfuscate with a concealment formation and do my best to stealthly track the Vemonfang. Fortunately I was able to use some of it's drool in a tracking formation to get a general directions to move by.

With it's wind affinity, the Venomfang has a huge hunting range and I travel a good distance before I find it's lair up on a mountain ledge cave. I had notice when I first entered this danger zone, there was an ancient restriction which keeps any demonbeast born in the crater from leaving. This wouldn't be a danger zone without that restriction and I have yet to find it's source.

I probe the cave with my divine sense and I recieve a growl in return. It's sensitivity is extraordinary so I cut loose with mid stage eight battle skill called Earthen Embrace. This technique cause earth and stone to surround and crush my foes. It's a perfect skill to use in a cave and I watch the cave entrance close like a giant maw and crush everything inside.

However, an insubstantial Venomfang passes though the sealed entrance and lunges at me in fury for losing it's home. I don't understand why, my divine sense didn't pick up anything of value in the cave. We begin our battle once again, but this time it's definitely doing it's best to kill me. I could have defeated several time it not for it's ability to turn into a vaporish insubstantial form.

We take turns using doing our best to kill one another, but we finally realize neither of us is going to be a winner any time soon. However, it did have an interesting trump card, a techinque that can cut anything in half. It even cut a stone pillar in half that one of my battle technique could not even scratch. I have pass dozens of these ancient pillars as I track the Venomfang to it's lair.

All I saw was a flash of fading light and an ancient pillar was cut in half. I had recording the image with my divine sense and spiritual force to analyze it later when I have the time. It also made me want to get it's core to examine it's technique by installing it into a generator. However the battle is getting us no where as time passes, and several stage eight demonbeasts have gather around us waiting kill the wounded.

So in the end we both withdraw from battle and using our means dissappear from sight to recover our half spend qi. Neither of us was stupid to over spend when enemies begin gathering. But I won't let this slid in the future, I fully intend to come back when I am stronger to finish this battle we started today.

After escaping a fair distance, I began searching for any natural treasures and any clues on where that powerful ancient sect might have been hidden. Also I am interested in locating the restriction that keeps the demonbeast born in the crater from leaving. Since no one has found the sect remains after two eras, I don't have any hopes in finding it. So I throw me efforts in finding the restriction, at least it would be rewarding to study to advance my restriction knowledge.

Besides I'm here to scout out this danger zone, I don't have time to thoughly explore it, so I record every thing with a recording jade. Next time I come here I will hunt down the Venomfang and thoughly explore the danger zone. So this time around I search for natural treasures and practice my battle skills.

I do pick up several anomalies with my divine sense, but when I search their locations I can't make any heads or tails of them. Obviously my divine sense is not strong enough to completely decipher what I am vaguely detecting. These key points I left in the recording jade and hope when I visit again, my divine sense would have increase by several notches and would be able to fulfill my curiosity.