A massive beast slithered through the trees in a small town on the frontiers of the Baihu empire.

Its scales glimmer in the sunlight with a multi-colored hue. Its massive eyes scanned the surroundings for any threat towards itself.

The unique thing about this beast, however, is the vein-like pattern spread across its massive serpentine body, glowing with Fire Qi flowing within the beast.

The beast lazily moved through the trees and arrived at a massive cave, a place that it called home.

However, just before it could enter its burrow, its senses caught onto an anomaly that made it pause.

The Pure Qi in the air around its cave was much higher than it was before it left to hunt for food.

Cautiously, the beast flicked its tongue in the air. The organ within the roof of its mouth that mimicked Jacobson’s organ in normal snakes carefully analyzed the particles and Qi of the surroundings while its eyes, which could switch between Infrared vision and normal vision with excellent movement detection ability, watched its surroundings cautiously looking for anything that could be the cause of this anomaly.

Unfortunately, despite its extremely cautious nature and exceptional detection abilities, it failed to spot the two humans that were hiding behind bushes near its body while using an artifact to refract light and radiation while masking their scent.

“So, this is a Magma Python?”

“Indeed. Lingxi. We are lucky to see such a rare beast.”

Yin Lingxi frowned as she looked at the admittedly majestic beast while Da Wei carefully captured its form on the book that he received from Jin Tianrui for his birthday. While the different color dyes that he carried with him could not capture the true majesty of the beast’s appearance, he made great efforts to at least capture it as true to form as he could.

“I heard that Magma Pythons were hunted to extinction in our empire due to their potential of transforming into a Fuzang-Long, a dragon of hidden treasures associated with Fire, once they reached the Soul Transformation realm. But, it would seem that the Baihu empire has no such fears.”

“it is understandable. Unlike the Yin Long Empire, which had personal experience with dragons in the past, the Baihu Empire is a younger empire that was founded after the disastrous times of the end of the 3rd era and the birth of the 4th era. As such, they have no reference to the dangers that the existence of a dragon, even if it is only in the Soul Transformation realm, can pose.”

Yin Lingxi looked contemplatively at the Magma Python before turning to her friend.

“…Why not capture it as a Dao Familiar for yourself? Da Ling has already obtained one and Jin Tianrui is working on finding one for himself. Why not get one for yourself as well?”

Da Wei looked at Yin Lingxi with an amused look.

“Why don’t you have a Dai Familiar? As a princess of one of the only two empires on the continent, don’t you have certain privileges?”

Yin Lingxi huffed in annoyance before leaning back into the tree behind her.

“I never felt a connection with any of the beasts that I ever came across. Not to mention the fact that my Light element is so unique that the number of Dao Familiars compatible with my cultivation can be counted on my fingers.”

Da Wei nodded at those words as he continued to draw on the book.

Yin Lingxi was born with one of the rarest elemental affinities in existence, the element of Light.

As expected of an advanced category elemental affinity, her cultivation was much faster than her peers. This, combined with the fact that there were a few other Light element users in her lineage in the past which allowed her to use a cultivation technique tailored for her, she never had any challenges in her path of cultivation.

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However, just like with everything, her advantages also came with limitations.

Just like she said before, due to her elemental affinity, she was unable to find a Dao Familiar that had the same element as her to bond with.

In a society where Dao Familiars are seen as a status symbol for cultivators, she always struggled to maintain the same prestige as her older and younger brothers, who had Dao Familiars of their own thanks to their normal spirit roots.

Of course, this matter of prestige is something that no one would dare to mention in front of her. But she always felt it to be one of the few things she lacked compared to her siblings.

On the other hand, Da Wei suffered from a different problem. Or rather, he suffered from his success.

Thanks to the fact that his spirit roots did not have any elemental affinity, he is capable of taking any beast he desires as a Dao Familiar. The only problem is that due to the overwhelming power of his Primal Qi, he cannot take any beast that is weaker than him as a Dao Familiar.

In fact, any Dao Familiar he takes must be at least a minor realm higher than him to even survive the power of his Primal Qi flowing into them through the contract.

“For now, I don’t need a Dao Familiar, so we can just get rid of this thing right now. I’ll take the core, you can have the rest of the body. I need the core to enhance Da Ling’s Yaoban.”

Yin Lingxi giggled softly before touching shoulders with him.

“You only ever think about others all the time. Why not look for something that would benefit for once?”

Da Wei chuckled at her words before replying with a happy tone.

“For me, the prosperity of my loved ones is more important than my personal gain. Besides, I don’t particularly need or lack anything, so there is no point in taking such an action.”

“Fine, fine, mister good guy, let's take care of our work and go back. I am tired from our journey, and I want to get some rest in a proper bed and not on your Airship.”

“Well, it is your own fault. I told you we should have rested before we departed from that frontier town to travel Eastward for more than a week.”

Yin Lingxi gave a glare and playfully smacked his shoulder.

“Enough backtalk from you. Let’s go.”

Da Wei smiled as he put away the book and got up from the ground.

By this point, the Magma Python had long since dropped its guard and slithered into its cave to rest.

With a pulse of his Qi, Da Wei disabled the artifact concealing their presence, and cautiously entered the cave, making sure to draw the Pure Qi from the atmosphere, and turn it into a more potent form but stopping before it converted into Primal Qi, then releasing it back into the atmosphere.

Ever since breaking through into the Nascent Soul realm, Da Wei had long since realized that his Pure Qi had a natural camouflaging effect on the senses of cultivators and Demonic Beasts. However, his Primal Qi is something much more potent than regular Pure Qi and would easily stand out in the atmosphere.

That is why he developed this method of drawing in and intensifying the Pure Qi of an area to hide himself from his targets.

Right behind him, Yin Lingxi walked with her sword in hand, keeping an eye on her surroundings and guarding Da Wei’s back against any potential ambushes.

Soon, the duo walked deeper and deeper into the cave until they found the beast sleeping peacefully upon a pile of bones belonging to both humans and Demonic Beasts.

Near that bone pile, it also had a small hill of gold, spirit stones, artifacts, gems, shiny pebbles, and anything else that would gleam under light.

“…Looks like its draconian instincts are already shining through. It’s a good thing we caught it before it could truly mature. Who knows what kind of disaster would have befallen this continent if we were left ignorant about its existence?”

Da Wei said nothing in return since he had his own doubts about this.

He doubted this Python would have lived long even if they had not stumbled upon it, given the lack of its existence in Xiang’s memories of his timeline. Even then, the thought of a fully mature dragon was truly spine-chilling for Da Wei to consider, so he remained guarded and observed carefully.

Slowly, he crept near the slumbering beast, arriving near its body, just below the head where one of its scales was reversed.

The so-called reversed scale of a dragon.

With a deep breath, Da Wei gathered all of his Primal Qi into his fist and got into a martial arts stance.

Then, with explosive force, he shot out a punch straight at the reversed scale.

With a thunderous noise, the cave wall behind the Python exploded outwards, along with the head of the beast, which turned into a bloody mist.

The massive body of the serpent started thrashing about. Without the brain to give it instructions, it was not anything more than a thrashing dead body.

Within a matter of minutes, the body slowed down its thrashing and finally fell silent.

“….That was suspiciously easy.”

Da Wei received no response for his words, causing him to turn towards his friend, only to find her staring at him with a slack jaw and wide eyes.

“What? What is it?”

“….Nothing. Let’s go.”

With a confused look, Da Wei took the corpse and the treasure hill into this storage before following the shocked princess out of the cave.