Eternal Swordmaster
Chapter 217 - 210 Absorption and Trading Part 2

Chapter 217: Chapter 210 Absorption and Trading Part 2

At this moment, Lin Xin had barely taken a few steps before he felt a crisp cracking sound coming from his Crystal Core, surprisingly forming another layer of crystalline shell around it.

Turning to look at the giant fruit, Yin Mantuo had already returned to his original size over one person tall, while the giant fruit had completely shriveled into just a black peel, hanging there.

"Could it be?"

Feeling a surge of happiness, he hurriedly checked his attribute panel.

’Return to Origin Technique — Qi Refinement Realm Eighth Layer. (Completion 67%) (Damage +17, Physique +17, )’

"From a single-digit percentage, it’s shot up to 67% — and all I did was absorb two giant fruits because of Yin Mantuo."

As Yin Mantuo no longer increased the essence absorption, Lin Xin changed locations to rest and digest for a while, soon returning to normal.

Upon using Inner Vision, his body was a mess inside, with the surfaces of his channels and blood vessels covered in scars, much like porcelain about to shatter.

After meditating and regulating his breath for a while, Lin Xin took several precious medicinal pills in a row, nurturing and repairing his internal injuries, but this only temporarily stabilized his condition. The state of his channels had only improved slightly.

"If I hadn’t been practicing the Body Refining Techniques ’Jiu Chen Qu’, and my attributes weren’t strong enough, I might have been vaporized the moment I activated the Qilin, before even getting a chance to attack the enemy," Lin Xin reflected sincerely. These ultimate moves of his were not something ordinary cultivators could handle.

Unfortunately, attribute points couldn’t be obtained from other sources anymore, only through Demon Talisman Seeds...."

After a brief recovery, he stood up and continued moving along the giant branch towards the distance, with Yin Mantuo transforming into a red light and flying into his sword blade.

As a summoned creature, it had indeed been diligent enough, hardly needing any sacrifices to be summoned at will — always ready to arrive and sacrificing itself for Lin Xin, each time returning half-dead. And now, it had once again returned to its juvenile form.

Lin Xin felt somewhat guilty in his heart and secretly decided that this time, given the good opportunity, he must allow Yin Mantuo to fully satiate itself.

If he missed this chance, coming here again would be troublesome given the distance. If it hadn’t been for the large troop’s collective action, who knows what troubles they might have encountered along the way.

Moving rapidly along the dark green branches, turning corners occasionally, he lightly leaped, landing on other branches and leaves.

On a wide green leaf several meters in diameter, a caterpillar over half a person long slowly wriggled, arching slowly as it crawled. The caterpillar’s body was a mix of yellow and red, vibrant in color, its spines constantly shaking as it moved, as if embedded with large patches of white steel needles.

Lin Xin lightly tapped his foot next to it on the leaf, causing the entire leaf to shake continuously up and down. Frightened, the caterpillar immediately stopped dead, lying flat on the leaf without daring to move.

With several leaps, the Spiritual Energy within him boiling and propelling him, the techniques of Return to Heaven and Flash Spirit in movement technique worked in concert, allowing him to move swiftly and effortlessly with the occasional touch for leverage.

In the shadows of the trees, Lin Xin was like flying, with an abyssal height of thousands of meters below him. Gazing down, all he could see was darkness.

Hiss!

A green-bodied venomous snake shot out from between the branches several meters thick, viciously lunging toward Lin Xin suspended in mid-air.

The snake was massive, just its head and front half emerging was over twenty meters in length, appearing to Lin Xin in mid-air as if a green train was ruthlessly bearing down upon him.

Before it even drew near, the thick stench and the pressure of the wind could be felt compressing the air.

The Heart Eye Sword Path instantly unfolded, the Red Flower Sword unsheathed with a soft hum transforming into a red streak, shooting directly toward the venomous snake.

Ssss...!

The blade shot into the wide-open mouth of the snake, and in a few seconds, swiftly sliced through the critical spot seven inches from its head, splattering blood. The sword emerged from the snake, immaculate as before, snapping back into its sheath with a clang.

Lin Xin propelled his Spiritual Energy for a boost, his toe tipping the onrushing snake’s head, as his body once again shot toward a distant new giant fruit like an arrow.

The snake slowly fell down, shriveling mid-air as if its essential blood was being drained, transforming into a mere skin and bones within a few breaths, a sight too miserable to behold.

While still mid-air, Lin Xin felt another surge of pure Essence Qi flowing into his body.

He looked back at the snake, his heart skipping a beat.

He had clearly killed it instantly, with the Red Flower Sword not even coming close afterward, so where had that Essence Qi come from?!

Vaguely, he sensed there might be some important secret in the midst of this.

But there wasn’t time to ponder further, as he had already reached another giant fruit.

This giant fruit was even larger than the previous ones, nearly double in size and pear-shaped, with its surface covered in pale golden natural Formation Patterns.

Below the giant fruit was a cluster of dark green broad leaves, all oval-shaped, each leaf as large as a small sports field, dense with tiny white aphids.

These aphids were semi-transparent, resembling white almonds with tentacles, proudly waggling their large rears as they crawled on the leaves.

Lin Xin lightly landed on one of the leaves, and within a meter radius, three aphids slowly crawled about, each half the height of a person and over a meter long.

As soon as he landed, three pairs of small black eyes immediately stared at him.

But these aphids merely glanced at him and then quickly returned their focus to their own leaves. It seemed they were migrating, moving from one tree branch to another thicker one.

After releasing Yin Mantuo, the familiar intense pain soon started again in his body. To divert his attention from the pain, Lin Xin simply walked slowly among the aphids, starting to observe these strange creatures.

An aphid, swaying laboriously with its big belly, crawled a few steps, rested a few, then continued crawling.

Lin Xin stood right beside it totally oblivious to him, focusing solely on its effortful crawling, though it seemed to have too much liquid inside it.

The translucent body allowed sunlight to permeate from outside, revealing the inside that swelled with liquid like an about to burst balloon.

Lin Xin walked up to it and pressed on the skin of the aphid.

Cold and resilient, it felt like a slightly hard orange.

He circled around the aphid, observing it from head to tail.

"This guy actually doesn’t have a mouth?" he suddenly became interested.

The head of the aphid featured only two antennae and a pair of small black eyes; its six short legs struggled to maintain balance as it slowly crawled forward.

The thinness of its legs compared to its round, swollen belly created an extreme contrast.

Lin Xin took a full circle around it but couldn’t locate its mouth; where the mouth should be was nothing but smoothness.

Pop!

Suddenly, a ball of round, sticky fluid shot out from behind the aphid. The sticky ball was entirely clear, swelling rapidly from the size of a fist to over a meter in diameter and sticking on the leaf without dripping or shaking.

Then, as if a chain reaction, the other aphids nearby, many with swollen bellies, began to squirt out transparent watery balls one after another, all sticking firmly to the leaves.

The surface of the water balls was continuously diffusing a sweet, extremely tempting scent.

Lin Xin approached one of the water balls but hadn’t looked closely when he heard a whooshing sound rushing towards him from beside.

He turned his head.

Several fearsome yellow wasps, over a person tall, buzzed toward them, their fuzzy bellies striped with yellow and black, wings vibrating like electric fans.

Lin Xin swiftly executed a Flash Spirit movement technique, suddenly reappearing ten meters away. He didn’t feel any murderous intent, so he simply dodged to avoid it.

Sure enough, the wasps’ target was the sweet-scented water balls squirted out by the aphids.

The wasps each grabbed a water ball and buzzed away, quickly vanishing into the dark shade of the trees.

"Interesting," Lin Xin realized that these water balls were likely the juice extracted from the giant tree by the aphids, and might have some unusual effects.

"Damn it! Give me back my aphid honey!!!" suddenly, a delicate voice came from not far away. It was spoken in the dialect of demons.

Lin Xin was slightly startled; he hadn’t expected there to be intelligent beings here, and looked in the direction of the voice.

He saw a golden-yellow bee, buzzing as it hovered not far away in the air; this bee was over three meters tall, and though it had mouthparts and compound eyes, it had the face of a human little girl.

"Aaargh!!!" the giant bee-girl started screaming loudly.

"You damn robbers!! Wait for it, bumblebees!!" the bee-girl looked frantic.

"Huh? Is there really a human here?" she seemed to notice Lin Xin, who was as tall as her belly.

"Are you a native here?" Lin Xin also asked in the demon dialect.

"Yeah," the bee-girl flew around Lin Xin, her eyes filled with curiosity. "This is deep within the Black Wind Tree, it’s very dangerous. How did you get here alone? Do you want me to take you out?"

"No need, I am here to collect something," Lin Xin pointed at a withered giant fruit in the distance.

"Oh, that, there’s plenty of it here. But that thing has such hard skin, how could you even open it?" the bee-girl said, surprised.

"No worries, I have my ways," Lin Xin smiled; he didn’t sense any malice from the bee-girl in front of him.

"Then why are you running around in our dairy farm? This place is our milk farm; by your human terms, it’s a place for rough work," the bee-girl said curiously.

"Dairy farm?" Lin Xin also felt curious. "Are you talking about these insects?"

"Yes," the bee-girl nodded. "These ’cows’ can secrete aphid honey, which contains the essence of the giant tree. We use it as our staple food; it tastes really good. Want to try?"

Lin Xin was astonished; the stuff these insects excreted was actually considered staple food?

"I won’t be eating... but aren’t you supposed to eat pollen...." suddenly Lin Xin couldn’t continue; his gaze sharply fell on a small item hanging around the neck of the bee-girl.

It was a Demon Talisman Seed!

A purple-black Demon Talisman Seed!

"Hey, hey, what’s wrong?" the bee-girl flew around him a few times.

"Do you like this?" she also noticed Lin Xin’s gaze and reached to weigh the Demon Talisman Seed. "This is a Demon Talisman Seed, used for sacrifices, very precious, I can’t give it to you."

"Why is it purple-black? The ones I’ve seen before were other colors," Lin Xin noticed a sly glint in her eyes.

"Because the black ones are more common," the bee-girl said casually. "Are you looking to buy it? You humans love to trade. If you want to buy, I want eggs from a Wealthy Plumage bird, one for one!"

"Eggs from a Wealthy Plumage bird?" Lin Xin was taken aback; he had never heard of such a bird before, and there wasn’t any record of it in the books—though there were few who understood the demon dialect, perhaps many things just weren’t recorded. (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to visit qidian.com to cast your votes and support, or continue reading on m.qidian.com on your mobile device.)