Tang Jie walked through a lush forest, Yiyi and the little tiger at his side.

The twisted roots made the ground difficult to traverse.

Even someone of Tang Jie’s strength was beginning to tire after the long journey.

He raised his head and peered into the distance. “Yiyi, Bao’er, let’s stop and rest for a bit!”

This was the northeastern region of the Transverse Range.

The Transverse Range was a famous mountainous region of Duskland, covering an area of 160,000 square kilometers and spanning three provinces, six prefectures, and forty-two counties. Countless powerful fiend beasts dwelled within.

The vastness of the land prevented even the Seven Absolutions Sect from fully controlling it. Every year, numerous students, hunters, and Wanderers ventured inside to hunt the fiend beasts and search for spirit treasures. They either got rich or died.

But for the students of the six major sects, the Transverse Range was not a particularly good mission area.

While this vast mountainous region did have many fiend beasts and spirit herbs, many years of hunting had resulted in all the easy fiend beasts being killed off and the easy-to-pick spirit plants all being picked. One either had to fight savage fiends or travel across vast distances to find a few spirit plants.

From a resource-gathering perspective, the Transverse Range was much worse than the Valley of No Return.

It had to be understood that while there was no entry fee to enter this open mountainous region, there was a time cost.

It was just like how a bottle of Essence-Refining Pill could save a Spirit Spring student sixty days of cultivation, a Spirit Lake student forty days, and a Spirit Sea student twenty days.

In other words, if a Spirit Sea Tier student couldn’t make 1200 spirit coins in twenty days, they would have essentially lost money, for they could have achieved the same result with their own cultivation. And this wasn’t even considering the risk and labor involved in exploring such a place.

The higher one’s realm, the greater the labor costs, and thus the greater the profit required.

This was a natural contradiction.

This was precisely why getting rich in the Transverse Range didn’t only require strength, but luck.

Tang Jie clearly wasn’t that lucky. This was his fifth day in the mountains.

He had run into fiend beasts twice in the Transverse Range, and while he had easily handled them with his strength and harvested them, their value was no more than one hundred coins.

Tang Jie couldn’t do anything about this.

Tang Jie stopped and picked some wood to start a fire and cook.

A wild river deer that he had just caught served as their lunch.

The golden river deer was roasted on a spit, releasing an alluring aroma.

Yiyi propped her chin on her hand as she sat by the fire while the little tiger lay on the ground and stared at the roasting meat. These two had both gotten used to eating cooked food after spending these years with Tang Jie, and Tang Jie’s cooking wasn’t bad and had gotten ahold of their stomachs.

As the sparks leaped and the meat on the spit cooked, the aroma grew more and more tempting. Watching golden oil dripping from it, the little tiger began to restlessly scratch at the ground.

Tang Jie found this rather amusing. He tore off a piece and threw it at the little tiger, who began to devour it.

Yiyi pouted, “Big Brother is biased, feeding the little tiger first.”

Tang Jie scratched her cute little nose and said, “Silly, Bao’er can’t eat food that’s too cooked. What are you fighting with him for?”

Yiyi grunted and turned away, unconvinced.

“Alright, alright. This piece is almost done, so you can have it,” Tang Jie said, handing a piece over to Yiyi.

The little girl excitedly took it and began to tear away at it.

Tang Jie couldn’t help but shake his head. “You’re not like a little girl at all.”

The little girl made a face at Tang Jie in reply.

As she was eating, Yiyi suddenly said, “Big Brother, this place is so boring. When are we going to find that thing you’re looking for?”

Tang Jie patted Yiyi’s little hand and said, “Don’t rush. Patience is the mother of success. You want to find a lot of fiend beasts? It’s simple. You just keep walking farther in. The farther you go, the more powerful and more numerous the fiend beasts become. You’ll have to worry not about being able to find them, but about whether you can deal with them or not.”

“But that’s too dangerous!”

Tang Jie didn’t reply for a while. Finally, he said, “Yes, it’s very dangerous, but perhaps that’s the destiny of your big brother. From the moment I arrived in this world, I was foreordained to have danger as my companion. Alas, Yiyi, you must accompany your big brother in this hardship.”

Yiyi shouted, “Yiyi isn’t afraid! If some bad man tries to bully Big Brother, Yiyi will help you beat him up!”

Tang Jie laughed and stroked Yiyi’s head. “Hurry and eat so we can get going again. We should be reaching Old Crow Ridge soon, where we won’t have to worry about fiends.”

At this moment, there was a rustling in the distance.

It wasn’t particularly loud, but the little tiger stopped eating and turned toward the source of a noise, a low growl of warning in his throat. Yiyi also suddenly became serious, and with a wave of her little hand, some of the surrounding plants began to move.

Tang Jie remained seated, his right hand gripping the hilt of the Heartbreak Saber while his left hand prepared to pull out the puppet token.

The three of them had instantly prepared for a battle, and a moment later, the bushes across from them began to rustle, louder and louder until a wild boar charged out.

This boar was the size of a bull, and its thick fangs were like two inverted hooks. Its body had an earthen yellow sheen to it, indicating that it was a fiend boar.

The moment this fiend boar appeared, it charged at Tang Jie’s group.

Yiyi clapped her hands and laughed. “Finally, another fiend. Unfortunately, we can’t roast it and eat it.”

If beasts that had become fiends were roasted, their essence would completely go to waste, which was why Yiyi had said this. As she spoke, she waved her hand, sending several vines to coil around the boar.

The boar fiend was an upper-grade Spirit Sensing fiend and quite strong, so when it saw the vines, it immediately tried to break them. But Yiyi had changed over the last two years, and while she was still at the middle grade, her spell arts had swelled in power. These binding vines were many times more tenacious than before.

The boar fiend struggled a little, but when it saw that it couldn’t break free, it howled, and a yellow light exploded from its body. The fiend boar gigantified, growing to the size of an elephant, and the vines began to give way under its rapidly expanding body.

Yiyi pursed her lips. “A few more.”

More vines coiled around the boar, wrapping it tightly.

Even though it was at the upper grade of Spirit Sensing, the boar couldn’t break free, and all it could do was howl miserably.

Tang Jie and the little tiger did nothing but watch as Yiyi tangled with the fiend boar.

This fiend boar wasn’t able to get any sort of advantage against Yiyi in a one-on-one, and desperately howled. Yiyi was very happy, clapping her hands and laughing, “Big Brother, Big Brother, look! I’ve restrained this stupid pig. I’m so awesome!”

But Tang Jie frowned.

Although Yiyi was a sprite, who relied purely on spell arts, her spell arts were far stronger than those of other sprites, and she had also learned some cultivation methods from Tang Jie. This was why she was much stronger than middle-grade fiends, but that was still comparing her to those of the same grade.

Against upper grade, victory was possible, but it shouldn’t have been this easy.

He was about to say something when there was a flash of light in the distance, and a flying sword flew over and stabbed into the head of the boar. With one last howl, the boar fiend dropped to the ground, dead.

Several young men and women appeared in the distance, coming their way.

The young man leading the group rushed up to the fiend boar’s side and waved his hand, upon which the flying sword flew back to him. The others in the group then arrived, shouting, “Senior Brother’s divine sword is incredible! It stopped this fiend boar from escaping.”

The man laughed, appearing rather happy.

Yiyi furiously glared. “Hey, this fiend boar is ours!”

The man smiled. “Young miss, let me make it clear that we chased this boar to this place.”

He pointed at the back of the fiend boar, which was sporting several wounds. When Yiyi had been restraining it with vines, she had failed to notice these injuries.

She was rendered speechless, upon which Tang Jie said, “Since it is yours, then you may take it.”

The man chuckled and said, “Little Brother is truly understanding. Then we will help ourselves.”

He began to dismantle the boar, but he pulled off one of the boar’s tusks and threw it to Tang Jie. “But we have to thank you for stopping it, as we would have had to waste quite a lot of time chasing it otherwise. Take this as a sign of my gratitude.”

Tang Jie saw that this person knew his manners and developed a good impression of him, but he still gave the tusk back. “Thank you, but there’s no need.”

The young man didn’t mind, smiling as he said, “I’m being rude. Anyone who can penetrate this deeply into the Transverse Range must be someone of some ability and naturally wouldn’t care about such small things.”

A red-robed girl heard this and said, “Senior Brother Qin, aren’t you praising yourself by saying this? We were only able to get this far by relying on you.”

This Senior Brother Qin was taken aback, and then he laughed and said, “Naughty girl, you’ve got quite the sharp tongue.”

He turned back to Tang Jie and said, “I am Qin Zhou of the Green Hill Sect, and these are my junior brothers and sisters.”

“My name is Tang Xuan. This is my little sister, Yiyi. We’re both students from Sageheart,” Tang Jie replied, giving a fake name.

He knew about the Green Hill Sect. It was a cultivation sect of Endsea, and while it wasn’t big, it had some reputation. It was most skilled in refining pills, particularly pills for ascending to the next realm. Even the Seven Absolutions Sect couldn’t compare to them in that aspect.

Pills, talismans, formations, and tools were known as the four auxiliary arts, but they had further subdivisions.

For example, the Dao of Formations could be divided into fixed formations, refining formations, seal formations, and many other categories. Tang Jie was most skilled in fixed formations, which were formations that were fixed in one location and couldn’t be moved around. He had focused the majority of his energy here because his goal was the Nine Executions Immortal Formation.

As for pills and medicines, there were cultivation aids that solidified and nurtured one’s foundation, healing medicines that restored blood and muscle, battle supplements that simulated spiritual energy and blood energy, and many other kinds of pills with special functions.

This Green Hill Sect specialized in spirit medicines that could help a cultivator when they were attempting to break into the next realm, while the Seven Absolutions Sect specialized in foundation-solidifying and stimulating spirit medicines. The two had overlaps, but they also had differences.

The Five Energies Sovereign Essence Pill that the Basking Moon Sect had offered as a reward for Gu Changqing was a spirit medicine for making a charge at Celestial Heart, but this pill only raised the success rate by 15%—much less than the 30% offered by the Anti-Tribulation Celestial Sphere Pill of the Green Hill Sect.

In the golden age of the Green Hill Sect, it was even able to refine pills that would assist in ascending to the Violet Palace or Immortal Platform Realms, but as it declined, these two recipes had been lost. At present, the best pill the Green Hill Sect could refine was the Anti-Tribulation Celestial Sphere Pill, and because it lacked materials, it only produced a small number of them. Even the few it refined were all handed over to Horizon Ocean Pavilion.