"Alright, after being stuck in that godforsaken place for so long, my bones are practically stiff. I need to stretch them out. You guys do as you please, I'm off."
Bai Hu said, preparing to leave.
Ye Tiancheng thought for a moment and felt he couldn't miss this opportunity. He quickly called out to stop Bai Hu, saying, "We are indeed here for Luo Qi Mountain, but we don't have many clues, nor do we know how to reach its entrance."
"If you don't mind, could you please give us some more hints?"
Hearing Ye Tiancheng's words, Bai Hu's steps paused slightly, but he didn't turn around.
He said to Ye Tiancheng, "Hints? What more do you need to ask? To enter Luo Qi Mountain, you need your own sincere heart, your own heart. I cannot help you. This much is enough, any more would be too much. Shhh…"
After speaking, Bai Hu left directly, with no intention of continuing the conversation with Ye Tiancheng and the others.
Seeing this, Ye Tiancheng didn't press further.
The little fox helped Ye Tiancheng pick up the two items Bai Hu had left behind.
After Bai Hu left, Ye Tiancheng turned around, and the little fox said to him, "I wonder what use these things are. Where should we use them?"
Ye Tiancheng replied, "Let's wait and see. We'll find a place for them eventually."
The little fox sighed and said, "That big white tiger speaks so vaguely, I can't understand him at all. Can't he just speak more clearly?"
Ye Tiancheng smiled slightly at the little fox's words.
Ye Tiancheng said to the little fox, "Perhaps it's better not to be too clear. I actually think that white tiger was quite straightforward and sincere. This might be the greatest help he could offer?"
The little fox then changed his tune, saying, "Alright then, regardless, he was helping us."
Although Bai Hu said he was repaying a favor, their actions were unintentional and didn't require much effort. He could have simply left, but he still left them a token of gratitude, which was quite considerate.
Ye Wuji's attention was focused on the two items.
Suddenly, Ye Wuji interjected, interrupting the conversation between Ye Tiancheng and the little fox.
Ye Wuji suddenly said, "Look at this. Doesn't it resemble something from that book we saw earlier, the one that recorded information about Luo Qi Mountain? I remember this… it seems to be a plant seed?"
Ye Tiancheng and the little fox were immediately drawn to Ye Wuji's attention.
"Huh? A seed?"
They immediately started reviewing the clues and information they had collected. Indeed, they found relevant records in the资料. However, because the records at the time were drawings made with ink, it was only upon seeing the actual items that Ye Tiancheng and the little fox didn't connect them with the drawings they had seen in their memory.
But now, with Ye Wuji's mention, they compared the drawings and written descriptions with the external features of the other item besides the jade, and only then did they realize Ye Wuji was indeed correct.
Ye Tiancheng immediately breathed a sigh of relief and said to Ye Wuji, "You've been a great help."
What the giant white tiger who had left earlier said was indeed true. He had already helped a lot. The seeds left by the white tiger, when planted, were one of the conditions for opening the entrance to Luo Qi Mountain.
To open the entrance to Luo Qi Mountain, three plants needed to be gathered, and this was only one of them.
However, the little fox had something to say about this.
He said, "But, even though three plants are needed to open the entrance to Luo Qi Mountain, and the plant grown from this seed will be one of them, this is still just a seed!"
"Who knows how long its growth period is, or what its cultivation conditions are."
"Do we have to stay here and plant flowers and trees to enter Luo Qi Mountain?"
Ye Tiancheng examined the seed and used his cultivation to sense its condition, then replied to the little fox, "You don't need to worry too much. From what I see, this is probably something that is not simple to cultivate, but not too difficult either."
"In short, it might indeed need to be planted, but as long as the clues and conditions are gathered, it shouldn't take too much time."
The little fox sighed and said, "Alright then, there's no other way."
Ye Tiancheng said, "If we continue to investigate, we'll find out, won't we? If what we get later is still a seed, doesn't that prove that we indeed need to plant plants? If that's the case, then planting it definitely won't be a concern about time."
"As long as the conditions are met, there shouldn't be any major issues."
Ye Wuji flapped his wings and said from the side, "Then let's hurry and continue. We should probably reduce the time spent searching for clues. Our time is quite tight, and we probably need to complete this within a day, otherwise, we should quickly leave this place."
They still had the recurring trouble of time constraints and the need to worry about overlapping issues, and they couldn't linger in one place for too long.
Ye Tiancheng also remembered this, so he didn't delay.
Speaking of this mountain, its foothills were quite magical, gathering many terrains and plants that couldn't possibly appear in the same place simultaneously. However, there seemed to be no animals around. At least, they hadn't heard any sounds of wild beasts.
So far, the only beings they had encountered that could be called animals were not quite normal.
First, the birds that stopped in front of the stone tablet were all motionless, letting themselves be slaughtered. Only when they reached the cave did they finally move, flying into the cave, and then they never came out again.
After that, it was the giant white tiger that came out of the cave. That white tiger was even more unusual.
That white tiger could speak human language, could communicate with them, and even gave them things.
The items also appeared out of thin air.
It was likely that the white tiger could also master spatial laws and store things itself, so accurately speaking, it was a cultivator, definitely not an ordinary animal.
Other than that, they hadn't seen any other animals.
However, just as Ye Tiancheng and the others were about to leave, they turned around and discovered that there was another thing behind them, another seed.
If it weren't for the fact that the seeds of those plants were all very large and particularly conspicuous, they might have overlooked them just lying there.
The little fox picked up the seed and compared it with the资料 again.
This time, they had collected the second of the three plant seeds. It was indeed something they needed.
The little fox said somewhat curiously, "This is indeed the seed we need, but who left it here? Did that big white tiger leave it?"
Ye Tiancheng glanced at it and shook his head, saying, "It's probably not from that big white tiger. If he wanted to give it to us, there would be no need to secretly hide one seed and place it behind us; he would have put them all in front of us."
"This might have been left here by something else."
After speaking, Ye Tiancheng observed the surroundings, and then Ye Tiancheng quickly reached a conclusion.
He said to the little fox, "It seems like… it was left by those birds earlier?"
The little fox was suddenly bewildered.
He asked doubtfully, "Ah? Those birds? Why would they leave something for us? And when did they leave it?"
"...I thought they all flew into the cave and ended up in that big white tiger's belly."
Ye Tiancheng's mouth twitched slightly after hearing the little fox's words, and then Ye Tiancheng said to the little fox, "That's probably not the case. Those few small birds wouldn't even be enough to fill the gaps between the big white tiger's teeth."
"Besides, that was a white tiger that could speak human language and had human-like qualities. It's hard to say if it could transform into human form. If it could, it might be even more formidable. Faced with such small birds, it might be too lazy to open its mouth, and might not be willing to eat them."
The little fox looked at Ye Tiancheng with a dejected expression and said, "This won't work, and that won't work either. Then what could be the reason?"
"But, Big Brother, how do you know this seed was left by those birds?"
Ye Tiancheng explained to the little fox, "Look there, those feathers. They must have been left by those birds, but we just didn't notice them before."
Following Ye Tiancheng's direction, the little fox indeed saw a few bird feathers.
And they were definitely not Ye Wuji's feathers.
However, to be honest, Ye Wuji rarely shed feathers unless he deliberately plucked them himself and threw them away. Otherwise, Ye Wuji wouldn't shed feathers everywhere like ordinary birds.
The little fox stroked his chin thoughtfully and said, "I see. Then it's not necessarily that they deliberately left it. Perhaps they brushed against it somewhere, and it got stuck in their feathers. When they flew up just now, it fell off along with their feathers."
Ye Wuji found it a bit far-fetched and disagreed, saying, "That shouldn't be possible. It definitely didn't fall off their bodies."
"Look how big that seed is. If it were on them, it would be so conspicuous. It wouldn't wait until they flew up to fall off, would it?"
The little fox shrugged and said, "Who knows? But I can't think of any reason why they would actively leave seeds for us. Did we do anything good for them? No, right?"
"The white tiger had a reason to thank us. Even though it was unintentional, we still helped the white tiger break its seal."
Ye Tiancheng thought for a moment and then said, "Forget it, let's not worry about it. As long as the seeds are fine, it's already very fortunate. No matter where they came from, we only have one more seed to find."
Although the little fox didn't want to dampen their spirits, he said somewhat disappointedly, "We still don't know how to plant these seeds."
Ye Tiancheng was quite optimistic.
He said, "We'll figure it out. Are we really going to be stumped by these problems? If it's really impossible, we can explore another place. There's no need to get stuck here. We're not trapped right now."
The little fox raised his eyebrows and said, "Alright then."
He accepted this explanation.
Thus, Ye Tiancheng and the other two finally set off again in a new direction.
Their next destination was another very strange place. Ye Tiancheng had always felt that from one direction, a particularly cold aura had been constantly spreading outwards.