Cultivation begins in Qingfeng Market.

Upon seeing this, the remaining monsters halted their pursuit.

Lin Zhao retrieved the ancient seal and sped away without looking back.

Over the next few months, Lin Zhao's patrol life took on a fixed rhythm.

At the beginning of each month, they would leave the market and patrol upstream along a designated route to assess the movement and threat level of various animal groups, and draw detailed spirit maps.

Return to Jinsha City at the end of the month, submit the intelligence, and Jinsha Palace will issue a mission to mobilize the demon hunting team or military forces to carry out targeted elimination or dispersal.

He no longer insisted on large-scale extermination. Faced with those massive herds of beasts, often numbering in the tens of thousands, or even exceeding one hundred thousand, individual strength was truly insignificant.

He also began to frequently interact with the demon-hunting teams in the market.

Sometimes they would watch from a distance, and sometimes they would have to take direct action to rescue the entire team from the jaws of the beasts—including the mortal soldiers covered in blood who were responsible for carrying the monster corpses.

There are too many demonic beasts to fit in the storage bag, but we can't just ignore them. They are not only cultivation resources, but if we let the demonic beasts devour each other, they will easily breed powerful demonic beasts.

But the most important task remains fighting against second-tier monsters.

Second-tier monsters are the key to truly threatening the stability of the defense line.

These sentient beings can not only command herds of beasts, but also ambush and kill lone human Foundation Establishment cultivators.

During a routine patrol, Lin Zhao detected a distress message.

He rushed over and saw two early Foundation Establishment cultivators surrounded by five second-tier demonic beasts, in grave danger.

When he arrived, he found that there were four more, making a total of nine second-tier demonic beasts attacking the three of them.

The two cultivators were struggling and almost couldn't hold on.

Fortunately, Lin Zhao unleashed the powerful Nine Luminaries Heavenly Dragon in time, forcibly breaking through the encirclement and killing two second-tier demonic beasts.

The sudden attack threw the monster camp into chaos. The three seized the opportunity to launch a counterattack, severely injuring several more monsters.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the monsters scattered and fled. One of them, an armored earth dragon that was moving a little slower, was pinned to the ground by Lin Zhao's Azure Lotus Sword.

After this battle, Lin Zhao's name truly became renowned in the Foundation Establishment circle of Jinshafang City.

His previous intervention in the distribution of Foundation Establishment Pills by the sect leader had already drawn attention, and now the strength he has displayed, far exceeding that of ordinary early Foundation Establishment cultivators, has made many people secretly tremble.

Even the perspectives of certain higher-level figures, such as Cai Kuo, a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator from the Thousand Radiance Sect, and the captain of the Shadow Chasing Demon Hunting Team.

------

On this day, Lin Zhao received an urgent distress signal.

The divine sense probed in and found a distress call from a large demon-hunting team codenamed "Grizzly Bear"—they had encountered an accident while intercepting a herd of over ten thousand beasts in a dangerous place called "Chaotic Rock Ravine".

The strength hidden among the beasts far exceeded expectations. Not only were there several "commander-level" demonic beasts at the tenth level of Qi Refining, but there were also suspected Foundation Establishment demonic beasts lurking in the shadows.

Nearly half of the three hundred cultivators and five hundred auxiliary mortal soldiers have been killed or wounded, and the situation is extremely precarious.

Lin Zhao immediately turned the Flowing Cloud Flying Boat around and rushed there at full speed.

Half an hour later, the Rocky Ravine came into view. The terrain here was extremely treacherous, with the river channel blocked by countless giant rocks, forming numerous undercurrents, whirlpools, and narrow waterways.

The roars of beasts and the explosions of spells emanated from a particularly narrow canyon, where various colored lights could be faintly seen flickering.

Lin Zhao did not rush in immediately. He hovered above the canyon entrance, probing with his piercing sword eyes.

Sure enough, behind a reef shrouded in mist on the flank, two chilling Foundation Establishment auras were sensed, seemingly waiting for the best opportunity to strike.

He ignored it. With Qi Refining cultivators present, Foundation Establishment cultivators wouldn't easily engage in battle with second-tier demonic beasts, and second-tier demonic beasts would usually leave if they saw there was no advantage to be gained.

Monsters are incredibly resilient and difficult to kill. Human cultivators, on the other hand, have numerous methods to defeat them, but killing them is extremely difficult, and they can easily escape.

Moreover, generally speaking, cultivators of the same level are stronger than demonic beasts, which is a strange tacit understanding that humans and demonic beasts have reached over the past thousand years in Jinsha City.

He flipped his hand and took out the Three Flames Fan.

The Three Flames Fan is most effective in dealing with situations where the terrain is narrow and monsters are densely packed.

Infused with magical power, the three-colored spirit feathers on the fan shimmered with light. Lin Zhaozhao gently fanned the fan at the most densely populated area of ​​monsters in the canyon.

"Crimson Flames"

Three-colored flames poured down from the edge of the fan, forming a torrent of fire hundreds of feet wide, like a waterfall of lava, which roared into the canyon!

Wherever the flames passed, the monsters turned to ashes before they could even scream. The rock walls were scorched red, the river water boiled and evaporated, and white steam rose into the sky.

This torrent of flames precisely burned a charred path through the dense horde of beasts!

"Retreat!" Lin Zhao's voice transmission rang in the ears of the surviving cultivators.

Having escaped a desperate situation, the demon-hunting team and soldiers ran wildly outwards along the fiery passage without hesitation.

Lin Zhao stood in mid-air, holding the Azure Lotus Sword. His powerful divine sense locked onto the two hidden Foundation Establishment demonic beasts, and his sword intent was chilling, full of warning.

The two demonic beasts clearly hadn't expected someone to break the deadlock in such a violent way. After hesitating for a moment, they ultimately didn't dare to show themselves to intercept them, and their auras slowly receded.

As Lin Zhao covered the rear, his gaze swept over the beast horde, and he suddenly noticed several exceptionally agile beasts covered in dense, dark blue scales.

They were subtly coordinating the attacks of the surrounding demonic beasts, and the aura emanating from them far exceeded that of ordinary late-stage Qi Refining cultivators, almost reaching the threshold of the tenth level of Qi Refining.

Lin Zhao's heart stirred, and with his left hand outstretched, the Five Qi Converging Lock silently shot out, accurately binding the five special demonic beasts, forcibly dragging them out of the horde, sealing them, and throwing them into the flying boat.

After the last wounded soldier was evacuated from the canyon, Lin Zhao waved his Three Flames Fan again, unleashing a devastating wave of fire at the surging beast horde before steering his flying boat to chase after the retreating group.

On the way back, he discovered that the demon-hunting team had also captured two similar special demon beasts, which were bound with specially made spirit-suppressing chains.

He carefully examined the five strange beasts. Their dark blue scales were cold and tough to the touch, and the patterns on them faintly formed a special design. After a long time of scrutiny, Lin Zhao realized that the pattern on the claw of the dragon in his storage bag was somewhat similar to the one he had obtained from it.

What's even more peculiar is that these strange beasts possess a trace of "spirituality" in their eyes that doesn't belong to low-level demon beasts.

He found the leader of the demon-hunting team, who was at the tenth level of Qi Refining, and casually asked, "Are these patterned, blue-scaled demon beasts common?"

The commander, panting heavily, wiped the blood from his face: "Reporting to senior, there weren't any in earlier years. They've only started appearing sporadically in the last three or four years. There aren't many, but they're very troublesome."

This Azure Scale Beast is strong, thick-skinned, and has hard bones. It's also incredibly cunning, knowing how to get other beasts to cooperate.

There seem to be people interested in them in the market; they've posted a quest to buy them and are absolutely determined to get them, and the price is pretty good, so we specifically targeted live ones.

Lin Zhao nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

Leading the team that had survived the ordeal, they headed towards Jinshafang Market.