Starting as a spiritual plant master, may I eventually become the master of all lands.

This is a top-tier first-order wood lightning talisman, slightly more powerful than the water arrow talisman of the male cultivator in Vine Flower Valley.

However, compared to the earth locust stone and the proper thunder pearl, it is far inferior.

It seems this person spent all their wealth on this Wood Thunder Talisman.

And that Kongsang Token, who knows how the six major sects distributed it, it must be quite valuable!

No wonder Lin Kuo didn't have a single spirit stone; it's likely that most rogue cultivators who come here are in the same boat.

Let alone independent cultivators, he himself was the same.

Many people exchanged their spirit stones for their most prized spiritual items before coming in, figuring they could plunder everything and easily earn it back when they left.

Besides the Wood Thunder Talisman, Lin Kuo also had a bottle of pills, which were quite valuable. They were Qi-restoring pills that quickly restored mana.

Song Chuan organized these items and put them into his storage bag.

He took out Duanmu Jingyi's silk handkerchief and Xuanhe's map, pondered for a while, then fled from the earthen mound and headed southeast.

An hour later, Song Chuan arrived at a rather low mountain, his brows slightly furrowed.

This mountain is only a few dozen feet high, and surrounded by other mountains, so it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it a hillside.

After wandering through the mountains for a while, Song Chuan suddenly stopped and stared blankly at a grove of low trees in front of him.

The forest had a peculiar appearance; the crowns of each tree were shaped like horse heads.

But this was not what alarmed Song Chuan; he had already recognized it as a kind of spiritual wood called "Horse Head Wood".

To his surprise, this patch of horse-head wood, which looked grayish from the outside, had a strange, pungent "vinegar" smell emanating from the forest, even from several meters away!

Song Chuan paced back and forth in front of the woods a few times, taking a deep sniff of the strong vinegar smell, muttering to himself, "Jealousy sickness!"

This is a rare disease that only affects sacred trees.

The disease is caused by a type of insect called the "vinegar beetle," which injects its secreted "vinegar liquid" into the tree trunk. This vinegar liquid prevents the wounds on the tree from healing, making it easier for the vinegar beetle to feed on them.

After vinegar beetles have eaten the trees, they lay their eggs on the trunk, forming galls. These galls are the nests of their larvae and are firmly attached to the wounds on the tree.

If there are no natural enemies of vinegar insects in the vicinity, and the spirit tree has no means of self-preservation, over the years, the spirit tree will slowly emit the smell of aged vinegar and become a dead tree!

Horse-head wood is one of the sacred woods that vinegar worms like.

The second-tier spiritual plant, the Stone Silkworm Flower, that Duanmu Jingyi wanted to collect happened to grow underground on the Horse Head Tree!

Song Chuan chuckled self-deprecatingly, recalling the sect's instructions: in such a situation, if one can protect oneself, one should try to heal the spirit tree as much as possible.

He began to doubt whether his sect was genuine and whether they were truly kind.

Hey! Let's leave it to our fellow disciples. I just need to use Earth Escape to go underground, gather the Stone Silkworm Flower, and then come out.

He swayed and was already in the ground.

He fled forward for a moment, then suddenly stopped.

In the soil ahead, several spiritual plants, resembling silkworms, emitted a milky white light.

However, next to these silkworm-like features, a black beetle the size of an infant lay sprawled, seemingly asleep.

"Hiss! Late stage of Tier 1!"

Song Chuan gasped, a surge of intense jealousy rushing to his head, almost making him faint.

It seems that the king of the vinegar insects in this forest is hiding underground, right next to the stone silkworm flower.

He used Xuanhe's Breath Concealing Bead to hide his aura and quietly walked forward.

After finally reaching a spot a few feet away from the stone silkworm flower, a sudden, even stronger smell of jealousy welled up in my nose.

The vinegar worm shifted slightly, seemingly sensing something amiss through its vinegar-like scent.

Song Chuan's expression changed, and he quietly retreated. Then he immediately emerged from the ground.

"What a useless Concealing Breath Bead!" Song Chuan cursed inwardly.

Fortunately, the vinegar worm wasn't very intelligent and probably didn't notice it. If it were a wind leopard beast, things might be different.

He had no choice but to look around the woods and make other plans!

What one sees is a scene of desolation and decay.

There was no living creature in the forest, not even a single weed.

Inside the trunk of the horse-head tree, one can sense many vinegar insect nests.

He gave a wry smile, realizing that he would have to lure out the vinegar worm and kill it in order to harvest the stone silkworm flower.

Although he cultivates earth-attribute techniques, those in the Qi Refining stage do not possess the ability to fight in the earth.

Unless it's a top-tier cultivation technique! You absolutely must find a top-tier cultivation technique after reaching the Foundation Establishment stage.

He looked around the woods, pondered a solution, and finally sighed softly.

Fine, I'll try being a herbal healer this time!

He carefully circled the woods a few times before walking to a large horse-head tree.

This tree is the largest nesting site for vinegar beetles in the forest.

He carefully examined the tree trunk and saw seven or eight galls of varying sizes, resembling a honeycomb, but without the numerous holes of a honeycomb; instead, they were sealed.

Song Chuan reached out and took out the Black Horn Hammer. He made a hand seal and tapped the hammer a few times, knocking the galls off the tree trunk.

After the galls fell off, deep black holes were revealed on the tree trunk.

He then directed the black-horned hammer to smash open a gall, revealing a series of small "cells" inside. Each "cell" contained a black insect egg, some of which were already molting and transitioning into adults.

Seeing that the orchid insects were not moving and seemed uninterested in them, Song Chuan prepared to have the black-horned hammer smash them all.

But something else in his insect pouch moved slightly; it was the two demon-transforming earth dragons he had brought from the Radiant Fragrance Garden.

He bought these two earth dragons for over ten spirit stones. Since his fate on this trip was uncertain, he naturally had to bring all his belongings with him.

Before even entering the forest, the two earth dragons seemed to smell the vinegar and stirred. At the time, Song Chuan thought they were agitated.

But now it seems that's not the case.

Because they had already crawled out and landed on the gall.

The earth dragon first ate all the insect eggs in the opened gall, then swayed its body and moved to another gall.

To Song Chuan's surprise, the creature burrowed directly into the gall without making any opening.

Hey, just like me, they use earth-遁 (earth-遁 is a type of magical ability)! The earth dragon's innate ability. In that case, let them handle these galls.

Song Chuan took out a thin, long, wire-like magical artifact from his storage bag. This artifact was called the "Spirit Testing Wire," and it was used by the disciples of Teng Hua Valley to detect the age of some soil and spiritual plants.

Song Chuan took it out, but he had another purpose for it!

He bent one end of the spirit-testing wire into a hook shape and inserted it into a black hole left behind after a gall had fallen off.

The black hole was quite deep; the spirit-detecting thread went in more than halfway before it finally hooked onto something.

Upon seeing this, Song Chuan's face lit up with joy. He pinched the other end of the spirit-testing thread and carefully pulled it outwards.

But the thing on the hook seemed to fall off several times, which made him very impatient.

After being hooked seven or eight times, Song Chuan finally pulled the hook of the spirit-testing silk out of the black hole, with a large, black, winged insect hanging on it.

It exudes a strong "vinegar fragrance" and is a first-stage vinegar worm!

Before the vinegar worm could make any move, the black horn hammer smashed it to pieces, revealing chunks of white flesh.