The Eternal Saint of Alchemy

They advanced along the edge of the ice field, neither dodging nor attacking, neither pausing nor changing direction, as if they were proceeding along a fixed route.

In the afternoon, Xiao Fan, along with Pei Hunter and Bai Ye, arrived at the mage tower.

He used the crimson crystal in his hand to probe the group of people from a great distance with his spiritual power.

This spiritual power was unlike any other race he had seen on the Aurora Plains; it was more profound and its structure more stable.

However, the frequency of transformation is much lower than that of human cultivators, as if it has formed an independent spiritual energy system in the long process of evolution.

Bai Ye scanned the person's spiritual energy with the Silver Frost Sword and confirmed that the person's spiritual energy structure was exactly the same as that recorded on the Silver Frost Sword: "From the Rock Skin Clan of the North, adults are over eight meters tall, with dark gray skin, and are skilled in long-distance migration and heavy-duty work."

Bai Ye sheathed his Silverfrost Sword and said, "In the ancient records, they were called Rock-Skinned People. The native inhabitants of the far north live in groups and generally do not venture into human territory on their own initiative."

After the blizzard, two more traces of the Rockskin Clan were discovered on the tower.

They all traveled south along the edge of the ice field, neither approaching the Twin Peaks nor the Twin Peaks, maintaining a clear sense of direction only in open areas.

Xiao Fan compiled a record of the Rock Skin Clan's movements and placed it in the map cabinet along with the Ancient Sect's files.

In the first week after spring, news came from Tiezhenji: in a long-abandoned, dry valley north of the mine, more than a dozen temporary tents made of thick animal hides and bones had appeared.

On the afternoon of the day he received the news, Xiao Fan rushed to a dry valley north of Tiezhen Town. Looking down from the high place, there were more than twenty tents of various sizes in the valley, with people coming and going in the tents. These people were tall, dark-skinned, and wearing thick fur coats.

Xiao Fan noticed several neatly arranged holes at the edge of the tent area, which must have been temporarily erected.

On a clearing carved out at the edge of the valley, someone was using huge stone tools to chisel at the ground, seemingly processing the collected stones.

Standing on the edge of the cliff, the woman surnamed Shi said, "They arrived three days ago, and they haven't expanded their territory or gotten close to the mine. I saw some people polishing stones and animal hides outside the tents from a distance. The tools they use are very heavy, but they are very efficient, and it seems they often do it themselves."

After observing for a while, Xiao Fan confirmed that the tent area showed no signs of expansion and that he did not intend to approach the anvil mine.

After returning to the Twin Realms Platform, he briefly discussed the matter with Cultivator Cheng and Hunter Pei, and decided to temporarily refrain from contacting the Rock-Skinned People, observe their movements, and then make a decision.

Every night, Bai Ye would take a look at the location of the dried-up valley that Xiao Fan had marked on the map, as well as the general distribution of the Rock Clan. He was certain that the Rock Clan's camp was separated from the Twin Realms Platform's pipeline network by the entire north side of the mine.

In the third week after the start of spring, news came from Qinglu Village that the village's patrol team encountered several slender, fair-skinned, unidentified races at the edge of a forest northeast of Aurora Plains.

Before the patrol team from Qinglu Village could even get close, they disappeared into the depths of the dense forest. They were dressed in airtight clothing and carried exquisite wooden bows on their backs.

The young master of Qinglu Manor explained it very clearly: those people were extremely fast, leaving no trace, and their speed in the mountains and forests was even faster than that of human cultivators.

In the array room, Xiao Fan was reading the records of the northeastern forest of Aurora Plains written on the Silver Frost Sword.

According to the old records, this forest is located in the northeast of Aurora Plains. It is densely forested, with a stable spiritual environment, and is almost undisturbed by the outside world.

Bai Ye turned to a page and saw a line of annotation: "The Forest Dwellers are small in stature with grayish-white skin. They are skilled in concealment and adept at using plant spiritual power. They live year-round in the forests of the northeastern part of the Aurora Plains and rarely have contact with the outside world."

After receiving the news from Qinglu Manor, the records at Shuangjietai remained unchanged.

There was no further news from Qinglu Village. After that brief encounter, the Linju tribe members hid deep in the dense forest.

On the fourth week of spring, when Bai Ye arrived at the Twin Realms Platform, a new pattern appeared on the Silver Frost Sword; it was naturally formed.

She confirmed that it was a faint spiritual resonance coming from the northeast of Aurora Plains. It was a non-aggressive natural resonance, consistent with the description in the Forest Dwelling Tribe's ancient texts.

Bai Ye sheathed his sword and said, "The Linju tribe has not left the forest; they have simply confirmed the presence of a new force in the vicinity."

In the fourth week of spring, news came from Anvil Village: a man had walked to the edge of the marked mine in the Rockskin tribe's camp. He stood there, seemingly waiting for something.

After checking him thoroughly and confirming that he was not carrying any weapons, the woman surnamed Shi went to the border herself.

Although their words were brief, their meaning was clear: they came from the Rock Skin tribe in the far north. Due to the harsher hunting conditions in the north during winter, they chose to head south in search of a better place to settle down. They did not occupy any resources or facilities on the Twin Realms Platform, but only to determine their route.

The woman surnamed Shi asked about the number of people migrating and their plans for the future.

As far as he knew, the Rock Skin tribe numbered over a hundred. Only the first group had set up a temporary camp in the valley and established a communication point during road construction. The others would follow in batches, with their final destination being the Aurora Plains.

The woman surnamed Shi recounted the entire conversation between the two of them.

After listening to the report from the main hall, Xiao Fan instructed Cheng Xiushi to keep a regular record of the situation around the Rock Skin Clan camp.

Bai Ye looked at Cheng Xiushi's notes and said, "The Rock-Skinned People are very restrained in defining their boundaries and expressing their route intentions. If the next batch of immigrants is carried out in stages, we can share part of the plan with them."

In the fifth week after the start of spring, a patrol member, while inspecting the edge of the woods on the east side of Shuangjietai, discovered a patch of disturbed land with a broken tree branch and a pile of peeled bark on the ground.

The bark had peeled off neatly, showing no signs of being eaten by spirit beasts or blown by the wind.

Upon inspection, Pei the hunter discovered that the bark belonged to the forest dwellers. When processing plant fibers, they would peel off the bark to ensure that the fiber length remained unchanged.

The soil was disturbed very lightly, and the footprints were very shallow and light. This is a characteristic of the forest dwellers. The direction and rhythm of the footprints are exactly the same as the traces on the northeastern edge of the Aurora Plains forest.