Spirit Seed — A Mere Appetizer

After the Fire Calamity's cleansing, the Demon-Beast density in the North Corner of the Blazing Plains had dropped dramatically. Even leaving an Element Detector buried underground for an hour or two was no guarantee that any Demon-Beasts would be drawn toward it.

Or perhaps it was because the Fire Calamity's lingering might had yet to fully fade — the creatures that lived here were cowering in their Nests, too terrified to show their faces.

The longer the detectors stayed buried, the greater the range they could sweep, which cut significantly into the time the group needed to track down a Spirit Seed. With four Element Detectors spread across four directions, a precise set of coordinates came together quickly. Following those coordinates, the ground beneath their feet grew hotter and hotter — proof that a Spirit Seed lay somewhere close.

"It's right here. Zhang Xiaohou, Chenying — use your Earth Element abilities to dig it out as fast as you can." Mo Fan turned to the two of them, barely keeping the excitement from his voice.

Zhang Xiaohou was a simple soul — whatever Mo Fan said, he did. Had he a shovel in hand, he likely would have just started digging by brute force.

Chenying, by contrast, was considerably calmer. She clearly understood that after a Fire Calamity, a Spirit Seed on the Blazing Plains was hardly a rare thing.

Zhang Xiaohou was already coiled and ready, all but champing at the bit the moment a spot was pointed out. Just then, Chenying tapped him on the shoulder, signaling the utterly gold-drunk fool to look ahead first.

Until moments ago, the path forward had been buried in swirling, turbid sandstorms, visibility almost nil. Now, as the dust slowly settled, what lay before them was a massive crater that looked as though a meteorite had punched straight through the earth.

The crater stretched nearly a kilometer in diameter — practically a small basin, and staggeringly large.

Inside, the air was scorching and bone-dry. The ground around it had cracked and split, and from every fissure, tongues of flame licked outward. Their inner cores burned a pale goose-yellow — and seen from a distance, they swayed and shimmered like half-ripened wheat stalks trembling in a breeze.

Spirit Seed flames had to be nearby. Only a Spirit Seed could alter the color of fire like this.

Zhang Xiaohou squinted toward the center of the crater. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and the sight that greeted him stopped him cold: right at the heart of the entire flame-filled crater, a mass of pure pale-yellow fire hovered suspended roughly two meters off the ground.

Zhang Xiaohou hadn't encountered many Spirit Seeds himself, but he'd heard enough from the others in his unit — hunting one down was supposed to be an exhausting, drawn-out ordeal. A Spirit Seed sitting openly in plain sight like this, practically offering itself up... he'd never even heard of such a thing.

"This... is this not just a little *too* easy to find?" he said, barely able to trust his own eyes.

Mo Fan stood at the rim of the kilometer-wide crater. This was clearly a Spirit Seed that had only just been born — the immense flame energy unleashed during the Fire Calamity had concentrated in this area until the land could no longer bear the weight, sinking a full kilometer of earth beneath it.

And at its very center, all that scattered flame essence had condensed into something solid and living. He'd never seen pale yellow fire before, and had no idea what special properties it might carry.

Spirit Seeds generally possessed some unique effect. His own Rose Flame, for instance, could amplify Fire Element magic by a factor of 2.5.

Different Spirit Seeds produced different effects, and the more potent ones tended to command far higher prices. The Flowing Marsh that Zhang Xiaohou had once obtained was a top-tier Earth Element Spirit Seed — if put up for sale, it would probably fetch close to thirty million.

A Spirit Seed possessed a spirit by its very nature, and this pale yellow fire seed looked vibrant with it. Its price would certainly be no small thing.

"The ground in there is laced with underground fires that could reduce a person to ash. Getting to the center would kill an ordinary person," Xinxia said.

Zhao Manyan and Zhang Xiaohou both turned their gazes toward Mo Fan, who was already eyeing the crater with barely-contained eagerness. He was the only Fire Element cultivator among them — and as such, he could shrug off a certain degree of flame damage.

Mo Fan didn't wait for anyone to deliberate. He stepped off the rim and dropped into the pale-yellow flame-filled crater below. A Spirit Seed exposed openly to the air like this was completely unheard of — and even more astonishing was the utter absence of any guardian creature anywhere around it.

Demon-Beasts, unlike humans, couldn't directly refine a Spirit Seed and absorb it as their own power. They had to linger near it, drawing in the energy it radiated, allowing their bodies to gradually acclimate to the Spirit Seed's nature — only after that long process of adaptation could they swallow and fully refine it in one go.

It was a slow, painstaking affair. Which meant that the moment a Spirit Seed appeared, if a Demon-Beast found it first, that creature would effectively become the Spirit Seed's self-appointed guardian.

Mo Fan worked his way along the inner slope of the basin until he reached the center. The pale yellow Spirit Seed was now only a few dozen meters away — and despite himself, his pace slowed. He began glancing around, left and right.

Nature had been almost obscenely generous, placing a prize this precious right in front of him. It felt like a goddess he'd long coveted had suddenly stripped herself completely bare and was playfully tossing her hair at him — an offer too warm to refuse, yet deeply unsettling, the sort that made him fear that the moment he howled and pounced, the whole thing would pull a vicious swerve and he'd jolt awake from a dream with nothing but regret to show for it.

So even though every instinct screamed at him to charge like a starving wolf, he advanced with an air of studied, almost theatrical caution.

Then again — looking around, there really did seem to be nothing here at all. Just the increasingly fierce flames surrounding him. His Rose Flame guarded his body and let him shrug off the worst of the heat.

At last, he pressed forward. Rolling waves of heat crashed over him, battering his face and giving him a vivid sense of just how fierce this pale yellow fire seed truly was.

Not that its ferocity mattered in the slightest. It couldn't stop Mo Fan's reaching hands.

With painstaking care, he eased the Spirit Seed into a containment vessel. Through the entire process, aside from the uncomfortable sensation of being steadily roasted by the surrounding pale yellow flames, Mo Fan hadn't encountered a single obstacle.

His mind had half-conjured the image of something three-headed and six-armed bursting from the earth the moment he plucked the Spirit Seed away, chasing him relentlessly across the basin. In reality, nothing happened at all. By the time he strolled back to the group, the Spirit Seed sealed inside its vessel, even the pale yellow flames outside had quietly dissipated on their own.

"I'm starting to believe that the heavenly calamity flames genuinely staged a grand feast of heaven and earth across these Blazing Plains..." Zhao Manyan watched Mo Fan claim the Spirit Seed without a hitch and spoke with a surge of barely-suppressed excitement.

If even a Spirit Seed this exceptional could be obtained this effortlessly — then in this grand feast, something like this was nothing more than a small appetizer.

Heaven alone knew what jaw-dropping treasure might emerge as they ventured deeper.