The crevice within the Bat Cave, just large enough to conceal a single person, offered Ye Qin a temporary reprieve from the constant slapping and biting assault of the demonic bats. His protective Vajra Shield, previously draining too quickly, could now hold for at least another hour.
Ye Qin finally let out a long, deep breath.
“These demon bats are truly detestable. Yet, if it weren’t for them, the Green Skin Monster and Snake Scorpion Third Sister would have already stormed in with blades drawn. Those two are far more troublesome than these winged pests.”
He glared fiercely outside the narrow gap. There were three or four thousand, perhaps more—a number so staggering it made the scalp tingle. Probing with his Spirit Sight technique, he confirmed the bats possessed spiritual energy, albeit meagerly, barely equivalent to a first-layer Qi Refining cultivator. However, their speed and evasiveness far surpassed that of a first-layer cultivator. Even Ye Qin, at the fifth layer, found it nearly impossible to strike them; all he could do was admire their agility and hide within this fissure to escape the brunt of the onslaught.
Fortunately, these demonic bats only employed crude attacks like slapping and biting. They lacked the innate divine strength of the Yellow Demon Bear, nor did they seem to wield magic. If they had, a coordinated low-tier spell attack from just a few bats upon his entry would have immediately ended his struggle right here in the Bat Cave.
Ye Qin managed a wry smile.
Even with the immediate danger suppressed, it didn't guarantee his survival out of this bat-infested den. He sat cross-legged, clutching spirit stones to recover his mana, his mind gradually settling as he pondered a countermeasure.
He examined his personal inventory, wondering what could be best employed against this swarm. He had five or six low-grade offensive talismans and three defensive ones. Talismans were finite; he needed to use them sparingly.
His most abundant resource for offense was the Wood Thorn Seeds.
Using Wood Thorn Seeds to fight the bats? One seed might kill at most a hundred creatures. Thousands remained; it was nowhere near enough to blast a path out of this cave.
He grasped a handful of seeds, turning the idea over in his mind.
A sudden spark ignited in his thoughts. Ye Qin conceived of an eccentric plan.
If he used ten or so Wood Thorn Seeds at the mouth of the crevice, encouraging them to grow rapidly and weave into a dense net that completely sealed the opening, perhaps he could rely on this thicket to absorb the bats' physical striking attacks.
This way, while he couldn't eradicate the bats, they temporarily couldn't kill him either!
As long as he could buy more time, sustaining himself for a few more days, a chance for a turnaround might appear. Perhaps the bats would disperse on their own if they couldn't reach him.
Ye Qin considered the idea deeply and found it viable. He made his decision. He took a clutch of one or two dozen Wood Thorn Seeds and swiftly flicked them onto the rock face of the fissure, urging them to climb and grow densely, weaving a massive, overlapping screen from the ceiling almost entirely down to the floor.
The method proved effective immediately.
The demonic bats were soon blocked by the woody growth, unable to strike him directly. They landed instead upon the thicket, beating and gnawing at the thorns.
The Wood Thorns were not as easily "bullied" as the Vajra Shield protecting Ye Qin. They were studded with venomous barbs. When a bat wing struck hard, the thorn bush remained unharmed, but the bat itself was instantly impaled by a dozen sharp points.
Immediately, over ten demon bats that had been furiously attacking Ye Qin were grievously wounded by these barbs, poisoned, and tumbled down, falling to the cave floor. These heavily injured bats were instantly torn apart and devoured by the rest of the swarm.
The rising stench of blood profoundly stimulated the bats' savage instincts.
More bats, heedless of their own safety, lunged toward the dense thicket at the fissure’s mouth, incessantly using their sharp teeth to bite and their wings to slap. In just a short while, they managed to sever the stems of the Wood Thorns.
Ten or so Wood Thorn Seeds had only bought a brief reprieve. Thirty or forty bats, after chewing through the wood, succumbed to the poison and died, their remains fiercely contended for and consumed by the others. Then, they surged forward again to the fissure, relentlessly assaulting Ye Qin’s protective shield.
Witnessing this brutal frenzy, Ye Qin’s face paled in horror.
He had utterly failed to anticipate that the Wood Thorns would instead inflame the bats’ ferocity, making them even more aggressive. Their striking power seemed intensified compared to before. If this continued, his defensive shield wouldn't last half an hour.
But he had no time for contemplation. He hurriedly flung out the remaining seeds in his hand, layering the fissure with an even denser network of Wood Thorns, determined to delay things at any cost.
Next, Ye Qin swiftly took the spirit stones he carried, crushed them, and immersed his consciousness into his Zifu (Purple Mansion), scattering the powder equivalent of two low-grade spirit stones into the Wood Thorn nursery plots, hoping to accelerate the growth of more seeds for emergency use.
The spirit stone powder was sprinkled onto the two Wood Thorn plots. The wood thistles flowered, and tiny golden bees quickly arrived, busily gathering the season’s yield of berries, which dropped into the plots—twenty-odd berries, yielding at least forty seeds.
Ye Qin inwardly rejoiced. The speed at which he could generate Wood Thorn Seeds was far faster than the bats could chew through the existing thicket. A bizarre thought struck him: could he perhaps wipe out the entire swarm using just the seeds?
He did not collect the berries.
Instead, he immediately took two more spirit stones, crushed them, and sprinkled the powder into the plots again, planning to harvest several more rounds of berries before taking the seeds.
He repeated the process again.
Sizzzle!
After sprinkling the third batch of spirit stone powder, the two Wood Thorns suddenly appeared as if roasted by fire, burning scorched and seemingly unable to survive. The forty to fifty berries in the plots were smoking, burned to ash.
Ye Qin froze.
His body tensed rigidly, his head thrumming with dizzying confusion, feeling as if he had plunged into an ice cellar.
A thought, bordering on despair, flashed through his mind: in his haste, he must have mistakenly used a Fire Element spirit stone instead of a Wood Element stone when scattering the powder. The dozens of berries and the two Wood Thorns had been incinerated by the Fire Spirit energy, completely ruined.
Not every spirit stone was suitable for cultivating spirit herbs. Based on his accumulated cultivation experience, the element of the spirit stone and the spirit herb had to match. Only Wood Spirit Stones could cultivate Wood Element spirit flora. Using other elemental stones invariably led to serious problems. He had experimented out of curiosity long ago and discovered that other elemental stones not only failed to cultivate but actively caused the spirit herbs and trees to die. The spiritual energy of Fire Spirit Stones was notoriously domineering; scorching Wood Element spirit flora was a perfectly normal outcome.
That much was regrettable.
He still possessed dozens of Wood Thorn Seeds, and if he had Wood Spirit Stones, he could continue planting.
But the worst issue was that his limited supply of four or five Wood Spirit Stones had already been exhausted; he could not possibly cultivate more Wood Thorn Seeds. His source for the seeds had completely vanished. That single handful of spirit stone powder had cost him at least a hundred Wood Thorn Seeds.
Now, he was left with only the original few dozen seeds for immediate self-preservation.
Ye Qin felt so distraught he nearly contemplated smashing his head against the wall, but he didn't have the luxury of time. He lunged toward the nursery plots, scrambling to salvage any berries that hadn't been completely burned, hoping the seeds inside might still be viable.
Every seed saved meant a little more time he could endure, and a greater chance for a turning point.
Thousands of demonic bats clawed and bit wildly outside the fissure, battering the Wood Thorn net.
Hiding within the crevice, Ye Qin mechanically peeled open the berries.
Forty or fifty berries were saturated with too much Fire Spirit Stone powder and had turned to charcoal. As he cracked each one open, the seed inside was also charred. With every opened berry, his heart chilled a degree further, signifying less time he could hold out.
Only the last few berries remained. He sighed deeply, feeling the likelihood of finding a living seed was almost zero.
He should accept the inevitable.
Ye Qin broke open the final few berries. As expected, they were uniformly burned pitch-black. Not a single viable seed remained. He tossed them aside carelessly.
Just as Ye Qin was preparing to devise some other means of breaking through the siege, he suddenly paused. His gaze, tinged with confusion, swept over the burnt seeds once more. There seemed to be faint spiritual energy lingering within them.
He swiftly activated his Spirit Sight technique, scanning the seeds. From the pile, he picked one out, wiping away the external char to reveal a greenish seed underneath.
Huh!
Although this seed possessed a greenish shell, its interior seemed to contain an extremely faint trace of Fire Spirit energy!
“A Fire Element seed?”
Ye Qin gasped in astonishment. It was unbelievable. This seed from a Wood Element spirit plant had not only survived contact with the Fire Spirit Stone powder but had actually absorbed a minute amount of Fire Spirit energy!
The marketplace in Xian Yuan City sold numerous spirit herbs. The vast majority were Wood Element, though others existed, they were exceedingly rare, usually variants that were upgraded a full stage beyond their original form.
Ye Qin had never managed to purchase a living variant spirit herb or tree in the marketplace.
He remained stunned for a long moment, a look of wild ecstasy spreading across his face. If he could successfully cultivate this seed, he would possess a higher-grade, mutated Wood Thorn!
He immediately transferred the seed into his Zifu.
He planted it in the nursery plot, sprinkled an extremely minute amount of Fire Spirit Stone powder, and the seed cracked its green shell, sprouting forth. It was a fiery-red, tiny sapling. Though it looked sickly, as if ready to collapse at any moment, it clung stubbornly to life.
Ye Qin cautiously added pure Fire Spirit Stone powder. He still possessed six or seven Fire Spirit Stones—enough for this purpose.
The small, fire-red sapling gradually began to absorb the fire energy, becoming vibrant and burgeoning. It grew stems and leaves. Initially, they retained a hint of green, but that soon shed, replaced entirely by fiery-red foliage, transforming into pure, blazing scarlet.
As it matured, the entire shrub became breathtakingly fiery—every leaf, every thorn, looked like a burning flame.
A thorn of flame.
“Flame Thorn!”
Ye Qin stared at this mutated growth, shouting the name out involuntarily. Since he had no idea what the mutated variant was called, he simply bestowed upon it a pleasing title.
This thorn was no longer Wood Element; it was Fire Element, and a second-grade one at that, making it sturdier and tougher than the previous first-grade Wood Thorns.
Stronger, more exceptional! Let the monthly passes come even more fiercely! Let the thorns grow even more mighty!
Next Chapter Preview: 118, The Might of the Flame Thorn! (To be continued. For the rest of the story, please visit www.wwn.com for more chapters, to support the author, and to read the authorized version!)
For more novels, visit storyread.net.