Chapter 22: The Man-Eating Vine and the First Black Hair

  Li Ran's sword flashed out for hundreds of feet, only slowing down when he finally caught his breath. The area was already rarely visited by people, and the forest floor was slippery with mud, occasionally revealing dark-colored boulders protruding from the soil.

  In the Misty Valley, Li Rou's knife had to find the spiritual medicine and be careful to guard against others at all times. He furrowed his brow, took out a gourd from behind him, and drank a big mouthful from it, a hot current rapidly flowing into his chest, replenishing the energy consumed in his body.

  In the valley of danger, one must always ensure they are in their most powerful state at all times.

  Li Ranno held the gourd and shook it, only a few mouthfuls of medicinal liquid were left in the entire gourd. His goal of achieving fourfold strength still had one last difficult hurdle to overcome. Without a stronger elixir energy boost, relying solely on Li Ranno absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth would not be enough to make a breakthrough even after many years.

  In the treacherous Misty Valley, every step is fraught with danger and hidden perils. If Li Ran's knife can break through to the fourth level of Jing Yuan Qi, his self-defense capabilities will be greatly enhanced. However, spiritual medicine is hard to come by.

  Li Ran's eyebrows slightly furrowed, and a heroic spirit began to stir in his heart.

  In his previous life, his greatest achievement was the art of alchemy. Now that he had entered the Misty Valley, as long as he carefully avoided being hunted down, this place was his world.

  Others may not recognize the spiritual medicine, but he can identify it at a glance. Others may not understand its properties, but he knows them like the back of his hand. Others may not know how to pick it, but he does it with ease. This time, he will definitely not return empty-handed from the Misty Valley.

  Li Ranno's confidence ignited in his heart, and the sharpness in his eyes was faintly visible. He was just about to lean against a tree to catch his breath when a sudden change occurred. A shrill, ear-piercing sound echoed through the air as two branches of the strange tree behind him closed in like arms, rapidly embracing Li Ranno.

  Wrapped with fluffy tree leaves, the sturdy branch entwined instantly.

  Li Ran's knife jumped in fright, as he had never encountered such a thing in the valley in his previous life. With a thought, he pressed the card slot, and with a whooshing sound, the long sword flew out of the oil skin bag, and with two hissing sounds, the branches fell to the ground.

  Li Ruo's knife was shocked and just settled, taking a big step to fly out of the emergency retreat for several yards, far away from that strange tree. At this time, a long vine on the side of the strange tree suddenly grew like an eye, making a loud noise in the air, like a long whip wrapping towards Li Ruo's knife.

  Would you actually encounter man-eating trees and vines?

  Li Ran didn't even have a chance to catch his breath before the long vine reached out in front of him, its thick and long tendrils rapidly coiling around.

  With a whooshing sound, Li Ran's knife body internal energy surged rapidly, instantly moving like a flash of lightning, and suddenly appeared one zhang away, with the rattan rod coiling through the air.

  Li Ruo's heart was pounding, and he was about to dodge to one side when he saw a large plate of tendrils growing on the trunk of the strange tree like a parasite. From that plate of tendrils, dozens of long vines flew out and wrapped around Li Ruo.

  In an instant, it blocked Li Ran's knife- wielding direction.

  Li Ran's eyes and eyebrows exerted force as he raised his sword, cutting off a thick vine with one slash. However, more vines entwined him, rendering it impossible to pull back.

  In the midst of crisis, he calmly released his long sword, letting it be rolled away by the vines. Li Ran's hand shook and took out a short crossbow, with one hand tightening, the refined steel arrow at his waist jumped into his hand and was placed on the crossbow. With a swooshing sound, an arrow shot into the center of that vine root.

  The arrow pierced through the wisteria and sank deep into the trunk of the tree.

  Li Ran's dagger flashed simultaneously as he tapped the ground with his foot and rapidly flew backward, just feeling a dense, dark green light flashing before his eyes, the whooshing sound of breaking wind making one's heart feel chilled.

  The vines' vigor swept across, but clearly weakened and went down, unable to even retract, directly hanging down softly. Dozens of long vines gradually turned withered and lost their vitality.

  Everything was between electric sparks just now, and it took only a blink of an eye to go through the danger. If Li Ran's knife was slower by one step, he would have been wrapped up with more rattans and sucked dry of his blood, ending in death.

  Li Ran wiped his forehead with a forceful motion, but his face was full of surprise and delight.

  "The weakness of the Man-Eating Vine's leader is indeed at the center of its roots, haha, I didn't expect that the first spiritual medicine I obtained in the Misty Fog Valley would be such a strange object."

  Li Ran's knife bypassed the withered long vines and walked towards where Lixiang shot, the disc-like object entwined by the roots of the tree trunk seemed to struggle like a dying man.

  Li Ran's eyes grew brighter, and with a flick of his wrist, he stabbed the sharp dagger into the tree trunk, digging deep. Before long, the entire rattan plate was dug out by him, and at the very bottom of the rattan plate, a fist-sized block-shaped spiritual root appeared.

  Li Ran's heart was filled with great joy, and without hesitation, he swung his knife down, cutting off the spiritual root. The vines and dozens of long tendrils above it quickly withered away like they had lost their moisture.

  Li Ran's knife held the fist-sized spiritual root in front of his eyes, everything was exactly as described in the pharmacopoeia, it was that rare spiritual medicine - Fēng Shǒu Wū. According to the pharmacopoeia, this Fēng Shǒu Wū grew by absorbing the life essence of other living beings, and the medicinal properties inside were extremely dense.

  This vine-like Wu can grow to this size, I don't know how many lives it has absorbed, and transformed its life essence. This kind of spiritual medicine, even if placed in front of others, they probably wouldn't be able to identify it.

  Li Ran took a deep breath, and a refreshing fragrance entered his nostrils, causing his spirits to involuntarily lift. He removed the bundle from his back and carefully placed the Man-Eating Creeper in it.

  Li Ran Dao knew that people who didn't understand spiritual medicine would find it difficult to recognize that the man-eating vine was actually a rare spiritual medicine, and even if they did recognize it as a spiritual medicine, they probably wouldn't know that this vine needed another accompanying spiritual medicine to be effective, otherwise mistakenly eating the vine would result in instant death from severe poisoning.

  Li Ran Dao used his dagger to carefully dig out the arrow that had been shot into the tree trunk. The arrows were worth eight taels of silver each, and every single one was a masterpiece that could determine life or death, so he didn't want to waste it in vain. He carefully inserted the arrow back into his waist, retrieved his long sword, and then turned around to observe his surroundings, choosing a direction with damp soil and denser trees to proceed cautiously.

  Nature has a principle of mutual generation and restraint, generally speaking, the accompanying spiritual medicine of Tianjiu is growing nearby, as long as that spiritual medicine is found, Li Ranno can take Tianjiu and turn it into his own power.

  The energy contained in the Taiyin Wusong is quite pure, and I believe that with this spiritual medicine, Li Ran's knife can break through the fourth level of Jingyuan's barrier in one fell swoop, increasing his strength several times. At that time, he will no longer be as embarrassed as he is now in this Misty Valley.

  Li Ranno felt a slight sense of anxiety and excitement in his heart, raised his vigilance to twelve points, and stepped into the depths of the forest one step at a time. Ten zhang, twenty zhang, fifty zhang, Li Ranno had searched so far, but that strain of companion spiritual medicine still hadn't been found.

  The woods were full of hard shrubs and unknown weeds, the shrubs were dull and menacing, and if you weren't careful, they would tear your clothes.

  Li Rando slightly furrowed his brow, according to his experience, Li Rando knew that in this direction he had searched to the limit, the companion spirit medicine of Fulingwu was unlikely to grow further away, not finding it could only mean that the direction of his search was incorrect.