Zhang Ling quickly arrived beside the corpse of the Spiked Ball Beast. With a wave of his hand in the air, he extracted the beast's demon soul and quickly sealed it away.
Naturally, he couldn't let go of the Spiked Ball Beast's materials and demon core, so he also collected them into his storage bag. Materials from this grade of ancient beast are extremely rare.
Afterward, he summoned back the six puppets and examined them. All six puppets had varying degrees of damage. Especially the three Iron Lion puppets were covered in the Spiked Ball Beast's bone spikes, which had extremely strong penetrating power. The shells of the three Iron Lion puppets were almost scrapped.
Although they weren't completely scrapped, the puppets' power was greatly reduced. To unleash their full strength again, many parts would need to be replaced. As for the Giant Turtle puppet, its defensive power wasn't weak, so it wasn't severely damaged.
To this, Zhang Ling could only sigh inwardly. High-level puppets were already quite strong, but when facing powerful opponents, they could only hold them back at most. If the Spiked Ball Beast hadn't burrowed underground and been coincidentally trapped by his petrification spell, it would have taken some effort to kill it.
And this was only against an ancient beast with low intelligence. Fighting against transformed demon cultivators and Nascent Soul cultivators would definitely not be so easy.
Zhang Ling pondered for a moment, then walked towards the stone cave, simultaneously taking out the Yin-Yang Gourd and casting a spell on it.
The uneven ground beneath his feet made a rustling sound as the Heavenly Star Sand hidden underground transformed back into streams of quicksand and was collected into the gourd.
Reaching the entrance of the cave, Zhang Ling lightly waved his hands, sending several yellow lights into the stone cave. Instantly, the wind howled, and a gust of wind stirred.
In a short while, the black-green demon mist that permeated the surroundings was completely blown away. Although the cave was still pitch black, the air was much fresher.
Zhang Ling swaggered in. He had already roughly investigated the situation inside through the Earth Spirit Bees. Apart from the Spiked Ball Beast, there were no other dangers inside.
The situation inside was similar to what he had guessed. It was indeed an ancient cultivator's cave dwelling.
However, it had existed for a very long time and had been occupied by the Spiked Ball Beast for an unknown amount of time. There were many claw marks on the passage floor and the surrounding stone walls.
Occasionally, he could see some black spikes scattered on the ground. Zhang Ling casually picked up a few and looked at them. These were all bone spikes that had fallen off the Spiked Ball Beast. They were as hard as steel needles in his hand.
Even without refining, they could be used directly with the power of a top-grade magic tool.
Zhang Ling put these bone spikes into his storage bag. They were excellent materials for refining arrow-type magic tools. The humanoid soldier puppets he refined could be equipped with bows and arrows, greatly increasing their power.
In the blink of an eye, he passed through the passage, and a wide stone hall suddenly opened up before him. A gust of cold wind blew over. Scanning the situation in the hall, apart from a pile of weeds and rocks, there was no sign of a cultivator's cave dwelling.
However, there were more than a dozen cave openings on the stone walls on both sides. Some of them still showed traces of the original construction. There was an irregular round hole, more than twenty zhang wide, that occupied most of the wall. This was the Spiked Ball Beast's entrance and exit.
The previous Earth Spirit Bees had flown into this large hole, leading out the Spiked Ball Beast.
Releasing his divine sense to scan the several stone caves, there was nothing inside. Zhang Ling directly walked towards the largest stone cave, his divine sense also penetrating into it.
The space inside the cave wasn't large, and a layer of faint white mist floated, with strong spiritual energy fluctuations. This was a layer of spiritual mist, and the concentration of spiritual energy had reached the level of a high-grade spiritual vein. It seemed like it had originally been a quiet room for cultivators to cultivate.
This was nothing surprising. When Zhang Ling first came to this Qionghua Mountain, he sensed that there was a not-small high-grade spiritual vein in the mountain.
This large cave was also dilapidated, covered with dry grass, and there was a dark hole in the ground. Cold wind blew out from the hole. The space below was even larger, and the spiritual energy felt even more abundant. Obviously, the place below was the Spiked Ball Beast's real nest.
A yellow light orb entered it, illuminating a range, and Zhang Ling also flashed into it. Descending a hundred zhang, he reached the bottom.
A layer of spiritual mist floated before his eyes. The place where he landed was like a large pit, with several wide earth caves beside him, dark and unknown where they led.
This was obviously the Spiked Ball Beast's handiwork. It seemed that many places in the entire mountain belly had been dug into this by the beast. Zhang Ling separated several strands of divine sense power and checked the caves separately.
In a short while, his brows furrowed slightly. Each of these caves was extremely long, winding and twisting, dividing into many forks, like a complex maze of tunnels, making it difficult to investigate clearly in a short time.
Zhang Ling pondered for a moment, then patted his spirit beast bag, and a buzzing sound rang out as he released a dozen black beetles.
Each of these beetles was iron-green, the size of a thumb, and the carapace on their backs vibrated rapidly like wings, emitting bursts of low buzzing sounds.
Before he could give the order, these beetles quickly scattered, strangely yelling restlessly, extremely irritable.
These were not Earth Spirit Bees, but Spirit Devouring Insects.
Zhang Ling's mind moved, controlling the Spirit Devouring Insects to gather in front of him, spraying a yellow mist to cover these spirit insects. Instantly, a strand of his divine sense was attached to each of the dozen Spirit Devouring Insects.
Go.
He snorted softly, and under his command, the Spirit Devouring Insects flew towards several caves, dispersing. And he himself sat cross-legged on the ground, closing his eyes to sense.
Although Spirit Devouring Insects were more troublesome to control, they were much more sensitive to spiritual energy than Earth Spirit Bees. In this environment of spiritual mist, using Spirit Devouring Insects could find the place with the densest spiritual energy faster.
If he didn't find any spiritual herbs above, then he should first find the place with the most abundant spiritual energy in the mountain, like the core area of the spiritual vein, which was the most likely place to find rare spiritual herbs.
Often, such places would be utilized by cultivators to open up spiritual herb fields. Relying on the spiritual energy escaping from the spiritual vein, they could quickly cultivate rare spiritual herbs.
The Clear Spirit Flower he was looking for was a sixth-grade spiritual herb, which was extremely precious. To plant and cultivate it, it would basically only be in high-quality spiritual fields.
Ordinary spiritual herb fields might not even meet the requirements, so finding the area with the most abundant spiritual energy in this place would maximize the chances of finding this spiritual herb.
After a quarter of an hour passed, the corners of Zhang Ling's mouth rose. He had found it. He glanced at a cave on the right side, his figure swayed, and he transformed into a yellow light. He entered it and traveled quickly.
After passing through twenty or thirty forks all the way and walking more than twenty miles, he saw an underground karst cave. The spiritual energy here was even stronger, and in the floating spiritual mist, he could see specks of five-colored starlight, like a large patch of fireflies, constantly flashing.
The surrounding environment was like a natural karst cave, with many strange and bizarre stalactites. He could also hear the sound of water, and under his feet was a small stream of water. In one part of the cave, there was a patch of glowing light covering an area, where the spiritual energy fluctuations were the strongest.
Two Spirit Devouring Insects were being blocked outside by this patch of glowing light, constantly making low buzzing sounds, looking extremely irritable. Zhang Ling also instantly arrived there, carefully sensing with his divine sense, and found that this was a layer of spiritual light restriction.
Through the spiritual light, he could vaguely see some of the situation inside. There seemed to be traces of many buildings inside. The first thing he could see was a large white jade tree that radiated spiritual light throughout.
"Spirit Eye Divine Tree."
