Translated by Mianbao
Edited by RED
“This was supposed to be Heiya’s opponent…” Zhu Minglang coughed. He was in an awkward position. He didn’t mention it beforehand.
Baiqi dispersed all the frost, looking uninterested as usual as he returned to Zhu Minglang’s shoulder. When he landed, his body slowly shrank, their surroundings full of snow-like feathers melting in the air.
“Let’s look for our next prey. At least we have a better lure now,” Zhu Minglang consoled Heiya.
“Ouou…” Heiya felt wronged. Truth be told, he’d suffered a blow, too.
An opponent he had recognized as an equal was killed so easily!
Zhu Minglang approached the horrible-looking pseudodragon corpse. Truthfully speaking, he hadn’t even gotten a clear look at its appearance.
Extending his palm, Zhu Minglang began harvesting a soul pearl once more. This was a demon spirit whose strength was close to Dragon Child rank. The pearl harvested might be a dragon pearl.
He’d be rich if that turned out to be true!
Dragon pearls had a certain chance of allowing spiritlings with dormant aptitudes of a dragon to dragonize. To creatures that had already become real dragons, they were similarly valuable as great nourishment. It was possible to Awaken their bloodline power or innate abilities with one.
Little Baiqi’s Azure Dragon Mystic Art remained dormant. It was highly possible his Starwind Ice Dragon’s bloodline had diluted his Silvermoon Winged Dragon bloodline a lot. After all, most of the abilities he currently controlled were from a Starwind Ice Dragon…
Even so, Baiqi’s main bloodline was that of a Silvermoon Winged Dragon. His potential from the Azure Dragons and their relevant Mystic Arts should be even more powerful abilities!
If those powers weren’t Awakened by feeding, Zhu Minglang had to consider relying on dragon pearls for support!
However, dragon pearls had always cost a fortune… especially given the fact that Baiqi was a Dragon General.
“Strange. Why is this pseudodragon’s soul even fainter?” Zhu Minglang noticed the brown soul aura.
That soul aura was so faint it was about to turn into fog. Zhu Minglang was trying very hard to harvest it, and in the end, he only managed to condense a pseudodragon pearl that was of even lower quality.
A pseudodragon pearl could also be sold for some money, but its quality was so low that Zhu Minglang felt like it would have scattered to the wind by the time he brought it back to the Academy.
“Why is this happening?” Zhu Minglang grew suspicious.
Why would the soul pearl of a pseudodragon whose strength was close to Dragon Child rank and had five hundred years worth of cultivation be so poor? There was clearly no problem with his technique.
Immediately, Zhu Minglang flipped the book regarding harvesting soul pearls he brought along open. However, after looking through the whole book, he didn’t find anything that mentioned the situation he was in…
“Could it be that its soul was scattered by Baiqi? That pseudodragon soul I saw looked torn apart…
“Does that mean higher level creatures will easily destroy the bodies and souls of lower level creatures with their overwhelming strength, and with the souls too broken up, the soul pearls harvested by the Dragon Tamers will be especially poor in quality?…
“In that case, when I come across good prey, it’s best to not overwhelm them with a higher rank.”
Zhu Minglang’s comprehension was pretty high. After reviewing some fragmented records in the books, in conjunction with the situation he came across, he made such a conclusion.
The art of dragon taming was a vast field of knowledge. Zhu Minglang felt like there were still plenty of things he needed to learn.
In the past, be it the art of armor casting, or dragon taming, they were all Zhu Minglang’s supplementary studies. He didn’t put them to heart at all. Now, he was starting to regret it.
Not working hard in your youth would only disadvantage you in the future.
How could you only eat rice? Wouldn’t it be better with a few dishes to go along with it?
—–
“Yuu…” Baiqi returned to Zhu Minglang’s spirit domain to sleep. There probably wasn’t any more worthy opponents for him in this part of the forest.
That was the truth. This was a huge forest, with nothing extraordinary. How could there be a Dragon General-rank creature here?
Thousand-year Devil Spirits would live in even deeper areas. They weren’t planning on going to those places on their trip here to hunt.
Zhu Minglang had asked Hong Hao to help him look through the missions offered by the Academy and the city state. There weren’t many jobs that required a Dragon General-rank Dragon Tamer.
A General-ranked Tamer was already pretty strong within Ancestral Dragon City State’s borders. How could there be jobs available all the time? As such, they still needed to wait for an opportunity to let little Baiqi practice.
It would already be quite lucky for Zhu Minglang if he found a Dragon General-ranked mission with decent commission in a month or two!
It wasn’t that he couldn’t accept jobs with low commissions. It was just that the gains didn’t make up for the losses.
All dragons would expend great amounts of energy when fighting. Regardless of whether they were injured in the process or not, they would need several times more food than usual after fighting to make up for it.
Currently, Zhu Minglang had a very limited amount of frosty snow tree nectar. It was only enough for little Baiqi to fight at full strength once, at the most. If he wasted it on some small mission, not only did it offer no training value to Baiqi, perhaps Zhu Minglang wouldn’t even earn enough money to make up for the nectar!
As such, he couldn’t be fooled by little Baiqi’s beating his wings to scatter frost all around, displaying his devastating strength so elegantly.
Everything he scattered cost money…
—–
Heiya was rather intelligent. After using the baiting method once with Zhu Minglang, he grew more familiar with it.
Dragging the bloody pseudodragon corpse, he left it at a location where demon auras were obviously prominent. Compared to the Blood-Drinking Fur Beast, the pseudodragon with five hundred years worth of demon beast cultivation was extremely tempting to many old demons hidden in the deeper mountains.
“We should be able to fish out an even bigger prey. We’ll be returning with lots of rewards if we get its soul pearl!” Zhu Minglang told Heiya.
Heiya hid his huge body behind a small tree trunk while nodding, eagerly looking forward to a prey falling for their bait, unaware that his fearsome bulk was still basically exposed.
“Yiii…!” A long cry rang from above the treetops through the dense forest.
Zhu Minglang looked up, wanting to locate the creature. However, he soon heard similar cries in the surroundings. It sounded like some ferocious flying creature.
Putaputa…
The odor of blood spread through the area, while the ferocious creatures hidden above the tree crowns beat their wings, having found their prey. Many pairs of eyes were looking through the dense pine leaves.
Those ferocious creatures were cautious and observant. They soon noticed the Black Mosasaurex’s presence.
Just when Zhu Minglang thought those forest birds would back off on their own, several vigorous figures swooped down from the treetops, flying past the Bristlemane Hog Pseudodragon’s corpse at extreme speed, their incredibly sharp claws tearing large pieces of meat off its body!
“Not good! Put our bait away, quick!” Zhu Minglang shouted in a hurry.
The Black Mosasaurex also realized the pseudodragon corpse he was using as bait would be snatched away by those ferocious birds. He immediately released his dragon might and charged at those shameless birds.
Zhu Minglang recognized the birds. They were a group of Cliff Vultures, who usually flew in the skies above vast forests. Their eyes were able to see through the layers of leaves, observe the creatures on the ground, and their terrifying sense of smell could pick up the scent of blood from a dozen kilometers away.
Whenever any injured creatures were spotted, these Cliff Vultures would hover in the skies above them, slowly exhausting their prey’s strength as they called for their companions to gather. When the time was ripe, they’d strike quickly and fiercely, biting their injured target to death!
Cliff Vultures were extremely dangerous creatures. Even a powerful Demon Spirit would fear them. Their appearance signified that their deaths were imminent!