Chapter 128

Chapter 128: Sang Ruo the Mushroom Picker

After shaking off Feng He Yun and his companion, Shen Sang Ruo kept heading toward Wuqing Stockade. She had already slowed the two of them down, which also cleared one more rival from her path.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, and she reached Wuqing Stockade within the time she had planned.

Wuqing Stockade was the largest city in the Phantom Mirage Domain. After she paid Spirit Stones at the gate, Shen Sang Ruo entered Wuqing Stockade. What she saw inside was almost the same as in her last life. The unique buildings wrapped the whole city in a layer of mystery.

Knowing the roads well, she went straight to the center of Wuqing Stockade, where a tower that seemed to pierce the clouds rose before her eyes. The signboard read “Floating Cloud Tower,” the place where the Old Shaman was in Closed-Door Cultivation. Many visitors were already gathered around the bulletin boards near the tower. Besides people who came for the Old Shaman, plenty of others passed through Wuqing Stockade and headed for the deeper parts of the Phantom Mirage Domain.

Those were Treasure Hunters. The Phantom Mirage Domain was full of danger, but it also hid many mysterious treasures. Stories said a Grand Adept once completed Tribulation Crossing here and soared in Ascension, leaving behind endless riches. Because of this, Cultivators seeking treasure came in a steady stream. They knew the terrain well, did not easily get lost, and returned with great harvests each time.

Shen Sang Ruo squeezed into the crowd and learned the Old Shaman would not exit seclusion for another month. She decided to go deeper into the Phantom Mirage Domain to search for Protean Wood, then come back two or three days early. Even if such a short time was not enough to find Protean Wood, she could at least scout the way. [I’m not going to stand around and wait.]

She booked a room at a nearby inn in advance so she would not be homeless when she returned. Before she left, the inn boy told her: “The Mountain God will bless you.”

She had heard of this in her last life too. Locals believed a Mountain God lived on the tallest mountain in the Phantom Mirage Domain, and they were very devout.

After she prepared everything, she continued toward the inner reaches of the Phantom Mirage Domain. The domain had many kinds of spiritual plants. The deeper she went, the more rare plants she found every few steps. She picked a few at random to bring back for Su Xi Yu, maybe they could serve as Alchemy ingredients.

What drew her eye most were the different kinds of mushrooms. Not only did they taste great in spiritual dishes, but some added to pills could have surprising effects. She did not dare grab them carelessly, though. Some were deadly poison. In her last life, someone in her team ate the wrong mushroom and died on the spot. Even after the Leader fed him many spiritual medicines and pills, they could not bring him back. So she only picked mushrooms she recognized and knew were safe.

It felt like Shen Sang Ruo was fated with mushrooms, because she kept running into them. They were good things, but not so good that she would waste too much time. She was just about to move on when her gaze fell on a very plain little mushroom in the grass.

“Revival Mushroom?” she murmured in surprise.

She went closer. The cap of the mushroom was covered with a mysterious totem, so she was sure it was a Revival Mushroom. A Revival Mushroom was a rare, top-grade spiritual plant. Pills refined from it, the Revival Pill, could bring flesh back to bone and save the dying. In the Cultivation World, one pill was hard to find. In her last life, her team had stayed in the Phantom Mirage Domain for months and still never found a single Revival Mushroom. Maybe this life was her chance. She had discovered one so easily.

Joy flashed in her eyes as she carefully picked the Revival Mushroom. [If I refine this into Revival Pills, how many Spirit Stones could they fetch at Linglong Pavilion? Rebuilding Ninghua Sect just came one step closer.]

That was only the beginning. Every few dozen meters she found one or two more Revival Mushrooms. Shen Sang Ruo took them all. After she collected more than ten, she realized she had reached a huge sea of mushrooms. The colorful caps dazzled her eyes. Among them were more top-grade spiritual fungi like the Revival Mushroom.

This mushroom sea was extremely well hidden, ringed by slopes on all sides. If she had not followed the “trail” of Revival Mushrooms, she might never have found it. She pressed down her excitement and turned into “little mushroom picker” Sang Ruo, diving into the mushroom sea.

While all her attention was on the mushrooms, the guiding map she had set to the side flashed with a red light and then quickly went dark.

Of course, this sea also held many poisonous mushrooms. For example, the Illusion Mushroom covered itself with a tempting scent but made people see things that were not real. She still picked some Illusion Mushrooms; she felt she would need them someday.

Just as she was picking with full focus, a crackling noise came from the slope above. Something unknown rolled down at high speed with a stream of wails. It did not miss or overshoot. It stopped right at her feet.

“Ow…”

Only then did Shen Sang Ruo realize that the “unknown object” was Fang Yu from the Joyous Union Sect, the person she had run into before. He came to his senses too and looked at her with delight, saying: “Sister Sang Ruo! I didn’t expect to run into you again!”

She looked at mud-covered Fang Yu and asked, half teasing: “So… was this your carefully planned entrance?”

She remembered how he had also fallen at her feet last time. She added, calm but curious: “Why are you here?”

As a disciple on his first trip outside the sect to train, he should have stayed near the outer layers of the Phantom Mirage Domain, but they were already deep inside. Fang Yu looked embarrassed. He jumped up and said, a little shy: “I got lost, and I lost the map my Master gave me. I walked and walked, and suddenly I was here.”

[He got from the outer ring to the deep zone by accident?] Shen Sang Ruo clicked her tongue. [That is some “oops.”] In a way, Fang Yu was a strange kind of genius.

“I slipped just now and fell down the slope, which is what you saw,” he added. Compared side by side, their luck was like two extremes: hers was blessed over and over, his was unlucky in very weird ways. Fang Yu himself did not mind much. Since he had met Shen Sang Ruo, heaven still had a bit of mercy. Now he was not worried about getting out.

He quickly adjusted his mood, acted like nothing had happened, and glanced at the mushrooms in her hands. He asked with interest: “Sister Sang Ruo, you’re picking mushrooms?”

“Yes. There are many high-grade mushrooms here. You can pick some too,” Shen Sang Ruo said. Since he had made it here, it meant he had his own share of fate. She had no wish to keep it all to herself.

“Oh, oh,” Fang Yu nodded and began to pick mushrooms as she did. He had also heard mushroom soup tasted amazing, so he figured he could take some home to make soup.

“Some mushrooms are poisonous. Be careful,” Shen Sang Ruo reminded him.

“I’ll just copy what you pick,” Fang Yu promised, and turned back to mushroom picking.