Finally Finding the Origin Fruit

“Mmm~”

After a while, Lu Qiancha, in the cave, slowly awoke.

She stretched long and languidly, like a young wolf cub, her bones making soft popping sounds.

She tilted her head, her clear gaze sweeping over the empty grass mat beside her, her small mouth slightly agape. “She’s gone…”

Shaking her head with a bit of listlessness, her gaze was suddenly caught by a magical artifact lying quietly on the ground.

Instantly, the little wolf cub’s mood brightened.

She happily picked up the magical treasure, not forgetting to exclaim from the bottom of her heart, “What a truly, truly good person!

She even left a generous gift behind. How thoughtful!”

Humming a cheerful, tuneless little ditty, Lu Qiancha walked out of the cave.

A ray of moonlight, as if on cue, pierced through the clouds and mist, illuminating the path before her.

This picturesque scene stirred a bit of a poetic mood in Lu Qiancha’s heart.

She pretentiously raised her head to gaze at the moon, trying to wrack her brain for a few appropriate lines of poetry.

But no matter how hard she thought, after a long while, she could only squeeze out half a line—”Lifting my head, I gaze at the bright moon…”

“Ahem!” Realizing her attempt at being poetic was rather forced, Lu Qiancha awkwardly looked away and decisively pulled out her crumpled map.

Getting down to business was more important—continuing the search for the Origin Returning Fruit!

After so much effort, she still felt a lingering unwillingness to give up.

“I’ll search further north for a few more days.”

Lu Qiancha murmured, then leaned forward and sped off towards the chosen northern snowy region.

The further north she went, the more the world became a boundless expanse of silver-white, the cold air biting to the bone.

However, when Lu Qiancha stepped into this frozen world, she didn’t feel the biting cold at all. Instead, it was like diving into water on a hot summer day; every pore on her body felt a refreshing coolness.

Three days after rescuing Shangguan Yunzhu, Lu Qiancha had not found the Origin Returning Fruit.

Instead, by venturing deep into Beiju Luzhou, she had harvested quite a few useful spirit herbs and strange medicines.

She had even caught two precious [Golden-Winged Dew Feather Spiders].

These insects were extremely venomous and could be used to refine potent poisons.

Although the poisonous insects were a good find, the main objective of her trip was still nowhere in sight.

Lu Qiancha couldn’t help but pout, a wave of frustration washing over her.

“It doesn’t make sense…” she muttered to herself as she traveled. “The Origin Returning Fruit is rare, but this thing… it’s an utterly evil object that can melt souls and refine spirits, combining them into a chaotic, primordial poison! Mortals dissolve upon contact, and if an immortal swallows it, in less than three quarters of an hour, their three spiritual souls will melt like snow in boiling water, and their seven mortal souls will crumble like spring ice in a furnace! What’s the use of such a malevolent thing? Who would go around collecting such a lineage-ending poisonous herb?”

And all the areas she had searched fit the growing environment of the Origin Returning Fruit, yet she hadn’t seen a single seedling…

It was as if she was seeing a ghost.

Could it be that the pharmacopoeias and poison classics she had spent so much time reading in her spare moments of cultivation were all fake?

“As expected, Master’s luck is just too bad.”

Lu Qiancha shook her head, forced to console herself this way.

She pushed aside her unwillingness and began to consider when to leave this place.

‘Another three hundred li to the west!’

‘If I can’t find it, then I’ll have to give up and go back to that town to see if the Origin Returning Fruit is for sale.’

With quick steps, Lu Qiancha’s short legs became a blur of afterimages as she set out on the final leg of her quest.

Five li, ten li, fifty li… as far as the eye could see, there were only vast snowy ridges and rugged ice rocks, with no harvest in sight.

After searching for a hundred li, although she hadn’t found the Origin Returning Fruit, she had unexpectedly harvested several precious spirit herbs needed to configure the Soul-Returning Pill…

“The main ingredient is missing. A mountain of supplementary herbs is useless…”

She let out a long sigh, preparing to grit her teeth and push on for a few more dozen li.

Hum—!

Suddenly, the spiritual energy of the world fluctuated.

Someone was fighting!

Lu Qiancha’s spiritual sense immediately spread towards the source of the fluctuation.

The fight was happening twenty li away.

With the strength of her spiritual sense, she could only catch a few fleeting figures…

Adhering to the principle of “don’t cause trouble, but don’t be afraid of it,” alarm bells rang in Lu Qiancha’s mind.

Her little feet had already subconsciously begun to move away from the battlefield.

As the saying goes, a gentleman does not stand under a crumbling wall.

It seemed this trip to Beiju Luzhou could only end in regret… Hmm?

Lu Qiancha’s spirit was suddenly jolted.

Her spreading spiritual sense had accidentally caught sight of several inconspicuous green vines swaying gently at the base of a cliff not far away.

And at their tips hung several small, crimson spheres.

Shaped like red pearls, with veins that resembled a hundred skeletons.

Origin Returning Fruit!

The Origin Returning Fruit that could poison a Yuan Immortal and severely damage the divine soul of an Earth Immortal!

And judging by the number of veins, the one in the center was at least two thousand years old, and the few companion plants next to it were at least a thousand years old.

Lu Qiancha was so excited she nearly jumped up, her tail behind her wagging like a large broom.

‘No, calm down, calm down. The herb is not yet in hand. I can’t get happy too early. It’s not too late to be happy once the herb is in my possession!’

‘Let’s do this!’

Lu Qiancha took out the cube.

With a thought, a verdant pearl was already in her palm.

Then, with the wind at her feet, she pushed the Cloud Sea Dragon Step to its limit.

Her small body became an almost imperceptible wisp of blue smoke, shooting towards the Origin Returning Fruit at the base of the cliff!

As her figure moved, her sharp spiritual sense, which had spread out, finally clearly outlined the battlefield in the distance—

It was Shangguan Yunzhu!

But at this moment, she had none of the tough resolve she had shown in the cave.

She was desperately weaving and fleeing through a violent storm of magical light.

And in hot pursuit were four black-clothed men with profound auras.

Their attacks were fierce and domineering, each move leaving no room for error, yet they precisely avoided all of Shangguan Yunzhu’s vital points.

Their intention was obvious: they wanted to capture her alive.

Lu Qiancha raised an eyebrow slightly.

She couldn’t quite figure out why Shangguan Yunzhu was here.

The exit from Beiju Luzhou was clearly to the southeast.

Could it be that she also had some herb she had to find?

Lu Qiancha couldn’t help but think of the Crimson Phoenix Grass that Qingfeng had mentioned on the flying boat… but that wasn’t right.

How could a fire-element herb grow in the depths of this frozen tundra?

“Who cares about her!” Lu Qiancha pursed her lips and muttered to herself. “Saving her once was already an act of kindness. Getting involved again? Does she really think I’m some goody-two-shoes who helps everyone? Especially since—” Her spiritual sense once again swept over the four black-clothed men who were sticking to her like maggots on a bone, and her heart sank slightly—all four of them were at the peak of the Spirit Transformation realm, and one was even half a step into the Void Refining realm!

This was a mess she couldn’t afford to get into!

The top priority was to snatch the fruit amidst the chaos and get the hell out of there!

‘Let Martial Aunt Xuan deal with this headache.’

Lu Qiancha had made up her mind and was about to sneak towards the vine—

‘Wait!’

An extremely subtle, yet restrictive, cold sensation suddenly came from the edge of her spiritual perception!

“A formation…?”

Lu Qiancha’s spiritual sense detected a strange pattern on the snow, with the vine bearing the Origin Returning Fruit at its center.

This meant… this Origin Returning Fruit had an owner.

‘No wonder there are no guardian beasts nearby…’

But for her to give up on this Origin Returning Fruit?

That was impossible.

But she was not going to touch this formation herself…

Then, Lu Qiancha’s gaze shifted from the dangerous formation to the distant Shangguan Yunzhu, who was being chased and was in a precarious situation.

A bold and… “helpful” plan instantly formed in her mind.

‘Perhaps… I can do her a favor?’

Just as her thoughts were racing, two new auras suddenly burst onto the edge of the battlefield that her spiritual sense was monitoring.

And those two auras, compared to the black-clothed men, were somewhat familiar to Lu Qiancha—

The great general of that kingdom, Qiong Gong.

And a fellow disciple from Creation Peak, Qingfeng.