Nine Nether Dragon Emperor-Chapter 297

"We’re new here and not used to this place. If we had those, we could recover faster. You wouldn’t want us to be weak and sickly, would you?"

Upon hearing this, the goat-headed creature subconsciously nodded.

What was that human saying again? Sharpening your axe won’t delay the work of chopping wood! No, that’s not right! You can’t say it like that. It should be... Forget it! Who cares how it goes.

As the City Lord, it didn’t even need to lift a finger. With just an order, it wasn’t long before mountains of Divine Crystals piled up in front of Ning Xuan and Zhongli Ruoruo.

Initially, Ning Xuan had been prepared to find an excuse to send the beasts away, but who would have thought?

"You two recover quickly! Handle the rest on your own. I’ll be back in half a day!"

After a disdainful glance at the Divine Crystals, the goat-headed creature left as if fleeing.

After a good while, Zhongli Ruoruo couldn’t help but swear, "Damn! Today I’ve truly seen what it means to squander precious resources!"

She had never even seen a Divine Crystal on the Yuan Ling Continent before! There were twelve grades of cultivation, with Heavenly Crystals ranked above Element Crystals, and Divine Crystals above those! To be precise, she hadn’t even laid eyes on a Heavenly Crystal before, yet now she had skipped that tier entirely and was seeing the legendary Divine Crystals! And so many right from the start! The bipedal beasts here even treated them like trash. If this isn’t a colossal waste, what is?

"The energy within these is very pure, but just to be safe, I’ll go first. Here, these are for you," Ning Xuan said, handing a Storage Ring to Zhongli Ruoruo.

When Zhongli Ruoruo took a look, she almost threw the Storage Ring away.

Heavenly Crystals! She saw several mountains worth of Heavenly Crystals!

These were naturally Ning Xuan’s spoils from the Cloud Summit Heavenly Palace. Now that they had Divine Crystals, he could confidently let Zhongli Ruoruo use the Heavenly Crystals.

Having stepped into the Peak Emperor Realm, Zhongli Ruoruo naturally had no trouble assimilating the energy of Heavenly Crystals for her own use. Moreover, she realized this was her best option. With Ning Xuan present, all her worries were gone. She had been worried that the Turbid Qi here would have an adverse effect, but she soon realized that with Ning Xuan around, such a concern was unnecessary. Thus, she immediately began absorbing the energy and quickly lost herself in the process.

Ning Xuan watched for a while, then nodded in satisfaction.

Worthy of being at the Peak Emperor Realm. Her speed at absorbing energy is impressive indeed! 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

However, when he began to absorb the Divine Crystal Energy, his speed instantly left Zhongli Ruoruo in the dust. To Ning Xuan, they were just Divine Crystals; they couldn’t even begin to slow his voracious absorption. This was because he was now in the King Realm, and Divine Crystal Energy was the most suitable nourishment for him.

RUMBLE—

The area began to hum and vibrate, but it was nowhere near as terrifying as when he had absorbed the Heavenly Crystals. This was because Ning Xuan had contained the entire process within a specific space. The mountain of Divine Crystals was disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

By the time Ning Xuan had absorbed all the Divine Crystals, Zhongli Ruoruo was still in a Meditative State.

He frowned. It wasn’t because Zhongli Ruoruo was too slow, but because after absorbing so many Divine Crystals, his Cultivation Realm had only advanced by one First Layer Heaven.

There was definitely nothing wrong with the Divine Crystals. The problem lay with the World-Ending Cursed Earth. Even though the energy of the World Tree’s fruit in his body countered the unextinguishable Cursed Earth, the balance he had imagined wasn’t a true balance. After the energy from the Divine Crystals entered his body, it strengthened him, but it also bolstered the other two entities. One portion of energy, divided among three. It would be a miracle if his improvement was fast!

"Damn it, does it have to be this frustrating!" Ning Xuan was at a loss for words.

Humans were slaves here, yet Divine Crystals were everywhere. He had thought he was about to take flight this time. Instead, his rate of improvement had actually slowed down. What the hell!

When Zhongli Ruoruo came to her senses, she immediately noticed something was wrong with Ning Xuan. Just as she was about to speak, a voice rang out.

"Stop right there, you need to get to work..."

The goat-headed creature appeared once again. Seeing the empty space, it was stunned.

"Not bad, not bad. You do have some self-awareness! You cleaned up that pile of trash, right? Good. Stop your training, there’s work to do!"

As the creature led the way, Ning Xuan called out, "Are there more Divine Crystals?" He wasn’t concerned with the task, only the reward. For him, the more Divine Crystals, the better.

"Yes, as many as you want!" the goat-headed creature didn’t even hesitate. That garbage had been taking up space anyway.

"Then what are we waiting for? Hurry up!" Ning Xuan’s eyes lit up as he urged the creature on.

The latter was dumbfounded. A moment later, it muttered, "Humans really are cheap!"

...

"Your task is to harvest these. See over there? After harvesting, throw them down!"

In the vast terraced fields, the goat-headed creature spoke a single sentence before leaving. Its expression was not much different from when it had seen the Divine Crystals.

Ning Xuan’s eyes were fixed on the plants in the terraced fields, nearly popping out of his head.

"What is this?" Zhongli Ruoruo quickly asked Ning Xuan via sound transmission.

"Good stuff! The bipedal beasts here are truly squandering heaven’s gifts!" Ning Xuan said as he began to harvest with great zeal.

Zhongli Ruoruo, not to be outdone, also started to labor.

At the same time, she heard Ning Xuan’s transmission: "This is Rosy Cloud Spirit Grass. It can consolidate one’s Divine Soul! Legend says it’s effective even for Holy Realm experts!"

"What?!" Zhongli Ruoruo exclaimed aloud in shock.

She was now in the Emperor Realm. The further she progressed, the more she understood how terrifying the subsequent Realms were. This unremarkable-looking grass actually had such a heaven-defying effect! And there was so much of it. She finally understood why Ning Xuan was so excited.

There were guards around the terraced fields. Zhongli Ruoruo’s cry drew their attention.

"Ugly human slaves, truly disgusting!"

"Hmph! Getting so excited over Slave Grass. They were born to be slaves!"

The Rosy Cloud Spirit Grass Ning Xuan spoke of was called Slave Grass by the bipedal beasts. This was because legend told of a captured human expert who refused to submit, no matter the methods used. But upon seeing this plant, the expert immediately gave in. From then on, the nameless grass had a name.

The bipedal beast guards naturally didn’t bother to conceal their thoughts. However, both Ning Xuan and Zhongli Ruoruo acted as if they didn’t exist, their faces beaming with smiles. They could do as they pleased with this Rosy Cloud Spirit Grass, and on top of that, their masters would pay them with Divine Crystals. This was an absolutely incredible deal. How could they not smile? Others might not, but they certainly couldn’t help themselves.

「An hour later.」

The goat-headed creature returned.

"How are they doing? Any slacking off?" it asked the guards.

The guards immediately described Ning Xuan and Zhongli Ruoruo’s enthusiastic performance. Just as they finished, the pair returned.

"Excellent, excellent! You two are very good! As for the trash I promised you, this City Lord will double it!"

Ning Xuan and Zhongli Ruoruo both nodded, smiling. Seeing this, the goat-headed creature laughed heartily.

The two humans and the one beast were all inwardly cursing the other for being an idiot.