As the last evil spirit was scattered to wisps of faint smoke and vanished, the four Qi warriors secretly let out a sigh of relief.

Almost at the same time, they fixed their eyes on Nie Tian and the girls.

Eyebrows furrowed, one of them who seemed older asked aloud, “Where are you from? You’ve been watching us for some time now, instead of coming to our aid. So... what’s your intent?”

After this battle, the young man with that fascinating folding fan seemed to have consumed a significant amount of his strength.

The other three had also consumed their spiritual power to different degrees.

Under such circumstances, their best choice was to avoid more battles, and recover their spiritual power as soon as possible.

Seeing that Nie Tian and the other two didn’t say anything, Xie Wanting took the initiative to say, “We were just passing by. Like you, we’re also here to explore the Bloody Grave Mountain Range. Evil spirits and ghouls are everywhere in this region, and we also face unknown dangers. So we didn’t intend to fight you.”

“Good,” The man said a careful expression. “In that case, you may leave now. We need to spend some time recovering.”

Xie Wanting then turned to fix Nie Tian with an inquiring gaze.

Nie Tian’s gaze swept across the four Qi warriors before he nodded and said, “Let’s go.”

Xie Wanting then activated the air-transportation spiritual tool and flew into the distance.

Watching Xie Wanting’s air-transportation spiritual tool fly farther and farther, the older man muttered in a low voice, “Strange... That man only seemed to be at the late Worldly realm, which is the lowest among the four of them. And the tainted energies gathered around him were also rather faint, which indicates that his battle prowess should also be the weakest, yet that woman and the other two seemed to treat him as their leader.”

Another man chimed in. “Those who dare to come to the Bloody Grave Mountain Range must have their own strengths. We’re lucky that they didn’t take the opportunity to attack us when our battle against the evil spirits had just ended.”

“No need to mind them. Judging from the intensity of the tainted energies around them, they aren’t very powerful anyways. If they had actually attacked us, they’d have earned themselves a great deal of suffering.”

“Come on. Let’s recover first.”

The four of them reached a mutual understanding and sat down in the lotus position. While contending against the tainted energies, they took out spiritual materials of different attributes and a variety of medicinal pills to recover.

...

After flying for a while, Xie Wanting’s air-transportation spiritual tool gradually slowed down in the air filled with tainted energies.

Eyebrows furrowed, she said, “I didn’t expect that the tainted energies can even undermine the spirit stones that power air-transportation spiritual tools.”

Hearing this, Nie Tian looked down, and discovered that the spirit stones that paved the floor of the air-transportation spiritual tool were now rust-stained, and the spiritual power they gave had become impure.

Most air-transportation spiritual tools ran on spirit stones. The spirit stones being compromised would cause the air-transportation spiritual tool to become slower and slower.

Therefore, Xie Wanting had to constantly replace the compromised spirit stones with fresh spirit stones to maintain a high speed.

The four of them only flew on for another hour in the Bloody Grave Mountain Range before they started to feel tired.

After all, they had to summon their spiritual power to ward off the tainted energies at all times.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Three evil spirits suddenly came out of nowhere.

From the look of it, they were slightly tougher than the one Yin Yanan had killed.

Crying fiercely, they rapidly surrounded the air-transportation spiritual tool, showing their natural desire for flesh and souls.

Just as Yin Yanan was about to launch attacks, Mu Biqiong rose to her feet and said, “Let me see how powerful these evil spirits really are!”

With these words, the black demonic flower’s thick resilient root shot out of her left palm, along with a gruesome icy aura.

However, as the pitch-black root shot out, more tainted energies suddenly gathered towards her.

Like multicolored clouds, thick tainted energies kept converging on her from all directions, and rapidly built up around her.

Mu Biqiong’s expression flickered as she hastily jumped off the air-transportation spiritual tool, lest the gathering tainted energies swallow Nie Tian and the others as well.

FIZZ! FIZZ!

The black flower’s root exuded a bleak soul aura as it rapidly wrapped around the three evil spirits.

Since the evil spirits were illusory, and not living creatures, the black root shouldn’t have been able to trap them.

However, after the black root unleashed a unique soul aura, it seemed to suddenly be vested with the ability to slaughter spirits and souls.

One after another, the three evil spirits were bound by the black root.

“DIE!” Mu Biqiong shouted coldly.

As she did, the black root that had grown out of her palm suddenly burst into black flames.

Strange and powerful, the flames could even set spirits on fire. The three trapped evil spirits soon burned madly within the raging black flames.

The three evil spirits’ sizable illusory bodies rapidly shrank until they vanished completely.

SHEW!

The demonic flower’s root shrank back into Mu Biqiong’s palm, and the tainted energies that had gathered to her instantly grew faint.

In an arrogant manner, she flew back onto the air-transportation spiritual tool and said casually, “It seems that the evil spirits aren’t that hard to deal with after all.”

With an impressed expression, Xie Wanting nodded slightly. “Yeah, they didn’t seem very powerful compared to you.”

“Let’s take a while to recuperate before we march deeper,” Nie Tian said.

He could see that even though Mu Biqiong had mostly relied on the coexisting flower’s strength to kill the evil spirits, the added tainted energies had greatly raised her consumption. In fact, she didn’t have as much of a headache killing those three evil spirits as she had contending against the soaring amount of tainted energies around her.

The moment the black root had shot out of her palm, her magnetic field seemed to go through changes, causing the tainted energies in her surroundings to madly converge on her, putting her under a great amount of pressure.

“Can it be that anything with signs of life will trigger movement from the tainted energies?”

With this thought in mind, Nie Tian summoned a tree branch from within his ring of holding.

It was one of the tree branches he had gained from an ancestral land of the Floragrims, and used to establish the Wood Thriving Formation.

Holding the tree branch, he examined his surroundings with rapt attention, but noticed that no more tainted energies were gathering to him.

“This tree branch contains rich wood power, so its aura should be at least similar to that of Mu Biqiong’s demonic flower root, but didn’t it cause any changes in the tainted energies?”

Then, he decided to try other items in his ring of holding.

As soon as he summoned the Flame Dragon Armor, the tainted energies went through great changes. An alarming amount of tainted energies rapidly converged on it from all directions.

Taken aback, he hastily put the Flame Dragon Armor back into his ring of holding, and summoned the Spirit Pearl instead.

Even though the two of them both had their own souls, and could be viewed as Spirit Channeling grade treasures, the Spirit Pearl didn’t trigger any changes after flying into Nie Tian’s palm.

“The biggest difference between the Flame Dragon Armor and the Spirit Pearl is that the Flame Dragon Armor contains a copious amount of flesh power other than its raging flame power, but the Spirit Pearl doesn’t contain noticeable flesh power.

“Mu Biqiong’s coexisting flowers aren’t like spiritual tools. Not only do they have souls and awarenesses, but they also carry vigorous flesh power. They could even be viewed as living creatures like Floragrims.”

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

While he made these attempts, he suddenly noticed that the amount of tainted energies gathered around Yin Yanan suddenly increased dozens of times over.

Yin Yanan’s face turned pale as she hastily berated the Frost Blood Python, which had acted on its own, and had almost slithered out of her waist, urging it to go back to dormancy.

After the tainted energies around her grew faint again, Yin Yanan took a deep breath and said, “This is not good. Once my Frost Blood Python leaves my body, it’s also subject to the tainted energies’ unceasing corrosion. And the amount of tainted energies it’ll have to deal with will be dozens of times more than what I have to deal with.”

Nodding, Nie Tian said, “It seems that these energies are only sensitive to things that carry both flesh and soul auras. If something only has a soul, but no flesh aura, then it won’t trigger any changes.”

Both Yin Yanan and Mu Biqiong’s expressions flickered slightly as they heard these words.

Both the Frost Blood Python and the coexisting flowers which they relied on could be viewed as living creatures with flesh and souls. They had already seen for themselves that as soon as they unleashed them, the tainted energies would pour madly towards them from all directions. This meant they wouldn’t be able to fully display their battle prowess here.

“No wonder no Void domain experts or eighth grade outsiders would want to come to the Bloody Grave Mountain Range,” Nie Tian said, while sensing the tainted energies that were everywhere.

Having figured this out, Yin Yanan and Mu Biqiong no longer dared to use the Frost Blood Python or the coexisting flowers as they pleased.

The two of them exchanged a glance, and took out spiritual materials to recover. They knew that they need to adjust themselves to recover their peak state in order to be prepared for the crisis that might befall them at any moment.

After some time, when they had pretty much recovered all of their spiritual power, a bolt of lightning shot towards them from the distant sky.

After it came to a stop before them, it turned out to be the impressive young man they had met earlier.

His chest was covered in bloodstains as he said with a panicked look in his eyes, “A group of outsiders attacked us and killed my companions.”