1080 Finding Willow

Alex flew down the mountain, letting Whisker gather whatever he could on the mountain itself. Whisker didn't have Alex's poison resistance, so he would most likely die just entering the field around the plants.

He could have waited for Whisker to finish before taking him in as well, but he was here for one thing and he wanted to complete it as soon as he could.

He arrived next to the field of poisonous plants and immediately sent his spiritual sense out all around him to search for the one thing he was here for.

A moment later, he smiled as he saw it.

The Corrosive Willow.

"Well, that was easy," Alex thought. He stepped into the stale, pungent air that was full of poisons and toxins and made his way toward the plant that was far away. He picked what he could from around him, but he didn't stop on his path toward the willow.

Rather, he didn't stop on his path toward the willows. There were multiple of them scattered around the field, and Alex was going to go through at least a third of them and strip it clean.

He could imagine the money he would be making if he sold the Earth's spiritual root-improving pill to the world. It wouldn't sell as well as a Saint rank pill likely would, but for what it would cost him, it would sell phenomenally.

Alex finally arrived in front of the dead-looking tree with no flowers at all. Its bark was corrosive, and the sap it produced was even more poisonous.

So, he took out Midnight and started carving the tree to collect the very same bark.

Midnight had an amazing edge. It wasn't as good as the strongest sword he had previously, but it was definitely better than everything else. Not only had his Dao of sharpness and cutting helped improve its edge, but also the tiny soul inside of it was helping it be even sharper.

Alex stripped the tree clean and placed everything into his storage ring. Once done, he went for another one that was not far away.

He only stopped collecting it after going through 5 of such trees.

He held a piece of the bark in his hand and closed his eyes. He sensed the energy in it and especially its internal structure to see how it was.

"I see," he thought. "So it was that type of ingredient. Hmm, it should be much easier to make the Saint rank pill now."

At the very least, Alex was certain that within the next year, he would have completely made the Saint rank earth pill. Maybe he would even be halfway done with the Water pill as well.

He happily put the last fragment of the bark into his storage and started gathering the other ingredients. The poisonous section of the secret realm was something no one really wanted to come to, so it was overflowing with ingredients that he could take back with him.

After spending no less than 6 hours in there, he finally left the field. He walked back towards Whisker, while constantly sending pulses of Yang Qi throughout his body to make sure the poisons around him were no longer there.

Whisker had already gone somewhere a little further away in the last 6 hours, so Alex had to fly for a little longer to reach him.

Just as he was flying, he heard a cry from down below him.

Alex looked down to see an elder from the sect being attacked by some sort of plant that was full of vines.

It was grabbing the elder, dragging him, lashing at him, and even going as far as to rip him in two.

Alex swooped down from the sky and slashed the vines before turning towards the plant. The plant withdrew all of its vines after being attacked and no longer tried to fight.

"Are you okay?" Alex asked the elder.

"Y-yes, I'm fine," the elder said with heavy breaths. "Thank you for saving me, brother Alex."

"Leave now, don't stand around here," he said. "Also, focus on where you are and what you are doing. Use your spiritual sense before going anywhere just in case. You never know what sort of plants you might come across."

"Yes," the elder said before looking through his storage bag. "Brother Alex, do you have any poison-removing pills?"

"Poison?" Alex asked and looked back at the vine plant. Was that plant a poison plant too? He learned what it was and then learned more about it.

'Ah, it has a slight toxin,' he thought. 'It should only numb his legs for a while, but I suppose he had disciples to look after.'

Alex brought out a simple antidote pill and handed it to the elder. "Eat it, and leave from here," he said.

"Thank you," the elder said and ate his pill.

Alex flew away to go meet up with Whisker, leaving the elder behind. The elder slowly stood up and dusted himself off before looking in Alex's direction.

A small smirk appeared on his face and he took out a talisman to write something.

"Target is either used to dealing with poison or has been recently conditioned to. It is possible that Jade had gone out of his way to contact the target, maybe even kill him. It is possible that he was dealt with, which is why he's been missing for the last 2 months."

Once the elder wrote that down, he put away the talisman and started walking away from the place he had purposefully come to.

Alex met up with Whisker a bit further away and started gathering the ingredients himself. Since he had found the thing he had come looking for, all he needed to do was wait for the portal to open so he could go back.

Of course, he wasn't going to just wait around. He was thrown into a gold mine, and the last thing he was going to do was try and get out immediately.

Alex and Whisker, together, went around gathering so many ingredients in such little time, that Alex wondered if he ever had this many ingredients with him, ever.

Just a day's harvest here outshined a month's work back in the Beast's realm when he was trying to find the other demon realm.

Alex's days were filled with satisfaction, with the occasional dashes of disappointment.

He would be extremely happy gathering the many ingredients from one place and moving on to the other to do the same. But, from time to time, he would come across places that people had been through already.

While they would still have left ingredients behind just because they didn't know they were ingredients, it wasted quite a bit of his time.

As the days passed by, this would continue to increase, and that frustrated Alex.

It had been 3 days since they had entered the secret realm and he was still continuing to collect the ingredient. Whisker went in and out of his beast space to rest, but Alex hadn't gotten the chance to.

"I should rest too," he thought to himself. He decided on settling down at the next location and cultivating for a while. It had been some days since he had cultivated, so that was a good idea.

He saw an opening in the forest he was in, beyond which it was all a patch of grassland. He made his way in that direction, but suddenly, he stopped.

His eyes moved slowly to the right of where he was and he couldn't help but be shocked.

"No way!" he thought.

He quickly ran towards what he saw and stood in front of it with wide eyes. In front of him were two plants that were entwined into a single one.

There was a tree made of wood; thick, robust, and sturdy. It was not very big, but it was strong and that was all it needed to be.

Then there was a climber; thin, flimsy, and weak. The climber plant was too weak to grow without any support, but that was why there was a sturdy tree.

Surprisingly, the two plants grew from the same root, and most likely the same seed.

The two plants mixed with each other, and both of their leaves were the same as well. At the end of a branch where a climber ended as well, there grew a creamy white fruit with a lot of white dots all over it.

Alex looked in awe at the plant and the fruit. He remembered seeing this plant long ago, but that wasn't his main thought at the moment.

His main source of awe and focus was the fruit he was looking at.

"The Divine Devil's Fruit," he thought. He would have never guessed that he would ever be able to see something like this. He would have expected that he could only see it after he went to the hegemonies where Shen Jing grew it.

'A Divine Devil's fruit,' Alex thought in awe. 'Another Demonic Plant's descendant.' He had never personally eaten the fruit himself, but he had seen both pearl and his mother eat it.

The Mortal Cleansing once went through after eating this was very much worth it in his eyes.

"I should take it for everyone else," Alex thought to himself. There were nearly 20 different fruits on the tree, but Alex knew that just as there was a trick to picking a Spirit Cleansing Lily, there was a trick to picking the Divine Devil's fruit as well.

If he ignored it and picked the fruit regardless, he would end up destroying it.