This little pocket realm was something she had awakened by sheer chance in the apocalypse.
Apart from the house she had brought into the realm, everything outside remained a gray, chaotic void.
She had explored it before, but it seemed endless, and she had no idea where it led. Afraid that she might attract some unknown creature, she had never ventured very far.
The realm had electricity. Aside from appliances such as the refrigerator, which worked normally, it could also store limitless supplies and automatically sort them into their proper categories.
Strangely enough, the realm could not contain living things. Only around the spirit spring could she see a few flowers and plants. Yet she had been able to bring Zhan Haoting inside.
Now she had an idea. Could she dig up the medicinal herbs she knew and plant them here?
And it was time to collect those rare treasures as well.
Cheng Yao hid in the grass and pretended to be digging for star-root herb. When no one was paying attention, she entered the realm with a single thought.
Once inside, she visualized the locations recorded in the book and quickly sensed a mysterious connection.
With a shift of her mind, a faint sensation of being pulled away swept over her. The scene before her instantly blurred and warped, stretching into a kaleidoscope of bizarre, disordered lines.
She felt only mildly dizzy. Thankfully, it wasn’t too bad.
In the blink of an eye, she appeared dozens of miles away, in a pitch-black, damp primeval forest.
The heavy scent of decaying humus rushed at her. Towering ancient trees blotted out the sky, allowing only scattered rays of evening sunlight to filter through the gaps and outline the twisted branches and jagged rocks.
The cries of night owls and the rustling of unknown insects added to the eerie atmosphere.
Cheng Yao focused her senses.
She did not need to search as an ordinary herb gatherer would. Her innate sensitivity to the essence of plants and trees spread outward like invisible tendrils.
She found it! It was at the base of a dead ancient tree that would have taken several people to encircle.
She hurried over and, by the faint light, saw several poria cocos clinging to the roots of the dead tree. Their vines were as thick as a child’s arm, and their age was obvious at a glance.
Not far away, several clumps of dendrobium swayed gently in the breeze from cracks in the rocks. Their stems were golden, their segments clearly defined, and their leaves a vivid green.
Under normal circumstances, digging up poria buried deep beneath the earth and dendrobium gripping the cracks in the rocks would require a great deal of time, strength, and tools.
But Cheng Yao only needed to reach out and place her hand on the largest poria.
She focused her thoughts. Her mental power flowed out like invisible threads, wrapping around the poria, the surrounding soil, and the roots of the dead tree.
A heavy sensation came back to her.
“Collect!”
The command rang silently in her mind.
Without a sound, the enormous pieces of poria—brown and covered in cracked patterns—vanished from their original locations along with portions of the native soil surrounding them.
A surge of delight welled up in Cheng Yao’s heart!
In the apocalypse, all living things had been contaminated by an unknown substance and mutated. The plants were no longer usable, so she had never collected anything alive.
She had never expected this attempt to succeed!
Did this mean that she could collect all those rare treasures from now on?
That was incredible!
Cheng Yao was beaming. However, collecting living things consumed ten times as much mental power as collecting dead objects. After collecting only this small amount, she already felt somewhat tired.
But that was nothing to worry about. She had plenty of energy!
Daring not to stop, she repeated the process and collected several more plants of poria, roots and soil included, before moving on to the finest-looking dendrobium.
By then, her head was spinning and her vision had begun to blur.
She no longer forced herself to continue. After stopping for a short rest, she headed toward her next destination—Eagle-Beak Cliff.
With another shift of her thoughts, an even more intense dizziness and tearing sensation swept over her.
This time, the distance was much greater, and the surroundings were even more perilous.
When her consciousness stabilized again, she was standing atop a steep cliff shaped like an eagle’s beak.
Below her yawned a pitch-black abyss with no visible bottom. The cold wind cut like a blade, whipping her frail body as though it might scatter her to pieces.
Not far below the cliff, she could vaguely make out several dark purple mushroom caps glowing faintly in the setting sun. They clung to several crooked sections of rotten wood.
It was the purple lingzhi the owner of Jishitang had dreamed of obtaining!
Almost at the same moment, voices rose from below the cliff.
“Quick! The boss said it’s somewhere around here! Search carefully! There’ll be a handsome reward for whoever finds the purple lingzhi!”
They were the Jishitang shop assistants. As expected, they had brought herb gatherers with them!
Cheng Yao’s gaze sharpened.
The purple lingzhi was said to possess the miraculous power to bring the dead back to life and restore flesh to bones.
Although the legend was exaggerated, the vitality and spiritual energy it contained were crucial to restoring her soul power and healing Zhan Haoting’s legs. She absolutely could not let anyone else have it!
Still, the fat boss had given the people in the group quite a few things. She could leave a little behind for them to find, so they would not return empty-handed.
Cheng Yao locked her consciousness onto the several purple lingzhi glowing with a flowing violet radiance in the dusk. Her mental power surged wildly, forming an invisible force of extraction.
“Collect! Collect! Collect!”
With each successive thought, the purple lingzhi with the longest growth and richest spiritual energy vanished from below the cliff together with the sections of rotten wood they had grown upon, as if swallowed by an invisible maw.
Afterward, Cheng Yao felt as though her soul had been hollowed out. A wave of weakness washed over her, and she had to brace herself against a nearby tree to keep her balance as she gasped for breath.
She was practically exhausted. She felt that if she collected anything else, her mental strength would completely collapse.
Faintly, she heard the herb gatherers below cry out in panic.
“It’s gone! The purple lingzhi! It was right here just now—how did it suddenly disappear?! A ghost… There’s a ghost!”
Cheng Yao had no time to concern herself with them. Struggling to keep her mind clear, she locked onto her final target—and the most difficult one to find of all: the seven-leaf flower.
The description of the seven-leaf flower surfaced in her mind.
The Compendium of Secret Herbal Lore recorded that this flower was the incarnation of the Flower God. Anyone who saw it would be blessed with good fortune and might even gain the chance to change their destiny.
Members of the imperial family and nobility had once offered enormous sums to purchase it, yet failed to obtain one. Few people in the world could recognize it, and the environment in which it grew was even more harsh and secretive.
The location Cheng Yao had drawn for the owner of Jishitang yesterday was where the true seven-leaf flower could be found. But his people could not possibly locate it so quickly.
With a thought, she teleported once more.
The strain this time far exceeded anything before. It felt as though countless fine needles were piercing her soul, and even her consciousness began to blur.
The scene before her flickered wildly before finally settling in the depths of a snow-covered mountain crevasse untouched by human footsteps.
Unlike the bleak desolation outside, where all life had withered, this place was as warm as spring. A steaming hot spring bubbled gently nearby, while many strange flowers and herbs rarely seen in the outside world grew around it.
Beside a spirit-infused slab of bluish stone near the hot spring, two extraordinary flowers stood in quiet bloom.
They were about half a foot tall, with jade-like stalks. Each bore seven translucent leaves of different shapes, arranged in the form of the Big Dipper.
At the center of the cluster of leaves rested a flower bud no larger than a fingernail. Its color shifted constantly, sometimes glowing with seven-colored radiance, sometimes returning to a pure milky white. It emanated a strange aura of tranquility and hope.
They were seven-leaf flowers!
And she had found two at once!
They had not fully bloomed yet. They would be perfect for raising in the realm!
An indescribable excitement surged through Cheng Yao’s heart.
She did not dare delay. Using the last trace of mental power remaining to her, she wrapped it around the two extraordinary flowers said to embody “hope” and “good fortune.”
“Collect!”
As her thought fell, both seven-leaf flowers vanished along with a small patch of spirit-infused soil around their roots. She had successfully brought them into the realm.
But the next moment, she heard a deep, thunderous shout. “Who’s there?”
Several terrifying figures lunged toward where she was hiding.
Cheng Yao felt that if they caught up with her, any one of them could slap her into a bloody pulp.
