Luck Shelter

After weeks of travel, they still had not found even a trace of Luck Shelter. At this point, she wasn't sure it still existed. Now they had lost several geno trees and all their mounts. Even the strongest of hearts would begin to waver.

"I also think it's over, but not in the same way you are thinking."

Bian seemed to be in thought. He summoned the Ivory Serpent, and a fifteen-foot-long white serpent appeared beside his feet.

"It's so tiny." Bian looked at the 'small' snake, wondering what it could contain and how it would do so. Other containers came as quivers or scabbards; he had not heard of a living container. He tried ordering the snake to 'hold' one mutant geno tree.

Bian and Hope Spirit both watched as the snake opened its mouth, swallowing the tree that was five times bigger than itself in one gulp. Its body did not change at all after this; it looked exactly the same.

He ordered the snake to enlarge itself, then to swallow Hope Spirit. The white serpent just stood there, looking at him with its red eyes, unresponsive to his orders. He then ordered it to spit out the tree, worried that it might have been crushed.

The snake opened its mouth, revealing a tree leaf. As it slithered backward, the full tree was revealed, looking exactly the same as it was before it was swallowed.

"Interesting." Bian placed a water drop on all the remaining viable trees and had the white snake swallow them. He didn't dare unsummon the snake without experimenting first, so he placed it on his shoulder.

Hope Spirit was also injured, so he carried her like a princess before dashing toward the spot where the Ink Sun Dragon had killed the Ivory Serpent.

"I can walk," Hope Spirit said, her face turning red. Bian ignored her comment and focused on the path ahead. The terrain had been completely changed, looking nothing like a forest. He stopped at the edge of the crater, ground zero of where the dark beam had landed, giving Hope Spirit a moment to take in the devastation that had befallen the area.

"The rose, is it showing any reaction?" Bian asked. He had used the Empirical Aura not too long ago and sensed a humongous structure. Now, he had to wait a bit before using it again.

Hope Spirit brought out the purple rose. It almost looked as purple as it always did, except for a very slight red tinge. The red was quickly fading, indicating that the shelter was moving away.

"It's getting colder!" Hope Spirit said.

Bian ran in a random direction, speeding up the fading of the rose. Then he kept going in different directions until the rose turned slightly red. He played a game of "hot and cold" for five hours, eventually reaching a spot and stopping.

The forest looked more beautiful under the moonlight. The animals had yet to return to this section of the forest, giving it an eerie silence. The rose was glowing with a brilliant red color, prompting Bian to look at Hope Spirit.

"I don't see anything." Even with the Dongxuan Sutra, Bian couldn't sense anything.

"There is a special way to temporarily unveil it." Hope Spirit fidgeted, forcing Bian to put her down.

"The first leaf of the clover stands for hope, the second for faith, and the third for love. But there's a rare fourth leaf that sometimes shows up, and it represents luck."

As Hope Spirit said this, a veil seemed to come undone. A mountain was suddenly revealed in front of them. It was not shaped like a normal mountain. While flat at the bottom, it did not become overly narrow near the top. Not that Bian could see the top.

"It's so huge."

"You've never been here before?" Bian was shocked; she was looking for a shelter she had not seen before.

"Not in person." Hope Spirit said, a little embarrassed.

With a sigh, Bian unsummoned her and began climbing the mountain with the snake on his shoulder.

He climbed the mountain, noticing three more mountain-like structures, and came to the conclusion that they were legs for the walking base.

After two days of climbing, with his amazing physique, he finally reached the top of the huge shelter. It was very, very big.

He brought out Hope Spirit, and they both gawked at its wonder while moving around the base.

"It's deserted," Hope Spirit said, a little bit crestfallen.

"What makes you so sure?" Bian asked.

"Luck told me there was a barrier that was always active at the top of the shelter. She would never leave it exposed like this."

The shelter was really big, the same size as a small continent on old Earth. There was no visible structure that helped it move, but there was a big tree near the center of the shelter, close to the Spirit Hall.

"What kind of tree is this?" Bian asked, amused. There was a large pool beside the tree, full of colorful rainbow-like liquid. The pool was halfway full.

"It looks like a sacred blood tree, but it also doesn't look like the one I know. There should be a tree similar to this that grows fruits which grant self-geno points, but this tree looks different from it."

"Different how?" Bian asked with interest, hearing that the tree could open self-gene locks. He counted over eight hundred fruits on the tree.

"It's like a child with the physique of a bodybuilder. It's not meant to exist." Hope Spirit shuddered.

Bian plucked a red fruit from the tree. It was shaped like a mango, and there were several more fruits of different colors there. The mango-shaped fruit was only the size of an egg; it could be easily swallowed with some effort.

"Jadeskin gave me immunity to poison. I now have a body better than Jadeskin, so I should have improved immunity."

"A body better than Jadeskin, Jadebody," Bian came to an epiphany. He named his new Jadeskin-like body Jadebody.

Turning a deaf ear to Hope Spirit's complaints, he swallowed the fruit in one mouthful.

Bian immediately clutched his stomach. He felt thousands of blades ripping through his guts by the second, and a bead of sweat formed on his forehead.

[Empirical Aura Self Spirit Gene +1]

True to the lifeforce Bian felt, it really was a super geno tree. He looked up with a smile, counting the hundreds of fruits on the tree.

"The tree can unlock self-gene points. If I eat everything, that would open eight geno locks," Bian told Hope Spirit.

"I've never seen anything like the pool before. It is a catalyst and a nutrient at the same time. I feel that this tree absorbed some liquid from the pool to evolve into a super geno plant."

Bian gasped in shock when he heard what she said. Even in the original world, he had never heard of any treasure that could turn a sacred-blood tree into a super one.

"Let's plant the trees back. Then we can decide on what to do with the rainbow liquid." Bian retrieved the trees they had managed to salvage from the attack of the Hellfire Lion.

He planted them near the Spirit Hall, away from the giant tree already growing there.

"Can you activate the barrier you were talking about earlier?" Bian asked Hope Spirit.

"I can, I just need to enter the Spirit Hall," she claimed confidently, walking toward the closed doors of the Spirit Hall.

Badum!

Bian's heart skipped a beat. He ran to the door and held Hope Spirit's hand, stopping her from opening it.

"There is a threat behind this door. It's probably a super creature," Bian said with a solemn look. Although he couldn't perceive through the large metal doors with the Dongxuan Sutra, only a super creature could cause him such distress.

His body released an indigo light, which traveled through all substances and revealed the interior of the Spirit Hall. It was a massive structure with a giant humanoid-like creature chained up inside.

The creature was in a cocoon-like cast, restraining the movements of all its body parts except its head.

'It really is a super creature, although it has been locked up.' Bian relaxed after the light returned to his body. Knowing the creature was chained up gave him some sense of relief.

Before he could even entertain opening the doors to the hall, he knew he had to increase his strength.

"How are the geno trees?" Bian asked, worried about their burnt exterior.

"They will survive, thanks to what you did. It might take some more energy for them to recover and continue growing," Hope Spirit responded.

"Good. How many gene locks do you have open?" Bian asked, just to make sure.

"Four."

'If she ate six hundred of the fruits, she would have ten gene locks open. Then wouldn't her powers greatly reduce the time needed to nurture geno trees?

But even if it did reduce the time, it can't be so exaggerated as to reduce 2,000 years to less than 1,000 years. Only the Executioners would have balance-breaking powers like that.'

Originally, Bian planned to max out Hope Spirit's gene locks to have her increase the absorption of geno trees, but the time taken would still be enormous. In the end, increasing his own power came first.

"I can guess what you're thinking. Even if I became an Empress Spirit, the most I could do would be to increase the rate of absorption by three times. It would be crazy but not as mind-blowing as the lifeforce you wield."

"Good that you said it. I guess I better start eating." Bian looked at the hundreds of fruits on the tree and sighed. Each one would bring gut-wrenching pain and a power boost.