Points

When the boys were done with their little crafting, Wen Yu inspected the small narrow containers and nodded in satisfaction. Then he gathered a bunch of sturdy branches and broke them off to use as stoppers.

Next he laid out the different plants he'd gathered before him and tried to guide out a tiny wisp of his spirit energy again. Having tried this earlier, he succeeded fairly quickly this time and managed to squeeze out the essence of each plant and put in the tubes.

The boys gave him weird looks but he ignored them. The repellant was ready and although it looked exactly like what he remembered, with a more refreshing fragrance and alluring lustre, he still wasn't sure if the effects were good enough.

We Lin returned at that moment holding up six gray balls and Duyi appeared right behind her holding up ten, they'd strung them up together with vines.

Wen Yu: '...' What overachievers, he'd asked for just two! He sighed, more was still good so he smeared the paste all over the gray balls and then tied them up on different tree branches festering with bugs that looked poisonous enough. He'd observe the them for sometime and check out the effects of the repellant.

The kids all knew by now that Wen Yu was trying to concoct a form of repellant so were quite excited to see the effects. They'd encountered quite a few troublesome insects on their mission today and would be glad if they had something to fend them off without wasting spirit energy.

They all climbed up their tree camp but Wen Yu remained behind.

Another thing he'd thought of doing was placing his hex stones at different parts of their residing tree. The tree looked to be quite old and any plant that managed to survive for so long must have amazing tenacity and an immunity to the dead cores to some extent.

The constant refining that the hex stones carried out on planet Dongwu actually reduced their purity and if it went on for long enough, purple hex stones would begin to turn blue and the blue, brown. Although this would take a long time, if he could make them last longer, then that would be good too.

He wanted to attach the hex stones to the tree to see if its basic immunity could preserve the purity of the stones for a while longer by reducing their consumption rate.

Taking out a purple hex stone and three blue ones, he dug the root and opened up several spots on the stem. He infused a bit of his spirit energy in the stones and buried the purple stone in the roots while placing the blue ones in the stems and covering it up with the bark.

The effect was instantaneous as the colour of the tree brightened up a bit and the drain on his spirit energy reduced. He was pleasantly surprised, his wasn't sure if his idea really worked but he one thing he was clear on was that it was the easier to refine spirit force next to the tree.

He only had one purple hex stone and two blue stones left but he wasn't worried. The gains of this method far outweighed the losses.

After climbing up the tree and settling in, his teammates formed a circle around him. He'd crisscrossed the branches in the tree to form a floor of sorts so they did not have to be conscious and fear falling off.

"Big bro Yu is so smart ah" Huo Lan commented as he looked around their tree camp in satisfaction. When him and Qi San got back earlier they couldn't detect any presence in the tree so they hadn't climbed up. That meant they weren't aware of the structure in the tree.

Who knew they could camp in a place sheltered from the elements out here in the forest. Wen Yu just coughed to hide his blush. The camp wasn't anything special and was a bit too shabby but the kids had no idea since this was the first time they were exposed to such a thing.

He really felt like a scum man tricking innocent children.

"That's weird, the energy drain on my spirit sea seems to have reduced!" Wen Lin exclaimed with wide eyes and the other kids echoed her words.

Wen Yu just smiled and remained silent whilst Duyi looked at Wen Yu with narrowed eyes.

After sometime, Wen Yu went to inspect the gray balls and the rest gingerly followed. The areas with the gray balls seemed to have been abandoned by the insects and the gray balls actually looked normal.

He nodded and handed his teammates a container each to smear on the exposed parts of their skin as he did the same. Immediately the cool paste hit their skin, they all sighed in relief. It felt so refreshing!

They quickly retracted the spirit energy they were using to protect their skin and focused on circulating it within them instead, this way, they wouldn't constantly lose it to the atmosphere and feel increasingly weakened.

Offhandedly, Wen Yu looked to his bracelet and discovered a string of numbers popping up repeatedly under different names on the screen. He was stunned. He'd been too busy to look at his bracelet since they walked into the forest so he didn't discover this.

The amount of points each team had gathered was broadcasted to everyone! Both the Lingxiu and Feng cadets alike. He looked over to his own team. A glaring zero greeted him, it looked so unpleasant.

His eyes trailed over to the tags on the gray balls. Anything was better than the zero so he reached out to scan them. The others picked up on what he was doing and started scanning the tags on the gray balls.

At the end of their little exercise, the numbers tallied for a while under their team name until a pitiful 1.6 points appeared under their name.

The team: '...' Really?! Their eyes moved to the top spot to find Han Zihao's team with an outstanding 750 points. Truly, there was no harm without comparison.

The kids all silently went up the tree in a single file. Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it, they chanted in their hearts.

When they got up the tree, they all settled down to assimilate. Even if they were distressed about their number of points, they still had ample faith in Wen Yu.

Wen Yu also decided to assimilate for lack of anything better to do. Even if he couldn't store spirit force in his spirit sea, he could still hold them up in his meridians and use them when the opportunity presented itself.

He wasn't as alarmed as the kids, the challenge was just beginning, they still had tons of opportunity to make a 'comeback.'