Of course, regardless of if it was Xia Ya, Shangguan Bing Xue, or Bai Zemin, none of the three of them had the slightest idea of what was going on behind them.

Although they could hear the sound of explosions caused by the start of the battle, as well as the roar of the bone dragon, the thought of turning around and returning only shone for an instant like a shooting star before disappearing.

Bai Zemin couldn’t help but stroke the Ice Phoenix’s frozen crystal-like feathers, and after a brief hesitation asked, “Bing Xue, did you get the skill to summon this phoenix when you broke into the Third Order?”

Shangguan Bing Xue looked at her fellow mount, and after taking a moment to think about her next words, she calmly explained, “My Ice Maker skill evolving into the Fifth Order was one of the requirements I needed to fulfill to acquire my Frozen Sacrilege Succubus class. After I evolved Ice Maker to Fifth Order, the skill gained a new activation, which is Sacred Winter Phoenix Summoning. Because the Sacred Winter Phoenix is a Fourth Order beast that can grow with time, I couldn’t open a door big enough for it to pass through. Tt was only when I evolved to the Third Order that I finally had enough magic power to make it happen.”

Although Shangguan Bing Xue had the door to connect with the Sacred Winter Phoenix, the key was still not complete. It wasn’t until she evolved that the key could be completed, thus allowing her to link key and door so that the being on the other side could come to her side.

“Fourth Order mutant beast…” Bai Zemin was secretly amazed and delighted.

Although he didn’t know how strong the Sacred Winter Phoenix was, a phoenix was a phoenix no matter what. A legendary creature such as a phoenix would definitely be very powerful even if it was the weakest phoenix among all the phoenixes. Moreover, Bai Zemin was 80% sure that Shangguan Bing Xue’s phoenix was not just an ordinary phoenix but was probably an extremely terrifying godly beast.

“Congratulations.” He looked at Shangguan Bing Xue with a genuine smile on his face and congratulated her, “Looks like you really don’t need to find yourself a mount after all.”

Previously, Bai Zemin had approached her about getting herself a mount by forming a contract with some Third Order mutant beast. However, despite having enough power, Shangguan Bing Xue chose to stay alone, which puzzled many.

Who would want any Third Order companion when they could have a Fourth Order legendary beast? He now finally understood the reason why she did what she did.

“Unfortunately, this little friend can only stay by my side for 2 hours.” Shangguan Bing Xue stroked the Sacred Winter Phoenix’s plumage and remarked with some hidden bitterness, “Besides, this phoenix may look big and all but it was actually born not much more than 100 years ago. For the phoenix race, 100 years is no different from a small child, so they need to rest for a long time after going into battle.”

Simply put, Shangguan Bing Xue’s skill to summon the Sacred Winter Phoenix should have a high cooldown time.

After giving it some thought, Bai Zemin felt that it was reasonable. If a skill as powerful as that had a short cooldown time it would be simply outrageous no matter how one looked at it.

As Shangguan Bing Xue spoke to Bai Zemin in a low voice, the Sacred Winter Phoenix glanced sideways at the large white dog running through the air. 

At first, the phoenix felt that its pride was being challenged by a street dog so it increased its flying speed with the intention of leaving it behind. However, that slight indignation the young phoenix felt soon turned to dismay and disbelief when it realized that no matter how much it sped up it still couldn’t outrun the dog.

Being a Fourth Order beast with intelligence, the Sacred Winter Phoenix naturally had the ability to express its thoughts in words. Moreover, thanks to being connected to Shangguan Bing Xue’s records, the phoenix could also understand some languages of this world such as Chinese, English, French, and even some Russian. 

Even though the phoenix wanted to ask the white dog what its problem was and why it could run so fast despite being just a simple dog, the young phoenix felt that it would be beneath it, so in the end, it kept silent and continued to try to leave behind the one it now saw as its rival.

A legendary phoenix seeing a white dog that was picked up from the streets of China as its rival… Little Snow was probably the first dog in history capable of achieving such a majestic feat.

…

The mutant forest was very, very big. 

It was so big that Bai Zemin and the two girls next to him were left at a loss for words. 

They had been flying for almost 2 hours at high speeds in a straight line directly towards the center of the forest, and yet, however, they still didn’t seem to have reached the heart. 

“This place definitely has some kind of spatial magic surrounding it.” Shangguan Bing Xue’s expression was not particularly pleasant. She could slowly feel the flight speed of her phoenix gradually slowing down, “I can only keep my phoenix here for another 30 minutes at most. If we still don’t reach our target in that time, I’m afraid it will be problematic.”

If it was just carrying a couple of people and flying it would still be fine to ride Little Snow. The problem was that they were being continually chased and blocked by oceans of enemies! 

Since Little Snow was a dog, regardless of her size there wasn’t much room to move anywhere. If more than two adults rode her back, the fighter or fighters would have a lot of trouble fighting comfortably against numerous enemies.

“Damn it, where the hell do these things come from?!” riding Little Snow’s back, Xia Ya waved the black and white colored wand in her right hand in the direction of the over 50,000 flying gargoyles closing the path ahead, “Shooting Star!”

A bright whitish-blue light shot out from the tip of the wand, and in an instant, a good portion of the sky was dyed white as the light covered the surroundings, leaving a thick trail wherever it passed as if it were a real shooting star.

The Third Order gargoyles, even those who were of a higher level than Xia Ya, had no time to react as their bodies were pulverized after being struck by the whitish blue light. The light continued to advance further and further into the enemy ranks, crushing each gargoyle it touched into nothingness.

Seeing she still had another 30 thousand gargoyles to annihilate, Xia Ya cursed under her breath, “That consumed 100 points of my Mana you know!”

A hundred points might not sound like much considering she was a Third Order soul evolver with thousands of Mana points. However, in this kind of place where Mana could not be regenerated and where enemies were as numerous as drops of water in an ocean, even 50 points was a colossal amount of consumption.

But when Xia Ya looked at her other two teammates she had no choice but to grit her teeth and swallow her bitterness to continue fighting. This was because both Bai Zemin and Shangguan Bing Xue were having more bitter moments than her own!

In order to prevent the Sacred Winter Phoenix from exhausting itself faster and having to return to its world sooner, Shangguan Bing Xue did not let it attack but instead asked it to focus on continuing to fly forward.

Little Snow was not particularly good at dealing with numerous enemies at the same time. All of her skills were mostly focused on dealing with enemies more powerful than her but only 1 at a time, so it was only occasionally that she would attack to clear a few hundred gargoyles before focusing on dodging attacks and moving forward.

In short, both defense and offense fell to Xia Ya, Shangguan Bing Xue, and Bai Zemin; particularly the latter two.

Wielding a deep blue sword in her right hand and a crystal sword made of ice in her left hand, Shangguan Bing Xue was like an immortal fairy finishing off her enemies using extremely lethal yet particularly elegant moves. Her Rank 2 armor was concealed by a slightly thicker armor of ice and light, and whenever a gargoyle was lucky enough to approach and survive the surrounding frost, the outer armor would glow to temporarily blind and freeze the movements of the monster.

Shangguan Bing Xue knew that she still had yet to face the most powerful enemy, so she followed Bai Zemin’s advice and used as minimal Mana as possible, making as much use of all her physical abilities as possible without allowing herself to get hurt. Although she was a genius born once in a million years, facing thousands of Third Order enemies for so long was gradually pushing her to her limit. 

At the end of the day, Shangguan Bing Xue was not Bai Zemin whose physical body was almost as tough as that of a dragon. After not being able to use her Agility for obvious reasons and sealing most of her magic, Shangguan Bing Xue was basically fighting with 30-40% of her power at best.

The total number of enemies numbered over 300 thousand, and of those 300 thousand it could be said that Shangguan Bing Xue was holding back approximately 100 thousand. Considering that Xia Ya was doing her best against 50 thousand enemies, there were still another 150 thousand that needed to be taken care of.

Standing on the back of the ice phoenix, Bai Zemin kept spinning while holding Annihilation of the Falling Sky in the shape of a golden arc with his left hand. His right hand moved as fast as a blur, leaving behind afterimages that piled up one after another with each ice arrow he fired towards his enemies.

Bai Zemin used the power of his armor to freeze the air particles around him, making hundreds of normal ice arrows per second. Although these ice arrows were so small and thin and appeared to be extremely fragile, the crimson flame burning in each of them increased Bai Zemin’s already terrifying physical and magical attack power by another 20%.

Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! Boom!!! …

Although the gargoyles were Third Order monsters whose bodies were extremely tough, they still could not withstand the power of the arrows shot by Bai Zemin who was grasping a legendary weapon. 

After hitting an enemy’s body, the frost energy contained in each arrow would spread out in an instant and slow down the movement speed of the other nearby gargoyles. The most terrifying thing was that when the other gargoyles wanted to advance, they were met with terrifying explosions of crimson flames burning the blood from their bodies each time they were hit.

Despite killing thousands of gargoyles per second, however, Bai Zemin was not particularly happy. This was because there were still more and more gargoyles waiting ahead as they advanced closer to the heart of the forest… In fact, had it not been for the fact that these gargoyles did not have particularly high intelligence, Bai Zemin believed that he would have been forced to let himself go completely or flee in the worst case scenario.

Being surrounded and attacked by a few hundred thousand enemies above level 100 was nothing to scoff at. Even powerful Fourth Order soul evolvers could end up dying if they were careless!

Approximately 20 minutes later and just as the speed of the ice phoenix had dropped below the 50% mark as if it was about to go home, a startling change occurred on the battlefield in the sky.

The gargoyles that numbered now easily over 500,000 and covered both the sky and the earth suddenly opened up as if they had received some higher order.

Shangguan Bing Xue’s breathing was slightly irregular, but she was still good. The worst of them was Xia Ya, whose body was so drenched in sweat that her black magic robe hugged her body tightly as a small cloud of hot steam rose from her.

Bai Zemin remained calm on the surface, but when he saw the large distortion of mana surrounding the jade tree before him, he narrowed his eyes.

“Are you the Mana Eater Tree?” even though he was asking a question into the air, Bai Zemin’s words sounded more like a fact rather than a doubt.

After several seconds without a response, the dark blue colored mana surrounding the jade tree shivered. At the same time, a single loud and powerful word enunciated in English boomed out.

“Yes.”

* * * * * * *

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