The scheming guy saw the outer area of the Silicon Forest getting farther from him and his face paled, he tried to move his body and circulate his spirit energy to fly and get away from the crazy black-haired youth, but his heart sank when he noticed he was unable to.
"Ahhhh!", expecting the worse he yelled in advance, maybe if he made some sound, he might be able to drag the one who killed him to hell with him, but the pain he expected didn't come.
"Uh?", the scheming guy just felt his body land on the ground and nothing else, he opened his eyes and saw that besides the pain of falling to the ground, he was perfectly fine, well if you don't take into account the fact that he earlier clashed against the protection of the paragon body which shook his organs, making him vomit blood.
The scheming guy got up and then gave Aster a poisonous gaze, he prepared to run not without shouting.
"Kid consider yourself dead, my Fire Mountain sect will kill all your family for this, maybe if you hand over those girls to me…", the smile on the face of the guy froze, he slowly looked downwards and saw a yellow crystal tree branch coming out of his chest.
He didn't even have the chance to yell, before his body melted turning into a yellow puddle that was then absorbed by the nearby ground.
Aster observed the scene without showing any reaction, the girls were the same, everyone here has seen their fair share of blood, not to mention that guy's intentions were pretty wicked, so they didn't feel any sympathy for the scum that died a moment ago.
"So that is the main threat of the middle area, unlike the outskirts which are desertic and dominated by the crystal formations, the middle area is filled with "life", which predates on any yang source", concluded Aster.
Unlike the outer area, the middle area is what gave the name to this place, because instead of a desert it indeed looked like a forest.
It was a strangely pretty landscape, formed by tress whose trunks were made out of yellow crystals, but which still had leaves at their tops, even then those weren't normal leaves, instead they looked like a flat solid dome created by the leaves of all the trees fused together.
That was the origin of the shadow, though there were some small holes from which the sunlight was able to reach the ground, illuminating the insides of the forest, just enough for a few hundreds of meters to be seen ahead.
Aster then turned to see the lizard which was still laying down on the ground, he changed his eyes back to normal to test something, and just as he expected the lizard immediately turned wild again and tried to attack him.
"Sheeee!", the lizard who was outraged to have been humiliated, exploded in yellow flames and dashed towards Aster, who shook his head.
"Felicia", with a single word, the smiling Felicia jumped towards the lizard, her hair turned black and a sinister dark mist leaked out of her body.
The lizard had a bad premonition but it was already too late, all the flames were surprisingly devoured by the darkness, until the crystals on the body of the lizard were empty.
"Booom!", Felicia's right fist which was cladded in a clawed black gauntlet, then landed on the head of the lizard, cracking its skull and killing it on the spot.
"Aster, can I keep its corpse?", asked Felicia.
"Sure, you hunted it and I don't think any of the others need any particular material from it", said Aster.
Felicia smiled and then the darkness that was summoned by her, swallowed the corpse of the lizard leaving not even a drop of blood behind.
The reason as to why Aster didn't bother to kill the lizard, it's because it wasn't going to obey him nor follow him, unlike the curious sand wyrm which willingly approached Aster and apparently treated him as its kin, thus happily tagging along and ultimately signing a contract with him.
The lizard was different, it only was afraid of the aura Aster had when his eyes where those of a dragon, probably some kind of primordial feeling hidden in its blood, but once that sensation was gone the wild and savage nature of a low ranked spirit beast, returned and after being forced to kneel it wanted nothing but to shred the human in front of it.
Sure, Aster could have forced it into submission by beating it up until it couldn't move, a few times and letting it recover, which is the regular method to tame a spirit beast, in the mortal realms where the contracts like the one Natasha and Charlotte showed him, doesn't exist.
But why would he, that lizard didn't have anything special and it also honestly tried to kill them, it wasn't for the sake of eating, but because it enjoyed carnage, Espi was a special case, it has a dragon lineage and it is also friendly with them, a completely different situation.
Leaving that episode aside, Aster looked at the forest of crystal trees ahead of them and then turned to see the girls.
"Let's change the strategy, Aria if you do the honors", said Aster, as he caressed Aria's pretty face making her smile.
"Mm, leave it to me~", she said.
Then guided by Aster they crossed the limit between the outer and middle areas, the same roots that earlier melted the scheming guy into a puddle, seemed to notice Aster who is a huge source of yang, but surprisingly they hesitated whether to attack him or not.
Aria's body lit up in a pretty light blue light, she let out a small amount of Rigel's flames, and the roots stopped showing any reaction.
Aster gently kissed Aria's cheek, since she did a good job and the group then started advancing, on the way Aster inspected the situation at the forest.
The ecosystem in the middle area was the complete opposite of the outer area, he raised his head to look at that strange dome-like top made out of the leaves of the crystal trees and his eyes glowed.
'The treetops absorb the yang energy in the sunlight and use it to form the crystals on the trunks, over the years after having absorbed enough "life", these trees become somewhat sentient, but at a really basic level, so they only know how to look for "food", which explains those roots attacking that guy', thought Aster.
The notebook Valentina handed him, only had the opinions and conclusions of the first ranked disciple, mostly they consisted on things about the outer area, that doesn't mean they aren't useful.
For example, though the scorpion wasn't mentioned, it did mention that anyone without a battle prowess of the middle stage of the Genesis Manifestation realm, shouldn't approach the rock hill at the limit between the two areas.
In other words, though the first ranked disciple didn't know what was hidden below the hill, it could estimate the strength of the lizard, and also not be tricked by its disguise, there were other comments like that, since the outer area seemed to be dominated by bugs and other vermin, which hid in the sand.
As for the middle area, there was only a couple of comments, first that if going on a team at least a strong girl should be a part of the group, second to not travel at night and lastly to not touch the trees and be aware of the spirit beasts that lived deeper into the forest.
The first comment was what gave Aster the idea, to ask Aria to use her naturally yin filled spirit energy to confuse the crystal trees, even if they don't have a yin type constitution, women in general produce small amounts of yin, the stronger the girl the stronger the yin, so that was why it was advised for one to be a part of the team, so that the trees wouldn't attack.
Positive plus negative results in zero, so if they tried to absorb yin, they will only lose yang, these trees only saw yang as their food, while ying was like poison to them, they would avoid it by all means, Aria whose Rigel's flames are purely yin as their overwhelming freezing capacity suppose, was enough to drive away the attention of trees.
It also helped that the trees hesitated to attack Aster from the very beginning, probably confusing it with another tree, due to the huge amount of yang and vitality his body contained.
Another thing that was different is that instead of the scorching high temperature on the outer area, inside the forest it was rather cold actually, probably because the dome-like treetops absorbed all the yang from the sunlight, yang is what gave the warmth effect to light, so the small rays that managed to pass through the treetops only illuminated but had no heating aspect, the reason as to why this place hasn't turned into a tundra is because the trees, radiated a small amount of yang naturally keeping it warm, to a certain extent.
But at night things will probably change, which was related to the advice of travelling at night, that was written on the notebook.
"We should be among the first batch that reached the limit between the outer and middle areas, and also among the few groups that had entered the middle area already, let's advance until the sunset and then look for a place to spend the night", said Aster.
"Mm", the girls nodded and they kept advancing through the forest, the middle area of the Silicon Forest was incredibly vast, so much that no one has ever seen its deepest part, in fact no one has gotten past what would be halfway to the center, those who managed to see the entrance past that point were either killed by a spirit beast or they were terrified by the ominous feeling coming from it and escaped.
Aster didn't enter the forest just because he wasn't interested in the outer area due to its lack of treasures, besides training Aria, which was still in effect as the gravity here was as high as the one at the Iron Sand planet, he came to find the Diamond Bone Orchid.
And the sole hint he had was that those armored guys were the ones that got an immature sprout of one, so they were sent to look for the real deal, and they were probably given records from the Fritz family, to which the patriarch of the Steel Tower sect had access, so Aster only had to use them as guides.
He tried to look for the other groups, but even if around twenty thousand people entered the Silicon Forest, the place was too vast, besides a few groups here and there, like the ones that were killed by the lizard, he didn't find the rest, but he was sure those armored guys and the others from decently high ranked places will enter the middle area.
And he had Eris meddling with the formations set up on the forest, though they couldn't directly communicate, Aster could "see" her soul energy with his dragon eyes, that's why he used them before, to confirm if Eris was following them and covering their backs.
And she was, that's why he didn't hesitate to use that guy as a guinea pig, he didn't have to worry about soul lamps, but the Fritz had set up something similar to a cctv circuit, at least until the currently explored area, which includes the outskirts of the middle area.
Supposedly they were only used to monitor the Silicon Forest, but Aster knew that since the Steel Tower sect was trying to get on the good books of a high ranked Stellar System, they will do anything to appeal to them, which including selling out whoever caused them troubles, and since he and those guys aimed at the same treasure, then they will have to die for the sake of his cute Empress's revival.
He wasn't afraid of them, but he didn't want the Drage to know about their whereabouts yet, since he is preparing a large-scale parade for the day, he brings Lilia back to that place.
Aster's eyes glowed, he who was leading the way with Aris, suddenly stopped, the other girls also stopped, and Aster didn't move even a single centimeter, a golden spear passed a few centimeters away from his neck and pierced the chest of a strange looking bird that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Caw!", the bird let out a hoarse scream, before it stopped moving, the spear accurately pierced its heart.
Camila who retrieved her spear, looked at Aster as she mumbled.
"What if the spear was aimed at you, I thought you were going to dodge you know…".
Aster smiled ad he slightly turned his head around, to look at Camila.
"Why would I worry about that, even if rebellious the Camila I know, will never harm me, since she knows I can "punish" her accordingly", he jokingly said, making Camila pout.
Now that she had started to treat Aster as a friend and an equal instead of a master-servant relationship, she has become more relaxed around Aster, even now she was wearing her coat, since the temperature dropped quite a bit.
In any case Aster felt that bird approaching with his spirit sense, despite its ability to hid its presence, it wasn't aiming at him but at Aria, Felicia also seemed to have detected it, but she graciously left it to Camila since she was eager to participate too.
As for why Camila also detected it, even if she isn't a soul cultivator, it's because the strange bird had a "treasure" in its body, Aster approached the corpse of the bird and inspected it.
It looked like some kind of crow, being around the size of a children, with grey feather and instead of the normal two eyes it had four of them, they were also bloodshot, to be honest it looked quite ugly.
But it had a small black crystal in its chest, which Aster found familiar, since he found a few of them back when he explored Prasil, it was a yin accumulation crystal.
"Well, it seems my luck is pretty good thanks to a certain someone, to think a treasure will willingly come to my hands", said Aster as he nodded, he used Rigel's flames to get rid of the corpse which seemed to be poisonous, considering the ground which was previously green had turned lifeless black, and only left the crystal behind.
The thing even shrank after the impurities were cleansed away, which made Aster sigh, the resulting size and amount of yin usable, was quite small, but it was still a nice resource for the girls, so he stored it in his spatial ring.
"That explains why it's advised for us not to travel at night, the trees hunt during day and the spirit beasts roam freely at night", he concluded.
Visit freewe𝑏nov(e)l.𝗰𝐨𝐦 for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience