Put this Su Mei ring close to your body, Lin Ming's true yuan poured into the fire essence in his body, preparing for a free cremation by Huo Gong. However, when the flames burst out of Lin Ming's hands for an instant, Lin Ming exclaimed "huh" in surprise.
Only the flames were a deep, dark red all over, and the dancing fire snakes were like the petals of a blooming lotus flower, which clearly carried some characteristics of the Red Lotus Demon Flame.
It was just a small spark, and the hot waves surged out like a tide, Lin Ming's mind moved, and he took out a fine steel dagger from the Mustard Seed Ring, inserting the blade deep into the spark. In just a few breaths, the blade turned red and softened, finally melting into iron water.
Lin Ming was overjoyed in his heart, the new flame was a big step stronger than the previous lava fire. To know that magma is scorching hot, but it's not enough to melt steel.
Lin Ming waved his hand, and the flame fell on Huo Gong's corpse. With a hissing sound, Huo Gong's body was quickly enveloped in dark red flames that could easily melt steel. The result of being burned by such flames on human flesh can be imagined. In an instant, Huo Gong had turned into a layer of human-shaped ash, without even any bones left.
Lin Ming's casual wave of his sleeve, a gust of clear wind blew away the flying ash, truly destroying all traces.
After dealing with all of this, Lin Ming began to search for the Guan Hong spear that he had thrown away. This spear had followed Lin Ming for a long time, and although it was no longer of much use now, Lin Ming still did not want to abandon it.
In the vast forest, finding a gun is not easy. Fortunately, Lin Ming had used the Gun of Yuanyuan for some time before, and True Yuan had repeatedly infused into it, leaving behind a faint residue of True Yuan.
Lin Ming followed the remaining True Essence and found the Quan Hong Gun, which was almost completely submerged in the soil, among a patch of wild grass.
After putting away the Guan Hong gun, Lin Ming began to think about how he should deal with Ouyang Dihua.
He is now at a disadvantage in both strength and backing compared to Ouyang Dihua. Returning to the Seven Absolute Martial Arts Academy would put him at risk of being taken advantage of, or even killed by Ouyang Dihua.
"With strength, I must have grasped enough strength, and then return to the Seventh Xuanwu Mansion, to avenge today's grievance!"
Lin Mingsuo was determined to stay in the southern wilderness of Xinjiang, which was a great place to hone his skills.
The southern wilderness is vast and desolate, stretching across 100,000 miles, located in the southwest of Tianyun Country.
This is no longer within the sphere of influence of Qixuan Valley. The southern border is a barbarous and desolate land without a country, only with tribes.
The people of Zhongtu called these tribes "barbarians" and believed they ate hair and drank blood. Ethical chaos.
Ethical chaos does exist. But it's not as severe as drinking blood and eating raw flesh.
People from southern Xinjiang often practice close relative marriages, which is considered a heinous crime by people from mainland China.
Girls from southern Xinjiang, wearing extremely bold clothing. Generally, they only use animal hides or narrow hemp cloth to cover their private parts, and such simple clothing naturally reveals a glimpse of spring light, evoking distant thoughts.
Girls in southern Xinjiang have healthy wheat-colored skin, most of them are slender and tall, with long and beautiful legs, wearing animal skin dagger sheaths on their legs, and ornaments made of animal teeth and bones on their necks and wrists, looking quite charming.
Lin Ming has been in Nanjiang for five days and has been walking through the forests of Nanjiang. Now he finally saw the first Nanjiang tribe.
In these five days, Lin Ming had killed over a hundred ferocious beasts. The place he was currently in was only the edge of the Southern Wilderness' Ten Thousand Great Mountains. The level of the ferocious beasts here wasn't high; the highest level ferocious beast he had encountered on his journey so far was only equivalent to a Bone Forging martial artist.
This ferocious beast posed no threat to Lin Ming at all.
After walking in the desolate forest for so long, Lin Ming finally saw signs of human habitation and let out a sigh of relief. Not to mention anything else, but just the food he had been eating these days was enough to make him sick of it - either beast meat or wild fruits, and most importantly, there was no salt, making everything taste bland and flavorless.
This tribe has a scale of about over a thousand people.
Lin Ming walked into it and suddenly felt a strong exotic atmosphere rushing towards him.
The buildings here are mainly wooden houses and tents, large and small pointed tents embroidered with various strange patterns, including fierce beasts, totems, mythical demons, and divine birds.
On the road between tents, merchants dressed in southern Xinjiang costumes carried bamboo shoulder poles and sold all kinds of goods, such as exquisite bone ornaments, handmade knives, bows and arrows, and various precious animal hides and bird feather hats.
Along the way, Lin Ming met many people from Nanjiang, most of whom had a strong foundation in martial arts. This was only to be expected, as Nanjiang was a land of lush vegetation and ferocious beasts that roamed freely. The people of Nanjiang often had to fight against these fierce creatures, and over time, this had led to the people of Nanjiang having generally better physical quality and innate talent for martial arts than those from Central Plains.
Lin Ming found a merchant to buy several catties of salt, but saw a 16 or 17-year-old southern Xinjiang girl with a slender figure and a smile like a flower beckoning him. She pointed at herself and then at the inside of the tent.
Lin Ming was taken aback for a moment before he came to his senses. The folk customs in Southern Xinjiang were open, and except for important figures of ethnic minorities, the marital relationships of ordinary people were not fixed at all, often practicing the "walking marriage" system of matrilineal clan society.
When a man and woman meet and fall in love, the man will often spend the night in the woman's boudoir, leaving at dawn the next day. If children are born, they are raised by the woman's family.
For the first time, Lin Ming was a bit embarrassed to shake his head. He hadn't planned on leaving a child in Nanjiang and then washing his hands of it.
The girl suddenly looked disappointed and wronged, and reluctantly dropped the curtain of the tent.
Lin Ming was so angry and amused at the same time that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Just then, he felt a slight movement in his heart, and he noticed that there were two men and two women standing not far away.
Among them, the two men were probably in their thirties or forties. One was a bald man with a bare upper body, a rugged face and a rough build, carrying a wolf-toothed club over a meter long on his back.
Another man was just the opposite, thin and small in stature, wearing a suit of leather armor, with a short axe slung over his back, his face sallow and wan, like a monkey.
What surprised Lin Ming was that these two unremarkable-looking men had actually reached the peak of Bone Forging in their martial arts cultivation.
A small tribe of over a thousand people suddenly produced two martial arts masters at the peak of their training, which was somewhat unusual.
Lin Ming's gaze shifted back to the two women, both of whom appeared to be only fourteen or fifteen years old, but their cultivation had already reached the Refining Marrow stage.
This once again shocked Lin Ming.
At the age of fourteen or fifteen, he reached the level of practicing zang, a degree that only the children of aristocratic families with superior heavenly gifts in Tianyun Country could achieve.
In a small tribe of over a thousand people, two girls with at least four superior heavenly gifts appeared, plus two warriors who had tempered their bones to the peak, this is too unreasonable.
"Perhaps these four people are also outsiders." Lin Ming guessed in his heart.
Just as Lin Ming noticed these two men in their forties, they also noticed Lin Ming.
The bald big man used Zhenyuan's voice transmission to say to the monkey-faced man: "Big brother, this little guy is in the Easy Tendon period, and it happens to meet our requirements."
The monkey-faced man nodded and said in a true yuan transmission, "Lucky, this little guy looks like he's only 15 or 16 years old. At such a young age, he has such cultivation, I reckon he's the talented son of some big family. This kind of little brat, who is not yet deeply involved in the world and is arrogant, is relatively easy to hook."
"Haha, I'll go call him over in a bit and use him. Once things are taken care of, we can get rid of him. He must have some good stuff on him, and after we rob him, my brothers and I will make a big profit again."
"Let's talk about it after we leave the city. If we call out to him here, people will see us. Who knows what kind of power is backing this kid? If his backers find out, we're both dead for sure."
"Alright, I know." The bald big man licked his lips, seemingly somewhat impatient.
The monkey-faced man licked his lips, turned to the two girls behind him, and smiled slyly at the older one: "Miss Nai, we'll rest in this tribe tonight, and tomorrow we'll trouble you again for directions. Don't worry, as long as we find the Holy Land of the Shaman, I'll let you and your sister go. But if you want to play tricks, hehe, then don't blame us. You may not know that a pair of shaman sisters can sell for a very good price in the Holo country."
The monkey-faced man was lewdly smiling, while the girl named Nai just stared at him with an icy gaze as cold as the nine underworlds. Her younger sister, Nashui, suddenly turned pale.
If it were just Nai herself, she could still fight to the death, but now with her sister added, she had no choice but to submit to these two evil men.
These two girls, older sister Nai fifteen years old, younger sister Nashui fourteen years old, were originally the witches of the Nana clan in southern Xinjiang.
Most of the southern Xinjiang tribes are matriarchal clans, with the highest authority being a woman, known as a shaman.
Most of the southern Xinjiang ethnic groups believe in shamanism, and shamans are considered to be the messengers of the gods, as well as the highest leaders of the tribe.
The shrine maiden is a candidate for the new oracle of the gods.
The position of Miko is not hereditary, but rather a choice made by the shrine maiden, with a complex set of rules.
Two girls were identified as witches at birth, and if nothing unexpected happens, they will enter the sacred place of witches at the age of sixteen to inherit the magical powers of the witches. Later, according to the choice of the witch god, it is determined who will succeed as the next witch messenger.
However, when Nai was fourteen years old, a rare beast tide broke out in the Nai tribe.
The southern border is a barbarous and desolate land, with many ferocious beasts. Sometimes, large-scale beast riots will erupt, which are known as beast tides. In a large-scale beast tide, the number of participating ferocious beasts can reach tens of millions, enough to completely destroy a tribe with a population of one million.
The Na clan was devastated by the beast tide, and the entire clan was scattered. Only one in ten of its people survived.
At this time, the nearby Huo Chi tribe fell into a well and launched an attack on the Na Shi tribe. The Huo Chi tribe believed in Shamanism, which was different from the beliefs of the Na Shi tribe, and there were also conflicts of interest between them, so they had been rubbing against each other.
The Na tribe, which had already been severely damaged in the beast tide, how could it resist the iron hooves of the Huo Chi tribe and was eventually wiped out.
Naina and her sister, as the hope of the Nai tribe, had been sent away before the outbreak of war. However, they were kidnapped by a bald-headed man and a monkey-faced man who took advantage of the chaos, their goal being the sacred place of the Nai tribe's shaman.