Chapter 68: Chapter 68

The night owl that Gabby had transformed into merely circled once above the Gentleman Orchid's head. In that instant, the two leaf swords in the Gentleman Orchid's hands continuously stabbed upward, and amid Gabby's panicked cries, one leaf sword almost pierced her, severing two of her flight feathers.

At the same time, Locke also seized this opportunity to find the Gentleman Orchid's hidden true root system in the darkness.

The Gentleman Orchid was a carnivorous magical plant, equivalent to a bird of prey in the plant kingdom, attacking and preying upon anything that moved.

There were two ways to deal with it. The first was to directly destroy it with brute force.

Without a first-class wizard apprentice controlling it, the Gentleman Orchid's threat level was only equivalent to some second-class wizard apprentices with deeper mana reserves. For Locke, it was relatively easy to handle.

But doing so would destroy this precious magical plant.

The second method was to find its true root system and extract it from the soil.

The Gentleman Orchid's visible roots were merely false roots used for maintaining its upright position and making small movements, and couldn't actually transport nutrients. Its true root system was hidden away. As long as the true roots were excavated, this magical plant would enter a state of suspended animation and cease all activity.

Locke moved quickly, softly chanting an incantation. Three plant hands formed by vine branches simultaneously extended, drilling into the rocky ground like drill bits, then growing along the rock crevices to find where the Gentleman Orchid's true roots were anchored deepest, carefully excavating them without damaging the root system.

"This Gentleman Orchid's true root system actually extends twenty-one meters deep. This Gentleman Orchid has been growing here for quite some time." Locke raised his eyebrows. If his mana hadn't already approached the level of a first-class wizard apprentice, he might not have been able to excavate it without damaging the true root system.

With a "clang" sound, the three slender vines of the Level 6 Mandrake Vines turned over large amounts of sandy soil and rocks, while also exposing the Gentleman Orchid's true root system, which was only as thick as a baby's finger.

At the same moment, the Gentleman Orchid shut down like a computer with its plug pulled, immediately entering an offline state. The entire Gentleman Orchid drooped down like a person hunched over, standing in place.

Even its orchid leaves automatically entered a dehydrated state, with the edges curling inward.

Locke chanted an incantation and carefully used Green Grasp, employing the branches and leaves of the Mandrake Vines to wrap around it, then lifted it up and placed it behind himself, carrying it along as he walked.

The owl that Gabby had transformed into landed on the ground and returned to her human female form.

"Senior, that was really dangerous just now." Gabby had a somewhat frightened expression on her face, and the hem of her wizard robe was torn, apparently because the Gentleman Orchid had just pierced the flight feathers of her owl transformation. "I didn't expect that just a wild magical plant could be so dangerous."

Locke nodded slightly and said, "Most of the magical plants in the Ashgra Mountains are semi-wild, degraded varieties, but the Gentleman Orchid is a rare magical plant of a different grade."

Gabby said with some joy, "But fortunately, we should have found the source of the plague in Ashgra City."

Locke and Gabby walked along the bank of this underground river for about fifty meters, reaching the place where the group of rats had gathered.

These rats were almost all parasitized by fungi. When Locke approached, those rats all turned their heads to look at Locke in unison.

They actually seemed to be actively approaching.

Moreover, the special fragrance belonging to the Corrupt Soil Taro became even more concentrated here.

But before this group of rats could get close, they suddenly let out increasingly shrill cries upon seeing Locke, and the entire rat colony formed a whirlpool-like pattern.

After half a minute of chaos, this group of rats scattered and began fleeing in all directions, emitting piercing screams.

Gabby looked somewhat shocked, staring wide-eyed at Locke standing beside her. "Senior... you... you..."

An invisible pressure was emanating from Locke's body, continuous, stable, and powerful.

Even though she was just standing beside Locke, every inch of her skin felt as if it was being pushed outward.

Locke alone was a powerful source of magical radiation directed outward.

Gabby had heard of this, after all, she had remained at the second-class wizard apprentice stage for almost ten years.

Those senior students who had once made her envious, after becoming first-class wizard apprentices, would undergo special changes. This was a special soul structure that would only begin to appear at the first-class wizard apprentice stage—magical pressure.

Overly powerful mana, surrounding the wizard apprentice's soul shell, formed a special magical pressure field that would naturally create special pressure on the surroundings at all times.

Wizards called this magical pressure.

First-class wizard apprentices had to receive special training to retract this magical pressure during normal times, otherwise ordinary people would just lose lifespan by standing beside them! They wouldn't live long!

Gabby said enviously, "Senior, you... congratulations."

"I didn't expect that you would break through to become a first-class wizard apprentice in such a place, Senior. I've seen the senior students at the academy all break through in safer environments within the academy."

Locke nodded slightly. He had taken the Crimson Echo Potion for more than three days now, and the medicinal effects were indeed almost fully absorbed.

However, the current side effect, vampire syndrome, still hadn't disappeared.

After his mana officially broke through the 200 threshold, his mana had become even more violent. Even the Deep Blue Jades he wore on his left hand completely shattered at this moment, causing Locke to feel a faint surge of violent emotion.

Locke suppressed this emotional rage caused by the side effects and said, "Let's go. Those rats have all fled under my magical pressure."

"This makes things much more convenient."

Gabby said, "Yes, Senior."

Locke and Gabby walked to the front of the Corrupt Soil Taro.

A patch of taros had bloomed here, but essentially, there was only one plant. This one had simply grown well and appeared to have many branches.

"It really is Corrupt Soil Taro. As long as we remove this taro, the plague in Ashgra City will disappear on its own." Locke said, "Essentially, that plague was nothing more than this taro wanting to reproduce and deliberately using rodents to cause a plague."

"However, Corrupt Soil Taro cannot successfully reproduce on its own in natural environments, so this was futile."

Locke looked at a set of white bones wearing wizard robes among this pile of taros. "This should be the reason why this Corrupt Soil Taro and that Gentleman Orchid grew in this place."

Gabby looked at the white bones with some unease. "Senior Locke, I always feel that those remains are ominous."

Locke examined the corpse and said, "Yes, these are the remains of a first-class wizard apprentice. After a first-class wizard apprentice dies, their magical pressure will continue for a very long time, continuously creating special pressure on the surrounding environment. Even now, his bones are still surrounded by some of his magical pressure, continuously releasing radiation outward, which is why you feel strange."

"The badge on his wizard robe is..."

It was a green circular ring.

Locke remembered, "This is the symbol of the Green Ring Society."

Gabby asked puzzledly, "Senior, I've never heard of this wizard organization. There shouldn't be such a wizard organization nearby."

Locke said, "It's normal that you don't know. The Green Ring Society has already disbanded due to the Abyssal Plant Catastrophe caused by their breeder experiments going out of control."

"He should have died somewhere else on the surface, but his corpse somehow entered the underground river and arrived here through the complex underground river system. The seeds or seedlings of the Gentleman Orchid and Corrupt Soil Taro should have fallen here along with his corpse."

Locke began to think. "No wonder the Corrupt Soil Taro could grow in a natural environment. It turns out it used the corpse of a first-class wizard apprentice as fertilizer."

"This is quite an extravagant thing."

A first-class wizard apprentice was considered precious wealth in any academy in the southeastern quadrant.

Unlike second-class wizard apprentices who could serve as assistants and do work, first-class wizard apprentices could generally already independently produce some small achievements.

They could handle more complex magical resources, they could form joint magical rituals, and they could even cause some trouble for formal wizards.

Therefore, sacrificing a first-class wizard apprentice to feed a Corrupt Soil Taro was definitely a losing proposition.

Just to cultivate a first-class wizard apprentice, an academy would spend countless resources. And it wasn't just spending resources on this apprentice themselves.

They also had to spend resources on the hundreds of other second and third-class wizard apprentices who entered the academy in order to find and select this one person.

Locke saw some withered and blackened seeds beside the white bones, which might be seeds of other magical plants that this corpse had brought, but they had failed to grow successfully.

After a preliminary examination, Locke also saw a brass ring on the palm of the white bones. The surface of the brass ring was engraved with a line of text: "Astral Ring."

Locke looked at this ring and was stunned for a moment, then delighted.

The Astral Ring was one of the masterpieces of alchemy—a spatial storage ring.

This type of ring cleverly connected to a space in the astral plane, possessing both convenience and extremely high security.

Because the astral plane was a high-dimensional plane that wizards found very difficult to enter, placing things in an independent space in the astral plane was very safe.

Astral Rings were storage items that could only be crafted by formal wizard-level alchemists.

Among all the apprentice-level wizards at Lilith's Cottage, probably very few could own such an expensive item.

But now, he had actually found one.

Locke picked up the Astral Ring and input his mana into it. Perhaps because the original owner had been dead for too long, the personal spiritual imprint input into this Astral Ring had completely disappeared.

Therefore, when Locke input his mana into it, he encountered no obstacles and imprinted his own spirituality into it, making it his own item.

Each Astral Ring was equivalent to an astral projection entrance.

Through this ring, Locke saw a space about the size of a room.

Sasari's Universal Studies class had mentioned that the astral plane was a special plane that wizards often borrowed from in high-level spells.

It had many special properties. One was that it had no concept of time, so placing items within it would not undergo any state changes. Whatever went in would come out exactly the same.

Second, the astral plane had many natural projection entrances located in the main material plane, which was the space where the southeastern quadrant existed.

Wizards would collect the ores that carried these natural projection entrances and process them through alchemy to create Astral Rings.

Of course, because the astral plane had no time flow and things within it would neither age nor grow, magical fields could not be placed in the astral plane. Moreover, the astral plane contained many things completely different from the main material plane.

It was filled with various unknown mysteries.

According to Sasari, there was once a first-class wizard apprentice at Lilith's Cottage who was about to die of old age and experimented on himself. Before dying of age, he voluntarily entered the astral plane, hoping to survive using the astral plane's special properties.

After entering, he indeed initially maintained his state without further aging, but he still died within it after several years.

Sasari said this might be because although the astral plane had no concept of time flow, things from the main material plane inherently possessed this concept, so even leaving the main material plane was useless. When lifespan reached its limit, death was still inevitable.

Locke immediately placed the Gentleman Orchid he had harvested earlier into this Astral Ring.

Then he also placed the remaining skeleton of the Green Ring Society's first-class wizard apprentice into the Astral Ring.

Although Locke didn't know what use this thing might have, a complete skeleton of a first-class wizard apprentice was relatively rare, so it was better to keep it.

He turned around and began searching for the main body of the Corrupt Soil Taro.

Among the patch of taro offshoots, Locke used Vine Hand and Multiple Manipulation to dig out the main taro body with its roots and placed it into the Astral Ring.

In the Astral Ring, there was no concept of time flow, so he didn't worry that transplanting two rare magical plants into it would cause any damage.

Moreover, these two magical plants only had harsh conditions during their growth and reproduction phases, but once they had matured, they possessed strong vitality and weren't easily killed.

After Locke transplanted the main body of the Corrupt Soil Taro, this entire patch of taro offshoots wilted like withered flowers, becoming listless and rapidly dying.

At the same time, the concentration of special fungi that the Corrupt Soil Taro secreted into the air was also rapidly decreasing.

This way, the plague in Ashgra City would quickly recede.

Having lost the source of fungal transmission, the symptoms on those patients would gradually disappear.

Locke took out a bottle of Narcissus Antidote from his pocket and handed it to Gabby, saying, "Gabby, although we have mana and aren't easily affected by the Corrupt Soil Taro's fungi, just to be safe, you should still drink a bottle of antidote."

Gabby was flattered. "Thank you... Senior."

Locke glanced at her. "I really must thank you for this time. I can't let you go without any gains. Consider this me hiring you. I'll pay you a hiring fee of seventy magic stones. How does that sound?"

For his current self, magic stones weren't that precious anymore, and Gabby had indeed helped him in some ways during this matter, which was why Locke offered this price.

Compared to the now wealthy Locke, Gabby, a truly poor second-class wizard apprentice, was momentarily stunned upon hearing Locke's offer.

The academy investigation task only gave her a mere twenty-five magic stones as compensation.

But Locke had given her seventy magic stones in one go.

Twenty-five plus seventy—this was almost enough for her to luxuriously purchase meditation supplies for more than half a month straight.

Gabby's breathing became slightly rapid. "Senior, you... you're really too generous. Good, good." Googlᴇ search Nov3lFɪre.ɴet

Locke said, "Besides that, I need you to keep this secret. Don't casually talk about what you've seen."

Although what Gabby had seen wasn't particularly important.

But Locke didn't want just anyone to know that he had obtained the Corrupt Soil Taro and Gentleman Orchid.

Moreover, Gabby had seen some of his spell information.

For wizards, information was power.

Of course, he had never used the invisibility ability of the Level 6 Mandrake Vines in front of Gabby, nor had he used his ancient creature bloodline trump card.

She didn't know much.

After all, he was a white wizard, not a psychopath. He couldn't possibly kill someone to silence them over such a small matter. That would be ridiculous.

Gabby said seriously, "Senior, you can trust me. I absolutely won't tell anyone."

"This is the survival method for people like us."

Gabby looked at Locke with a slightly fawning expression, as if looking at a wealthy patron. "Senior, if you need me for anything in the future, please call on me. We shapeshifters have outstanding reconnaissance abilities."

Locke nodded. "We'll see when the time comes."

A shapeshifter could indeed play unique roles in certain situations.

Gabby said, "Yes, Senior."