A figure disappeared in front of Celestial Maiden Han, who was taking the lead, and she sighed.

It had been three hours since they had entered the forest, and they had not slowed down yet.

They didn’t meet any powerful demonic beasts throughout their journey, but they did notice an increase in the number of Grade 2 beasts around them.

However, Grade 2 beasts didn’t even have the chance to attack the group as they would disappear once they had decided to show up.

“Master-Uncle, how about now? Is that enough?” Celestial Maiden Han asked using telepathy.

“Sorry!” Chen Jingzhai replied. “I need to get used to the formation to ensure nothing would go wrong.”

It was the same reply, and Celestial Maiden Han rolled her eyes. She decided to ignore the young man, who had been using the same excuse over and over again.

Ever since Grade 2 beasts had started to appear, Chen Jingzhai would be the first to react and capture them.

That was the most interesting ability of the Reversed Formation.

As soon as Chen Jingzhai locked on his target with his divine mind, he would activate the formation, then the beast would suddenly appear in front of him for a split second before disappearing once again. Everything happened in the span of two blinks.

People couldn’t help but gasp at first, but Chen Jingzhai made up an excuse saying that he needed to practice the Reversed Formation so that he wouldn’t get rusty when he needed to use it during combat.

However, he did not explain where the beasts had gone and left the rest to speculate on their own.

Most didn’t mind it since the journey was peaceful because of him.

The only problem was that Chen Jingzhai had gone out of his length to even capture all the beasts that were hidden far away from them.

That made Celestial Maiden Han and the rest who were taking the lead frustrated since it felt as though Chen Jingzhai was showing off.

Chen Jingzhai didn’t care what the others were thinking as he was drowning in excitement.

They didn’t run into any danger after entering the forest, but he had noticed a great number of different living things that he had never seen before.

He would use the Reversed Formation to absorb rare beasts into the Primordial Essence World while he would let his Dark-face Humanoid Puppet collect all the graded herbs they came across.

He did all of that to diversify the Primordial Essence World so that it could continue to evolve.

Although the Primordial Essence World had dense Essence Power and vast land, it was lacking in diversity.

Collecting herbs, plants, and beasts was one way to increase its foundation.

At least he had made the trip much more interesting than just plainly rushing towards the exit.

Everyone, including his own clan mates, was shocked when he took the Dark-face Humanoid Puppet out.

Now they were used to the puppet flying all over the place.

Another half an hour had passed, and they had already entered the deeper part of the forest.

The number of demonic beasts had reduced, and they could smell a hint of something rotten from the fog surrounding them.

“Be careful!” Celestial Maiden Han warned everyone through telepathy as it was weird for the fog to occur in the forest. It was a sign that something dangerous was hiding.

Just a few seconds after the warning, a thick trunk flew out of nowhere toward them.

“It’s the barbarians!” the celestial maiden said.

“Don’t kill them. Just knock them out!” Sage Lu Tao quickly reminded.

As long as they didn’t kill a barbarian inside the forest, they could avoid getting chased by the whole barbarian clan.

Although the barbarians were mostly dumb, they would not bite into their prey as long as none of them was killed. On the contrary, if one of them was killed, the one who was responsible would face the wrath of the entire clan.

It wasn’t a small matter, and even Chen Jignzhai would not want to get hunted by an entire clan of barbarians.

The puppet threw a punch and broke the trunk into tiny woodchips.

Miao Fa took the chance and gathered the fog to hide them from the barbarians’ sight.

Once the fog gathered around them, they were quickly hidden from the enemies.

All of them sped up at the same time as if they had talked about it before and roamed even deeper into the forest.

They didn’t alarm any barbarians after that.

After they had left, the barbarians appeared from their hiding. They sniffed but couldn’t sense anything.

With signs of disappointment, they turned to leave.

Everyone was even more cautious after that.

However, any demonic beasts they ran into were all captured by Chen Jingzhai.

Because of that, they didn’t alert the other beasts in the forests.

They were traveling pretty fast, but they still could not avoid a huge battle in the end.

A Poison Fang Tree Boa was a snake beast that had its body covered in deadly poison.

It hid its long body inside the crown of a huge tree, making it look like tree branches to almost everyone. It was disguising itself so perfectly that even the Golden Core Sages did not notice it.

Fortunately, Chen Jingzhai was careful enough to let his puppet explore in front of them, and the puppet managed to attract the boa’s attention, causing the snake to attack the puppet first. If not, the rest of the party would have been in grave danger as the boa was a Grade 3 demonic beast.

The boa could spit toxic spray that could penetrate spiritual-item-graded magic apparel out of its fang. The corrosion effect of the poison could contaminate the spiritual light of a spiritual item as well. It was a hard opponent to deal with.

With the puppet successfully attracting the boa’s attention, it was eventually split into half by Sage Lu Tao’s sharp sword light with the help of other sages.

Once it died, a white-colored rope around the boa disappeared.

Sage Xu started to collect useful ingredients from the boa’s corpse before leaving with the rest of the party.

After four hours since they had entered the forest, they finally arrived at the core of the forest.

Most of the beasts they met after the boa were Grade 2 beasts with Grade 3 beasts appearing from time to time.

No matter how careful and quiet they tried to be, some beasts still spotted them and attacked.

Majority of the ingredients from the beasts’ corpses were gathered by Sage Xu of the Elixer Twilight Clan.

Although the Elixir Twilight Clan was a clan that focused on elixir alchemy, they were also experienced with handling and managing ingredients, and Sage Xu had proven that by proficiently collecting the ingredients.

Chen Jingzhai would only absorb Grade 1 and 2 beasts. It wasn’t as if he could not absorb Grade 3 demonic beasts, but he would not be able to hide the Grotto-heavens divine light if he did that, and others would’ve noticed it.

With a few Golden Core Sages traveling with him, he didn’t want to risk the chance of them finding out about the Primordial Essence World.

He wasn’t interested in the Poison-type beast anyway since it could affect the spirit herbs and plants in the Primordial Essence World.

Due to a lot of reasons, Chen Jingzhai decided to keep a lower profile and refrained from absorbing Grade 3 demonic beasts.

He also stopped collecting other beasts and would only act if there were rare beasts that he had never encountered before.

As time passed, the fog got thicker and visibility was getting lower.

Thankfully, it did not affect the party as the probing bugs had helped them save a lot of energy.

At the fifth hour, the party had already traveled more than 700 kilometers.

However, the end was still nowhere to be seen. It was as if the forest had no end.

The deeper part of the forest was so quiet that even the slightest noise could put anyone on edge.

“This isn’t ideal,” Chen Jingzhai said. “We have to increase our speed.”

The members were starting to feel the pressure due to how quiet the surrounding was.

Chen Jingzhai, along with Kong Guang, Qiao Haisheng, and Wang Yao, was able to handle it, but the female cultivators from the Soaring Clouds Clan and the cultivators from the Elixir Twilight Clan were already at their limits.

Some of them were even getting agitated.

“That’s a good idea. It’s better if we speed up instead of being so stressed all the time.” Celestial Maiden Han nodded in agreement. “However, we have to make sure the Foundation Establishment Plane disciples are well protected. The sages will still take the lead, but they can move a little further away from the party.”

Even if they came prepared with the Mind Calming Elixir, most of the disciples would still be affected. The celestial maiden could see that the party was starting to get tired.

“Let’s do that.” Miao Yun also agreed after pondering for a few seconds.

Their formation changed immediately. Miao Fa, Celestial Maiden Han, and Sage Lu Tao increased their speed by 30% and disappeared into the fog.

The rest also sped up to remain in the vicinity where the Golden Core Sages, who were leading the way, could still sense them.

However, the moment their formation changed, the vines on the floor started to move.

They charged toward the party as if they were a group of snakes, and their targets were Sage Su, Sage Zhao, and Miao Yun. All three were tasked with protecting the disciples.