Time flew by like a white steed flitting past a crevice; summer went and autumn came.
In the tunnel, Fang Yuan stood once again in front of the giant rock blocking the path.
Because the weather was gradually turning cold, he had put on plain clothes with long sleeves. However, his physique was no longer as thin and emaciated as it was a few months ago.
On his chest, arms, legs, and abdomen, muscle groups were clearly visible.
These muscles did not bulge out like rocks but presented a streamlined form. Paired with Fang Yuan's gradually increasing height and fair skin, it gave people a feeling of youthfulness filled with vitality.
"Starting from three days ago, the White Boar Gu could no longer increase my strength. That is to say, I already possess the strength of one boar, which can be considered achieving the Flower Wine Monk's goal. Today, I will push this round rock again!"
A sharp light flashed in Fang Yuan's eyes. He stepped forward with his right leg, his left leg behind, forming a bow stance.
He placed both hands on the surface of the round rock, took a deep breath, and pushed fiercely with force.
Under the pushing of his hands, the giant rock first moved extremely slowly, then gradually started to mobilize, and finally slowly rolled forward.
The path blocked by the giant rock was a tunnel sloping upwards. The round rock, processed into a spherical shape by the Flower Wine Monk, was most suitable for rolling. Presumably, this was also his intention, wanting the inheritor to push the round rock and roll it up.
"Ten steps, twenty steps, thirty steps…" Fang Yuan calculated silently in his heart while pushing forward step by step. "Last week, I pushed for forty-five steps before my physical strength ran out, and I had to give up. This time, I wonder how far I can push?"
Forty steps, forty-five steps…
A moment later, Fang Yuan broke through his original record. But he was also tired enough to choke.
Forty-six steps, forty-seven steps…
Fang Yuan clearly felt that at this stage, his own physical stamina had very little left.
Forty-eight, forty-nine steps…
He roused his remaining strength and moved forward another two steps. Finally, he could walk no further; his whole body was covered in heavy sweat. After pressing against the round rock with his shoulder and legs, he fiercely gasped for a few breaths of coarse air.
"Should I give up?" Fang Yuan couldn't help but think this thought. This was an upward-sloping tunnel; on his way back, he would also have to consume quite a bit of stamina. After all, the round rock still had to roll down, and during this process, he still had to brace against it.
If he directly let go and ran, the round rock would roll faster and faster. He did not want to be unable to dodge in time and be crushed into a puddle of meat paste by the round rock.
But after thinking about it, Fang Yuan felt somewhat unwilling. Let's push a few more steps.
The fiftieth step.
He suddenly felt the pressure from the giant rock lighten abruptly. It turned out the giant rock had rolled onto a flat platform step.
Fang Yuan pushed a few more steps, bypassed the giant rock, and discovered he had arrived in a secret room.
This secret room was about the same size as the rock crack secret cave. Fang Yuan tentatively named it the Second Secret Room.
The secret room was empty of objects. The four walls were also made of that strange crimson earth, emitting a dim red light. On the other side of the secret room was a rough gray stone door. It should be a work created in haste by the Flower Wine Monk.
Fang Yuan rested for a while and did not immediately push open the stone door, having made a new discovery instead.
He discovered that a patch of ground in front of the stone door looked damp.
"Could it be…" A thought instantly surfaced in Fang Yuan's mind. He squatted down, extended both hands, and pushed aside the loose and moist soil.
A second Earth Treasury Flower!
Fang Yuan gave a loud, clear laugh, carefully pushed aside the petals, and took out the Gu worm soaked in the golden flower liquid.
With an urge of primeval essence, he refined it in an instant.
This was a Jade Skin Gu. Its appearance was like a stinkbug, flat and wide, with a very small head. Its pale green body presented an oval shape, emitting a layer of jade-colored halo.
"After I obtained the White Boar Gu, I was still pondering where to get another Jade Skin Gu so that I could refine them together to advance into the White Jade Gu. I didn't expect the Flower Wine Monk to have already prepared it for me." Fang Yuan's thoughts turned like lightning, pondering the impact brought by this Jade Skin Gu.
This was already Fang Yuan's sixth Gu worm.
Previously, although he had five Gu worms, none could be used for defense. With the Jade Skin Gu, he finally filled the loophole in his defense.
Sometimes, defense often implied offense.
This was not hard to understand. Taking Fang Yuan himself as an example, through the White Boar Gu, his strength had risen to the strength of one boar. logically speaking, such strength could allow him to smash a relatively soft rock with one punch, yet Fang Yuan had never done so.
Because he knew his defensive power was insufficient. If he punched down, the rock would break, but his fist would also be bloody and mangled.
Now, with the defense of the Jade Skin Gu, he could fully unleash the advantages of his strength.
Of course, the impact had a good side and also a terrible side.
The Jade Skin Gu had high value, and its defensive performance was among the best of Rank one Gu worms. But it was not easy to feed; it had to swallow two taels of jade stones every ten days.
The market price of jade stones was relatively expensive, but setting that aside, the key was the issue of the source.
Fang Zheng also had a Jade Skin Gu, but he had the clan head supporting him from behind, supplying him with jade stones. For Fang Yuan to obtain jade stones, he could only purchase them, but this would too easily give the game away.
"Originally, feeding the White Boar Gu required me to kill wild boars regularly, which was already quite troublesome. Now that I have this Jade Skin Gu, is it telling me to go everywhere to mine?" Fang Yuan gave a wry smile; a new problem was placed before him.
Storing the Jade Skin Gu properly and temporarily nourishing it within the aperture in his body, Fang Yuan slowly pushed open the stone door.
The stone door was heavy; if Fang Yuan did not have the White Boar Gu to enhance his strength, he definitely would not have been able to push it. But now, under the light push of Fang Yuan's hands, this stone door slowly opened.
The scene outside the door unfolded before Fang Yuan, and his vision widened abruptly!
This place was no longer a narrow tunnel or a secret cave, but a spacious underground stone forest.
Fang Yuan gauged it slightly; just a preliminary estimation led to the conclusion that the area of this underground stone forest was at least over thirty mu! On Earth, a standard soccer field was only about eleven mu.
"I should currently be inside the mountain body of Qingmao Mountain. This space should be naturally formed." Fang Yuan looked up at the surrounding stone walls.
The stone walls of this space were all over sixteen meters high, and the top was naturally also a stone wall.
From the ceiling wall, gigantic dark red stone pillars hung down one by one. Each stone pillar emitted a faint red light, as did the surrounding stone walls. Just like the tunnel and the secret cave, although the light in the space was dim, it was enough for Fang Yuan to see some things clearly.
Fang Yuan looked over; the stone pillars one by one were like upside-down growing trees, stripped of branches, leaving only solitary trunks.
The surface of the stone pillars was not smooth, but filled with one black, deep small hole after another. Countless stone pillars, large at the top and small at the bottom, hung down, forming an inverted intra-mountain stone forest.
Nature was just capable of such uncanny workmanship.
Fang Yuan was knowledgeable and experienced, so he was not surprised. He merely stared tightly at these black holes on the stone pillars, his brows furrowing tighter and tighter.
He understood somewhat the Flower Wine Monk's intention in arranging the Jade Skin Gu.
"If my expectations aren't wrong…" Fang Yuan flipped his right hand and shot out a moonblade.
The eerie blue moonblade drew a straight line of light in the air, shooting into a black hole on a stone pillar with incomparable precision.
Sharp and angry screeches instantly transmitted from the black hole.
With a whoosh, a gray monkey rushed out from the hole, suddenly pouncing towards Fang Yuan.
Swish swish swish.
Fang Yuan fired three moonblades in succession.
The monkey could not leverage force in the air, but its tail was extremely agile to the extreme. Swinging it repeatedly, it actually drove its body to somersault in mid-air. After avoiding two moonblades, it was finally hit by the third moonblade. With a thump, it fell to the ground, devoid of breath.
When it died, it unexpectedly did not shed a single drop of blood.
One could only see the gray body suddenly petrify, turning from a body of flesh and blood into a stone monkey statue in an instant.
The posture of the statue and the expression on its face were exactly like the appearance of the monkey when it fell to the ground before dying, remarkably true to life.
Two breaths later, the surface of the stone monkey emitted crisp cracking sounds. Cracks quickly covered its entire body from the inside out, and then with a crash, it shattered from a complete shape into pieces of small stones.
"It really is the underground beast group, Jade Eye Stone Monkeys." Fang Yuan approached, squatted down, pushed aside the pile of gravel, and took out two emerald green round pearls from within. These two round pearls were the two eyeballs of the Jade Eye Stone Monkey.
After this peculiar creature died, its entire body would turn into gray gravel; only its pair of eyeballs would form two emerald jade pearls. Each jade pearl was extremely heavy, weighing at least one tael.
This meant that as long as he killed the Jade Eye Stone Monkeys, the food problem for the Jade Skin Gu could be resolved.
"But I not only need to feed the Jade Skin Gu, I also need to continue inheriting the Flower Wine Monk's inheritance. The clue for the next step of the Flower Wine Monk's inheritance should be somewhere in this stone forest."
Fang Yuan frowned tightly; this matter was troublesome.
He attempted to advance a few steps, his gaze closely monitoring the stone pillars.
When he walked to the seventh step, on the stone pillar nearest to him, pairs of glowing green eyes gradually lit up inside the densely packed stone holes.
Instantly, a drop of cold sweat flowed down from Fang Yuan's forehead.
He hurriedly retracted his foot, and the countless glowing green eyes in the small black holes dimmed again.
Evidently, every pair of eyes represented a Jade Eye Stone Monkey.
The Jade Eye Stone Monkey was incomparably agile; Fang Yuan used four moonblades successively just to kill one.
On a single stone pillar, at least over a hundred Jade Eye Stone Monkeys resided. And in the entire stone forest, who knew how many such monkeys there were.
With Fang Yuan's current strength, if he encountered an encirclement by four monkeys, he would meet a hateful end. If calculating the defense of the Jade Skin Gu, Fang Yuan alone could at most contend with twelve Jade Eye Stone Monkeys.
However, fortunately, these monkeys usually slept in the black holes. When hungry or thirsty, they gnawed on the rocks beside them. The stone pillars were both their home and their food. Unless one approached them within ten meters or actively provoked them, they would not come out.
Using Earth terms to describe it, it was a group of shut-in monkeys.