At this moment, Zhang Ling, sitting on the Xuan Turtle, transformed into a black streak of light, rapidly flying forward.
Every few hundred miles, he would change direction, and after several changes, he was now three to four thousand miles away from Flying Cloud Island.
After another thousand miles, Zhang Ling finally looked relieved. It seemed that the Flying Cloud Sect's elder had not chased after him, and he was finally relieved.
Although the second soul controlled the Xuan Turtle to exert great strength and had successfully sneaked into the Flying Cloud Sect's library not long ago, while also covered in Illusion Mud, its trail was still discovered by a Nascent Soul cultivator's spirit beast.
Zhang Ling thought to himself that the red-haired mink was no ordinary demon beast, and now it seemed that the Xuan Turtle still had a gap compared to a true Nascent Soul cultivator.
However, as the second soul's control over the Xuan Turtle deepened, after fully controlling the Xuan Turtle's body and refining the Xuan Turtle's eighth-order demon core, he should be able to reach the strength of a true transformed demon beast.
After this series of twists and turns, although the Xuan Turtle was not injured, its spiritual power was greatly depleted, consuming more than 40% of its power. After all, it had been trapped not long ago, and then it had solved several insect nests at the cost of its spiritual power.
This was why he shouldn't have stayed on Flying Cloud Island for too long. But now that he had left Flying Cloud Island, it was considered safe.
Flying in the sky, the surroundings were all dim yellow, as if he were in a sandstorm. From time to time, he could see huge turbid mist storms sweeping quickly, with some wild beasts wrapped inside.
The level of turbid air in the air was also equivalent to that of the desolate region. Zhang Ling had long anticipated this situation with turbid mist everywhere. Since the beast tide had reached Flying Cloud Island, he was afraid that Myriad Manifestation City was also not peaceful.
Next, he would have to consider whether to return to Myriad Manifestation City or make other plans.
After flying for another half an hour, he saw a bare deserted island. Zhang Ling directly controlled the Xuan Turtle to land on the island, carved out a secret cave, and temporarily rested.
Inside the simple cave dwelling.
Zhang Ling first had the Xuan Turtle spit out the five insect nests it had swallowed and the thousands of spirit-devouring insects frozen in giant ice. Looking at these things, he became very interested in studying them.
The things that several spirit-devouring insects regarded as insect nests were not ordinary materials. The most dazzling of them was the silver insect nest.
This was a whole piece of Stellar Silver with a diameter of ten feet, roughly spherical, with many small holes bored by the spirit-devouring insects. Although it was frozen by the Xuan Turtle with ice, there were still hundreds of three-colored spirit-devouring insects inside that had not been frozen to death and were constantly devouring the power of the ice.
If left unattended, these spirit-devouring insects would break free in a quarter of an hour. This group of fierce insects devoured spiritual power very quickly.
With a thought, Zhang Ling controlled the Xuan Turtle to open its mouth and suck, directly sucking the icy power on the Stellar Silver into its mouth.
Buzzing sounds entered his ears, and hundreds of three-colored spirit-devouring insects flew out from inside.
He was prepared, and with a series of finger flicks, he shot out streams of Heavy Yuan Profound Light, and immediately a layer of bright yellow spiritual light lit up in the cave, covering the spirit-devouring insects that flew out.
The speed at which these spirit-devouring insects flew immediately slowed down by more than half, as if snails were crawling, slowly fanning their wings in the air. But after a dozen breaths, these three-colored spirit-devouring insects emitted a gray-black solidified light, gradually breaking free.
Zhang Ling keenly sensed that the spiritual power released by the Profound Light was being devoured at an alarming rate. He thought to himself that they were indeed a group of fierce insects. If he could control these fierce insects, it would definitely be a great weapon.
If he could control these fierce insects, even if he could only control a thousand of them, they could play a significant role. However, once the spirit-devouring insects were controlled, they seemed to lose their spirituality and would die on their own soon after. This was a bit of a pity.
Zhang Ling couldn't help but sigh and controlled the Xuan Turtle to release another burst of icy power, freezing the spirit-devouring insects that flew out into a block of ice first.
Next, he dealt with the other four insect nests in the same way, releasing all the spirit-devouring insects that had not died inside and freezing them in blocks of giant ice.
In fact, only three insect nests were processed. One of the earthy-yellow rock insect nests had been shattered by the Xuan Turtle's attack, leaving only some broken insect corpses and no living spirit insects.
This insect nest looked like some kind of earthy-yellow rock, gathering a large amount of spiritual power, and it was still pure earth spiritual power, but it was not very hard.
It also seemed to be some kind of spirit mine. Zhang Ling carefully scanned it a few times and felt as if he had seen it in some book, but he couldn't remember it for a moment. Now he had plenty of time to study it. He patted his storage bag and took out several books and jade slips, immersing his mind in them and searching.
After a while, Zhang Ling found the information about this earthy-yellow rock and chuckled to himself.
"So it's Earth Rock Essence."
This was a kind of earth attribute material, but it was not a natural material, but a rare special material.
In the cultivation world, there were some demon beasts and spirit insects that liked to eat rocks and soil. They might give birth to this material in their bodies after swallowing earth and rocks for a long time.
It was said that some Beast Control Sects specialized in raising demon beasts that swallowed earth and rocks to condense this material.
However, these materials were also quite precious. Only high-level demon beasts could condense them. It was said that a fifth-order Earth Rock Beast could only give birth to a piece of Earth Rock Crystal the size of a fist in its body in thirty years at most.
The most important use of Earth Rock Essence was to repair magic weapons. In fact, earth attribute materials were also the most gentle materials among the five elements of spiritual energy. For some magic weapons that clashed with water and fire, earth attribute materials would be used to reconcile them. Earth Rock Essence could reconcile most attribute spiritual powers and was the best material for repairing magic weapons.
Looking at the Earth Rock Essence that had been broken into several pieces in front of him, the total weight was also tens of thousands of pounds.
With a wave of his hand, Zhang Ling sacrificed the Two Forms Gourd, and a cloud of Qingbai Qi floated out and directly sucked all the Earth Rock Essence into it.
In addition to repairing magic weapons, this material was also a material for refining earth attribute magic weapons, which could be used to enhance his second natal magic weapon.
His Heavenly Star Sand was originally made of a large number of gold and earth attribute demon cores. Its core was even a special Yao Stone. Absorbing these Earth Rock Essences would definitely enhance the power of the Heavenly Star Sand.
The other three insect nests that were still intact were not ordinary materials either.
A black-green boulder covered with insect holes, with some crooked dark gold lines on it.
This boulder was five or six feet in size. Although it had been hollowed out by the spirit-devouring insects, its overall weight was not light. Zhang Ling weighed it and found that it weighed at least fifty to sixty thousand pounds.
According to the lines and weight on it, Zhang Ling immediately recognized that it was a large piece of Gold Green Stone spirit mine, which was also a good refining material.
The value of Gold Green Stone was not as good as Stellar Silver, but it was also extremely rare. Such a large piece was enough to refine more than ten high-quality magic weapons.
However, this material was used to refine some heavy magic weapons such as gold bricks and stone seals. Flying swords and flying knives rarely added this material.
Another insect nest was a gray-white skull, roughly maintaining its original shape. It could be seen that the skull was from a large feline animal. According to the remaining spiritual power on it, the original owner of the skull was at least at the peak of the seventh rank.
However, there were many bite marks on it. Although it still maintained a certain spirituality, it could only be used as an auxiliary material at most.
The last insect nest was an oval black-green jade stone with a size of more than twenty feet. It was the largest of several insect nests and exuded a strong wood attribute spiritual power.
The texture on it also presented a certain wood grain, which looked like a piece of amber. It was also bored with many holes by the spirit-devouring insects.
However, it was filled with black-brown small balls, with a number of hundreds. They were only the size of a thumb, and it could be felt that most of them exuded vitality. These were obviously the eggs of spirit-devouring insects.
Suddenly, Zhang Ling waved his hand and shot out a yellow spiritual power, pulling out a watermelon-sized black insect egg from it. Holding it in his hand, there was a warm feeling, and at the same time, there was a heartbeat-like sound, but it was very weak.
This insect egg had many circular black and white patterns and was very different from other insect eggs. Not only was it more than ten times larger, but the traces of life on it were also very strong.
Could this be the queen of the spirit-devouring insects? Zhang Ling guessed in his heart.
He did not find any spirit-devouring insects like the queen in the five insect nests he obtained. Generally speaking, group-living demon insects have a queen or insect king.
However, no cultivator could say for sure whether there was a queen of spirit-devouring insects.
In ancient times, spirit-devouring insects were rare. In the Flowing Cloud Sea cultivation world, it seemed that there had only been three or four spirit-devouring insect swarms in tens of thousands of years.
The largest insect plague occurred when the number of spirit-devouring insects exceeded ten million, which once destroyed many areas.
Moreover, this kind of fierce insect could not be tamed, so basically no one could understand the whole picture of spirit-devouring insects. They only knew that they had the supernatural power to quickly devour all kinds of spiritual power.
Looking at the special insect egg in his hand, Zhang Ling did not know whether it was the queen of the spirit-devouring insects or a mutated insect egg.
With a turn of mind, he smiled and directly put the giant insect egg back into the jade stone. With a wave of his hand, he took out a few spirit talismans and pasted them on it, temporarily sealing the jade stone.
He took out a black spirit beast bag and put the special jade stone, along with the insect eggs inside, into it.
He observed this jade stone for a while and did not recognize what material it was, but the wood spiritual power emitted from it was extremely strong and it was not an ordinary material.
It was not too late to study it later when there was a chance.
Next, Zhang Ling began to deal with the Gold Green Stone and Stellar Silver. These two spirit mines were both good refining materials, but they were only raw ore and had to be processed first.
At the same time, many high-level wild beasts collected in the beast tide also had to be dealt with.
In a blink of an eye, Zhang Ling stayed on the deserted island for more than half a month.
The Stellar Silver and the Gold Green Stone were both quenched by him with Dan fire. But he had not figured out what magic weapon to refine with these two rare materials.
He had many magic weapons in his hand, and there were several ancient treasures, so he was not short of magic weapons. This matter was not urgent, so he put it aside for now.
As for the high-level demon beast materials obtained from resisting the three waves of beast tide on Flying Cloud Island, there were also many. There were more than thirty demon cores alone. Among them, there were six seventh-order demon cores, plus he had hunted many high-level wild beasts in the Tianyuan before. There were also some demon cores collected when refining Heavenly Star Sandstone and entering and leaving the wilderness.
In total, there were now hundreds of high-level demon cores in his hand. The value of these alone was immeasurable. He was afraid that even Nascent Soul cultivators would be envious of his current wealth.
These demon cores were enough for him to use for a long time, whether for alchemy or refining treasures.
In these ten days, Zhang Ling also studied the spirit-devouring insects. This kind of fierce insect was indeed difficult to control.
In fact, it was possible to control them forcibly, but the number would not be too large, at most only two or three hundred. Once more than a thousand were forcibly controlled, commanding them to fight would put a great burden on his own divine sense.
In a short period of time, it would consume most of his divine sense, which was extremely uneconomical in battle. Once a cultivator's divine sense was over-consumed, their state would decline. There would even be feelings of dizziness and headaches.
This was not like his control of the earth spirit bee, where he only needed to control a few queen bees to drive tens of thousands of earth spirit bees, which basically did not consume much divine sense.
But thinking about it, there must have been many cultivators who were proficient in insect control who had the idea of this kind of fierce insect since ancient times, but the conclusion was that they were difficult to tame. There seemed to be no other way except to forcibly control them.
Zhang Ling also extinguished the plan to control this group of fierce insects.
However, the spirit-devouring insects still had a lot of research value, so he also controlled all the insect eggs in the dark green jade stone through the insect control secret technique after dripping blood essence into them.
Especially the giant insect egg, which had a strong resistance consciousness when controlled, was very unusual.
In the divine sense induction, the life breath of this special insect egg was much stronger than other insect eggs. He did not know whether it would hatch into a queen or a special spirit-devouring insect.
Zhang Ling couldn't wait to get up. The Xuan Turtle had also swallowed the scattered spirit-devouring insects before, and the total number was six or seven thousand, basically all two-winged spirit-devouring insects, and many of the three-colored spirit-devouring insects that flew out of the Stellar Silver.
These were not larvae. Since they could not be controlled, their value was not great. He directly killed all these evolved spirit-devouring insects. The remaining insect corpses were not wasted and were thrown into his cultivated earth spirit bee colony to be devoured by the earth spirit bees.
However, the difference between the earth spirit bee and the spirit-devouring insect was too great, and the swallowing was extremely slow.
On this day, Zhang Ling was holding a black jade slip in the cave and studying it carefully. It recorded the cloud gathering technique when condensing Devouring Cloud Stones.
After leaving Flying Cloud Island, he had the second soul imprint the cloud gathering technique in the jade slip. Through half a month of careful study, this was indeed a set of formations. Only by refining the cloud gathering formation and cooperating with the Flying Cloud Flag could the effect of collecting cloud gas and condensing Devouring Cloud Stones be achieved.
In fact, there were two refining methods for the cloud gathering formation in this secret technique, a complete version of the cloud gathering formation and a simplified version.
After reading the materials required for the complete version, Zhang Ling basically did not consider it. Because the materials to be used were too precious, even if he was wealthy, it would be difficult to refine them.
Moreover, the complete cloud gathering formation had to be arranged in an area with rich cloud gas, preferably relying on the spiritual energy of the earth veins, like the Qiyun Mountain of the Flying Cloud Sect, a giant peak of ten thousand feet, which was the most suitable. It was a large formation, and at least twelve Flying Cloud Flags had to be used to fully activate the formation.
