Chapter 294: Rewards for Merit, Great Salt Lake Crisis
Hongmei was very excited to have obtained a life-defining artifact that was beyond her imagination.
She had an extraordinary mind, not comparable to that of ordinary people, and she quickly calmed down.
The same went for Cao Yongxiang. After the surprise, he calmed down.
The two of them, together with Li Dingguo, immediately discussed the plan for attacking and developing the area outside the Wuding River Pass.
After the three of them made some detailed improvements to the major action plan, Cao Yongxiang and Hongmei left with a copy of the plan respectively.
According to this plan, Hongmei will go to the source of Wuding River to take charge.
Cao Yongxiang served as the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary army of this major plan, responsible for all combat missions in the basin outside the Wuding River.
At this point, Cao Yongxiang officially became one of the three military heads of the Fuxing Army.
Such appointment arrangements are also very necessary.
It is impossible for Li Dingguo to go to the front line to command every battle as he is too busy to do so.
With Cao Yongxiang's current level of cultivation and war experience, his abilities in all aspects are already qualified.
Now he is capable of leading the Azure Dragon Legion to stand on his own.
After the two left, Li Dingguo also walked out of the hall and came to the roots of the Five-Colored Sacred Tree. He looked at the little golden dragon who was still sleeping soundly on the trunk and couldn't help shaking his head.
After the little golden dragon broke out of its shell, it played with Li Dingguo for a while, had a big meal, and then lay on the five-colored sacred tree to sleep.
It was not an ordinary sleep, but a deep sleep like falling into a slumber, and he never woke up.
Since it fell asleep, its true size was revealed, a huge body that was more than three meters long and as thick as a bucket.
"what?"
Li Dingguo suddenly discovered that something was wrong with the little golden dragon. "From my perspective, the little golden dragon's body is more than three meters long now."
"This should be at least four or five meters, right?"
Seeing this scene, Li Dingguo was surprised and happy.
The special life energy emanating from the five-colored sacred tree is surprisingly so helpful to the growth of the little golden dragon!
Although according to legend, an adult dragon is at least a hundred feet long and of terrifying size.
Now seeing that the little golden dragon's growth rate was completely beyond common sense, Li Dingguo was naturally surprised and happy.
The little golden dragon does not need to reach adulthood. It only needs to break through to the peak of level six within ten years.
At that time, it would undoubtedly be of great help to Li Dingguo.
He turned around and left, using his physical skills to fly around, wanting to check out the changes that had taken place on the island in the middle of the lake.
Ever since the five-colored sacred tree took root and grew on the island in the middle of the lake, converging to form a large spiritual vein, the island has been growing taller and larger as if it had come alive.
Today, the base camp of the Renaissance Army, the Lake Heart Island, has a radius of hundreds of miles. It is estimated that in a few years, its size may exceed that of Lingshan Island.
The key point is that no matter how it grows, the outside world cannot see it!
This is quite magical.
Under the magical effect of the five-colored sacred tree, this island in the middle of the lake seemed to exist in an alien space, and gradually took shape as the prototype of a paradise.
This is the magic of the top-level innate spiritual roots.
In myths and legends, wherever innate spiritual roots grow, a paradise will naturally form.
The difference is that the place where the top-grade innate spiritual roots grow will evolve into a cave that is a small world of its own.
The places where the upper, middle and lower grades of innate spiritual roots grow are lower-level blessed places and will not form a small world of their own.
This is also the main reason why the top-grade innate spiritual roots are more precious than the top-grade innate artifacts.
A small world in a cave accompanied by a top-grade innate spiritual root is a rare blessing for any force, and it is the foundation of their own power.
Now this innate spiritual root five-colored sacred tree is still far from mature. Naturally, it is impossible for it to evolve and upgrade the place where it grows into a small cave world so quickly.
Not to mention a small world in the cave, even to create a blessed land would take at least a hundred years.
But no matter what, the magic of the island in the middle of the lake has begun to show.
Ordinary practitioners simply cannot understand or believe that it is so magical.
Fortunately, since the strange change happened on the island in the middle of the lake, only five people, Li Dingguo, Wan'er, Hongmei, Cao Yongxiang, Wei Jinfan, and Chang Liyun, knew about it so far.
The others have not yet set foot on the island in the middle of the lake after the mutation.
When Li Dingguo arrived at the place where he specialized in growing and cultivating those rare medicinal herbs, he immediately got a surprise.
After more than half a year, a new batch of auxiliary medicines used to refine the Marrow Cleansing Pill and the third-grade top-grade spiritual nourishing pill have matured.
Facts have proved that the special breath of life emanating from the innate spiritual root five-colored sacred tree has a very magical effect on the growth of various spiritual medicines.
The rare spiritual medicine that normally takes more than a hundred years to grow can now be harvested, enough to refine a furnace of marrow cleansing pills and a furnace of third-grade premium nourishing spirit soup.
"咴咴!"
At this time, three top-grade dragon-scale horses came galloping from a distance like lightning, and in just a few blinks of an eye, they arrived in front of Li Dingguo.
They hadn't seen their owner for a long time, and they were so happy that they used their big heads to push into his arms.
If Li Dingguo's lower body was not very stable now, he would have been knocked to the ground by these three big guys!
"Ha ha……"
Li Dingguo laughed heartily, which was rare for him. He touched their big heads one by one with his hands and played with them for a while.
"This……"
"Dahei, Baixue, Xiaoxue, have the three of you reached the peak of level four?"
"It looks like it won't be long before you can break through and become a level five spirit beast. That's great!"
Only then did he realize that these three top-grade dragon-scale horses had grown to this point in just half a year.
Li Dingguo also knew that the two peerless geniuses of the Ming Dynasty: Cao Bianjiao and Lu Xiangsheng, both had a top-grade dragon-scale horse.
Rumor has it that these two top-grade dragon-scale horses had already broken through to level five primary spirit beasts three years ago.
Maybe those two top-grade dragon-scale horses are now mid-level level five spirit beasts.
Dragon scale horses of this level have extremely strong combat power and even stronger ability to survive.
Even Cao Yongxiang would not be able to defeat it without the help of his newly acquired natal magic weapon.
On the battlefield, as long as these two level 5 mid-stage dragon scale horses wanted to escape, unless they were trapped by the formation, it would be basically impossible to keep them. Now, these three top-grade dragon scale horses of ours will soon break through to level 5 spirit beasts, narrowing the gap with the mounts of some top generals.
Otherwise, if one were to ride a level 4 spiritual beast warhorse and fight against a core general of the Later Jin Tatars who was riding a level 5 spiritual beast warhorse, it would be extremely difficult to defeat the opponent.
Once the opponent adopts the kite-flying tactic, it is easy for them to beat you, which will probably make you so angry that you vomit blood.
Can't hit, can't catch up, can't escape.
That kind of situation makes people feel depressed just thinking about it.
In this big world, spirit beast mounts are also an integral part of a top-level warrior's military force, and the most important part.
“Wheeze…”
Hearing the praise from their master, the three top-quality dragon-scale horses, which had the mentality of little children, became more and more excited, jumping up and down around Li Dingguo. The scene looked very funny.
After playing with these three top-quality dragon-scale horses for a while, Li Dingguo sent them away to play on their own.
Today, a large spiritual grass ranch has appeared on the island in the middle of the lake. Not to mention the three top-grade dragon-scale horses, even thousands of spiritual beasts and war horses can live well here.
Unfortunately, Li Dingguo would not open this island in the middle of the lake to the public.
Rather than facing the huge troubles that would inevitably arise after opening up, Li Dingguo would rather let a lot of resources go to waste.
This island in the middle of the lake is too special and has too many secrets, so it is impossible to expose it.
It is so now and will be so in the future.
God knows what big secrets are hidden in this big world?
Even if Li Dingguo breaks through and becomes a level six expert in the future, there will probably be many practitioners who can threaten him.
He then went to pick those rare and ripe herbs, started to move, and returned to his own mansion in a moment.
He first made the preparations for refining the Marrow Cleansing Pill and the third-grade top-grade Spirit Nourishing Pill, then he sat cross-legged on the ground, summoned his supreme artifact, the Human Emperor Cauldron, and began to refine these two rare pills one after another.
Practice makes perfect. Li Dingguo, who has now become a junior alchemy grandmaster, will certainly not fail in refining these third-grade top-grade elixirs.
After successfully refining these two extremely rare elixirs, Li Dingguo took out eighteen small jade bottles and put nine pills of each of the two third-grade top-grade elixirs into them separately.
Then he went back to his room, got paper and pen, wrote a letter, and put it into a wooden box along with 18 rare pills.
Carrying the small wooden box, Li Dingguo walked out of the gate and called the golden eagle.
"Da Jin, this wooden box contains two third-grade top-grade elixirs. Take it to Hong Mei."
"Tell her to distribute these pills to the leaders of the five main battle corps, except Cao Yongxiang, and the heads of various departments according to the instructions in the letter in the wooden box."
"This is a personal reward I give them for their various contributions during this period, in the hope that they can make further progress, whether in terms of cultivation aptitude or cultivation realm."
Li Dingguo knew that in the past six months since he left the Great Wall and headed south, it was thanks to the concerted efforts of these core generals of the Fuxing Army that the Fuxing Army was able to develop so well.
But before today, there was no suitable treasure to reward them.
Today they happened to have discovered that those rare elixirs had matured, so they could refine two furnaces of the third-grade top-quality elixirs that they urgently needed, which would be perfect to use as prizes.
"Chirp..."
The big golden eagle nodded its big head, raised one of its big claws, gently grabbed the wooden box, flapped its big wings, soared into the sky, and flew out of the island protection formation at a moderate speed, heading towards the military building outside the island in the middle of the lake.
……
At this time, in the office hall of the Military Intelligence Department in the military building, Wei Jinfan was holding a piece of urgent intelligence in his hand and had just finished checking it.
She looked solemnly at He Guang who was sitting in front of her on the left, and asked in a serious tone, "He Guang, is this information true?"
"If there is even a slight error, it will affect our westward expansion plan and delay a lot of time."
Given the seriousness of this information, she had to confirm it.
"Commander Wei, this is the urgent military information sent back by our military intelligence department's brave general Lu Yanni, who personally led her intelligence personnel to conduct a field investigation. There cannot be any falsehood in it."
He Guang certainly would not be careless. After receiving the information, he confirmed it again and again with Lu Yanni, who came back to report on her riding a level 4 three-tailed magic wolf, and then hurried to report to Wei Jinfan.
"One of the three major monster forces in the eastern part of the Dongtao Prairie: Qinglang Mountain, all the blue wolf monsters suddenly rioted and headed straight for the Great Salt Lake 30,000 miles to the west?"
"Such an outrageous situation would happen?"
Although Wei Jinfan had long known that the Great Salt Lake being built and developed by the Renaissance Army had recently produced large quantities of refined salt, it would definitely cause some considerable trouble.
Unexpectedly, the first to attack the Great Salt Lake were not any human forces, but the three dominant monster forces on this prairie: Qinglang Mountain.
No matter how you think about it, this seems very wrong.
The tens of thousands of blue wolf monsters in Qinglang Mountain, which were used to eating bland food, are now changing to eating salty food?
Okay, this is a bad joke and it's not funny at all.
Those wolf packs and monsters that have always been entrenched in the Qinglang Mountain area are definitely not thinking of stealing the salt. There must be other reasons.
"Commander Wei, I suggested to Chief Steward Hongmei a few days ago that we should first wipe out the three major monster forces on the Dongtao Plain, and then head west to the Wuding River."
He Guang looked serious and said, "Recently, our intelligence personnel from various places inside and outside the Great Wall have successively sent back information about the unusual movements of monsters in various places."
"I specifically checked the historical records and found that the once-in-a-century beast tide will break out in the next few years!"
"At that time, General Hongmei had other considerations. He wanted to capture the entire Wuding River basin outside the pass first, and completely solve the problem of self-sufficiency in food for the immigrants from all over the country who needed our Renaissance Army."
"I just didn't expect that the tens of thousands of blue wolf monsters entrenched in the Blue Wolf Mountain would riot at this critical juncture."
"And the destination they are heading to is where our Renaissance Army's defense is the weakest right now."
"After all, the Great Salt Lake is 40,000 miles away from our Renaissance Army's base camp, and we can't take care of so many things at once."
He Guang was now very anxious. After finishing his explanation, he looked at Wei Jinfan.
"Well, this matter cannot be delayed."
Wei Jinfan thought for a moment and said, "Although we are still not sure that the tens of thousands of wolves in Qinglang Mountain are heading for the salt fields in the direction of the Great Salt Lake, we must make adequate preparations in advance to avoid causing serious losses."
"The several large salt fields built by our Renaissance Army in the Great Salt Lake have just entered formal production and cannot withstand the attack of tens of thousands of blue wolf monsters."
"He Guang, the two of us will go find Chief Steward Hongmei right away, and then have her notify the Grand Commander."
"The commander-in-chief is now in the base camp, and is making corresponding instructions and arrangements."
"The Blue Wolf Monster Army has just started to move. They are still far away from the Great Salt Lake. We still have plenty of time. We have enough time to make a corresponding response plan."
Wei Jinfan knew very well the importance of salt production in the Great Salt Lake to the Fuxing Army, so he quickly stood up and, together with He Guang, used his body skills to fly towards the military hall where Hongmei was...
(End of this chapter)
