Chapter 171: The Rare Brown-tailed Crow
The night wind whipped against his face.
Tang Wen weaved through the mountain forest, heading at high speed toward the location of the Public Water Spirit he could sense.
As an Extraordinary, he had been holding back for too long.
Now, moving at full speed, he felt exceptionally free.
He executed the Shadow Nether Step, his feet landing without a sound.
From a distance, he looked like a black streak of light, weaving and flashing through the mountains.
The dozen-plus miles flew by in the blink of an eye.
Tang Wen came to a stop.
The distance had been greatly reduced, and the connection he felt with the Public Water Spirit was much stronger.
It had gone up a whole level.
If the connection he felt in the city was like a silk thread,
then now it was a hemp rope.
He sat down on a rock.
The distance between them was still more than ten miles.
Borrowing his tamed beast’s vision from such a great distance would consume a great deal of Spiritual Power.
But the advantage was absolute safety.
When the Black Water Gang did business, they were bound to clear the area and post lookouts in all directions.
But no matter how thoroughly they cleared the area or how vigilant their watch, they wouldn’t extend it for more than ten miles, would they?
Tang Wen switched his vision to the Public Water Spirit.
The humanoid Public Water Spirit had just become a High-level Exotic Beast.
It was striding confidently, approaching the heart of the mountain range.
This was a canyon.
The trees grew thick, blotting out the sun. Looking up, one could only see fragmented patches of sky through the gaps in the dense foliage.
The Public Water Spirit took the lead, like a big brother leading his little brothers, guiding the other Exotic Beasts as they rushed through the forest.
A clearing appeared before them.
It was strange.
The soil and land were clearly the same.
One step back was the lush forest, but one step forward, the ground was hard-packed, without a single blade of grass.
The Public Water Spirit stopped in its tracks.
It felt a sudden chill, its hair standing on end for no apparent reason.
Tang Wen couldn’t feel its emotions, nor could he hear any sound.
He didn’t know why it had stopped.
From such a great distance, Tang Wen couldn’t send the Public Water Spirit any effective commands.
In other words, he could only watch.
He couldn’t do anything else.
He switched his vision back.
Tang Wen was full of questions. ’Aren’t they supposed to be salvaging a shipwreck?’
’What are they doing in the mountains?’
’Is there a barrier lake in the mountains?’
’Or some kind of underground river?’
He stood up, his mind filled with doubt, and continued forward.
After running for another two or three miles, he stopped again.
He turned his head to the right, his gaze fixed on a shadow in the treetops.
To a normal person’s eye,
it was just a shadow.
Even on closer inspection, it would at most seem like a strange shadow.
"A Brown-tailed Crow?"
Tang Wen saw that there was something unusual about the shadow.
The Brown-tailed Crow was a variant of the common crow.
It was slightly larger than an ordinary crow, with a somewhat black tail.
It was the equivalent of a Crow King among common crows.
Ordinary crows were not Exotic Beasts.
A child with a slingshot could kill one.
Generally speaking, the king of a normal flock of beasts or birds,
like a sparrow king,
would be at the level of a Low-level Exotic Beast at most.
But the Brown-tailed Crow was different.
Or rather, flocks of crows were different.
This type of bird was extremely intelligent.
As long as a Crow King—a Brown-tailed Crow—appeared in a flock,
it was often an existence that leaped an entire level.
It would be a Middle-level Exotic Beast right off the bat.
Tang Wen was suddenly interested.
Aside from the rarity of the Brown-tailed Crow,
he recalled a conversation from when he was attending Elder Ya’s lectures at Flame Camp.
He had asked about the origin of Elder Ya’s nickname.
Why go by Elder Ya instead of a proper name?
In return, the old man had shot back,
calling him ignorant.
It turned out that when Elder Ya was making a name for himself in other lands,
his most famous tamed beasts...
were a flock of mutated crows.
There were over a hundred of them, each with the strength of a Low-level Exotic Beast.
And don’t look down on them just because they were Low-level Exotic Beasts.
They possessed a Sound Wave Skill called "Scum Call."
The call of an ordinary crow was coarse and unpleasant.
At most, it would make a normal person frown and curse their bad luck.
But after becoming mutated crows, the lethality of their calls skyrocketed.
It was dozens of times more powerful than that of an ordinary crow.
If ten of these low-level mutated crows gathered in a flock,
then even a Middle-level raptor-type Exotic Beast wouldn’t want to provoke them.
After all, for birds, a few seconds of dizziness or disorientation from a Sonic Attack could often be fatal.
If fifty low-level mutated crows were together,
then truly, no one below the level of Extraordinary would be willing to pick a fight.
It wasn’t that High-level Exotic Beasts couldn’t beat them.
It was that even victory would be a pyrrhic one.
Even if you killed the entire flock of low-level mutated crows, what would you get?
They weren’t large, so they didn’t yield much meat.
The meat from risking your life to kill dozens of them wouldn’t even match that of a single Exotic Beast Goat.
To fight and risk death for so little was simply not worth it.
However, such flocks of crows were extremely rare.
Even rarer than Extraordinary Exotic Beasts.
Thus, not many people knew about them.
Beastmasters could cultivate low-level mutated crows.
But this cultivation had one prerequisite.
You had to have a Crow King—a Brown-tailed Crow.
And Brown-tailed Crows were incredibly few in number.
You needed the perfect alignment of time, place, and fortune—an explosion of luck—just to encounter one.
When Elder Ya was young, he had encountered one.
And an injured one at that.
After that, he slowly cultivated a massive flock. At its peak, his flock had thousands of ordinary crows.
When they took flight, they blotted out the sun.
He also had over a hundred low-level mutated crows.
And so, he had made a name for himself.
Later.
The Brown-tailed Crow died of old age.
The flock dispersed.
But people still respectfully called him Elder Ya.
Tang Wen stared in the direction of the Brown-tailed Crow, pushing his Breath Concealment Technique to its limit. A faint darkness draped over him like a cloak, obscuring the light.
He approached stealthily.
He was afraid the Brown-tailed Crow would fly away.
His Blood Crow wasn’t with him. If the bird took flight, he would be helpless.
Flying Exotic Beasts were easy to kill, but difficult to capture alive.
Tang Wen entered the woods and casually picked up a hard clump of earth.
’If I control my strength, I can hit the Brown-tailed Crow without killing it.’
He reached the base of the tree and leaped up abruptly.
With that movement, he could no longer conceal his presence.
Sensing the malicious intent, the Brown-tailed Crow was startled but not panicked. It lowered its head and let out a sharp cry.
Pieces of bark rained down from the tree.
It spread its wings to take to the air.
However, its usual, tried-and-true escape maneuver...
failed this time.
It realized that the leaping shadow was completely unaffected by its sound wave.
The figure’s speed didn’t change as it reached for it.
Whether it was a Spiritual Attack or a Sonic Attack,
to Tang Wen, who had stepped through the gates of the Extraordinary realm, it was at most like a bitter cold wind.
It couldn’t cause any harm.
It just made him feel a little cold.
FLAP FLAP FLAP.
Its wings flapped wildly and its beak pecked in a frenzy.
The Brown-tailed Crow fell into Tang Wen’s hands.
In the past, Tang Wen would have locked it in a cage for a few days to break its spirit.
He would have caught some other crows,
and in front of it, snapped the necks of any that were disobedient.
Or he might have tortured them a little before feeding them to his Sand Wolves.
He would have let the Sand Wolves eat them right in front of it.
Crows are the most intelligent birds.
After a few rounds of this, he would have offered it some pellets made from Extraordinary Exotic Beast Meat.
The Brown-tailed Crow would surely have submitted.
But now, he didn’t have the time, nor was there a need for such trouble.
He simply applied a few rounds of spiritual soothing and then took out some Exotic Beast Blood Marrow for it to smell.
The Brown-tailed Crow, which had just quieted down, immediately grew excited.
Although it didn’t know what this was,
it smelled something that could help it advance.
"CAW, CAW CAW CAW!"
Tang Wen tentatively let go of its wings.
At this close range, even if the Brown-tailed Crow could fly, it couldn’t escape his grasp.
The Brown-tailed Crow hopped onto his shoulder.
It nuzzled its little head affectionately against his shoulder.
"You certainly know how to read the room."
Tang Wen smiled. Elder Ya hadn’t been exaggerating.
The intelligence of a Brown-tailed Crow was truly high.
A typical Middle-level Exotic Beast couldn’t perform these two actions.
He broke off a pea-sized piece of the Blood Marrow Elixir and fed it to the crow.
The Brown-tailed Crow eagerly swallowed it, its small eyes shining brightly.
"Lead the way!"
"CAW CAW!"
The Brown-tailed Crow took flight.
Tang Wen continued on his way.
He ran for another six miles or so.
He stopped again.
’Considering how important this salvage operation is to the Black Water Gang,’
’there must be experts constantly patrolling the perimeter.’
’Staying about six miles away might be the only way to guarantee my safety.’
He found a place to rest and switched to the Water Spirit’s vision.
The scene changed.
The Public Water Spirit was still on the desolate, barren ground.
Before it were two teams of Black Water Gang experts that Tang Wen had never seen before.
Tang Wen’s curiosity was piqued once again.
’Why is it a forest over there, but completely barren here?’
After a few seconds with no change in the scene, he immediately broke the connection.
’I need to conserve my Spiritual Power.’
’Who knows how long this mission will take.’
’I have to use my Spiritual Power sparingly.’
"CAW!"
The Brown-tailed Crow, which had been standing guard, flew back with a warning.