Chapter 66
Soren shook his head, he had been overthinking it.
No matter how rich the mountain was, you didn’t stumble across the exact rare treasures you needed on a whim, the Five-Flavored Flower had been luck, nothing more.
The second he looked away, she shouted.
"Demon Emperor, look! Quickly!"
"It’s a Grand Sun Heaven-Bearing Fruit!"
Soren frowned and blinked across the distance, appearing before her, he took the dark golden fruit out of her cupped hands, his expression stiffened.
"It really is a Grand Sun Heaven-Bearing Fruit."
"How did you spot it?"
"I looked down, and there it was."
"That simple?"
"It was intuition, I felt like it would be in that spot, so I went to check, and I never expected it would actually be there." She clapped her hands.
Soren thought about that, he smiled and handed the fruit back, keeping his voice level. "Impressive, that leaves the Regenerative Divine Wood Root."
"It grows in shade and damp, very unlikely on a mountain peak."
"You found the fruit on intuition, use it again, see whether the last herb is hiding nearby."
"I understand." She said it with an earnest face, tinged with devotion.
To her, his words were absolute.
Very soon she pointed at a massive boulder nearby. "Ethel feels the Regenerative Divine Wood Root is right under that stone."
"Hehe, my intuition might be wrong, of course."
"If I’m wrong, will the Demon Emperor really not punish me?"
"Don’t be afraid, go and look."
Reassured, she walked over and shoved the boulder aside, as a Middle-Tier Spirit King, moving a dozen meters of stone cost her nothing.
Soren watched without speaking.
The intuition claim was ridiculous on its face, but if she turned up a Regenerative Divine Wood Root here too, he would have to take another look at what that word actually meant.
He was near certain the odds of finding one on this summit were zero.
The root needed dark, damp ground, a sunbaked peak was the wrong environment entirely.
The root was the underground base of the Regenerative Divine Wood tree itself, to get it you first found the tree, there wasn’t a trace of Regenerative Divine Wood anywhere around here.
"Hehe, such good luck."
Her cheerful laughter came from beside the shifted boulder while he was still thinking it through.
You have got to be kidding me, Soren walked over, outwardly composed, thoughts in complete disarray.
In the depression where the boulder had sat grew one thin, frail seedling, standing alone, trapped under the stone, unable to break through to sunlight, it had spread sideways instead, creeping under a dozen meters of rock in the hope of reaching open air someday.
The result, above ground it looked like a dying sprout, below ground its root system was enormous.
Soren couldn’t hold his calm any longer, this is what she calls intuition? This is precision radar tracking.
He summoned the Strategy Encyclopedia and pushed through the dense sea of data, hunting for the truth behind Ethel’s herb-finding.
[Ethel possessed a Holy Constitution blessed by the Heavenly Dao, standing in direct opposition to her brother’s cursed Berserk Constitution.]
[A Holy Constitution was rarer and more precious, appearing only once every ten thousand years.]
[The Holy Constitution could deploy a Domain of Holiness, all living entities within it could be precisely detected, categorized, and confirmed one by one.]
[Although Ethel’s had not fully awakened, she had already developed the initial capacity to sense and differentiate between forms of life.]
So that was it, her zero-margin herb location wasn’t an accident, and neither was the unawakened constitution sitting in her.
He needed to raise her properly, the ability alone was extraordinary, used well, it would be obscene.
Soren went looking for a way to awaken it.
[A Holy Constitution appeared once across thousands of years, ordinary individuals never awakened it in their lifetimes.][]
[The Ice Heaven Alluring Fox clan had produced only one clansman who awakened a Holy Constitution.]
[To help Ethel awaken hers, she must first develop a specific special relationship title toward Soren.]
[Once that special relationship awakened, his Yang energy would act as a force of refinement, capable of promoting constitutional evolution or awakening.
Soren cursed inwardly.
Ethel already met the prerequisite of Following to the Death, but relationship titles under special traits weren’t something anyone could awaken on command.
The other condition was that it had to awaken because of Soren, anyone else, any other reason, and it wouldn’t work.
He set the method aside and went back to a phrase that had snagged him.
The clan had produced one clansman who awakened this constitution, someone had done it before, didn’t that mean it could happen without his involvement? Maybe the conditions were only stricter.
He fed the doubt back into the Strategy Encyclopedia.
[The first Ice Heaven Alluring Fox clansman was awakened at birth, an Innate Awakening. Ethel could only undergo a Post-Natal Awakening.]
Soren withdrew the panel, the difficulty was not low, better to leave it alone for now.
Ethel blinked up at him, her lashes fanned against a face built out of pure good behavior, and watching his expression change three or four times in a single second made her nervous in a way she couldn’t name.
She asked carefully. "Demon Emperor, what are you thinking about?"
"Nothing, put the Regenerative Divine Wood Root away."
"Understood."
While she pulled up a section of root, something occurred to him.
"Ethel, since you can use intuition to find the herbs we need..."
"Can you use it on our surroundings? See whether anything nearby makes you uncomfortable."
She stared at him blankly, then nodded hard. "Yes! While I was looking for the Regenerative Divine Wood Root, I felt something strange in my heart."
"I can’t put into words what kind of feeling it was."
"I thought..."
"That it was just because the Demon Emperor was standing next to me, that I was nervous." She looked relieved to have gotten it out.
The anxious little face got to him, he reached out and stroked her hair.
"Where is it?"
The gesture looked idle, to Ethel it was honey, colour rose in her cheeks as she pointed. "Over there, what it is, how far away, I don’t know."
She loved his praise, she would never lie to get it.
Soren wrapped her in demonic energy and shot off in the direction she’d pointed.