Divine Herb Forest…
Fire Elemental Mountain…
The moment his boots touched the flame-baked soil, a wave of heat pressed against his lungs. Not just heat—pressure, like the breath of a beast sleeping beneath the surface.
But Kent’s expression didn’t flinch. He walked with steady steps, scanning his surroundings.
And what he saw stunned him.
Between the lava-cracked rocks and under the golden-red mist, countless herbs bloomed in secret luxury. Thick stems, vibrant colors, glowing pollen—their energy was visible even without spiritual sight.
A thick Blazing Moonstem grew beside a half-buried boulder, its five petals radiating warmth and time. The veins glowed faintly with golden embers—a 12,000-year-old herb by his estimation.
Nearby, a Twin Flame Lily swayed in the scorched wind, each flower facing opposite directions like twin suns—only one bloomed every 5,000 years.
“Unreal…” Kent whispered, stepping toward them.
He squatted, spread a protective cloth, and carefully circled the root zones, measuring the flow of spiritual heat through his palm. Each herb had survived eons under the Naga’s shadow; their life force had merged with the elemental fire of the mountain itself.
Kent harvested with the patience of a healer and the sharpness of a storm.
Each herb he extracted was transferred directly into fiery patches inside his spirit ring’s spiritual land, which he’d modified with Fire Domain energy beforehand.
The deeper he walked, the denser the heat became. Rocks glowed from beneath, and every few minutes, a rumble would shake the ground faintly, as though something vast shifted in its sleep.
But Kent couldn’t stop.
He passed by a collapsed pillar wrapped in vines of Infernal Thread Grass, the strands hot enough to melt steel—but he sliced them with calm precision. Further in, he found Sunfire Dew Pods, which normally grew only in active volcanoes, and a rare Phoenix Horn Mushroom growing on a scorched, dead tree.
“Ten thousand years… fifteen thousand years… even twenty,” he muttered as he touched the stalk.
His hand trembled—not from fear, but from the weight of value. Each herb could earn a fortune. Together, they could earn what a nation might pay to arm its top general.
As sweat rolled down his brow and the heat began to bake his skin, Kent didn’t falter. Instead, he smiled bitterly.
“They say someone once sold a city to buy a Grandmaster Rank weapon…”
He looked at the blazing horizon.
“If I can harvest all this, I might afford a bow worthy of the Storm God’s Physique.”
Determination surged through him.
He pressed deeper, step after cautious step, always scanning the ground and horizon. Beads of sweat sizzled on his armor.
A dull roar echoed now and then, shaking the cliffs, as if the old Naga ancestor snored beneath the crust of the mountain.
But Kent didn’t retreat.
Every step brought more riches—more herbs untouched by any hand in centuries. He dug up a Scarlet Ember Vine, whose roots burned a layer of his glove away. He found a Molten Heart Lotus blooming from a tiny lava pool—a divine-grade herb used in body refinement pills.
Still, he kept going.
The mountain grew silent. Even the birds and spirit beasts stayed away. No breeze, no song—only the low, ominous throb of pressure. Yet Kent’s gaze sharpened.
“Just a few more…”
He reached a small alcove where a single Ashen Firefruit Tree stood.
The fruit on it pulsed with a heartbeat—each one carried enough spiritual fire to power a Saint-tier weapon for ten days. Six fruits. Fully matured.
Kent looked up at the sky, a grin curling at the edge of his lips.
“Come on, how can people leave such precious things out of fear? These things can save a dying old man and let him live another thousand years!”
He began the harvest—quietly.
–
Time flowed like a burning candle and evening approached, but Kent moved with the energy of a man possessed.
He had harvested nearly half of the Fire Mountain’s precious core.
Herbs older than empires fell into his hands like destiny itself had offered them on a flaming plate.
A single Inferno Bloodroot, coiled beside a blistering ravine, could buy an elder rank weapon. A patch of Skyblaze Threads, radiant with heavenly fire, shivered before falling into his storage. His spiritual land inside the ring was now half-covered in glowing flora of unimaginable value.
If the Immortal Alchemist Association saw this… half of them would die from rage and the other half from envy.
For thousands of years, the fear of the Naga Ancestor had sealed these treasures in silence. And now, a young man was reaping them with steady hands and a wild grin.
Then it happened.
Kent’s gaze fell upon a strange fiery red mountain, tucked behind two jagged cliffs. Its entire surface pulsed with a slow glow, as if breathing with the land itself.
“What in the world…”
He lifted his head slowly, eyes widening.
Patches of rare herbs blanketed the entire structure, arranged in a natural formation that mirrored a grand alchemy array. There were Lava Star Buds dotting the ridges, Ember Petal Clovers thriving in cracks, and at the top, he even saw traces of a Blazing Lotus Root, something thought extinct in the realm.
Even more shocking— the mountain was silent.
No guardian beasts.
No protective spiritual auras.
Just raw, exposed wealth.
Kent’s mouth curled into a wide grin.
He leapt forward like a windborn blade and began harvesting, his hands dancing with practiced speed. He moved like a healer in love with his craft, each dig careful, each extraction clean.
Glowing roots were transferred into fire-enchanted sections of his spirit ring’s garden, where volcanic soil and heat had been prepared beforehand.
Time blurred.
Halfway up the red slope, as he reached for a particularly thick Hellfire Orchid, something strange occurred.
The entire mountain shrank.
Just a little.
But unmistakably so.
“…What the—?”
Kent staggered for a moment, blinking at the horizon. The herbs above him had tilted—no, lowered. His feet sank a fraction deeper into the warm soil.
A rumble passed beneath his feet, like distant thunder under skin.
“…An illusion?”
He looked around, unsure, but nothing else moved.
His heartbeat quickened, but he didn’t stop. As the sun dipped lower, he redoubled his efforts, digging faster, breathing heavier. Faint golden light flickered in the air—spiritual fire merging with dusk.
Then, after another few dozen herbs…
The mountain grew again.
Only slightly.
The height rose like a breath being drawn in reverse. The slope stretched forward, and the herbs shifted ever so slightly.
Kent stood frozen.
A chill ran down his spine, unnatural amidst the blazing heat.
His instincts screamed, but his thoughts were fogged by curiosity and gold.
He dropped to his knees and dug around the root of a Crimson Molten Leaf herb. But his hand struck something hard.
Not stone.
Not metal.
Something ancient.
He brushed it clean—and revealed a golden scale, smooth, hard as godsteel, and faintly warm to the touch. And from it grew the herb.
Kent’s eyes widened.
He rose slowly, standing upon the smoking slope, now staring down at the entire ‘mountain’.
The ridges.
The shape.
The flowing curves.
The herbs weren’t growing on terrain.
They were growing on flesh.
His mind reeled.
“This isn’t a mountain…”
He stepped back, chest rising with a sudden breath, sweat now cold on his neck.
He looked up again, this time with the sight of a hunter and not a harvester.
The curves of the slope resembled folded coils.
The uneven top now appeared to be a crest, like the crown of a long-dormant beast.
The golden scale… was just one of countless others.
A single line of jagged stone in the distance suddenly made sense—it was a serpent’s fang, half-buried in time.
It was breathing.
The fiery red mountain was a sleeping ancient serpent—a slumbering Naga Ancestor, his body coiled in endless loops across the landscape, camouflaged by years of dust and herb growth.
And Kent had been harvesting right on top of him.
A single wrong move… A deep enough dig… Could awaken something that had slumbered for years.
Kent’s breath was shallow as he stood unmoving, trying to process what he had stepped into.
But then…
A grin tugged at the corner of his lips again.
“I already dug this deep,” he muttered.
“Now I just have to not wake him up.”
He crouched down again—this time slower, gentler, like picking flowers on a dragon’s back.
And as the light faded completely into night, Kent’s figure remained a flickering shadow on the scaled mountain, quietly collecting the wealth of a forgotten god.
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