CHAPTER 656: CHAPTER 113: MILLENNIUM WOOD JADE

Seeing the suspicious behavior of Mu Hu, Yue Jinghua quietly observed from the side.

After digging the earth, Mu Hu carefully ignited a small bunch of fire he brought along and shone it towards the dark earth mound.

One could see rows of ants scrambling out of the ground as soon as they encountered the fire.

Only then did Yue Jinghua see clearly that what Mu Hu was digging was an ant nest. As the ants fled from the light, the nest was full of tender white eggs.

Overjoyed upon seeing the nest, Mu Hu carefully placed the fire to one side. Working with both hands and feet, he dug the earth while cautiously extracting each of the eggs.

It turned out that all of Mu Hu’s preparations were for harvesting these insect eggs, Yue Jinghua praised silently.

Mu Hu might appear simple-minded, but he’s quite talented in dealing with poisonous insects, and it seemed he had no fear of potent poisons.

Dawo Village had no grain, but behind the village on Poison Mountain, there were thousands of various insect nests.

By choosing carefully, one could find non-poisonous nests, and the eggs were a nutritious food source rich in protein.

In fact, this was the only method for villagers to survive when the summer grain wasn’t ripe and the autumn harvest was insufficient.

Mu Hu would always go up the mountain behind the back of the old village chief to dig up ant nests and snake holes, getting bitten and bruised each time. Over time, he became immune to the venom of these insects.

Mu Hu might be slow of speech, but his speed at digging and excavating eggs was extremely fast, and he never dug out a nest entirely, always leaving one-third of the eggs behind.

This was common sense for the mountain dwellers living in the hills, leave some behind for future encounters.

If they ate all the descendants of these insects, there would be nothing left to eat in the future.

After digging out one ant nest, Mu Hu found several more nearby.

After he had dug up four ant nests in succession, an unexpected event occurred when he got to the fifth one.

The ants on Poison Mountain were mostly black, the size of a sesame seed, with some toxicity, though not fatal.

But when Mu Hu was digging the fifth nest, as his hoe struck the ground, a buzzing sound erupted, similar to that of bees.

A group of red ants with reddish wolf-like markings on their heads crawled out.

They were very small, barely larger than fleas, but their mouths sported a pair of fang-like teeth, resembling sickles.

The red ants became furious upon detecting Mu Hu, the intruder, and swarmed towards him furiously.

"Not good, Ghost Ant Queen," Mu Hu seemed to recognize these ants and quickly tossed his torch towards the nest.

However, the ants were incredibly fast, and in an instant, they had climbed on Mu Hu’s straw sandals.

Their sharp teeth, like a rice harvester, cut frenziedly; the straw sandals quickly fell apart under their relentless biting.

Mu Hu knew of the danger of these ants; they bite once they smell blood, never stopping until they had drained your every drop of blood and flesh.

He didn’t dare to fight back; with a few stomps from his feet and carrying a straw basket, he rolled and scrambled, trying to shake off the ants from his body.

Yet his movements couldn’t outpace the swarm; his left foot was soon bloody and gory. These ants were like tenacious maggots sticking to bone, relentlessly, and insanely leaping towards other parts of Mu Hu’s body.

The scene was even more ferocious than Yue Jinghua’s Giant Winged Mosquito Group.

Looking at the area around the ant holes, there was a cluster of needle-like holes that looked very familiar.

Upon seeing those holes, Yue Jinghua suddenly had a moment of clarity, and a question that had puzzled her for days was effortlessly solved.

Mu Hu’s left leg was bitten, causing pain as sharp as a knife cut. The pain reached its extreme, and he abruptly pulled out the firewood knife he had tucked at his waist.

On Poison Mountain, he actually swung the knife directly at his own left leg. The firewood knife was extremely sharp; a single cut would surely sever the leg.

Just then, a strange force swept the blade out of his hand, causing it to veer off and slice off only a piece of flesh.

Immediately after, someone gave him a light push on his back, and he was lifted into the air. With a long neigh, a golden Unicorn carried Mu Hu.

Looking ahead, the young man from the Southern Expedition Army whom he called "Mom," descended from the sky with his clothes fluttering, making a peculiar hand gesture with his right hand, drawing in the void revealing a bizarre pattern like a star.

Suddenly, a Firebird with fiery feathers appeared in the sky, transforming into a fireball. Its fiery feathers fell like snowflakes.

Where the Fire Feathers fell, they immediately turned into a sea of flames.

The fire was not an ordinary blaze; it could even turn soil and stone to ash, and the Ghost Ants were quickly swallowed by the Fire.

While dealing with the ant swarm, Yue Jinghua was particularly vigilant, leaving behind the leader of the ants, the Ghost Ant Queen.

Seeing the ant problem resolved, Yue Jinghua then immediately landed beside Mu Hu.

Mu Hu had not yet recovered from his earlier shock. His face was covered in dirt, his leg still bleeding profusely. Staring at Yue Jinghua, as if he had seen a ghost, he stammered, "Are you... are you an Immortal?"

"Heh, kid, save your words for later. You’ve made a great contribution this time," Yue Jinghua said with a smile, as she let the Unicorn carry the injured Mu Hu back to Dawo Village.

They then found Cheng Ying and had him bandage Mu Hu first.

During the bandaging, Cheng Ying also noticed that Mu Hu’s constitution was very special, not only immune to poisons, but his injuries healed remarkably fast as well.

"Kid, have you eaten any Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures? Your constitution is impressively strong," Yue Jinghua remarked to Mu Hu after bringing him back. Cheng Ying had only administered simple bandaging before noticing Mu Hu’s body was already recovering well.

Complimented by a beautiful woman, Mu Hu grinned foolishly: "I don’t really know, I wasn’t like this a few years back. Three years ago, during a famine in the village, I was so hungry I had no choice but to strip bark from a rotten stump at the village entrance. After eating it, I became like this. Nothing hurts, and I’m not afraid of pain anymore."

A rotten stump?

Both Yue Jinghua and Cheng Ying were astounded.

Especially Cheng Ying, after thinking for a moment, he asked, "Didn’t you eat the Wood Jade? Was that rotten stump a thousand-year-old ancient tree?"

Legend has it that when a thousand-year spirit wood is struck by lightning and dies, it produces a Spiritual Wood Core that resembles a stump in appearance but contains countless wood spirits.

Those who eat Wood Jade will have their bodies transform as if undergoing a Wash Marrow and Bone process, reborn with incredible strength. After rebirth, flesh, sinews, and bones become exceptionally tough, capable of regrowing unless the head is severed.

Thus, on the Canglong Continent, Wood Jade is also known as the Undying Divine Wood, and it is one of the most precious Spiritual Wood Cores.

It was unimaginable that such a precious object would be unwittingly consumed by Mu Hu, causing Yue Jinghua to feel like Zhu Bajie who ate the Ginsengfruit without realizing its value.

"Let’s not talk about this for now, Mu Hu, come with me. I think we’ve found the reason why the Transmission Array’s Dark Pill power is disappearing inexplicably," Yue Jinghua said, seeing that Mu Hu was no longer in grave danger, and led him toward the direction of the Transmission Array.