Xiao Fei had been tense for several days after receiving Xiao Lan's message, but his tension was of no use.
Now, sending people to find the bald man who had escaped was like searching for a needle in a haystack, unless he revealed himself.
Since that was the case, Xiao Fei stopped worrying about it and decided to wait until the man came looking for him.
He would focus on strengthening his own power and improving his escape abilities.
His current combination of escape methods still relied on the Death Substitute Puppet, coupled with the Thousand Mile Teleportation Talisman, and the flight speed of the Flying Fish.
These would allow him to evade danger and escape quickly.
After years of use, the quality of the raw materials used to refine the Death Substitute Puppet had been continuously improving, otherwise, it would not be able to withstand the might of a Nascent Soul stage cultivator.
The main material currently used for refining the Death Substitute Puppet, the Nine Twists Golden Lotus, now utilized lotus roots that were over 5,000 years old.
As for the Thousand Mile Teleportation Talisman he possessed, it was made with the bark of a 6,000-year-old mulberry tree for the talisman paper, theoretically allowing instantaneous teleportation up to 600 miles away.
Among these three escape methods, only the Flying Fish was still at the late stage of the Golden Core realm and could no longer keep up with his strength.
A while ago, Xiao Fei had fed the Flying Fish a Nascent Soul Pill, but after the creature consumed it, there wasn't even a ripple, no reaction at all.
It seemed that the Nascent Soul Pills used by humans were of no use to ancient exotic species like the Flying Fish.
Helpless, Xiao Fei had to find another way, and at least one method should be feasible.
That was to consume a large amount of heavenly treasures and accumulate spiritual energy and magical power to a certain extent, which would naturally break through the bottlenecks between major realms.
In recent decades, he only harvested spiritual herbs when they became too dense and numerous in his spatial dimension.
He would either refine them into pills himself or hand them over to the Treasure Pavilion for sale.
He hadn't used most of the rare spiritual items in his space, and now a large quantity of them had accumulated.
Some of the spiritual herbs had even reached ten thousand years in age.
It was important to note that in the outside world, spiritual herbs faced various natural disasters, diseases, and pests during their growth, leading to their demise.
Even if they survived these calamities, they were often impatiently harvested within hundreds or thousands of years, ending their lives prematurely.
Especially for wild spiritual herbs, who would have the patience to wait for them to grow for ten thousand years?
Moreover, spiritual herbs were generally delicate and extremely picky about their growing environment, often dying easily.
Spiritual herbs of the ten-thousand-year-old level were treasures that could no longer easily appear in the cultivation world.
The history of the Eastern Continent had witnessed several major wars triggered by ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs, even involving cultivators at the Soul Transformation stage.
Xiao Fei dug out a ten-thousand-year-old Scarlet Blood Yellow Essence from his space.
After these spiritual herbs entered his space, their vitality seemed exceptionally tenacious; they were basically disease-free and pest-free, and would live as long as they touched the ground.
He had never tended to this Scarlet Blood Yellow Essence, and had even accidentally stepped on it once.
However, this Scarlet Blood Yellow Essence showed no arrogance, fearing its own demise, and had tenaciously survived for ten thousand years.
It was only today, when Xiao Fei dug it out, that it reached the end of its life.
This ten-thousand-year-old Scarlet Blood Yellow Essence was about ten times the size of ordinary spiritual herbs, but its spiritual energy concentration was more than a hundred or even a thousand times that of ordinary spiritual herbs.
After digging out the spiritual herb, Xiao Fei didn't even wash it. He directly fed it to the Flying Fish, which swallowed it in one gulp.
The moment the Flying Fish swallowed the ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herb, its internal magical power fluctuated violently, and its body expanded as if it were about to explode.
However, after several cycles of contraction and expansion, the Flying Fish's body gradually calmed down.
It had likely temporarily suppressed the violent medicinal properties of the ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herb.
Fortunately, the Flying Fish was a descendant of the Kun Peng and possessed a special physique. If it were an ordinary Golden Core stage human cultivator, they would have exploded and died at that moment.
"Master, I'm going back!"
The Flying Fish flicked its tail and sank into the bottom of the lake.
In Xiao Fei's space, there were dozens more ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs of similar quality to the Scarlet Blood Yellow Essence he had just fed.
He wouldn't feel any heartache in feeding one or two to his pet.
If news of his possession of ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs were leaked, people would obliterate Meteor Island tomorrow and tear him to pieces.
Currently, the oldest spiritual herb in his space had grown to ten thousand years, while the vine in the very center of the space still showed no signs of flowering or bearing fruit.
This vine grew only one leaf every ten years, and now it had nearly a thousand leaves.
Xiao Fei had spent a vast amount of time in his space, having read through the inheritance books of four ten-thousand-year-old sects.
In terms of knowledge, it would be difficult to find anyone in the entire cultivation world who could match him.
Based on the knowledge he possessed, he already had a general guess in his mind.
It was said that at the beginning of the creation of each world, extremely rare innate spiritual roots would be born between heaven and earth.
Although his space could not compare to an entire world, it had the embryonic form of a small world, and it was very possible that one or two innate spiritual roots had been produced.
If this object was indeed an innate spiritual root produced at the beginning of each world's formation, then the preciousness of this treasure would be indescribable.
It was far beyond what man-made spiritual treasures could compare to.
Ever since this guess formed in his mind, Xiao Fei could not suppress his excitement every time he approached the spiritual vine.
He would gently caress the green leaves, as if sensing the power within them.
He didn't know if this object would bear fruit, but for now, he would nurture it. If it absolutely refused to bear fruit, he would pluck the leaves to eat and cut the vine to refine into rope, specifically for binding people. In any case, it would not be wasted.
After inspecting his space, he picked out another plump ten-thousand-year-old ginseng and pulled it out.
He then found several auxiliary spiritual herbs that were over a thousand years old and began refining pills in his space.
The medicinal properties of these ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs were too potent. While suitable for the Flying Fish, it was better for him to refine them into pills.
Generally, for Nascent Soul stage cultivators, spiritual herbs that were a thousand years old as the main ingredient were sufficient.
Due to the rarity of thousand-year-old spiritual herbs, most Nascent Soul cultivators might not even get to consume them during festivals.
Xiao Fei's current situation was a bit special; he had a large patch of thousand-year-old spiritual herbs in his space, and dozens of ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs as well.
Moreover, he had just fed a ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herb to his pet.
It was like his own dog was eating them, and if he didn't eat one or two himself, he would ultimately feel unbalanced.
Therefore, today he specifically used a ten-thousand-year-old spiritual herb to refine a batch of spiritual pills for himself.
The pill formation rate was quite good; this batch yielded seven pills.
Xiao Fei held the seven pills in his hand. These pills were the size of eggs and were enveloped in a layer of precious light.
The pills were good, but their size made them a bit difficult to swallow, and they could easily cause choking!