The days following Bai Yunfei’s escape from the beast tamer were passed without further incident. Rather than stay in one area for too long, Bai Yunfei moved around every so often.
Five days later, Bai Yunfei was already ready to forget about the beast tamer and continue on his own adventure.
With how expanse the Soulbeast Forest was, it’d be easier for the beast tamer to find a needle in a haystack than to find Bai Yunfei.
Bai Yunfei came to the forest to train, but to have so many matters like the soulbeast wave and the beast tamer happen so quickly was beyond what he thought would happen. Experience was experience nonetheless. He could begin his ‘ordinary’ adventure now, if anything.
For ten days, Bai Yunfei traveled through the forest before finally arriving in the class six area.
He met plenty of soulbeasts on the way–many of them being late-stage class fives. There were a few class six soulbeasts, but they only served to be practice dummies for Bai Yunfei rather than being a threat.
After so many battles, Bai Yunfei felt his combat experience being rather sizeable, but combat experience didn’t directly relate to his strength of soulforce. He was still a late-staged Soul Ancestor, and he hadn’t any signs of being able to make a breakthrough either.
If Bai Yunfei could help it, he didn’t want to kill any of the soulbeasts he came across. This was true even when he was traveling with Zhang Yunpeng and the others on their way to the class five area.
The reason why he felt this way was probably in part due to Hong Yin’s influence. Unlike the other soul cultivators, Bai Yunfei didn’t want to kill a soulbeast for its soulgem.
Excluding the soulbeast wave where the soulbeasts were the invaders, Bai Yunfei felt it to be wrong.
In the Soulbeast Forest, it was him who was the ‘invader’.
As a secondary goal, Bai Yunfei was here for a soulbeast to form a contract with. But not once did Bai Yunfei come across any soulbeast that caught his interest.
When it came to forming a soul contract with a soulbeast, the best method of doing so was to form a very amiable bond between the two. Not every soulbeast wanted to kill; there exists many peaceful and friendly ones too. But the latter type of soulbeasts were comparatively few, and without any extenuating circumstances, these soulbeasts wouldn’t form a soul contract with any soul cultivator.
Another way of doing so was to simply beat the soulbeast into submission and use soulforce to bend the soulbeast to one’s will. This method wasn’t always successful of course, and many soulbeasts would rather die than to submit. And the stronger and more aware a soulbeast was, the harder this method became.
If Bai Yunfei couldn’t find any suitable soulbeasts in the class five area, going to the class six area was the only reasonable option after that. With how strong Bai Yunfei was, he should be fine as long as he stayed within the first half of the class six area.
In his heart, he knew that he just had to find a class six soulbeast to form a contract with. If he formed one with a class five soulbeast, it wouldn’t be able to keep up with his strength…..
Strength wasn’t the only factor in choosing a soulbeast. Like humans, soulbeasts had also varying levels of aptitude and talent. Some soulbeasts could only go as far as being a class five or class six soulbeast, and some soulbeasts who were more gifted than others were potentially limitless. Between a soulbeast who was already a class five and a soulbeast who could potentially become a class six, it was a simple answer on which one to pick.
And since Bai Yunfei trained in elemental fire, he wanted to find a soulbeast that was also capable of elemental fire, or elemental wood to supplement his strength.
And so with all the caution he could muster, Bai Yunfei made his way into the class six area.
Only two days transpired before Bai Yunfei found himself unfortunate enough to come face to face with three mid-stage class six green-eyed tigers. Battling hard in their cave, Bai Yunfei managed to make his escape rather than fight to the death.
In this dangerous area, fighting a battle with one’s life on the line was a very foolhardy task.
Another five days passed without incident, but Bai Yunfei found it far more strenuous than his one month traveling in the class five area. It wasn’t without benefit, however, as Bai Yunfei found himself gaining an exponential amount of combat experience and a lot of medicine.
On the eve of the seventh night, Bai Yunfei found himself a nice resting spot near a river. For dinner, he fished himself several large fish and began to started to roast them over a fire.
“The map’s getting really vague now, I’m going to be on my own from here on out. Maybe I’ll go a little deeper tomorrow…..” he muttered as he crunched on a fish.
Sudden movement from behind him caused Bai Yunfei to narrow his eyes. Putting the fish down, he spoke without turning his head, “Friend, if you’re here, you may as well come and sit. I’ve some fish you can eat.”
“Oh? You found me out that easily?”
A sparse few seconds after Bai Yunfei spoke, another voice from a hundred meters away replied to him.
Then a figure stepped out from the shadows.
The fact that this person didn’t seem to bear any ill will gave some semblance of peace to Bai Yunfei, but when he turned his head around, he found himself starting in surprise.
“You’re….”
He thought for another second to place a name to the face.
“You’re Na Lanyin!!”
“Haha, so you still remember my name, brother? That’s a hard feat….” He chuckled.
Walking on over, he took a seat on the stone in front of Bai Yunfei, “It’s been a few years since our last meeting, you’ve changed quite a bit, brother!”
“Ah, I’m Bai Yunfei.” Feeling somewhat awkward with how he was being addressed, Bai Yunfei introduced himself.
“Ah, so you’re brother Bai, it’s nice to meet you.”
“…..”
A sweatdrop fell down Bai Yunfei’s face. “Well, you can call me Yunfei, brother Na Lanyin…..”
“Haha, alright then! If you don’t mind calling me big brother, then I won’t object to it.”
He took a fish into his hands and took a tentative bite into it, “Wow, you’re quite skilled at cooking too, Yunfei. I ran out of rations a few days ago, so imagine my anguish when I had to subside on fruits and nuts.”
Under the amazed eyes of Bai Yunfei, Na Lanyin devoured another three pieces of fish before he wiped his mouth in satisfaction and burped.
“Big brother, what brings you to this part of the forest?” Bai Yunfei asked.
“Ah, nothing much, just talking a walk,” Na Lanyin started to pick at his teeth with one of the fish bones, “just tryin to find a soulbeast to form a contract with.”
“…..” Again, Bai Yunfei forced a smile to his lips. “I didn’t think I’d meet big brother Na Lanyin again, and here of all places.”
The Na Lanyin of today looked very aloof compared to before, where he looked a little worse for wear before. Back then, Bai Yunfei knew better than to peg him as a nobody; he had a mid-heaven tier soul armament, how could anyone with one of those be a nobody?
And his strength was a mid-stage Soul Exalt to boot!
Bai Yunfei’s own senior, Jiang Nan, was only able to become a mid-stage Soul Exalt last year, and he was much older than Na Lanyin!
There were of course, extenuating circumstances between the two. Crafters focused more on trying to achieve a higher level of soul compatibility between their soulbound armaments and them rather than training, so it took longer than usual for them to progress.
But still, this didn’t take away even an inch away from the fact that Na Lanyin was a soul cultivator capable of beating out any other prodigy in the empire!
“Ah, it really is a coincidence eh? I was just following wherever the earth took me when I found you. The gears of fate have started to move, perhaps….” He nodded; the first half of his sentence had been fine, but the last bit was very mystic sounding.
“The gears of fate? Sounds like some sort of third-rate epic, since when did you become a storyteller, big brother Na Lanyin? Weren’t you a fortune teller?”
“Oh? How’d you know that I spent an entire month in the Town of Braves telling stories?”
“…..”