Yang Qing wasn't sure about what criteria it used to search for its successors but he guessed with its dwindling lifespan the standards had to have been growing lower and lower by the year till finally, it found one in the founders of the Red Maple Empire.

Seven adventurers wandered into the territory of the red maple spirit in search of fortunes. Those seven people as denoted in the notes didn't seem to have anything outstanding about them other than the fact by the time they stumbled onto the territory of the red maple spirit they were just as desperate as it was.

Those seven cultivators had been members of the Odyssey Horizon Guild, they were seasoned explorers at the core formation realm who had formed a partnership with each other out of convenience.

The Odyssey Horizon Guild was one of the oldest organizations on the continent sharing that same reputation with the Dragon Meadow, with both these organizations rumored to be older than even the two holy lands.When it came to renown, the Odyssey Horizon Guild was pretty well-known when compared to its counterpart in the Dragon Meadow. Other than people with significant connections, few knew about the Dragon Meadow, and even those who knew about it didn't know much.

Take Yang Qing for example, he knew for a fact that the Dragon Meadow was real, a bit of what it dealt with, and a little bit of history but he had no idea of how to get in contact with them let alone find where it was located. It was always stepped in a huge veil of mystery, but it was different for the Odyssey Horizon Guild. Everyone knew about it. Whether it was a cultivator or a mortal,someone in the villages or someone in the cities, a mother, a child, or a grasshopper chewing a blade of grass by the road, they all knew of it.

lightsΝοvel Bards sang countless tales about it of the explorers who discovered wealth beyond their imagination, unraveled mysteries of the heavens, with the heavens and earth as their blanket and tent, there was no way they would not dare venture, slowly unveiling the secrets of the world to the rest.

With tales like that floating around it wasn't difficult for every child to be enamored by the prospect of being one of those explorers with nothing but the clothes on their back, the sword on their waist diving fearlessly into the mysteries of the world, drinking with dragons, dancing with phoenixes, drinking from the cup of wisdom offered by the most ancient of existences such as the long-lived parasol tree spirit, unearthing secrets that told a tale of a bygone era spanning millions and millions of years back.

Every single child dreamed of living such a life, being the heroic carefree figure, a glorious member of the Odyssey Horizon Guild, and Yang Qing had been no exception, that was up until he felt the fearsome pressure of a peak stage foundation establishment spirit beast when he was just a fledgling snort filled six-year-old body refinement cultivator. That terrifying experience sobered him up to the realities of the world, and how dangerous it was.

He could hardly breathe under the fearsome pressure of a radiant flaming comb chicken, how would he be able to dance with a phoenix or gamble with a dragon, if he couldn't handle even a chicken?lightsnovelThat day, he realized that being an explorer may not be for him. That realization was something that dawned on every single cultivator who becomes an explorer and they're in the thick of it. They realize that post isn't as glamorous as it was made out to be and it was fraught with dangers at every turn.

Being a cultivator was perilous and being an explorer was even more so. Explorers usually went by another name, it wasn't spoken of in the open but it was still known. They were called the living corpses.

From the moment you became an explorer, you should consider your life forfeit, and that statement rang true for the seven founders of the Red Maple Empire. In a scramble for a treasure they found while diving into some ruin, they ended up offending someone they should not have when they maimed the son of a rank 3 clan leader in the vie for the treasure.

In a ruin or mysterious realm, all's fair in the fight for a treasure, status and background matter little in there but that is only if you can ensure what happens in there never leaks out. The seven founders fought with that son over a treasure and won that bout and they were well on their way to killing him to avoid any mishaps when he used a secret technique to escape and eventually left the ruin.

The attempted murder was a reasonable choice on their part. They had already maimed and gravely injured that young master, it would be naive to assume that young master would let it go if they left him a path to life on account of his status. The best and surest way to avoid any troubles was to silence him, which they failed to do.

They immediately left the ruin using every means at their disposal to hide their tracks from that clan. The seven of them were only in the core formation realm and had angered a rank 3 clan, they could only flee and hide, and flee and hide they did until their paths led them to the doors of the red maple spirit.

There was no better place to hide than there. Unless one had a death wish, humans were prohibited from stepping foot in that place. It was the perfect place for those seven cultivators to hide. If the worst was to happen, for them, it was better to die at the hands of the red maple spirit than whatever fate awaited them if they fell into the clutches of that clan.

Their gamble proved worthwhile as they managed to not only guarantee their lives but also profit from disaster. The red maple spirit chose its successor from one of them.

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