After a century of worship, I became the ancestor of the tribe.

Chapter 221 The Geniuses of the Blazing Flame Division

The two three-headed stone statues that activated the barrier were moved by Shen Can to the Blazing River Valley.

As for the ancient trees within the barrier cave, he doesn't plan to transplant them for the time being. If they were cultivated and used as clan territory, they would be too conspicuous.

After Zhiyan is promoted to the rank of Bo, and after he has accumulated more experience, we can discuss planting the ancient tree outside the barrier.

Without the support of a fourth-tier leader, the Xiaoyang Clan suffered an unexpectedly rapid defeat under the siege of 10,000 elite soldiers led by Huotang.

The original large tribes of the Muyan and Qiuyin branches were the main targets of the attack, and almost all the warriors above the rank of commander were killed.

The remaining owl yang began to collapse into the mountains and forests, hiding in narrow mountain crevices and dark valleys.

The entire operation was carried out by the Blazing Flame Tribe alone, without notifying Jishan and Yanran.

However, the Yanran tribe might know something, but it's not a big problem. The strength of the Zhiyan tribe will be revealed little by little in the future.

In just one month, Huotang returned with his army.

Tribal stone tower.

"Clan leader, you didn't kill all the Xiaoyang cultivators at the Heavenly Vein Realm, did you?" Shen Can asked with a smile.

"No, these guys are very fast. Once they hide in the mountains and forests, even a master of divine treasures might not be able to find them."

Huo Tang said, "Judging from the number of Xiao Yang scattered in the mountains and forests, they still have quite a few Heavenly Vein Warriors, and some even still have tribal structures."

"If we let our young people in, the casualties could be quite high."

Shen Can knew Huo Tang's worries and immediately said, "Since our Zhi Yan came out of the mountains, we have held several sacrifices, and some of the younger generation have also received blessings from the sacrificial spirits several times."

Those snot-nosed creatures from back then, like the Fire Turtle, have long since cultivated to the Heavenly Vein Realm, and many more are at the Mountain Opening Realm. It's time to bring them out for a spin.

Tell your tribe members that it's a voluntary volunteer effort, and explain the potential dangers involved.

"Of course, if they don't even have the courage to sign up for the trial, then they are not worth training in the future. They can just stay in the clan and farm."

"The trial is simple. I only need Xiao Yang's left ear, and the merit points will be calculated based on the number of Xiao Yangs I kill."

"A trial participant who kills a fellow Rank 1 Owl Sun will receive one battle merit."

"A trial participant in the Mountain Opening Realm who kills a Heavenly Vein Realm expert like Xiao Yang will be awarded 100 battle merits."

"Within the Heavenly Vein Realm, a trial participant who kills a Xiao Yang who is one realm higher than themselves will receive twenty battle merits."

Killing Xiao Yang, who is two realms higher than oneself, earns forty battle merits.

Killing Xiao Yang, who is three realms higher than oneself, earns eighty battle merits.

Shen Can spoke as he pondered, but this was only a general idea and needed further refinement.

"A large number of outposts have been set up in the eastern mountains and forests. Trial participants can go to the outposts to record the Owl Sun Left Ear they have obtained."

Every day, clansmen are sent back to collect and summarize the data from various strongholds, so that the specific battle merit values ​​can be known in real time.

"Other clansmen will be sent to patrol the mountains disguised as wild beasts. Each trial participant will carry three whistling arrows. Shooting an arrow will automatically be considered a failure of the trial, disqualifying them from entering the Martial Hall."

"The clansmen on patrol will then be able to bring back those who have given up the trial."

"Let's take this opportunity to separate out the young clansmen at the Mountain Opening Realm and Heavenly Vein Realm and see which ones are worth nurturing."

“Cultivation in the Divine Treasury Realm requires starting from the Mountain Opening Realm.”

Huo Tang pondered for a moment and nodded, then asked, "Will the wizard participate in the trial?"

"join."

"By the way, it needs to be made clear in advance that unless you voluntarily give up the assessment, you are not allowed to return to the tribal camp."

Returning to the tribal settlement was automatically considered a failure of the trial, and the individual lost their qualification to enter the Martial Hall for training.

"The eastern mountainous region is vast, and it will take quite a while to find Xiaoyang by traversing mountains and rivers. How about setting the trial period at one year?"

"A year is a period of both wilderness survival and a trial to kill owls."

Huo Tang nodded. "Let's leave it at that for now. The elders and I will refine your idea further."

He felt that even if he arranged for his people to enter the mountains and forests in advance to prepare for such a trial, the casualties would likely be considerable.

Despite having such thoughts, Huotang did not back down, for killing was the fastest way to grow.

Shen Can hadn't expected Huo Tang to act so quickly. The day after discussing it with him, Huo Tang had already finalized the trial plan they had come up with.

It largely followed his line of thinking, with some additional content added.

For example, the method of obtaining battle merits by hunting down owl stags allows trial participants to hunt down owl stags with lower cultivation levels than themselves.

Of course, this would result in a lower number of battle merits.

For example, a trial participant in the Mountain Opening Realm must kill twenty Rock Splitting Realm Owls to gain one battle merit.

A Celestial Vein Realm trial participant needs to kill between one hundred and three hundred Rock-Splitting Realm Owls to gain one battle merit, depending on their Celestial Vein Realm level.

In addition, Huotang and the elders also agreed that the trial participants could form teams to hunt wild beasts, which would also count towards their combat merits.

However, Shen Can rejected it after seeing it, saying it was too detailed and he wanted Xiao Yang's ears.

As long as they don't kill their own kind and have an obligation to heal them, the trial participants are not bound by any other rules. They can form teams or act alone if they wish, without any restrictions.

The vast mountains and fields are the testing grounds for the trial participants; just try your best to come out alive.

In addition, the age of the participants is limited to between sixteen and twenty-five years old, and the minimum cultivation level is the Mountain Opening Realm.

"The clan leader can pass on the message to the clan and tell everyone to prepare. Even if someone participates in the trial with a fourth-tier magical artifact, I won't care. I only care about the battle merits."

In Shen Can's view, if a second or third-tier clansman can use a fourth-tier magical artifact, then it also proves that he is worth cultivating.

He didn't care where the fourth-tier magical artifact came from.

Upon hearing this, Huo Tang felt that Shen Can was truly reckless, and this trial was practically a free-range exercise.

"Then take a look at the reward arrangements."

Shen Can looked at the rewards arranged by the clan, which were nothing more than precious pills, witch weapons, and armor.

It also distinguishes between different reward levels, such as the third-tier champion, the top three, the top ten, the second-tier champion, the top three, and the top ten.

"I'll arrange the reward."

"Now, those under the age of 25 in the tribe who have not reached the fourth level of the Heavenly Vein Realm, there is no need for the distinction between the second and third tiers. They are all in the top ten. The leader receives the heaviest reward, followed by the second, then the third, and so on, from fourth to tenth."

"If any member of our clan is at the second level of the Mountain Opening Realm among the top ten, I will give them an extra reward regardless of their ranking."

When news of the trial spread throughout the tribe's settlements, the tribespeople were stunned.

Aside from not harming their own kind and having an obligation to heal them, there were no other requirements except to kill Xiaoyang.

The top ten trial participants in terms of battle merit will also receive temple rewards.

The quick-thinking tribesmen immediately began making arrangements, preparing witchcraft medicine, armor, bows and crossbows, and even war beasts for their own children.

The clan has said that there are no restrictions on preparing things in advance; they will only consider the battle merits gained from killing Xiaoyang.

The older generation also began to pass on their experience in fighting Xiaoyang, such as breaking up large groups into smaller ones and striking and running away.

Soon, the military department dispatched a group of wizards to various settlements to count the young people who wanted to participate in the trials. They were required to collect a drop of the trial participants' blood essence and record detailed information such as their names and physical appearance.

The purpose of collecting blood essence is to confirm identity through witchcraft, so that it can be identified in case of danger or death.

In addition, one can also use blood essence to find people within a certain range.

At the same time, Huotang also began to arrange for his people to go to the eastern mountains and forests to observe the terrain, draw maps, and select suitable places to establish outposts.

Fortunately, although the trial grounds are vast, the true core gathering place of the retreating Xiaoyang Clan is within a radius of ten thousand miles centered on Moyun Gorge.

During this siege of Xiaoyang, Huotang, in order to cooperate with the trial, did not attack Xiaoyang excessively, which frightened them into running away.

……

"Let's schedule the trial for two months from now."

On this day, Huotang came to the ancestral temple again.

“I have sent over a thousand of my people into the mountains and forests, and I have started to build outposts in prominent locations, a total of eighty-nine.”

At that time, there will be azure phoenixes and flying boats patrolling the sky, and beast-like tribesmen guarding the ground.

I have already warned them that they must not interfere with the trial unless there is a signal arrow."

As he spoke, Huotang handed Shen Can a thick roll of animal hide paper.

"This is the list of clansmen who participated in the trial. There are 2,737 people, including 93 second-tier wizards."

The identity badge has been completed and imprinted with the essence of blood.

Shen Can spotted Yan Ling's name on the list at a glance, but quickly glanced at it again.

"Our tribe had quite a few people back then."

Huotang nodded, his face beaming with undisguised joy.

Although the clan had long been united internally and externally, he had been quietly increasing the number of bloodlines of the Blazing Flame Clan over the years.

"If it had been a few years later, the babies born during the years we spent recuperating in the valley would have been able to participate in this trial. There would have been a larger number of these babies."

"Look at these two highlighted in red, one has seventy-seven Desolate Power and the other has seventy-eight Desolate Power."

Including these two, there are now nine members of the clan who have reached the level of seventy-two Desolate Power.

Three of these nine people have already broken through to the Heavenly Vein Realm, and I had already arranged for them to train among the clan soldiers.

In Yongyi, the power of the Seventy-Two Desolate Elements is the minimum requirement for advancing to the Divine Treasury. It does not mean that having the power of the Seventy-Two Desolate Elements guarantees advancement to the Divine Treasury.

For example, Volcano is one of the seventy-two desolate powers. Although he has now successfully advanced to the Divine Treasure Realm, if Volcano were in another tribe, the probability of advancing to the Divine Treasure Realm would not be very high.

Therefore, for each tribe, the more people who can condense the power of the seventy-two wildernesses, the better, as quantity increases the success rate of advancing to the Divine Treasury.

Among the list Huotang presented were clansmen with over sixty Desolate Power, especially these few with seventy Desolate Power, most of whom were the younger generation of the original Blazing Flame Headquarters.

This situation is normal. Although the number of clansmen who were later gathered was large, they were all ordinary clansmen, and the situation only stabilized for a few years. On the other hand, the main clansmen of the same age group had long been cultivating with the resources obtained from Ji.

These clansmen are indeed talented, but without a continuous supply of witch pills and witch elixirs to nurture them, they could not have reached this level.

It can be said that although the Zhiyan tribe is quite different from the Bo tribe in some aspects, it is no worse than other tribes in terms of blending witchcraft and cultivating its people, and may even surpass most of the Bo tribes.

For the next period of time, most of the clan's attention was focused on the trial.

Both Shen Can and Huo Tang were eager to see if the development over the years had produced any useful geniuses.

Huo Tang, in particular, kept scanning the list, secretly noting down many names, hoping to find one or more promising third-generation talents based on their performance.

Now, his thoughts have changed again. He will step down as clan leader and hand over the reins to Volcano, so that he can properly nurture the third generation. If he can see the third generation of clan leaders pass on the throne peacefully, he will have no regrets.

Two months later.

As the sun rose, a clan festival had just concluded, and flying boats carrying clan members undergoing trials headed towards the eastern mountains and forests.

Shen Can stood outside the ancestral temple, watching the departing flying boat disappear into the distance at the end of the mountains, before slowly walking into the ancestral temple.

After the trials are over, we will have a few years of stable development to prove our position as the leader of the tribe.

While Shen Can returned to the ancestral temple, Huo Tang escorted the trial clansmen all the way to the mountains and forests where Xiao Yang was located in the east.

Then, watching his clansmen undergoing the trial split into different teams and disappear into the mountains and forests, he still couldn't bear to go back.

He planned to stay a few more days, and he wanted to personally lead the team during the initial few days of patrolling the mountains and forests.

As for clan affairs, they are handled internally.

Since Huoshan was promoted to a divine treasure, he has selected people to handle clan affairs. There are four elders in total: Huoqi, Huokui, Huoning, and Huoyu, as well as five commanders: Huozhan, Huotu, Tianchuanshan, Shijun, and Jianyun.

The elders and leaders formed an elders' council to handle clan affairs and military matters, and will assist Volcano in managing the Blazing Flame Tribe.

Of course, Huotang himself is also a member of the elders' council.

In the ten days or so leading up to the trial, clansmen were constantly being injured and fired whistling arrows, and casualties began to occur.

This made Huotang very worried.

Inside the ancestral temple, Shen Can didn't pay close attention to the trial. At present, Blazing Flame was still a makeshift operation, and it remained to be seen how much gold could be extracted from the sand.

After the clone returned, it immediately went into seclusion.

It's more like a deep sleep than a period of seclusion.

After Shen Can takes control of his clone's consciousness, he will involuntarily fall into a deep sleep.

He tried to control the clone several times and could feel changes happening inside the clone.

However, whenever he tries to comprehend it carefully, his main consciousness is assimilated by the drowsy state of his secondary consciousness.

Not only that, the clone also transformed into a giant beast and hid inside the cave.

The only thing Shen Can could clearly perceive was the clone's rejection of the power of the five elements; it seemed to be generating a kind of stellar power.

Seeing this, Shen Can temporarily abandoned the idea of ​​sensing the changes in his clone.

He headed towards the Giant Mountain Range to begin preparing rewards for the clansmen who ranked first in the trials.

The game features carefully matched cultivation methods, magical artifacts, and companion battle beasts.

Although they were selected from a makeshift group of clansmen, Shen Can still planned to cultivate them vigorously, as this was related to the future reputation of the Firewood Hall.

……

In a dimly lit valley, thousands of Xiaoyang lived crammed together.

Every time the sun rises, this group of owl-suns sends out their young men to hunt.

But today, even though the sunlight illuminated the valley, Xiaoyang was not seen emerging.

The valley was quiet, and the caves were filled with a fishy, ​​pungent smell.

Yan Ling pinched her nose as she walked through the caves.

Beside her were a blue phoenix, a silver-horned wolf, and a little yellow-haired monkey.

At that moment, the little monkey, carrying a bamboo basket, quickly cut off the left ear from Xiaoyang's corpse.

This group of owls died in their sleep, from the cracked rocks to the celestial veins.

"gone."

Yanling lightly touched the ground with her feet and sat on the back of the silver-horned wolf, calling to the yellow-haired little monkey to head out of the valley.

Before leaving, Yanling took a seed out of her magic bag and threw it at the entrance of the cave.

Then, by performing a hand seal, the seed quickly sprouted and took root, filling the entire opening of the hole, and blooming into a pink flower.

……

Thousands of miles away, a thin figure was perched on an old tree, dressed in coarse linen clothes, underneath which was a modified suit of armor, with the breastplate and back panel re-embedded.

The hempen clothing concealed the light emanating from the armor, allowing it to remain securely hidden in the old tree.

His blood-red eyes occasionally flashed with a cold light. He held a black bow and drew a wooden arrow from the quiver.

Then he bit his finger and drew on the wooden arrow, leaving a blurry and grotesque mark on the arrow.

"coming!"

A Tier 3 Owl Sun Warrior appeared in the slender figure's sight and quickly headed towards a hidden valley.

call out!
The boy raised his hand, drew his bow, and the wooden arrow pierced the air, heading straight for the owl-like warrior at the second level of the Heavenly Vein Realm.

The sound of something cutting through the air naturally startled the owl-like creature. It immediately turned around to throw a punch, but then it heard the cries of its kind coming from the incoming arrow.

In a split second of hesitation, the wooden arrow pierced the skull of the owl-like creature.

Yan Liu quickly jumped down from the tree, came to the owl-like creature, cut off its left ear, and then pulled out a wooden arrow and stabbed it in the chest.

He muttered incantations, and a drop of blood from his heart seeped out from the open chest of the owl-like man. He collected it into a bottle and quickly left.

His father came from a tribe that was originally from the Blood Curse Guard. He met and fell in love with a woman from the Blazing Flame tribe during a battle, and that's how he came to be.

Later, due to the curse and problems with his cultivation, his father died with blood flowing from all seven orifices.

He thought he would die from the curse like his father, but unexpectedly, with the help of the clan's shaman, he survived and the curse within him was brought under control to a certain extent, becoming part of his own fighting power.

……

"I'm exhausted."

A chubby figure emerged from a crevice in the mountain wall and took out a fruit from its pocket to gnaw on.

After finishing the fruit, he pulled out a piece of Owl Sun Skin from a crevice in the rocks behind him and quickly put it on.

After dressing up, she really looked exactly like Xiao Yang, even her aura was the same.

Then, he swaggered off into the valley ahead.

In the valley, a remnant of the Xiaoyang tribe lived, and he was preparing to become the chief of this remnant tribe.

It's more interesting to kill Xiao Yang yourself than to let Xiao Yang fight himself.

Soon.

A figure ran out of the valley in a disheveled state, with a dense whistling sound of arrows piercing the air behind him.

A group of owl-like creatures chased after him, each shouting that they wanted to kill the imposter human.

"Damn it, how can you Xiaoyang people be so perverted, even smelling butts."

Clutching his backside, Lu Chen stumbled and rushed into the cliff face.

They quickly slid down the cliff to the other side of the mountain and pulled down pre-prepared stones to block their way back.

Lu Chen tore off the owl skin, put it in his basket, and quickly headed away into the distance.

……

Thirty thousand miles to the west lies the land of the Scorching Flame Clan.

into the night.

The moonlight was like water, and the starlight was dazzling.

Ancestral temple.

Shen Can, who was cultivating, suddenly woke up. He scanned all directions with his divine sense and found the clan territory completely quiet.

Looking out through the ancestral temple gate, one can see clansmen patrolling, and everything is peaceful and safe.

Even the tribal soldiers in the main camp had already rested.

"Senior Spirit Master, have you noticed anything?"

Inside the sacrificial vessel, Ji Tianlong was the first to awaken.

"No."

The spirits all shook their heads. They were connected to the people of the Blazing Flame Tribe by their shared will, and their senses covered all directions.

Shen Can was taken aback, then said, "I might be hallucinating."

At this moment, thousands of miles away in the dark night sky, a black bird hovers high in the air, looking down at the fiery land of the Blazing Flame Clan where bonfires and torches flicker.

The black bird's eyes were strange, seemingly tinged with blood.

"A very vigilant human."

P.S.: Two 10,000-word chapters today. I'll try to add more chapters for last month's monthly votes starting tomorrow, but my capacity is limited, so it will take several days to complete.

(End of this chapter)