Chapter 880 – The Heron Ministry

　　A caravan of some thirty people was advancing alone on the endless prairie. There weren’t many vehicles, only seven or eight, but the leather-suited people on horseback that surrounded the neighborhood were all young and energetic, and a few were even just eleven or twelve year olds.

　　At the front of the caravan was an old man with gorgeous clothes and riding a yellow stallion. He wore a fiery red fox skin hat. There were knife-like wrinkles on his forehead. His face was slightly purple. But around his waist was a three-colored brocade belt representing his identity, which was the very symbol of the Lord of a Ministry.

　　This place was already the southern part of the Tianlan Grassland, and this was precisely a team of Sudden People heading to the Holy Temple to pay tribute.

　　”Tianlan Prairie” is the name of the Mulan Prairie by the Woodlanders, because the Woodlanders have always believed in the rumored “Tianlan Beast”, and please treat it as the guardian god of their own race, and worship it for generations, so the prairie has this name.

　　Originally, the Sudden Woods people only occupied the southern half of the Tianlan Prairie, but since the battle in the central part of the prairie thirty years ago, they defeated the Mulan people in one fell swoop, and since then they have occupied the entire prairie, and their power naturally skyrocketed, and there is no rival in the entire prairie.

　　Of course, the Suddenly tribe is so huge, the internal tribes are countless, as small as hundreds of thousands of people of small tribes, roughly hundreds of millions of people of super tribes, all over the grassland. And because in the last holy war in the merit of many people, but also a lot of emerging independent tribes out. Some of these tribes are not small, but some are even more insignificant, with a population of only tens of thousands of people.

　　The old man’s “Heron Ministry”, is such a micro-tribe from the large tribes divided out, although it can also be called a tribe, but in fact the entire tribe has only 70,000 to 80,000 people.

　　The name of the old man is Ying Heron, when he was young, he fought bravely, and in the Holy War, he once defeated several small tribes of Mulan people, and captured many nobles alive, so that he got his position nowadays. But now he could not withstand the ravages of age, coupled with these years of labor, although he was only fifty years old, his body was already showing signs of old age.

　　Now is the noon time, the old man looked at the sky hot sun, and then looked back at the back of the caravan in those young children, long sigh.

　　According to the theory, no matter how big or small the tribe is, it must enshrine a certain immortal master, otherwise, in case of a natural or man-made disaster or encounter with a demonic beast, ordinary mortals would not be able to withstand it. However, with a newborn small tribe like theirs, they were simply unable to recruit any Immortal Masters, and even the lowest ranked Immortal Masters were unwilling to enter such a small tribe. After all, for Immortal Masters, it was only good to join a tribe that was bigger and richer in order to supply them with sufficient resources for cultivation.

　　The reason why some small tribes still have some low-ranking immortal masters is that these immortal masters themselves come from these tribes, or their own cultivation qualifications are poor, the big tribes are also unwilling to offer, so they have no choice but to stay.

　　The old man’s heron department, there is no opportunity to cultivate the tribe’s immortal division, so these years something, can only be heavy money to hire neighboring tribes of low-ranking immortal division to help. But these immortal masters are also very high price, a few times to spend the entire tribe to spend a small half of the year’s income, which makes the original is not rich Canglu Department even worse.

　　Good in twenty years turn to once the opening day of the spirit, finally is coming. Long ago on this matter on the heart of the Yinglu, naturally impossible to let go of this matter, immediately led the tribe was tested out of the spirit root of the tribal children, to the nearest one of their tribes to the Tianlan Temple and go.

　　The Heavenly Lan Sacred Temple was originally built only for the worship of the Heavenly Lan Sacred Beast, but after so many years of evolution, it has become a holy place in the hearts of the Sudden Woods people, and has become a place that specializes in cultivating low-ranked Immortal Masters of the Sudden Woods tribe.

　　There were several high-ranking Immortal Masters in each sanctuary, responsible for teaching some basic cultivation paths. Once they are successful, those with lower qualifications will return to their tribes and be worshipped by the tribes, while those with a promising future will be taken in as disciples by the higher-ranked Immortals, and will be trained exclusively. Mortals who have not gone through the Spirit Opening Ceremony are strictly forbidden to be taught Immortal Techniques by high-ranking Immortal Masters.

　　The number of these sanctuaries was not large, only sixty to seventy, but they were evenly distributed throughout the grassland, but each one was almost always the center of a large area, surrounded by thousands of small and large tribes.

　　As the region’s only temple, the larger the tribe from the temple naturally the closer, while the heron tribe is too small, was assigned extremely far away from the place. From the tribe out to the sanctuary, it was a three-month journey. Unable to do anything about it, as early as four months ago, Ying Loon led the team out from the tribe.

　　Speaking of which, on the last Spirit Opening Day, although he had made the tribe independent, he was unable to gather enough tribute and could only miss it. This time, Yinglu said nothing and was unwilling to miss it again. Even if the entire tribe had to scrimp and cut back on food for the next few years, he still wanted his tribe to have its own Immortal Master.

　　However, having to cross such a vast grassland with the tribute was an extremely dangerous thing for the likes of them. After all, the tributes were all things that would be of great use to the Immortal Masters, and almost all of them were cherished and valuable to mortals, and there were quite a few people with bad intentions who took this opportunity to rob the weaker teams, and even some true Immortal Masters might make a move. This was something that had happened many times during the Spirit Opening Day in previous years.

　　The tribes that were closer to the sanctuary were better off, they always feared the name of the sanctuary and didn’t dare to be too reckless, but tribes that were as far away as they were were extremely dangerous.

　　I heard that last time, a medium-sized tribe in this region had a nearly 1,000 year old elixir in their tribute, and when the news leaked out, the entire team disappeared strangely on their way to the sanctuary, and not a single silhouette could be found. As a result, many people have rumored that it was a high-level immortal master of a large tribe who was jealous of this treasure and therefore killed to seize it. The people of the temple were naturally annoyed by this matter, and I heard that they also sent their immortal masters to track down the matter, but somehow it was left unsettled.

　　So this time although the tribute is ready, but there is no immortal master pressure, so that the heron department leader from the out of the beginning, began to eat and sleep.

　　And during the time of the opening of the Spirit Day, all the tribal Immortal Masters were equally busy traveling with the team to the Holy Temple, that is, they had spirit stones but were not willing to be hired. Occasionally, there were a few wandering Immortal Masters, but they were also hired by a few of the larger tribes in the vicinity with a lot of money. As the leader of the weakest tribe, Ying Lu could only stare in disbelief.

　　Thinking of this, the old man sighed and couldn’t help but look back behind him.

　　Among the seven or eight vehicles behind him, four of them were loaded with tributes, and the ones pulling them were all carefully selected horses from the tribe. These vehicles also had the foresight to be made of the tribe’s strongest red birch wood. Of course, in order not to attract attention, the surface of all the vehicles looked tattered and worn out. However, it was fortunate that these measures were in place, otherwise something might have happened long ago.

　　That’s the case, in the last encounter with a small pack of wolves, the team was almost reduced in number. But in order to break away from the wolves, the caravan had to discard the slowest two vehicles in order to get here safely.

　　Those two vehicles didn’t have anything of value, but they were filled with most of their party’s food for the next two months, so it seemed that they would have to pause on the road for the next few days. Remembering that there was a canyon nearby after two more days of traveling, there were few people in there, maybe there were some wild cattle and wild sheep or something like that, so they could hunt some prey back first.

　　Thinking of this, the old man came back and touched the hardwood bow hanging on his saddle, a pensive look on his face.

　　”Huh! What’s that?” A clear female voice suddenly came from beside the old man, her voice full of astonishment. This was the voice of a clear young girl who followed closely behind the old man. This girl is called Ying Shan, age fifteen or sixteen years old, is a certain junior of Ying Lu, is also one of the several people in the tribe who were tested to have spiritual roots, naturally, deeply receiving Ying Lu’s favor.

　　The old man was shocked at his words, and hurriedly looked up. The result is not far ahead, a dense bush, there really is a burst of green light flickering, vaguely what things in its appearance. And he remembers very clearly, just back before, that direction has not this light.

　　The old man’s heart was in awe, as a tribal leader, naturally the spiritual light released when the immortal master casts spells, is not unfamiliar. Could it be that there really is an Immortal Master who wants to lay his hands on such a poor team as theirs?

　　Ying Lu’s heart sank as he suddenly raised his hand, and the group behind him came to a screeching halt. Everyone else also saw the green light in the bushes in front of them, and their faces couldn’t help but show a few moments of panic and wariness.

　　The old man forced himself to calmly strangled the reins and stood still, but all sorts of thoughts raced through his mind, thinking hard about a way to protect himself.

　　But a few moments later, the old man realized that something was wrong, the green light in the bushes, despite flickering non-stop, but there was never an immortal master appearing out, and there was no immortal art issued.

　　Yinglu’s eyes light up, hurriedly to the bushes to look carefully, these bushes are densely packed with one person to high roots, it is impossible to see clearly what.

　　”Earth Mang! You go over and see if there really is any Immortal Master there.” After the old man’s gaze flickered a few times, he suddenly spoke.

　　”Yes, Matriarch!” A strong and powerful youth in the caravan with an imposing face was stunned at the words, but hurriedly agreed, then dismounted his horse and carefully headed towards the bushes more than twenty feet away. When he was only five or six feet away from the place of green light, the youth hesitated for a while before his feet subconsciously restrained their steps.

　　”I wonder which Immortal Master is here? We are from the Cang Heron Ministry and have come to pay our respects to the Immortal Master’s true face.” The youth seemed to have some status in the Cang Heron Department, and his words were spoken in a gentle manner, with a respectful look on his face at the same time.

　　But the shrub is still just the flow of spiritual light, and there is no sound out, the youth saw this, could not help but look back at the old man.

　　The old man thought down to the back, or silently nodded at it, the youth heart suddenly had a few points of the bottom of the air, footsteps quietly and silently to the front. When walking to the front of the bushes, the youth hesitated for a moment, or clenched his teeth, and reached out to separate the bushes in front of him.