Huo Yuhao bowed apologetically to the two of them. "I'm sorry, Miss Snow Empress, Miss Qiuer. My place is a bit of a mess, please wait a moment while I tidy up."
Long Qiuer waved her hand dismissively, her gaze inevitably falling on the bag at Huo Yuhao's feet. "This is... what is this! How could you have such a thing?!"
"Eh? Miss Qiuer, do you recognize what this is?"
Snow Empress's gaze also fell upon that woven bag. She looked at the brownish-yellow little gorilla, rubbed her eyes, looked again, and lost her voice: "This, this is..."
She quickly walked over and drifted down, placing her hand upon that emerald-green bag woven from vines. She lightly hooked a vine with her finger, her eyes turning slightly red.
With a bitter smile and a shake of her head, she looked at Huo Yuhao with a deep and complex expression. "...You truly deserve to be someone favored by the heavens. This is actually a bag woven from the root whiskers of the Evergreen Vine of Life, and you've managed to obtain a Behemoth cub..."
Snow Empress naturally understood that this was fate; one could not simply envy it. It was like some people playing Three Kingdoms Kill and getting three gold cards in a row, while others playing Genshin Impact could only hit the hard pity...
It seemed the Silver Dragon Scale Pendant on Huo Yuhao's chest also emitted a trace of silver light.
Long Qiuer looked at Snow Empress in shock. "A Behemoth!? How is that possible? How could such a creature still be alive!"
Facing Long Qiuer's astonishment, Snow Empress merely nodded silently. Although Long Qiuer had heard Di Tian and Bear Lord talk about this species, she had only lived for 15,000 years; her knowledge was far less vast than that of the 700,000-year-old Snow Empress.
Huo Yuhao tried his best to ignore the looks from the two ladies that seemed like they wanted to eat him alive, and said somewhat helplessly: "Uh... you two ladies, at least tell me what these two things are."
Long Qiuer sighed, walked to Snow Empress's side, and picked up the woven bag with reddened eyes. "These are the root whiskers of the Evergreen Vine of Life. The Evergreen Vine of Life grows at the Lake of Life in the innermost core of the Star Dou Great Forest. Beneath the Lake of Life, Life Gold is condensed."
Huo Yuhao could understand this; put simply, this thing grew on top of Life Gold. It stood to reason it wouldn't be much less precious than Life Gold itself.
Long Qiuer continued to explain: "The Evergreen Vine of Life grows on that Life Gold, growing only one inch every thousand years. It is extremely precious. After Ferocious Beasts undergo a Heavenly Tribulation, the lightning will inevitably damage their life source. The function of this Evergreen Vine of Life is that after they are injured or their source is damaged, they only need to fuse a small section into themselves to repair their life source and extend their lifespan."
Huo Yuhao listened with his mouth agape. Didn't this mean he had struck it rich?
Snow Empress naturally saw Huo Yuhao's shock and shook her head with a bitter smile. "This isn't the kind of Evergreen Vine of Life you're thinking of. These are its root whiskers. Although the effect isn't that exaggerated, they still contain a massive amount of life energy. Most importantly, the Evergreen Vine of Life itself absorbs life energy by rooting into the Life Water Crystals. Therefore, it is extremely beneficial for the filtration and storage of life energy."
...Still, it was fine. He had managed to scavenge a piece of Life Gold after all; these root whiskers of the Evergreen Vine of Life would surely be useful in the future.
"As for this..." Long Qiuer looked at the little gorilla with a gaze similar to Huo Yuhao's, containing a trace of distaste. "If it really is as Snow Empress says, a Behemoth, then it is useless to you and me."
"Behemoth? What kind of thing is that?"
In human history, there were almost no records of Behemoths—at least Huo Yuhao had never seen them in ancient texts.
Long Qiuer stood up and sat on the sofa nearby. "Tell us first, how did you get your hands on this thing?"
Huo Yuhao pursed his lips. He figured telling these two shouldn't be a problem, so he truthfully recounted how he had obtained this from an ancient gold coin at the Star-Light Auction House.
Snow Empress cast a deep look at Long Qiuer, then stood up and sat on Huo Yuhao's bed. She said to Huo Yuhao: "If I'm not mistaken, it should be the royalty of the Behemoth lineage, the Golden Behemoth."
"In ancient times, during crustal movements, cracks seemed to open in space, and some strange creatures appeared that did not originally belong to the Douluo Continent."
"But many creatures died because they could not adapt to the environment of the Douluo Continent. In my memory, not many survived. However, every single one that could survive was an absolute powerhouse with terrifying strength. The Behemoth was a true king among them. It even earned a very resounding nickname: the Dragon-Eater!"
Huo Yuhao cried out in shock: "The Dragon-Eater!"
Only then did he realize why Long Qiuer had looked at that little gorilla with such dread earlier...
Snow Empress nodded silently. "An adult Behemoth possesses terrifying strength. Even a 100,000-year Soul Beast is no match for it in a one-on-one fight. It especially likes to drink the blood of dragon-type Soul Beasts and eat their brain marrow, which is why it earned the name Dragon-Eater. Fortunately, the number of Dragon-Eaters was extremely rare, and they were eventually suppressed by the Beast Kings of the Dragon Clan. However, they still left a very dark period in the history of the Dragon Clan's rule over the Soul Beasts."
"Hiss..." Looking at it that way, this Behemoth cub wasn't some scavenged treasure, but a troublesome fellow!
It was likely that Soul Masters during the era of the Martial Soul Hall had accidentally discovered this little guy. Not knowing what it was, but seeing its strong bloodline and high life intensity, they had used the root whiskers of the Evergreen Vine of Life to weave a bag and seal it up.
Long Qiuer stood up and walked to the bag, looking at the Behemoth cub inside with wary eyes. "Later, among the Soul Beasts, the Darkgold Terrorclaw Bear actually possessed some of the Behemoth's bloodline. But to you and me, calling it a natural enemy wouldn't be an exaggeration."
Huo Yuhao nodded thoughtfully. Since the bloodlines clashed, it definitely couldn't become a Soul Spirit, but was it right to just leave it like this? That didn't seem appropriate either...
"Ah, then doesn't that mean..." Huo Yuhao blurted out, "this little thing is Bear Lord's... ancestor?"
Long Qiuer's expression became a bit strange. "Ancestor..."
It seemed one could put it that way... she just didn't know if Bear Lord would mind having an ancestor who was hundreds of thousands of years younger than himself.
Huo Yuhao felt a bit discouraged. "...Forget it, I'll use this bag to keep this little ancestor for now. I suppose the reason it survived so long without suffocating is due to the nourishment of the life energy in the Evergreen Vine of Life root whiskers."
Long Qiuer thought for a moment and said, "I think Bear Lord shouldn't mind this little guy. If you're willing, I can help you discuss it with Bear Lord."