"Uncle Huang, can you recall when you fell ill?"

Ye Lingyue saw that Uncle Huang was still very weak, and couldn't ask too much at once, so she gently prodded to start with the cause of his illness.

"Gentlefolk, I'm not sick. I'm sixty-three this year and have always been hearty. I only remember sometimes being lucid, and other times being muddle-headed. As for when I turned into this state, it should have been three days ago," Uncle Huang tried hard to recollect.

Uncle Huang was a widowed elder in Pastoral Village. His son had lost his life in the beast chaos a few years back.

His daughter had married off inland, and the old man stayed in Pastoral Village, relying on the care of the villagers and the village chief's family.

Three days ago, like usual, the old man went out to forage some wild vegetables and had an accident after coming back and having a meal.

"Wild vegetables, could it be poisonous ones you ate?" Ye Lingyue wondered.

But the old man showed no signs of poisoning.

"That can't be, people in Pastoral Village have eaten wild vegetables all their lives. The ones Uncle Huang dug up that day were just some common mustard greens, eaten by every household in the village without any issues," the village chief hastily explained.

Worried that Ye Lingyue wouldn't be convinced, the village chief even specially brought some uncooked wild vegetables from his home.

Ye Lingyue glanced at them. The green wild vegetables looked indeed harmless.

"Uncle Huang, I suspect that the problem lies with those wild vegetables. Do you still remember where you picked them that day? I'll have the soldiers carry you there," Ye Lingyue ordered the soldiers to carry Uncle Huang and, guided by him, they went outside the village.

The grassy slope adjacent to Pastoral Village used to have a lot of wild vegetables.

But after the villagers' harvesting, the nearby wild vegetables had all been picked clean.

Uncle Huang had crossed over a slope to forage wild vegetables from another slope.

"It's just ahead." After leading the way for a while, Uncle Huang informed Ye Lingyue and the soldier.

Ye Lingyue quickly had people light up some pine oil torches, and they looked over using the bright light.

The slightly thawed patch of slope land was covered with rows of wild vegetables, green and luscious.

Next to the wild vegetable field, there was a small empty patch, which was clearly the spot where Uncle Huang had harvested before.

"Cauldron Master Ye, should we go up and take a look?" a few soldiers asked.

"No need." Ye Lingyue stared at the patch of wild vegetables, swaying under the night wind with tender leaves, an unprecedentedly solemn expression on her face.

Even from a distance of five or six hundred meters, she could feel a bone-chilling cold emanating from the soil.

In the eyes of the ordinary soldiers and Uncle Huang, the wild vegetables that looked appetizing, in Ye Lingyue's eyes, were life-threatening ghost talismans.

Countless tadpole-shaped black dots were twitching on the tips of the leaves and roots of the wild vegetables.

Moreover, this black qi affected not only people and plants but judging by their activity level, it even affected the soil.

If not stopped in time, it would likely spread to the surrounding area. If so, the nearby military and civilians, and even the livestock and barracks, would be threatened.

If any person or animal ate just a little, they would be immediately contaminated by the black qi.

"You all, go call Miss Aguduo over," Ye Lingyue ordered the soldiers to find Aguduo, who was in the village.

"Aguduo, take a look, is the aura you felt from those agitated Spiritual Beasts earlier the same as on these wild vegetables?"

Aguduo was the only person, apart from Ye Lingyue, who could sense that black qi.

After careful identification, Aguduo nodded with certainty.

Ye Lingyue was even more certain that these wild plants must have mutated due to the influence of the black energy.

"First, scoop up this area. Aguduo, take the other soldiers and search within a ten-mile radius. If you find more plants with this black gas, seal them off as well." Not even the Golden Crow Elixir Fire of Jin Wu Old Monster could deal with this peculiar black energy.

Ye Lingyue could now confirm that her Qian Cauldron was the nemesis of this strange black energy.

But there was only one Qian Cauldron, and it was hard to predict the amount of mysterious black energy rampaging across the plains.

On her own, it would be difficult to find a proper method to absorb all the black energy on the Xixia Plain.

After a busy day, most of the mysterious black energy inside the villagers who were sick had been absorbed by Ye Lingyue using the Qian Cauldron.

To prevent further beast disturbances, that night, the soldiers of the Tiger Wolf Army set up a temporary military camp next to the village.

Soldiers patrolled nearby from time to time, and everything seemed to revert back to the order when Nie Fengxing was still around.

To Ye Lingyue's surprise, Aguduo and those rough soldiers got along very well.

Perhaps it was because of Aguduo's Spiritual Beasts, particularly the imposing presence of the mountain-like Purple Micro Alabaster Elephant, that made those bone-piercing soldiers of the Tiger Wolf Army submissive before Aguduo.

Seeing this, Ye Lingyue thought to herself that Aguduo truly had the talent to be a Female General.

After the mysterious black energy incident subsided, maybe she should recommend her to her adoptive father. With Aguduo's inheritance from the Hundred Beasts Sect and her cultivation at the Great Primordial Dan Realm, she could very possibly become the youngest Female General in Daxia's history.

All through the night, there was no beast attack.

Ye Lingyue, thinking of the bad news of her mother, felt very depressed.

Lan Cai'er by her side had long since fallen asleep, snoring away. After a while of feeling restless, Ye Lingyue entered the Hong Meng Heaven.

Recalling the mysterious black energy she absorbed during the day, she decided to check her Qian Cauldron in her palm.

After scanning the cauldron with her Divine Sense, Ye Lingyue was also surprised.

Ordinary medicinal materials and Ore, once absorbed by the Black Cauldron, would be quickly refined by the Cauldron Breath.

Even the Golden Crow Elixir Fire of Jin Wu Old Monster, once it entered the Qian Cauldron, became much weaker; but these black energies, they did not seem to change much.

However, the black energies she swallowed during the day were not directly refined.

Within the Qian Cauldron, there were a large amount of white Cauldron Breath and those muddy-colored black energies formed a stark contrast.

At a glance, there seemed to be fifty or sixty strands of black energy, much like tadpoles wriggling nonstop in a pond.

The tadpole-shaped black energies that were very rampant outside, once inside the Qian Cauldron, their speed slowed down significantly, just struggling to move inside the Qian Cauldron.

"Once they are refined, I wonder what they will become?"

Thinking of her mother, who was swallowed by the Double-headed Python because of these mysterious black energies, Ye Lingyue felt a surge of anger with nowhere to vent.

With a thought, her Divine Sense turned into the Black Cauldron, hovering over the palm of Ye Lingyue's hand.

Spiritual Power quickly penetrated into the Qian Cauldron, and the Cauldron Breath inside the Little Cauldron suddenly became much stronger.

Seemingly aware of the intentions of the Qian Cauldron, those tadpole-like black energies also realized that something was wrong. They united and fiercely resisted the Cauldron Breath.

For a moment, they were caught in a tug-of-war with the Cauldron Breath.