Chapter 136: 136

As Ivona stood with her hands on Kieran’s neck, her face went pale when she felt the amount and density of the venom in Kieran’s veins. It was horrifying. But since Mare put her trust in her, she wouldn’t fail her.

Sending her light element spirit energy into Kieran’s bloodstream at high speed, soon his blood was sparkling and glimmering within his body, shivering within his veins. That was a sign that his blood was filled to the brim with Ivona’s spirit energy.

Quickly, she pushed in one more wave of spirit energy, which made the veins bulge, and all spirit energy which could tried to move to the side a bit to make way. And the only way where it could retreat was the venom in Kieran’s blood. Because the venom Mare used had extreme absorbing properties, as it functioned by sucking out the spirit energy of its victim into itself before suddenly pushing it all out along with a second wave of the venom.

The second wave would be completely different from the first one. It wouldn’t absorb any spirit energy, but cause direct damage, going straight for the heart and dantian. Straight for the kill. Still, Mare had the venom under control so it wouldn’t harm Kieran and Ivona.

When the venom absorbed Ivona’s spirit energy, Mare quickly retracted her own spirit energy, which made her lose control over it. The rest was left to Ivona.

Ivona knew what was going on and quickly pushed even more spirit energy into the venom. Then, she started pulling her spirit energy back into her body at a violent speed.

Meanwhile, Mare took on the form of a small snake and coiled around Ivona’s neck. There, she found the pulse point and bit down on it, sending something into Ivona’s bloodstream.

Ivona didn’t know what it was, but she knew it was necessary for her not to get venomed, so she just continued with the process.

Soon, the venom within Kieran’s veins moved along with Ivona’s spirit energy. When it left his body, Ivona let her spirit energy fly around her to get rid of as much venom as possible before absorbing her spirit energy back into her body. And at that moment, specks of the venom got into her body.

And that was exactly why Mare injected something into Ivona’s body. As a snake with a high bloodline, she had more than one type of venom, and the one she injected into Ivona’s blood was a weak venom with opposite properties to the one in Kieran’s body, but with a long incubation period. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t serve its purpose in Ivona’s body.

The moment the active venom in Ivona’s spirit energy, already just a small amount, met with the weak venom in Ivona’s blood, because spirit energy went through spirit veins which were close to blood veins, allowing spirit energy to seep into the blood. The two venoms clashed, making Ivona frown.

The weak venom completely skipped over the incubation period and activated because of the strong venom.

Ivona decided to sit on the ground as her head started to spin. Neither of the venoms would have affected the brain, and neither should have caused head throbbing, but mixed together, they started causing trouble all over Ivona’s body.

But luckily, the strong venom had a small concentration, and the weak venom was, well, weak. So even mixed together, they just caused discomfort and nothing fatal.

If the strong venom had been alone in Ivona’s body, she would have most probably collapsed and ended up with severe side effects because the venom was very fatal. But being neutralized by the high concentration of the opposing weak venom, the effects dimmed and Ivona could get through it just fine.

“How do you feel?” Mare asked as she squatted next to Ivona and checked on her. She seemed perfectly fine except for the two clashing venoms.

Originally, Mare thought she could inject the weak venom into Kieran right after her strong venom absorbed the venom injected into him by the Burrowfang Serpent. But she realized that the concentration of her strong venom had to be extremely high if she wanted to get rid of the venom of the Burrowfang Serpent, so it would be impossible to get rid of her strong venom within Kieran’s body.

So the best way she could think of was scattering most of the venom into the air before getting rid of the rest within someone else’s body. It felt a bit shitty to use Ivona like that, but that was the only way to save Kieran.

There was still the possibility to contact Michelle, but with how far she probably was, before she got to them, Kieran would have already died of venoming.

“This is shitty…” Ivona curled up on the ground, feeling sick. Her head was throbbing and spinning, making her feel like vomiting.

“Don’t worry! It’s just temporary!” Mare assured as she glanced at Snow. Snow just nodded and took on her fox form. “Anastasia, can you get Kieran on Snow’s back?” Mare asked as she took Ivona by the arm and forced her to stand up, pulling Ivona’s arm over her neck and shoulder to support her.

“Sure!” Anastasia quickly rushed over to Kieran, who was still somehow dazed, and helped him onto Snow’s back. She understood why Mare wanted Snow to take them away.

After fighting the Burrowfang Serpents, the air was reeking of blood, which could attract monsters and beasts. And they were in no condition to fight, so they had to leave before the monsters and beasts arrived.

When everyone was on Snow’s back, Snow jumped up and rushed towards the place Mare and Snow found a while ago and wanted to show to Kieran, Ivona, and Anastasia. It was a strange safe haven in the jungle where no beasts roamed.

Maybe it was because Snow and Mare were in a contract with a human, Michelle, but they didn’t feel anything that would make them want to stay away from the place, so they couldn’t understand why the other creatures avoided the place like the God of Plague resided there. And the place itself was strange.

Stopping in front of it, Snow looked down into the deep valley and frowned a bit. “Be careful not to fall off!” she reminded before she started descending, jumping down recklessly from stone to stone.

The deeper Snow went, the stranger the place looked. At the top, it was still part of a jungle, but at the bottom it looked like a desert. A rocky desert to be exact.

When Snow looked around, she got reminded of something Michelle once spoke about.

Rain shadows.

When a mountain stood in the way of wind currents, the wind would stop at one side of the mountain, bringing rain there, but the other side of the mountain would be dry, just stones and dry land, creating a rain shadow desert.

But Snow couldn’t see anything that could act as a rain shadow. In the end, the desert was deep in a valley. Usually, all water flowed down into the valleys, causing them to be especially abundant in life. But the valley in the jungle was dry like it hadn’t seen water in hundreds of years. It was suspicious.

“The spirit energy here is strange…” Mare commented, feeling a bit dizzy. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was definitely caused by the abnormality in the spirit energy. She just couldn’t identify what was wrong with the spirit energy. “We shouldn’t stay here…”

But unlike Mare, Ivona and Kieran, who had looked sick until then, lifted their heads and looked much better than before. “This seems good to recuperate…” Kieran said as he glanced at Ivona. She was also showing signs of feeling better after getting into the valley.

Since entering the valley, Anastasia remained silent, a slight frown on her face. As a Soul Master, she didn’t cultivate spirit energy, so she didn’t understand much about it, but unlike everyone else, she could identify what was wrong with it. The way it flowed around in the valley was different from in other places. “The spirit energy is moving in a whirl, going from the ground up to the skies,” she suddenly spoke.

Her words surprised everyone. Though they hadn’t known about it some time ago, Michelle told all of them that spirit energy only moved around horizontally, never vertically. Only to the sides. Never up and down.

“Could the whirl explain the dryness…?” Snow frowned as she closed her eyes, sensing the spirit energy. It was spinning around the bottom of the valley, slowly going up, taking along with it all water that could have fallen into the valley, and then it was thrown out of the valley with flinging force.

“But how could the movement of the spirit energy up and down cause Kieran and Ivona to feel better?” Mare frowned. She felt sick in the valley.

“I guess their bodies appreciate the changes because they are recovering. Also, you are probably feeling sick because you aren’t used to the flow of the spirit energy.” Snow spoke after a while of thinking.

“I can understand why I’m feeling sick. That’s quite easy. But I can’t understand why Kieran and Ivona are feeling better.” Mare sighed.

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