After that, Leilin and his group encountered several more massive clouds of miasma and swarms of venomous insects.
And with the help of Leilin's potions, the party passed through these areas without difficulty.
After watching Leilin use potions to disperse the poisonous insects and miasma several times, Jiamen and the others began looking at him with eyes full of conviction.
Even Bosayin, who hailed from the Lilisite Family, occasionally studied Leilin with a look of surprise.
Clearly, though he had heard of Leilin's talent in potionology, he hadn't expected Leilin's genius to far exceed his imagination.
After a grueling trek through mountains and rivers, the group finally reached the cliff marked on the map two days later.
"It's beautiful!"
Xiaya, one of the five, exclaimed in admiration. Even on Leilin's face, a hint of mesmerized expression surfaced.
Atop a small flat area on the cliff's summit, a type of bright yellow flower was planted in dense profusion. At each flower's center, several strands of bright red pistils protruded outward, and the blossoms, when fully open, were roughly the size of two adult fists.
The entire mountaintop was blanketed with these strange flowers, and a rich, intoxicating fragrance continuously wafted through the air.
"Leilin, what do you think?" Jiamen asked.
The Moon Lute Mountains were filled with all manner of dangers, and all sorts of bizarre plants emerged in endless variety. The more beautiful and gorgeous a plant was, the more dangerous it tended to be — especially now, when they were so close to their destination!
As a potionology apprentice, Leilin had already resolved three danger traps resembling fields of flowers along the way.
"No problem!" Leilin plucked one of the flowers and held it in his hand.
"Chip, cross-reference with the database!"
"Ding! Task established. Scanning appearance, scent, comparing..."
"Database search complete. Identified as Beta daisy!" the Chip reported faithfully.
"Beta daisy?" Leilin furrowed his brow. "That's an ordinary plant from the South Coast, typically found on plains. It symbolizes remembrance and respect…"
"This flower does seem to be the Beta daisy. The only reason it's growing here is that someone must have cultivated it deliberately!" Bosayin gave his affirmative assessment as well.
"Could it be the Wizard who left the ruins?" Ros spoke from the very back, his voice somewhat low and deep.
"Possibly, but I can't be certain!"
Jiamen unfurled his tattered map. "According to the map, the ruins should be located at the base of the cliff!"
Leilin silently nodded. On the map he had scanned earlier, the words "Dylan's Garden" were also marked at the base of the cliff. Combined with the vast field of daisies atop the cliff, he was now eight or nine-tenths certain.
"What are we waiting for?" Xiaya's face lit up with excitement.
For apprentices, finding the ruins of a full Wizard and obtaining a Wizard's legacy was often the beginning of a meteoric rise.
All five of their breaths began to quicken slightly, and even Bosayin was no exception.
The cliff was tall, and its steep face was covered with blade-like rock fragments as sharp as knives. For ordinary people, climbing down to the base would be a completely impossible task.
But for five Third-rank Apprentices, this level of difficulty posed no real obstacle at all.
Ros directly transformed into his tentacled form and began climbing down, while Leilin and the others each cast a "Feather Fall" spell on themselves — a technique that greatly reduced their weight, allowing them to drift gently down the cliff face.
Thud!!!
The effect of Feather Fall wore off, and Leilin's feet landed directly on the ground.
"This place is…" Leilin surveyed his surroundings with some surprise. Everywhere he looked, there were barbed stone formations shaped like swords.
Countless inverted stone swords were packed tightly together, occupying nearly half of the cliff's base.
And on the tips of those sharp points, numerous animal carcasses were impaled and dangling. Leilin even spotted what appeared to be several human remains.
"Looks like they were all creatures that fell from the cliff," Leilin remarked with a sigh, before suddenly noticing something wrong. "How could ordinary people possibly be here? Could they be apprentices who came seeking clues from a previous lead?"
"Watch out — the ground is full of barbs!" Seeing that Jiamen and the others were about to land, Leilin quickly called out a warning.
"Damn it!" Jiamen's face darkened. During his descent, his arm had been grazed by one of the barbed sword tips, leaving a gash over ten centimeters long.
"Every one of these blade tips has been imbued with Perpetual Sharpness, along with several other magical enchantments! Otherwise, they would never have breached my defenses!"
"Indeed!" Leilin ran his fingers along the gray-white blade, feeling the faint energy fluctuations emanating from it.
"Only a full Wizard could accomplish something of this scale — enchanting an entire region's stone formations!"
"Then where are the ruins?"
Whoosh, whoosh! Countless gray-white fleshy tentacles spread out from the cliff wall on one side, bringing Ros down to the ground.
"I used magical detection earlier. The underground here is nothing but rock and sand — not a trace of any ruins…" Bosayin held a green eyeball in his hand, his tone tinged with disappointment.