34 The Great Toad Robber

The Heaven Swallowing Toad quietly poked its head out of the water and scanned the area with its big eyes.

After carefully checking around and making sure there were nobody around, it finally leaped out of the water.

Due to its slick and smooth skin, it left no trails of water behind.

After landing, the toad made a few small jumps and covered a distance of over a hundred feet, arriving right at the biggest forging room in the middle of Sword Crafting Valley.

Qin Residence…

In the room, Qin Feng was sitting on the bed in the lotus position. His consciousness was latched onto the Heaven Swallowing Toad via the Demon Refinement Kettle, allowing him to see everything through the toad's vision.

His consciousness guided the toad to jump lightly onto the window. Its limbs were like a lizard on the wall, without the slightest indication of sliding off. It then extended its tiny hand to open the window and made its way in.

The toad's eyes were big and shiny, capable of seeing in the dark.

It jumped around in the forging room and leaped to a high spot, overlooking everything in the forging room.

After that, it immediately noticed the flying sword with a golden shine.

Gilded Executioner was a type of spiritual flying sword that was not that powerful. Otherwise, the forging method would not have been inherited by the Huang family.

Under Qin Feng's order, the toad opened its mouth and wrapped its slender tongue around the flying sword, swallowing Gilded Executioner into the space in its belly.

The Spirit Tempering Formation was only gathering spirit energy to nurture the restriction formations on the spiritual sword. It was without any offensive or defensive capabilities and did nothing to stop the toad.

After taking the sword, Qin Feng planned to have the toad return immediately.

However, when he saw the two hammers on the forging station, the spiritual tool forging equipment and materials, his eyes brightened up and immediately started cleaning the place up.

The toad opened its mouth wide, taking in all sorts of refined iron, cuprite, black gold, and other materials into its belly. That included the hammer that Huang family's grand elder used for forging spiritual tools and the spiritual tool refining furnace that was passed down in the family for several centuries. All of it was swallowed into the toad's belly.

At first Qin Feng was still a little greedy and wanted to swallow the huge forging station as well. However, the Heaven Swallowing Toad's sub-space in its belly was full, unable to fit in anything. He could only forget about the idea.

Right then, an angry roar came suddenly from the backyard of the Sword Crafting Valley, "Who dares trespass the Huang family's restricted grounds?"

However, when the toad swallowed the grand elder's spiritual tool refining hammer, it immediately triggered his senses.

After all, that was a magical tool he had refined over the years and had direct connection with him. It was due to his exhaustion after many days of refining and it being in his own forging room that he had forgotten to keep it.

In the end, just as he was falling into deep slumber to recover from his exhaustion from forging the spiritual sword, he suddenly lost connection with the hammer he used to refine tools. He immediately panicked and awakened from his slumber.

Hearing the roar, Qin Feng's heart skipped a beat and quickly urged the toad to jump out of the forging room. In a few leaps, it jumped into the Sword Cleansing Pool and swam away quickly in the direction of the spiritual well.

"Boom…"

Just a few breaths after the Heaven Swallowing Toad jumped into the Sword Cleansing Pool, Huang family's grand elder already came flying from the backyard.

That old man landed on the roof of the forging room. He poured in all the energy from his Foundation Establishment Stage to sweep through the entire Sword Crafting Valley. In the end, even after multiple scans, he could not find any abnormalities.

Following that, his expression changed and landed quickly, opening the doors to his forging room.

With just once glance, the grand elder immediately roared in rage, "B*stard!"

Right then, the grand elder almost coughed up blood.

The thief that infiltrated the Sword Crafting Valley had not only stolen his freshly refined Gilded Executioner, but even his tool refining hammer and furnace were taken as well.

In fact, even those spiritual tool forging materials that the family had paid a great price for were taken too.

Right then, apart from the heavy forging station, the forging room was empty.

He could slowly gather the refining materials after losing it, and he could also remake another Gilded Executioner for Huang Yulang. However, even his refining hammer and furnace were gone at the same time. How would he forge a spiritual sword like that?

Especially with the refining furnace. It was an inheritance that was passed down from the founding patriarch, a spiritual tool grade refining furnace. It was not something easily replaceable and was extremely complicated to forge. Apart from those tool refiners with exceptional skills, only a master tool refiner could easily forge a refining furnace of that quality.

At that moment, the rest of them in the valley were awakened by the grand elder's roar and ran over.

Someone asked, "Grand Elder, what's wrong?"

The grand elder, whose hair and beard were all white, panted heavily before he could barely suppress himself from going berserk. He bellowed, "Someone infiltrated the valley and stole the Gilded Executioner that I've just forged, along with my refining hammer and furnace."

"Eh?"

They were shocked, which then turned into anger.

"Who is that insolent person that dares to rob our Huang family. He's courting death."

The grand elder shouted, "Go inform the patriarch quickly and gather all the cultivators in the family. Lock down all the nearby roads and examine all suspicious tracks!"

"Yes, Grand Elder."

At that moment, they could not care if that would disturb the patriarch's cultivation. All the cultivators quickly used Windwalk to rush to the family residence at full speed. They had to inform the patriarch of the burglary that happened in Sword Crafting Valley and gather people to start searching the vicinity.

The grand elder had a dark expression and flew circles around the outer perimeter of the Sword Crafting Valley. He could not find anyone apart from their clansmen and also completely lost his connection to the hammers he used for tool refining.

He knew that it must be a thief that used some method to cover up the hammer's aura with some sort of treasure. That was why he could not sense anything from it.

However, he would never expect it to be a toad the size of a kid's fist that stole his item.

The Heaven Swallowing Toad had its own subspace within its body. That space was a lot more powerful compared to the subspace of a storage bag, which was forcefully modified using a space within space method.

Separated by the subspace within its body, the grand elder had no way to sense the aura from his own magical tool.

…

The Huang family was in a state of chaos. After learning of the burglary at Sword Crafting Valley, Patriarch Huang Tingyuan trembled in rage. He mobilized all the cultivators from the clan, locking down all the possible exits of Kun City and the neighboring area.

It was impossible for the Qin family not to hear of the news with such a huge commotion. If the Huang family wanted to lock Kun City down, the Qin family would surely disagree. After all, there were quite a number of the family's businesses that needed tending to. There was no way they would let the Huang family lock the place down.

Fortunately, the cultivators of the Huang family did not try to make things difficult for the Qin family, avoiding a conflict between them.

Meanwhile, after the Qin family heard of the burglary that happened to Huang family's Sword Crafting Valley, they only treated it as a joke. They did not have any plans to antagonize the Huang family in that situation.

Just as the Huang family was searching high and low, Qin Feng took a brisk walk to the spiritual orchard.

The clansmen standing guard at the orchard for the past few days were already used to Qin Feng strolling about the area.

In order to keep up appearance, Qin Feng indeed tried to learn something from the senior clansmen on caring for the spiritual plants. 

Because of Qin Feng's great potential for growth in the future and his honeyed tongue, he quickly earned the favor of those uncles. They were willing to pass on their experience in nurturing spiritual plants to him, hoping that this junior of theirs would be able to make it further in the Beastmaster Sect and one day be an existence that could shelter the clan.

However, when Qin Feng departed that morning, he told them that he would be placing his focus on other fields and would stop dropping by to learn. That made them feel that it was a pity.

Of course, they would not try to get in the way of Qin Feng learning other things. Instead, they sent him off with several spiritual fruits before he left.

These clansmen spent most of their time taking care of the orchard and were entitled to some benefits. Giving off a few spiritual fruits to Qin Feng was not considered much.

However, they did not know that Qin Feng took the chance to make a trip to the spiritual well in order to retrieve the Heaven Swallowing Toad.

Honestly, the toad was also feeling flustered.

It thought it was brought to the spiritual orchard for a feast by its master. In the end, it did not get to eat any spiritual fruit, but instead was ordered to stay in the water for several days just to swallow a bellyful of iron objects.