With how big this forest was along with the huge black trees that reached over 100 meters(330ft) in height and completely blocked everyone's vision, it was only natural that most outer disciples would struggle to locate specific magic beasts in this place.
This was even more so for those disciples that had no idea about the environment that each magic beast chose to live in or the habits that those beasts naturally had.
They would most likely end up looking for days, or perhaps even weeks without finding the magic beast that they were looking for.
After all, hunting specific middle rank 5 magic beasts was completely different from hunting any random middle rank 5 beast.
The first required knowledge of that certain magic beast, that was on par with that of most beast tamers', and wasn't something that any random disciple could do at a whim.
This was why those missions that required disciples to hunt certain magic beasts rewarded them with many more sect points compared to other missions at the same rank, since the faction that accepted that mission would require at least a talented alchemist who had plenty of knowledge about that specific magic beast, or a beast tamer to help guide them!
Taking a deep breath, Shun Long completely suppressed his aura, not emitting the slightest qi fluctuations from his body while minimizing the area of his soul sense to the bare minimum, making sure that he wouldn't be accidentally spotted by any powerful magic beast, before he headed deeper inside the forest.
As he carefully walked deeper inside the forest, Shun Long saw more than a few aerial peak rank 4 and early rank 5 magic beasts flying in the sky above him, but he avoided every single one of them as his eyes kept examining his surroundings seriously.
''The Poison-tongued Toad' prefers to live in environments close to water, since that's its only way to hunt other magic beasts. As long as there is a lake or a pond in this place, the toad shouldn't be too far away from it either.''
Unlike most other outer disciples, Shun Long's knowledge of the 'Poison-tongued Toad' was more than sufficient for him to hunt down the magic beast.
The only thing that was restricting him, was his current knowledge of the layout of the 'Giant Crane forest'.
Regardless of whether he felt confident to even take on a peak rank 5 magic beast with the remaining bottles of poison from the 'Soul Poisoning hell grass' that he had inside his herb garden, Shun Long also knew that there were chances for rank 6 magic beasts to live in this forest, so he wouldn't carelessly head deeper inside if he could avoid that.
3 hours later, Shun Long's eyes lit up as he spotted a small lake not too far away from his location.
However, he didn't head towards the lake right away, but instead, he climbed on top of one of the huge black trees around it, before he started to carefully examine the area around the lake instead.
A few minutes later, Shun Long shook his head with a disappointed expression as he thought to himself
''There are no traces of poison in this place and even the lake itself seems to be crystal clear. How unlucky...''
Shun Long had been hoping for the lake's waters to have been tainted with a slight purple color or for a few of the trees around the lake to have been affected by the toad's poison and start to decay, since those were the signs of a 'Poison-tongued Toad' living in this place.
Once the 'Poison-tongued Toad' hunted a magic beast, the poison from its tongue would spread through the lake itself, and Shun Long knew that in that case, it was simply impossible for the waters of the lake to be clear like this.
Knowing that the chances of a 'Poison-tongued Toad' to live here were practically zero, Shun Long didn't care if there was another rank 5 magic beast living inside the lake, as he turned around and left without any hesitation, heading deeper inside the forest.
Even though he felt slightly disappointed, he knew that the chances of finding the toad so quickly were extremely low.
In the blink of an eye a week passed.
During these 7 days, Shun Long had walked through more than half of the 'Giant Crane forest's' outer region but he had yet to spot a single 'Poison-tongued Toad'.
At this point, he had already started to wonder whether there were really any 'Poison-tongued Toads' inside the forest or if they had already been all hunted by others.
A few minutes later however, Shun Long's eyes abruptly lit up, as he spotted a few of the gigantic black trees in the distance ahead of him that seemed different from the others around them, as they were slowly turning into a purplish color instead.
As he walked closer to the trees, Shun Long noticed that the 'corroded' trees were surrounding a small pond whose waters had already turned into a deep purple color.
And yet, this purple color seemed to be extremely alluring for some reason, almost as if it was inviting everyone who laid his eyes on them to approach closer to them and enter the pond.
Even Shun Long was stunned for a moment, feeling as if something was trying to affect his spiritual sea and guide him to enter inside the small pond.
However, he simply snorted as his enormous spiritual sea easily dispersed the alluring effect of the purple waters without any issue.
What a joke!
Even if it was a middle rank 5 magic beast, it was simply impossible for it to bypass Shun Long's mental defenses so easily and affect his spiritual sea like that, after Shun Long had broken through to the Nascent Soul stage in body his qi and his body refinement.
After all, his spiritual sea had already doubled in size, and if another Nascent Soul stage cultivator could actually see it, it was very likely that they would piss themselves from terror, since its current size was far bigger than the spiritual sea of any middle-stage Nascent Soul stage cultivator as well.
Staring at the small pond in front of him, Shun Long actually smiled before he mumbled to himself
''Finally found you!''