Chapter 172: Someone Wants to Sprout

The pool was not empty; beneath a thin layer of black water on the surface lay twisted, gnarled tree roots, which made Ruan Xing involuntarily recall the psychological trauma of being surrounded, squeezed, and digested by layers of roots in her last Simulation.

She shook her head to cast this image out of her mind.

The roots now were not moving; they all lay quietly entrenched underwater, and if there was anything restless, it was the cyan seed in Ruan Xing's palm, which was eager to move.

Following the direction the cyan seed wanted to go, Ruan Xing passed through the gaps between thousands of tree roots, diving deeper into the water.

Fortunately, the pool seemed very deep, so the places where the roots connected were not very dense; the disguised Ruan Xing and Sun Xian, two adult bodies, could barely squeeze through the gaps.

Aside from the tree roots, the water was deathly silent, with no fish, shrimp, or water plants, though a faint smell of blood could be detected in the water.

She guessed that these roots were likely the same thing as the roots in the forest behind the Six Suns Study, both possessing the function of autonomous hunting and digestion, but perhaps due to unknown reasons like the lack of a master to awaken them, they were currently harmless.

This might be what the Demon Lord mentioned, that living thing in a dormant period.

She swam downward for about another half an incense stick of time.

Estimating by her physical senses, she had dived to a depth of nearly two or three hundred meters when suddenly, a light appeared before her eyes.

At the bottom of the water, there was a large, white, oval-shaped bubble; the surface of the bubble was opaque, but one could still vaguely see that there was a huge space inside.

Her Divine Sense quietly approached, only to be softly bounced back by the bubble.

She pulled Sun Xian closer to the bubble; the scene was inexplicably like an astronaut floating in space on the surface of the moon.

That vastness, that depth, that silence...

Fortunately, Ruan Xing did not have megalophobia.

However, Sun Xian, with his bitter expression beside her, clearly ruined this atmosphere.

He said in a trembling voice, "What kind of place is this... True Monarch, we had better not touch the things below, right? If it triggers an attack from the Boundary Tree, I fear it will be difficult to maneuver underwater..."

Before he could finish, Ruan Xing shoved him toward the bubble.

Sun Xian's eyes widened as he let out a scream.

And with a "pop," the bubble swallowed Sun Xian inside.

Sun Xian's screaming continued, but after a few seconds, it stopped abruptly.

Ruan Xing felt reassured; perhaps there would be no immediate danger after entering, and it was likely that Sun Xian had touched something to trigger a mechanism, which caused him to fall silent.

Having prepared herself mentally, Ruan Xing lowered her head and also dove into the bubble.

To her surprise, there was no water inside the bubble; although the air was humid, there were stone steps covered in moss beneath the ground, extending downward step by step, and thin, vine-like branches grew outward along the stone steps.

No, perhaps... these were not branches, but also tree roots.

And Sun Xian had not encountered any danger as Ruan Xing had guessed, but was kneeling on the stone steps with his hands on the ground, dumbfounded.

"What is it? What did you see?" Ruan Xing walked over and asked.

"Corpses... there are so many corpses here..." Sun Xian whispered, looking soul-lost.

Ruan Xing looked downward; indeed, almost every branching tree root had a corpse that had nearly become a dried husk, dense and numerous like an ant nest entrenched beneath a tree, so many that they were uncountable.

She sneered, "Are you afraid of corpses? Stop pretending; you are not good people either. This is something your Six Suns Study created."

She had actually guessed this long ago, as the Xumi Realm kept these hundreds of thousands of mortals, yet only accepted a dozen Inner Sect Disciples every thirteen years.

Then, besides maintaining this Mortal Dynasty, what else could those hundreds of thousands of people be used for?

Offering them as sacrifices to this eerie Boundary Tree might be one of those uses.

"No..." Sun Xian seemed to have recovered from his shock, shaking his head while crying and laughing, "They... they are all Inner Sect Disciples from the Sect!!"

"That person, that person is the Senior Brother I told you about before, who had been in the Sect for eighty-one years!"

He pointed at one of the fresh corpses on the very edge and shouted with a sobbing voice.

What!?

Ruan Xing was startled.

Looking closely, she realized that those corpses all had one thing in common.

They were wearing the Confucian robes of scholars, occasionally with scholar caps.

Sun Xian seemed to have noticed this too; he prostrated himself on the ground, crying out loudly as if he had gone mad: "Why? What are we to the Sect after all? I have cultivated for so many years, seeking immortality for so long, what does it all count for!?"

He finally understood why there were no disciples in the Sect who had been initiated for over a hundred years.

Why those disciples who went out to travel never returned.

Why, when kneeling and kowtowing to the founding ancestor in the main hall upon initiation, the Sect Master told them not to forget their original intention and to remember that they were scholars, and why the Sect uniforms issued were Confucian robes.

And why the seniors who taught them cultivation were called teachers.

On the night before he went to the Xumi Realm to take his turn at the National Teacher Palace, he had smugly changed his Confucian robe into a Daoist robe.

At that time, he thought that although his junior had caused him to lose face in the Inner Sect, the Sect Master still valued him, so he also wanted to wear a Daoist robe to prove to the Sect Master that he could handle the task in the Xumi Realm well.

Yet he saw a look of pity in his teacher's eyes.

He finally understood what his teacher was pitying him for!

They, these so-called Inner Sect Disciples! Were nothing more than Golden Core fodder for the Sect to quickly produce, fertilizer to feed the Boundary Tree!

Watching Sun Xian's breakdown, Ruan Xing sighed: "How ridiculous. You treat those mortals as ants, not knowing that in the eyes of others, you are also an ant."

Sun Xian did not answer, and Ruan Xing stopped paying attention to him, instead taking out the eager seed to see what it actually wanted to do.

The closer it got to the bottom of the stairs, the more active the seed seemed to become; it pulsed, signaling Ruan Xing to continue walking down the stairs.

Ruan Xing raised an eyebrow, "I have already brought you here according to your request, yet you tell me nothing. At the very least, you should let me know why you wanted to come, right?"

She had thought that even if the seed told her, it would be by controlling something to hint at it to Ruan Xing, but she did not expect it to actually speak.

However, this ability of the seed was exactly the same as the Boundary Tree.

A weak voice sounded in her mind, crying and whimpering: "I want to sprout, you promised to let me sprout!"

Ruan Xing was stunned; when did she promise that? Since obtaining this seed, this was the first time she had had a formal conversation with it.

Just as she was about to ask for clarification, the seed suddenly jumped out of her hand and rolled into the depths of the stairs.

Ruan Xing was startled and hurriedly chased after it, but a series of white bubbles emerged from the dark, deep place below.

Caught off guard, Ruan Xing was enveloped by a bubble and floated to the top of the giant bubble.

However, she was not bounced out by the giant bubble.

After the initial panic, Ruan Xing discovered that this bubble had no aggression toward her; instead, it seemed to be tugging at her Divine Sense, as if wanting to convey something to her.

So she released her Divine Sense and let her whole being sink into the phantasm woven by the bubble.

It was as if she were inside a holographic movie, only she was illusory, unable to interact with any objects or people around her, forced only to watch the scene.

At this moment, she was situated within a Bagua Disk formed by layers of rings; the Bagua Disk used a shimmering, icy blue color that looked somewhat familiar.

And at one end of the Bagua Disk, a man was sweating profusely, hitting his right hand with his left and his left hand with his right, acting like a madman and covering himself in wounds.

Ruan Xing could feel that this man was at least at the Spirit Severing cultivation level.

Yet when he hit himself, he did not use any Spiritual Power at all, relying solely on physical strength.

Finally, he slashed wildly at the Bagua Disk with his Sword, not only severing the existence of an illusory shadow on his own body but also smashing many of the circular Array Disks.

After the Array Disks shattered, a screen of light appeared in the center of the Bagua Disk, and from within the light screen, a silvery-white thread hung down, with a cyan seed dangling from it.

The man sat on the ground panting heavily, taking a long while to recover; he stroked his Sword with one hand and picked up a shattered piece of the Array Disk with the other, muttering to himself, "What material is this? How have I never seen it before? Still, to be able to destroy this Array Disk without using Spiritual Power, it truly is a Spirit Tool!"

Immediately, he tucked the shattered piece of the Array Disk onto his person, intending to take it back to study.

Walking to the center of the light screen, he reached out and plucked the cyan seed, smiling bitterly, "A wasted trip; I can't return with nothing, so I'll just take this seed back. Perhaps once it sprouts, it can bear Spirit Fruit to satisfy my appetite."

Only then did Ruan Xing finally understand: this familiar place was the Juelin Zhidi within that spatial rift! And the man with the somewhat familiar appearance before her was none other than Guangyou Xianjun!

Ruan Xing could not help but smile bitterly; this was clearly what Guangyou Xianjun had promised, not her—could this little seed have face blindness?

Once Guangyou Xianjun left, the fragile bubble popped with a snap.

Ruan Xing steadied herself and looked at the other bubbles floating at the top.

She pondered in her heart that the bubble just now was likely the seed's memory, and the other bubbles were likely the same; if she could find in the memories why the seed insisted on coming here to sprout, she would understand why.

Thus, Ruan Xing did not hesitate and reached out to touch the bubble closest to her.

She entered it very easily.

The memory in this bubble, however, was somewhat unusual.

This was an ancient battlefield, and what Ruan Xing found most incredible was that she saw the figures of the Demon Lord and the Immortal Maiden! Although the Puppet Bodies they were currently using were not their original appearances, having died so many times in the Simulation, how could Ruan Xing not have a deep impression of their souls? Tens of thousands of Immortal Cultivators and Demon Cultivators were engaged in chaotic slaughter; everywhere on the ground were traces of fighting, blood, and corpses. The original beautiful mountains and clear waters had been beaten into a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, and the jade towers and magnificent pavilions had become a ruin.

The Demon Lord appeared in every corner of the battlefield, laughing wantonly; whenever he spat out blood mist, an Immortal Cultivator disciple would be left with nothing but dregs in his mouth.

The Immortal Maiden chased after his figure, angrily rebuking him anxiously, "Demon, your opponent is me!"

"You?" The Demon Lord shook his head and laughed, "You are a tough bone; you don't taste good."

Having said that, the Demon Lord changed direction to continue his feast.

On this battlefield, cultivators above the Spirit Severing stage basically all had their own opponents; as long as he carefully avoided the areas of others, he could eat to his heart's content here.

Unfortunately, there was always this female cultivator pestering him to fight to the death, disturbing his appetite.

Seeing that he could not shake off the Immortal Maiden, the Demon Lord looked back and said good-naturedly, "Immortal Maiden, why don't we make a deal? I have no interest in occupying the Central Province; I just want to take this opportunity to have a full meal. How about this: stop following me and go gather the strength of all the Immortal Cultivators to kill the Saint Demon Lord. Once he dies, we underlings will naturally scatter like trees falling."

The Immortal Maiden was unmoved, "The great Demon Lord naturally has an Xianjun to face him; what I want to kill is a small demon and underling like you!"

Immediately, the two began to fight, locked in an inextricable struggle.

Both were at the Transformation Stage, evenly matched in cultivation; however, the Immortal Maiden had only been cultivating bitterly on the mountain for the last thousand years, and the moves she used were conventional—how could they compare to the Demon Lord, who had been through hundreds of battles in the Northern Territory and was full of variations? Moreover, the Demon Lord's cultivation technique was destined not to be suited for one-on-one duels, so for a time, neither could do anything to the other.

But this situation did not last long.

The light on the horizon flickered, and after a series of Magic Arts bloomed, cheers suddenly came from the Demon Cultivators in the distance.

"The Saint Demon Lord has won!"

"The Saint Demon Lord killed two Return to Void realm experts; we have won!"

"Brothers, charge! Take the Central Province!"

Hearing the shouts, the Demon Cultivators became as excited as if they had been injected with chicken blood, their moves becoming even more ruthless as they attacked.

The Immortal Maiden's expression became extremely ugly.

The Demon Lord began to respond more easily, a smile playing on his lips, "What, are you anxious?"

Another brilliant light gradually expanded on the horizon, and the smile on the Demon Lord's face slightly froze.

The Demon Cultivators began to shout and scream again.

"It's bad! That Immortal Cultivator brat has self-destructed!"

"Space is shaking; this place will soon be isolated from the world and become a Guixuzhidi!"

"The Xian Tai Tree has fallen! Run!"

In an instant, all the Demon Cultivators scattered and fled almost without hesitation, completely ignoring whatever orders their superiors might have had.

Looking up, hey, the superior was running ahead of them!

The Demon Lord naturally wanted to run too, but a long Sword was held across his front, and the Immortal Maiden said coldly, "Demon! I never said you could leave!"

The Demon Lord gnashed his teeth in anger, "Oh, my dear lady, do you not want your life anymore?"

In the ranks of the Immortal Cultivators, there were also those who cherished their own lives and fled, but most people took advantage of the Demon Cultivators' collapse to chase and kill the stragglers, completely ignoring that once the Xian Tai Tree fell, space would fluctuate again, and this place would soon become the Guixuzhidi of that self-destructing Gui Xu Xianjun. When the power of the self-destruction spread, everyone who had not escaped the area in time would die in this catastrophe!

The speed at which the world was isolated was extremely fast; in just these few minutes of delay, the Guixuzhidi had already begun to form, and a massive explosion comparable to a comet hitting a planet spread rapidly! Cultivators who had not yet managed to escape, whether Immortal or Demon, were now using every ounce of their strength to save their lives!

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