Front Line of the Beast Tide, Part 15

Because the number of people had increased, the fourth purification took longer, covered a larger area, and had a better effect.

As the illuminated area of the forest expanded, the days of living on a knife’s edge seemed to recede.

Even during the day, many people now moved about freely on the ground, the heart-fire in their chests no longer as weak and dim as before, but radiating with vigorous vitality.

Those who had initially chosen to follow Su Qing and Chang Hong, swearing the heart-fire oath and forming the life-and-death alliance, now walked with their heads held high and a spring in their step.

Even those who returned later couldn’t help but rub their noses and show their delight.

Face and pride were all illusions; survival was what truly mattered.

Now that their lives were secure, it was more important than any empty vanity. Losing face was a small price to pay; it was their own indecision that had put them in that position in the first place.

Since the fourth purification, which had been ongoing for a year, everyone here was enveloped in a light of hope, as if the future was not so bleak.

If they could just maintain this momentum, perhaps they could truly drive out all the demonic energy here, find clues, and return to the real world.

However, as the core figures of the life-and-death alliance, Ji Xinghong and Su Qing were not so happy.

Even though they maintained a calm demeanor on the surface to reassure everyone, in reality, Su Qing was extremely uncertain, and Ji Xinghong was not optimistic either.

“This purification has illuminated nearly a thousand li of the forest,” Su Qing said with a frown. “This is no longer the small skirmish it was before. If this forest truly has a spirit, it has definitely discovered us by now.”

“But it hasn’t taken any action.” Ji Xinghong agreed with Su Qing. “Either it thinks we are not a threat, or…”

Li Xiu Fu looked up and said, “Perhaps something more important is currently holding it back, leaving it no time to deal with us?”

Ji Xinghong affirmed, “That is indeed a possibility.”

She then turned to Su Qing, “What did you see during this purification?”

Ji Xinghong came from a prestigious background; both her family and sect were full of talented individuals.

Her perspective was broader than the others, and over this long period, she had come to realize that their group was likely trapped in a hidden space within the Myriad Beast Forest.

And this space was very likely a natural grotto-heaven born from the forest itself.

There was only one reason to be trapped here: to become food and nourishment.

But there was also an advantage—this was the place closest to the forest’s very core.

Su Qing had mentioned that she could see fragmented, corner-like memories after devouring and converting the demonic energy.

Ji Xinghong attached great importance to this, as she suspected these were the core memories the forest had stored here.

“Still the usual scenes.”

As a primeval forest, the Myriad Beast Forest naturally saw countless battles and miracles every day, but when these miracles were replayed day after day, the thrilling excitement and strange coincidences seemed to become a mundane repetition.

But this time, it was not entirely without gain. Su Qing pondered and said, “If there’s anything different this time, it’s that I saw traces of human activity.”

This news immediately piqued Ji Xinghong’s interest. “What were they doing?”

“Also very ordinary things. Gathering firewood at the edge of the forest, digging for seasonal wild vegetables, picking fruits, and so on,” Su Qing said.

“There were also some groups that went deeper, gathering herbs and hunting. Some got lost and died in the depths of the forest. These people should all be mortals, very few cultivators.”

“What was the forest’s reaction?”

Su Qing wanted to say it felt like the reaction of a documentary camera—a cold observer.

She rephrased, “I felt like I was watching a memory stone when I saw those memories.”

Everyone understood her meaning.

Danyue murmured, “So it means there was no emotional fluctuation.”

Quan Jiu said, “A completely detached observer’s attitude.”

Xiu Fu, however, understood. “After all, in the face of the forest’s immense life force, humans are probably insignificant.”

Ji Xinghong asserted, “Even so, we cannot sit and wait for death. The more territory we can occupy before the forest reacts, the more hope we have. At this point, all we can do is keep moving forward and prepare for the fifth purification.”

Everyone nodded solemnly, without any objections, though they occasionally cast worried glances at Su Qing, concerned about whether she could still hold on.

To clear the negative effects brought by the demonic energy invading her soul, Su Qing had already rested for over two months this time.

The chill brought by the demonic energy was easy to dispel, but the deep fatigue in her soul was hard to remove. To make her feel a little better, everyone took turns talking to her when they had free time.

Although they had erased their real names and identities, the place was simply too boring, and there was little to talk about.

So, gradually, everyone tacitly started gossiping, beginning with the most well-known tidbits in the cultivation world, then moving on to rumors about rival sects and the oddities of their own.

Since the cultivation levels of those present weren’t too high and they weren’t old, they were all from the same generation in the cultivation world, and the gossip was largely shared.

For example, the famous love triangle involving the senior brother and senior sister of the He Rong Faction and Yan Yi Sect.

Zhu Qing said, “How can we talk about gossip without mentioning the three of them? Li Weiyang and Cha Chun of Yan Yi Sect, and Ji Xinghong of He Rong Faction. All three are heaven’s favored children, with good backgrounds, good masters, and impeccable looks and character. Yet, their tangled affair is truly an eye-opener.”

He cleared his throat and said seriously, “I’m only telling you this in private, don’t spread it. And even if it gets out, you must not mention my name.”

Quan Jiu was speechless. “No one knows your name anyway…”

Zhu Qing slapped his thigh. “I’m just afraid the main party will come looking for me!”

The main party, Ji Xinghong, smiled benevolently, propping her head on her hand. “Go on, the main party has heard it so many times, she won’t be angry even if she finds out.”

Su Qing glanced at Chang Hong, feeling that she didn’t seem like the type to be interested in this topic, but gossip was a human instinct, so who could say for sure.

Zhu Qing then said, reassured, “Li Weiyang and Cha Chun are the senior brother and senior sister of Yan Yi Sect, respectively. Both are exceptionally talented, knew each other since childhood, and were raised by the Yan Yi Sect’s leader. They were childhood sweethearts, innocent and pure, so it’s highly likely they admired each other.”

“Among them, Li Weiyang excels in the sword, his Yan Yi Swordplay is masterfully exquisite, showing the grace of a pure swordsman. A few years ago, in the Sword Pavilion competition, with a single strike, everything fell silent. It was a truly earth-shattering sword strike, a hero in his youth.”

“Coincidentally, that year, Ji Xinghong, the senior sister of He Rong Faction, was also sent to compete. The two happened to face each other. Ji Xinghong’s swordplay was also exquisite and unparalleled. They were evenly matched, a fierce battle, but in the end, Li Weiyang was superior, defeating Fairy Xinghong. He not only won the competition but also won Fairy Xinghong’s heart. Since then, Fairy Xinghong has secretly given her heart to Li Weiyang, but Li Weiyang already had Fairy Cha Chun by his side, leaving him in a dilemma, not knowing what to do…”

“I have a question,” Ji Xinghong raised her hand to interrupt. “Why do you describe Li Weiyang’s swordsmanship as masterfully exquisite, showing the grace of a pure swordsman, with a single strike, everything fell silent, earth-shattering, while you only describe Ji Xinghong’s as ‘exquisite and unparalleled’? And she lost to Li Weiyang for a reason, not because her swordplay was inferior.”

“I also have a question,” Su Qing asked. “Isn’t he cultivating the Emotionless Dao? How can he be so fickle, leaving affections everywhere and being so indecisive? Can such a person truly cultivate good swordplay?”

Xiu Fu asked, “He’s indecisive, and Cha Chun can still tolerate him? She hasn’t run him through with a sword or cut him in half?”

Quan Jiu crossed her arms and sneered, “Seconded.”

Danyue then asked, “You only talked about Fairy Xinghong and Li Weiyang, you barely mentioned Fairy Cha Chun. What kind of person is she?”

Zhu Qing coughed, raising his hands in surrender. “Alright, I admit, how could a small figure like me dine with such heavenly prodigies? I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, retelling it as it was told to me. As for Fairy Cha Chun, she is said to be frail and sickly, rarely appearing in public, so no one knows what she’s like, only that she is deeply in love with Li Weiyang, as steadfast as a rock.”

Su Qing understood. They were listening to a piece of gossip that had been passed around countless times, so distorted that it couldn’t even be called gossip anymore; it was practically a rumor.

Danyue also said, “It’s not really Zhu Qing’s fault. Everyone says the same thing. Presumably, if the main parties minded, they would have clarified it long ago. Since there’s been no movement, there might be some truth to it.”

Ji Xinghong curled her lips into a smile but said nothing.

Zhu Qing keenly sensed something and said with trepidation, “Chang Hong, you couldn’t be Ji Xinghong herself, could you? Your name also has ‘Hong’ in it, and you were just defending her.”

“How could that be?” Ji Xinghong said without a change in expression. “I just simply dislike Li Weiyang, so I spoke up for Ji Xinghong in passing.”

“I thought so.” Zhu Qing smiled, relieved. “I was just thinking, if a figure like the senior sister of He Rong Faction were trapped here, someone would surely have come to rescue us. We wouldn’t be left to fend for ourselves from scratch!”

Ji Xinghong thought to herself, ‘That’s because I came here looking for the demonic bone without telling my masters or clan elders. Besides, my life is still in good condition, so there’s no life-threatening situation like a shattered soul tablet. Naturally, no one is coming to save me.’

She explained to Su Qing, “The Yan Yi Sect advocates for the Great Dao to be emotionless, treating all things as straw dogs, forsaking personal feelings for the greater good of the Dao. That’s why it’s called the Emotionless Dao. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but the sect’s doctrines are very twisted. It’s not uncommon to hear of ‘proving the Dao by slaying emotions.’ In short, the people there are all twisted. It’s best to avoid them.”

“I see.” Su Qing understood. “To prove the Dao by slaying emotions, one must first have emotions to slay. No wonder the senior brother of Yan Yi Sect is so indecisive. Perhaps he’s just waiting for them to mature before ‘slaying’ them.”

Ji Xinghong said, “That’s more or less the idea.” @Exclusive good literature, all at Jinjiang Literature City

Su Qing thought, Carefree Immortal, as the number one in the world, the strongest among the human race, a powerhouse whose name contained “Immortal,” did not emphasize severing emotions when she founded her sect.

She didn’t even enforce fasting. Instead, she let her students eat and drink as they pleased, even requiring them to live in dormitories and handle various interpersonal relationships.

Presumably, being emotionless itself has nothing to do with the Great Dao.

In fact, she highly doubted that someone who couldn’t even comprehend minor affections and righteousness could truly understand the Great Dao and great righteousness. How would they distinguish between the great and the small?

Although they had never met Li Weiyang, everyone present automatically developed a layer of dislike for him after Zhu Qing’s vivid account. Although they didn’t know who he was, Chang Hong was a reliable person, so she must have a reason for disliking him.

The brief chat ended, and the day’s tasks had to continue.

Ji Xinghong nonchalantly assigned a complex task to Zhu Qing, which made him regret bringing up a sore subject.

Since Chang Hong called herself “Hong,” she must be an admirer of Ji Xinghong. He had said too much.

Xiu Fu gently asked Su Qing, “How are you feeling now? Still cold?”

“Much better.” Su Qing looked at the flame in her heart. After the fourth purification, its capacity had increased to the early Golden Core stage. “It’s nothing serious. We Body Cultivators are best at expanding our limits of endurance. I’m not at my breaking point yet.”

Moreover, perhaps her friends, senior sister, and teachers were also trying to find a way to rescue them from the outside.

After spending these days together, Su Qing had more or less realized that at least a double-digit number of Sword School students had been drawn in here.

It was just that the number of new arrivals had clearly decreased recently, perhaps the Sword School had taken some measures.

…

In the depths of the Myriad Beast Forest.

An ancient tree was rooted deep within the forest. It had lived for tens of thousands of years, the very beginning of this forest.

If the forest had a spirit, its source was surely this tree. @Exclusive good literature, all at Jinjiang Literature City

Its root system was buried deep in the earth, like the planet’s veins.

Its massive trunk was like a giant stone pillar, or rather a city.

It was so large that it seemed like a being from a legend, capable of supporting a vast island on its body.

Its trunk could also support buildings, and living beings walked among its branches so openly that many were unaware it was just a tree and not solid, vast land.

The ancient tree’s crown and leaves were so dense they blotted out the sun, like an isolated island in the sky.

Its root system was even more astonishingly developed, spreading from the depths of the Myriad Beast Forest to its outer edges, its traces found beneath every tree. It was not an exaggeration to say that this entire forest existed and breathed with it as its center.

While it created life, it also devoured life.

But at some point, a layer of fluffy, tender green grass began to grow wherever its trunk and roots reached.

Symbiosis between plants was not unusual, but unfortunately, they were competing for authority.

The ten-thousand-year-old ancient tree should have been able to overcome the thousand-year-old grass, especially since it was in its own domain and the other was just an outsider from some remote mountain corner. However, the grass had first achieved human form and was bolstered by the power of the Earth Mother. In just a few short years, this foreign grass had covered the entire ground of the Myriad Beast Forest.

Yan Yun was a decrepit old woman, and also a late-stage Spirit Transformation powerhouse.

If Su Qing were here, she would recognize her as the old lady who plucked feathers and descaled demon beasts at the inn in Zhenyao Pass. Of course, she had another, more well-known identity in Yinlan City: the old City Lord.

At this moment, she dripped her blood onto the tree trunk, and a mirror-like surface appeared in the air.

This artifact was called the Heart-Protecting Mirror, a treasured heirloom of the Yan family passed down for thousands of years, with the miraculous effect of clearing the mind and heart, and mending life veins.

It was shaped like a round disk, with a surface as smooth as water, emitting a faint silver glow.

Unfortunately, the mirror was now covered in cracks and filth, polluted by demonic energy beyond recognition.

Originally, the Heart-Protecting Mirror was used to protect Yan Chi’s damaged heart meridians, but due to the crisis of the poisonous fog in the Inner Subsidiary City, Yan Chi took out the mirror to protect her people and the city.

Now that the poisonous fog had dispersed, Yan Chi did not take the mirror back, but instead brought it to the front lines of the beast tide.

Now, the old City Lord Yan Yun had taken over the mirror. She used it to protect the ancient tree, or rather, a person who had been devoured by the ancient tree.

“At this rate, it probably won’t last much longer before being completely demonized.” Yan Yun’s expression was grave. She bent down, picked up a pliable blade of grass, and said in a low voice, “I both hope she can hold on to her true self, and hope that you, as a descendant of the divine, can bring about some change. Otherwise, this old body will have no choice but to fight for a mutually destructive end.”

After three years of searching, Jiang Xiaocao finally found a way to forcibly sink into the ground, or rather, break into the forest’s inner world.

He found Su Qing and the tens of thousands of others who had been drawn into the forest’s grotto-heaven.

But they were either reduced to piles of dry bones and mud, or were alive but only just, their eyes closed and their minds lost.

Clearly, their souls were no longer here.

It was clear this thing fed on two fronts: one on the physical body, and the other on the soul.

Therefore, finding Su Qing’s physical body was not enough; it was just an empty shell. He had to bring back her soul as well.

To do this, he had to make a deal with the “person” before him.

This person had an innocent, doll-like face, with clear and bright eyes, rounded at the corners, looking somewhat guileless, yet her gaze revealed a cunning glint.

When she smiled, two dimples appeared. She did indeed look one hundred percent human.

But Jiang Xiaocao knew she was not.

Her inner self was the forest, or rather, the Forest Spirit, but the human shell she occupied belonged to another person: Ye Mingshi.

This person’s surname was Ye, connected to wood, and she possessed an innate demonic bone, which resonated with the demonic bone within the forest.

Best of all, she was female. She was the vessel the forest had waited ten thousand years for, meticulously selected for possession.

All plant cultivators, demon cultivators, and spirit cultivators, beings born of nature itself who accumulated powerful cultivation over time, must go through the step of human transformation if they wish to advance further, and human transformation is merely the beginning.

This rule has been passed down since ancient times; it can be called an ancient law, or perhaps a constraint of the Heavenly Dao.

As a plant cultivator who had studied under the Earth Mother for many years, Xiaocao understood this well.

“The Earth Mother once said that mistakes made out of ignorance can still be remedied.” @Exclusive good literature, all at Jinjiang Literature City

Jiang Xiaocao stared with calm, black-and-white eyes at the Forest Spirit hidden beneath the human shell.

“If you are willing to voluntarily return the remaining lives and remove the demonic bone, I will take you back to the back mountain to become a disciple of the Earth Mother, to start anew. Otherwise, with one foot in the demonic path and one in the human, you will not have a good end. Moreover, with demonic energy in your body, you can no longer achieve human transformation; you have only seized a human’s shell. Defying the Heavenly Dao, you will have no possibility of further advancement.”

The Forest Spirit, using that human shell, gave a vivid, cold smile.

Its voice carried the tone Ye Mingshi was fond of using, but for some reason, the inhuman feeling hidden beneath the words was still very obvious, sending a chill down one’s spine.

“Immortals and demons are two sides of the same coin. As long as one can become stronger, does it matter which side you stand on?” the Forest Spirit said without a ripple of emotion. “As for you, after a thousand years of cultivation, you finally had a chance to take human form, yet you chose a male body. Is it because you are foolish, or because the divine descendant you serve is intolerant?”

The forest was not interested in Jiang Xiaocao’s answer and continued on its own, “In order to achieve human form, my menu has not had any other options for thousands of years. It’s rare for a kinsman to walk right into my net.”

“But as a plant cultivator, your soul is incomplete, and you cannot enter my soul space. Why not just be buried here?” It lifted its eyelids, its eyes flashing with an inorganic light. “I will enjoy you thoroughly.”

The negotiations broke down, and the situation instantly reversed.

A portion of the grass threads carefully hid the physical bodies of Su Qing and the others, while the rest surged forward to fight the Forest Spirit.

At the same time, the fifth purification in the soul space was about to begin.