Someone is Hiding in the Tree
“Why are we turning back now?”
“Isn’t it a straight path? Why did we turn?”
“Are you sure we’re on the right path?”
The two maidens with no sense of direction kept asking why they were turning and if they were on the right track. In all fairness, the others were also puzzled why Cheng Yan turned when it was a straight path. Thus, Mu Yu expounded, “We have to use something as a guide. All we can see in this forest are trees and more trees. Each tree has many differences that are hard to notice. We think it’s a straight line, but it’s not.”
Mu Yu ran his hand across every tree they went by. For that reason, he could tell Cheng Yan was on the correct path. The trees could seemingly move, thereby misleading them. Thankfully, the compass helped them work around the issue.
It was difficult to navigate elemental demons’ formations since the latter were proficient with five elements formations. The only way to work around the issue was to fly. Of course, there was an obvious drawback in a forest scenario. Maybe that explained why humans couldn’t exterminate the demons in their home ground.
“Wait, I smell dead qi,” called Mu Yu, stopping.
Mu Yu had a bad feeling. He couldn’t put the feeling into words; it was a feeling he had when fiend beasts and humans died. The feeling had never felt so vivid before.
“Dead qi? What are you on about?”
To put it simply, Mu Yu could detect a special qi wreathing around the dead, which he rightfully coined dead qi. It was impossible to define it as a smell, however.
“This way!”
Mu Yu leapt over a hole to the right and parted the trees to squeeze through. He stopped in front of a large and patterned tree. There were only dapples of sunlight on the dark floor. The bark was rougher than most trees. His team and even he hadn’t seen a tree so enormous before.
Gu Yitian: “I smell blood.”
The team instantly readied themselves for comment at the declaration, eyes darting back and forth. Strangely, there was no blood or signs of a fight taking place previously.
Hong Yan sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything.”
“You haven’t witnessed murder nor have you gone through many occurrences, so it’d be foreign to you,” explained Gu Yitian, slowly approaching the enormous tree he smelt blood from.
Mu Yu slowly reached out to the tree. As soon as he sent his conscious inside, he jerked his hand back. Seeing his reaction, Hao Yingjun asked, “What happened?”
“N-nothing.”
Mu Yu’s panting clearly indicated otherwise. Mu Yu saw a person. To be precise, he saw the corpse of a cultivator, the corpse of one of the forty cultivators who went to investigate! Mu Yu couldn’t identify the sect he belonged to. The cultivator’s eyes were dilated. Blood had been drained from his face. He clutched his throat with both hands, face scrunched up. His body was forcibly compressed and painted in his own blood. Mu Yu clearly jerked his hand back for a legitimate reason. The tree branch had the cultivator squeezed with no room to move after devouring him.
Mu Yu was the only person who would’ve been able to tell among the group thanks to his ability. Only wood demons and he could’ve accomplished the task. He couldn’t tell the others about his findings without revealing his ability.
“The death qi you spoke of is exuding from this tree, isn’t it? I can also smell blood from it,” expressed Gu Yitian.
Xue’er went up to the tree and scanned it. “Why would there be blood coming from a tree?”
As Xue’er touched the tree, Hao Yingjun summoned his flying sword/ “What do you say we chop it apart and inspect, huh?”
“Don’t you think it’s a pity to chop down a tree that looks as if it’s grown for centuries?” contended Hong Yan.
Mu Yu tried to stay calm. “What do you think, First Brother?”
Cheng Yan could read between the lines when conversing with Mu Yu. Though he didn’t know what the exact problem with the tree was, they could find out. “Since Gu Yitian says there’s blood, let’s chop it down and find out.”
“Don’t chop across it. It won’t be funny if the top collapses given its height. Let’s shave the bark off,” Mu Yu suggested to Cheng Yan.
Cheng Yan nodded and launched his sword at the sword while the others instinctively back away. They held their breaths as Cheng Yan carefully shaved away the bark. Once he was close to shaving away a third of the trunk, Mu Yu called, “Wait.”
“What’s the matter?” Cheng Yan halted.
From memory, they should’ve found the corpse already at that depth. Mu Yu took a big breath, then went over. He placed his hand on the tree and sent his conscious in. To his astonishment, the corpse was gone! Unconvinced, Mu Yu sent his conscious further up the tree and finally found the corpse that something moved up. He saw… it was moving…
“Up top!” Cheng Yan summoned another sword and fired it up straight away.
In the instant Cheng Yan’s sword pierced the tree, a green figure emerged from it and zoomed over to another tree where it vanished. The team traced the sword’s path when he thrust it, so they saw the green creature with bark for skin. They saw the tree branches that made up its limbs, the misty green eyes and the spuds growing from various places.
“That’s a wood demon!”
The first ever wood demon they came across jumped out from the tree.
“After it!” asserted Gu Yitian, bringing everyone to their senses.
“Stop,” commanded Cheng Yan, stopping Gu Yitian as the others mounted their swords. “How are we supposed to catch it in a forest?”
Indeed, the wood demon was already gone. It was vexing, nonetheless.
Meanwhile, Mu Yu fixed his gaze on the spot Cheng Yan’s sword was stabbed in. Xue’er looked up and unleashed an echoing shriek, “Aaah!”
Half of the cultivator’s corpse was on display, dangling from the tree. His lower body, on the other hand, had become one with the tree. The wood demon attempted to take the corpse with it, but Cheng Yan ruined its plan. The cultivator’s blood had dried. His terrified eyes on the team were bloodshot. He looked as though he had something to say. Alas…
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