I heard a cacophony of roars and screeches as the beasts came to a stumbling halt. The domino effect of my sudden stop passed down the line, causing much complaint.

I was taking a big risk here, but I was confident in what I'd seen. We had decided that escape was our only option because we had no way to dispel the mists, leaving the trees free to attack us with impunity.

Yet, while studying the energy around us, I realised the truth behind our unseen opponents. All of the trees around us were dead, so how could the roots be alive?

The truth was that it wasn't the trees attacking us, but a creature hidden in the ground. The energy signature of every single root was identical, meaning there was only one enemy with dozens of tendrils striking at our group.

No matter how far we travelled or how fast, it managed to keep pace with us. How did it manage that without eyes?

It wasn't working alone.

While the roots all shared an identical energy signature, the ground was a blinding mass of light to my vision. Hundreds of sparkling nodes of energy were spread through the soil, pulsing as darting drops of spiritual energy passed between them.

I was reminded of a documentary I'd watched about how forests were almost alive. The reason? Giant networks of fungi that lay beneath the soil, connecting the roots of trees and passing information between them, almost like a brain.

Here, a similar situation was unfolding, but not between the trees and the fungi. I had no way to know my guess was correct, but whether the nodes belonged to a fungal creature or not, the way the two operated was extremely similar.

Thus, came my solution to defeat them. The reason I hadn't been confident in my techniques earlier was due to the confusion of the mist and the strikes from our blind spots.

I'd thought we were dealing with dozens of individual opponents working in the mist and fog to deliver lethal strikes. Even after discovering it was the roots attacking us, I'd still believed that with so many enemies, my techniques which were suited to single combat wouldn't be useful.

Only once I switched to using my energy vision and unveiling the truth about our opponents had I realised my error. With just two, giant opponents stretched across a large area, I was perfectly suited to deal with them.

The only issue I had now was deciding which technique to use. I heard a series of screeches in front of me. Suddenly, I felt a hairy paw gripping my arm.

"Human, you crazy? Why stop?" Meng Hou snarled, staring at me with undisguised fury.

I understood his anger. To his eyes, we were on the only possible path of escape and I'd stopped us in our tracks. Without a way to dispel the mist or fight off the roots, I was prolonging our torture.

"Am I crazy? Probably," I chuckled, cutting it short as I felt the ape's grip tightening like a vice on my forearm. "Relax, big guy. I know how to defeat the roots," I explained, pointing at the ground.

A sudden strike from the mist was deflected by the monkey's thick arm. It cocked its head to one side and stared at me, before nodding. "How?"

"All of the roots belong to the same creature. There is another one beneath the ground, giving it instructions, like a web. Only the roots are moving with us, the other one is spread across the entire forest," I told him.

The last part was only a guess, but it should be true based on what I'd observed so far. Now came the hard part. I had to figure out how to kill the roots, but I didn't want to damage the other creature.

Not because I felt bad for an enemy who'd been trying to kill us, but simply because it would take too much energy to affect something so large and spread over such a wide area.

I explained this all to Meng Hou and the others nearby, after which their eyes went wide in understanding. The badgerhog snarled and started scratching at the earth.

"If we defeat the root creature, we will be safe travelling through the forest. Even if the network of nodes can sense us, without the root creature it will have no way to attack. That way, if there are any treasures hidden within, we can claim them for ourselves," I finished.

At the mention of treasure, the beasts' final hesitant glares and nervous shifting stopped. Beasts understood the nature of life even more so than human cultivators. In the wilds it was kill or be killed.

If you didn't claim every opportunity to increase your strength, then you would end up becoming prey for a more powerful beast. The moment we had all made the decision to enter the Blossoming Heavens, we'd put our lives on the line in the hope of obtaining greater strength and fortune.

With such an opportunity in front of our eyes, who would be foolish enough to run away?

"I will deal with the creature, but it will take a short while to activate my technique. I've never used it in this way before, but I'm confident," told them. "I need you all to defend me from the roots while I work."

The group nodded in understanding. Meng Hao barked out a few orders and the beasts spread out a short distance, forming a circle around me.

We couldn't see each other through the mist, but I explained the situation with energy vision to the beasts. Even though their senses weren't as refined as mine, they could roughly tell each other's position.

As long as none of us moved too far, we wouldn't get lost. A few attacks from the roots struck out, but they failed to deal anything more than flesh wounds.

I wasn't sure which of my techniques to use. They had been inspired by diseases and poisons which affected humans, given that I had mostly been fighting with my own kind since arriving in this world. The fact the techniques worked on beasts too was likely due to the somewhat similar physiques they shared.

Additionally, any living creature which used spiritual energy shared the same weakness in front of my techniques. The problem was plants and mushrooms were quite different and I didn't even know if they could be affected by a technique like the tumour-inducing one or my poisonous qi.

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If I had to bring down the connected network of nodes that gave the root creature its sensory information, I would be utterly stumped. Luckily, my target was far less complex in nature.

I would use my poisonous qi technique. At the very least, if I could corrupt the creature's spiritual energy it should get it off our backs.

Only time would tell if it would give us the freedom to explore the dead forest without watching our backs. In the worst case, we would have a safe path to escape into the wider area of the secret realm.

I had cycled my qi enough by now, gathering almost a third of what was stored in my dantian at any given time. The majority of the qi was focused in the palms of my hands.

When fighting humans and beasts, I used my fingertips as a focal point. However, against the creature spread through the ground below, a wider surface area would work best.

Once I felt that my qi was at its most chaotic, fighting against my control in two whirling maelstroms, I focused my intent. Every so often I saw a lightning fast streak of spiritual energy arcing from the mist. The roots were hard to follow, but my allies blocked them all.

By now the mist had completely consumed us once more. The effects of the white tiger's azure light technique had dissipated. While that meant the roots could more easily attack us, it gave me exactly the window of opportunity I needed.

A single root lanced out of the soil, striking directly at my forehead. It had passed beneath the encirclement of my allies unbeknownst to them.

The instant it erupted from the ground, I clapped my palms together. They clasped the root firmly, stopping it in its tracks.

The tip wiggled, desperately seeking to pierce my skin. Unfortunately it never would. The instant my skin touched the root, all of the toxic qi I'd gathered burst into the creature like a storm on a sunny day.

The effect was even more devastating than I'd expected. I tried to focus my intent, turning my medicinal qi into a poison that would tear the plant creature apart from the inside.

After all, poison and medicine were but two sides of the same coin. That was a fact I'd known well before my death and subsequent reincarnation.

In this world I simply had the power to utilise my knowledge in far more effective ways than I'd been able to on Earth. I still wasn't sure if that was a positive thing or not. Only time would tell.

I had no desire to become a harbinger of death, yet circumstances continued to force my hand. Incidentally, this scenario stretched the limits of my oath, yet inside the Blossoming Heavens I felt no restraints on my power. I wouldn't push too far, yet it brought about even more questions I had no way to answer.

What exactly were 'the heavens' and why had a simple oath spoken in desperation granted me this odd physique, allowing me to perfectly utilise the knowledge I possessed. Yet in a world cut off yet part of the one I currently lived in, the chains of the heavens seemed weaker?

Did that mean the world itself was a sentient being? Was that the purpose of the Dao? Communicating with the world itself to reach enlightenment?

What was the world trying to tell me by giving me a physique that allowed me to become the ultimate healer, yet at the same time a devastating corruptor? In the time it took me to get into yet another philosophical debate in my own head, my technique had utterly devastated the root creature's body.

All the roots which had been in the midst of attacking my allies had withered and twisted as the poison caused the plant's cells to swell and burst, rot and blacken. Using my energy senses, I could see that the situation was even worse underground.

The creature's main body had been torn apart by the poison as it fought in equal measure to either purge the poison or fight it directly. Neither option worked, resulting in my technique spreading faster.

However, the most damage didn't come from my technique, but rather from the interconnected network of spiritual nodes I'd sensed beneath the ground. The moment a drop of my poisonous qi had tried to spread from the root creature to the web below, an automatic defense mechanism seemed to activate.

I saw bursts of energy denser than anything I'd sensed before, reaching the level of the spiritual energy contained inside a priceless natural treasure like the Ten Ascensions Lily. Those tiny bursts erased everything they touched, be it my poison qi, the strands of energy connecting the web to the root creature, or even the ground itself.

The latter effect went beyond spiritual destruction, causing shifts and tiny sinkholes to form in the soil. I almost stumbled into one as I stood back up, but seeing it beneath the ground as it happened allowed me to sidestep the physical aftermath.

Some of my allies weren't so lucky. However, falling into the earth wasn't dangerous now that the creature had been vanquished.

All it took was a little communication to find those who'd sunk into the soil and help them back to their feet. Meng Hou screeched out, banging his chest twice to gather our group towards his hulking body.

"Enemies dead?" he asked.

"Yes, I killed the root creature. There are other… things beneath the ground, but they don't have a way to attack us," I replied to the best of my knowledge.

It was a little difficult having a conversation when neither of us could see the other through the thick mists, but we were doing our best.

"Good! Hairless ape smart. Little Hou's mother did good job bringing you," he said approvingly.

I heard chortling nearby, sounding suspiciously like Wang Ren. At least someone was enjoying our hairy leader's antics.

"We should start searching the forest. There are meant to be many natural and ancient treasures in the Blossoming Heavens according to lore and we shouldn't let anyone get a headstart," I suggested.

"Agreed. Let us leave no stone unturned in our quest for rich- ahem, knowledge," Wang Ren finished with a cough.

I sighed at his remark, but I couldn't fault him. That was what most cultivators were here for—myself included.

While I did want to find any ancient knowledge of healing techniques or artifacts that might help improve my craft, I also needed wealth. I had a sect to nurture and my upcoming alchemical pursuits would be expensive.

Even with the discovery of the spirit stone mine inside the mountain, one could never have too many resources. Besides, the first natural treasure I'd acquired had led to me jumping four star-realms in my cultivation as well as refining another organ.

If there was a chance to find an equally potent or even half as potent treasure, I would be a fool to miss out because of a little danger. Danger that I'd already proven was beatable with a little brains.

"Other human even smarter," Meng Hou exclaimed at Wang Ren's words. "Treasure great. Let's search. If another enemy come, you kill."

I assumed he was talking to me, given that no one else had the ability to defeat the root creature. I wondered why the other beasts weren't talking. Either they had yet to acquire the ability or they simply had no desire to communicate with us humans.

As long as Meng Hou was here, they seemed content to follow his lead. After a series of squawks, screeches and purrs, the group came to an agreement.

The tiger's purrs turned into snarling growls at one point. I guessed they opposed staying in the forest after the other tiger had become its first and only victim from our group.

It was a shortsighted perspective, but grief overwhelmed logic in many cases. Even so, those who wanted to make our way out as quickly as possible were outnumbered by those who wanted to search for treasure.

In the end, we decided to stick together as a group while combing in a zigzag towards the general direction we'd been travelling in before. That way, we were killing two birds with one stone.

We would cover a wide area and that way discover any hidden treasures, ruins, or other oddities worth taking a closer look at, while also slowly making our way out of the forest.

With a plan of action settled, we began to move. Now that our lives weren't under threat, I was able to slowly appraise our surroundings with energy vision, giving me a clearer picture of the forest.

After the battle my excitement was at a peak and I was curious to discover unique treasures in this place. With that in mind, I made sure to leave nothing unchecked while scanning our surroundings, hoping I wouldn't have to wait too long for my first find.

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