Just as Wu Yijun was thinking and recounting everything that had happened during the past six days, an explosion followed by a fiery flare that immediately raised the temperature of the surroundings drew her attention.

Looking into the distance, Wu Yijun and the others present saw a huge fire snake with a horn similar to that of the flood dragons appear more than 500 meters in front of them. 

​ The fire snake was over 300 meters long and as wide as a house. Moreover, although it was clearly made of magic and mana, the destructive physical power of the beast was high enough to shatter all the trees it struck while charging towards a single enemy.

“That’s the 500 Year Fire Python that Miss Feng Tian Wu can summon!” 

“Looks like a new powerful enemy appeared!”

“Those damn undead really never end? We’ve killed over 300,000 during the past few days!”

Wu Yijun’s expression changed slightly when she saw a torrent of black-purple flames colliding head-on with the giant python. She recognized that attack instantly therefore she hurriedly ordered, “Everyone, step back in an orderly manner!”

Soon, under Wu Yijun’s leadership the troops began to retreat and only stopped after they had retreated more than 1500 meters. With her and other leaders protecting the others personally it would be practically impossible for the enemy to set up an ambush; knowing this, the soul evolvers climbed trees and watched the combat in the distance.

While looking at Feng Tian Wu standing in the distance facing her enemy with cold eyes, Wu Yijun could not help but regret in her heart: ‘If I could only use this forest to my advantage, how good would that be?’

Wu Yijun not only couldn’t make friends with the plants and trees in this place despite her class but she couldn’t even grow a simple level 20 Poison Spitting Thorny Flower not to mention higher level plants. No matter what seed Wu Yijun used, when the seed touched the soil it was devoured by the earth and the connection she had with each seed would be cut off immediately.

To say that her battle power was the one that had suffered the most when they entered the mutant forest was not an exaggeration in the slightest. The only thing that comforted Wu Yijun a little was the fact that her herbal ability and knowledge was extremely deep so she was still of great help to Bai Zemin and the rest.

thiŞ​ 🇨​🇴​🇳​🇹​🇪​🇳​🇹​ 🇸​🇹​🇴​🇱​🇪​🇳​ 🇫​🇷​🇴​🇲​ ⓝⓞⓥⓔⓛⓑⓘⓝ

In the distance, Feng Tian Wu coldly looked at the enemy in front of her as she ordered her 500 Year Fire Python to attack using elusive patterns.

On the opposite side, a skeleton covered in a black magic robe with purple embroidery and a golden rune on its forehead waved its bony hand outward. The human skull on top of its bone staff suddenly glowed and two dark flames blazed in the empty hollows of the skull’s eyes.

“Cursed Flame.” The skeleton’s voice was extremely unpleasant to hear and particularly sinister. 

When the fire python and the flare of cursed fire collided, there was an explosion that shook the trees vigorously. Most terrifying of all was that while the yellow flames that burst from the fire python burned the forest, the purple-black flames somehow seemed to be helping the forest recover more quickly.

A fireball made up of 50% yellow flames and 50% cursed flames that was particularly large flew off to the right deep into the forest. Just when it seemed that the entire area was about to be destroyed, the air around the fireball quickly froze and while the fireball was still in mid-flight ice layers began to appear around it.

The ice was clearly not normal as it managed to suppress both flames in a matter of seconds, and by the time the fireball hit the ground, it had already been turned into an ice ball that exploded into small fragments without causing any damage after hitting a tree as thick as a two-story house.

Standing about 200 meters distance apart, Bai Zemin watched the battle calmly and after a moment of silence couldn’t help but frown: “These damn Liches are really a big pain in the ass. If not for the fact that they have a fear of fire it would be quite an accomplishment to kill those things.”

If even Bai Zemin was saying something like that one could only try to imagine how terrifying those undead were.

“At least we have discovered quite a few things in this time.” Shangguan Bing Xue who was standing beside him comforted him.

Indeed, Bai Zemin’s expression changed slightly for the better when he heard her.

In the beginning only White Bone Warriors appeared whose levels ranged from level 5 to level 24. These skeletons used swords, spears, and shields made of bone to attack their enemies but although their numbers were many they had nothing to do against more than 3000 Second Order soul evolvers and around 12,000 warrior golems whose combat power was equivalent to soul evolvers above level 30.

After being raided every short intervals for a total of 3 days, whoever was the mastermind ruling this forest seemed to realize that the White Bone Warriors were no match for the invaders and decided to send another type of skeleton called Undead Mage and another skeleton called Indestructible Bone Skeleton; the Undead Mages were First Order monsters while the Indestructible Bone Skeletons were Second Order monsters.

As if this wasn’t enough, Bai Zemin had been forced to gradually have some of his subordinates go into the Collector’s Pocket World. This was because the deeper they moved into the forest the greater the density and amount of mana in the surroundings were.

Even after advancing only 10 kilometers deeper into the forest, the difference between this part of the forest and the part at the beginning was simply colossal. The trees in this area seemed to have taken some kind of peculiar route of evolution, as a faint metallic glimmer could be seen on their trunks while their usually weak leaves were as hard as steel plaques.

Although the two new types of enemies were vastly fewer in numbers compared to the White Bone Warriors, the strength of the Undead Mage and the Indestructible Bone Skeleton were worlds apart. After two days of fighting them, the Transcendent faction had lost a total of 756 warrior golems, 12 wounded soul evolvers who could not continue fighting, and 1 dead who fell after being bombarded by a dozen curses cast by the Undead Mages before being cut into two pieces by the blade of an Indestructible Bone Skeleton.

It was not until day number 5, yesterday, that Bai Zemin and the others realized a chilling truth. In addition to this, the mutant forest head introduced a new type of enemy; Third Order Shadow Lich.

Although only one Shadow Lich appeared every 2 or 3 hours at most, the power of each Lich was extremely frightening. They could not only summon thousands of White Bone Warriors with a swing of their staff, but they even had the ability to recover from their casualties quickly using the mana in the area.

“Bing Xue, how is your Mana reserve?” 

Shangguan Bing Xue checked her status window before calmly answering, “I still have over 98%. It should be enough for later.”

“That’s good.” Bai Zemin looked up at the sky and his eyes met the few rays of sunlight that managed to reach the forest, “We should start moving tomorrow… The enemy will probably make their move soon.”

The terrifying truth that Bai Zemin and the others discovered on the fifth day was that in this forest, for some strange reason, their Mana was not recovering at all. There seemed to be some kind of illusion or confusion magic cast throughout the forest as the soul evolvers below level 140 simply ignored the fact that their Mana was not recovering as it should. 

In fact, were it not for Feng Tian Wu personally stepping forward to finish off a shadow Lich and expending a good portion of her total Mana, Bai Zemin and the other leaders would be completely oblivious to this fact as none of them had been forced to use skills against such weak enemies.

“Fortunately our Little King has the Demigod grade treasure ‘Collector’s Pocket Watch’ where we can recover our spent Mana, otherwise we would be really miserable in this damn place.” Shangguan Xinyue descended from the sky floating down like a fairy at that moment, bringing with her a scent that strangely smelled charming but at the same time evoked purity.

As Shangguan Bing Xue secretly rolled her eyes, Bai Zemin asked in a serious voice, “Shangguan Xinyue, how did it go?”

“I told you that you might as well call me mommy…” Shangguan Xinyue joked but her expression was not very pleasant as she said, “It’s not good. There seems to be some kind of restriction magic that doesn’t allow me to fly over the trees. The height limit seems to be around 1000 meters at best.”

‘Great, another bad news.’ Bai Zemin snorted in his heart. He wasn’t surprised at all since Li Lei, Feng Tian Wu’s Third Order mount, had met with this problem a few hours ago. 

Shangguan Xinyue had been flying around for quite some time trying to find a hole in the invisible barrier, but it seemed that her efforts were as good as nothing.

At that precise moment, the sound of thunder rumbled in the distance.

Bai Zemin and the mother-daughter duo at his side looked in the direction of the exit through they entered the forest just in time to see a flash of bright red light flicker for a second before disappearing without a trace.

Cai Jingyi whose face was always embellished by a playful smile and bright mischievous eyes appeared like a ghost enveloped in flashes of bright red lightning around her small body. 

“… Where were you?” Bai Zemin tried to act calm but his heart was already trembling.

He had sent Cai Jingyi more than two hours ago to return along the path they had traveled to get here. The problem was that for an Agility-type soul evolver such as Cai Jingyi it should be a matter of a couple of minutes at most to cross the miserable distance of ten kilometers that they had traversed, and that was considering the appearance of any enemies in their path.

“Bai Zemin, it’s no good.” Cai Jingyi called him directly by his name like when they were in college and said in a serious voice, “Although I was running all this time I actually couldn’t reach the exit at all. After more than an hour without any result, I finally accepted that there was something wrong… Thankfully I didn’t keep going forward and decided to turn back or else heaven knows how long it would have taken me to get back here.”

It seemed to be that the bad news just kept coming one after another.

Bai Zemin slowly closed his eyes and only opened them when he heard a thunderous explosion that made the ground beneath his feet rumble. The temperature around him had risen tremendously, and when he looked at the area he found that he was surrounded by a sea of crimson-red flames. Fortunately, the flames belonged to an extraordinarily talented fire mage who knew who to hurt and who not to hurt.

Thanks to his contract with the Endless Blue Lotus Flame, one of the divine flames that existed in the universe, his eyes could see clearly through the sea of fire. He saw Feng Tian Wu standing in the distance with her back to him; at her feet, the bones and robe of the Shadow Lich had turned into a small handful of ashes.

Bai Zemin coldly looked deeper into the forest as he murmured in his heart: ‘It really is you after all, Mana Eater Tree… Since you insist on not letting us leave you are leaving me no choice but to make you regret it!”

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