Looking at the large jade tree, Bai Zemin sensed that there was something wrong but could not put his finger on what. 

The jade tree seemed to be made of genuine jade. Its entire body was of a dark green color that shone beautifully under the faint but clear glare of the sun’s rays weakly penetrating the treetop. All of its branches seemed to be made of jade, but strangely, they swayed around with a lot of flexibility whenever the wind blew, and its leaves that seemed to be made of a lighter jade compared to the rest of the body constantly released mana.

“Looks like this tree is not lying.” Shangguan Bing Xue whispered. She easily noticed that from the leaves of the jade tree, colossal amounts of mana were being released practically constantly, feeding the entire forest little by little as it spread out further. “I think we are in front of the real deal.”

Bai Zemin sensed a great amount of danger from the moment he arrived in front of the jade tree, but he still continued to feel that something wasn’t right. The biggest problem was that just as Shangguan Bing Xue had just said, the tree in front of them was definitely the Mana Eater Tree, there was no doubt about it.

Then what was wrong with it? Regardless of how strong his doubts were, Bai Zemin did not let any of this show on his face. Without letting his enemies know his thoughts, he spoke in a deep voice, “Xia Ya, you go back and carry out your task exactly as we agreed before.”

Xia Ya gently palmed Little Snow’s back to ask her to back off, at the same time, she said in a somewhat worried voice, “I’m fine with it and all but… What are we going to do with all these damn gargoyles?”

There were still around 500,000 gargoyles surrounding them. The enemies were so many that they covered practically 2/3 of the visible sky above their heads, making the darkness of the mutant forest even more pronounced.

“Circumstances are different than expected so we will make an adjustment to our plans until every piece falls into place.” Bai Zemin extended his right hand and the golden bow with dark runes quickly released a faint bright golden glow. As the radiance covered the weapon’s appearance, the shape of the bow began to change as Bai Zemin said in a serious voice, “Bing Xue, sorry to bother you but, could you take care of those gargoyles by yourself?”

Shangguan Bing Xue coldly looked at the surroundings as she nodded without hesitation, “I’ll back you up when I’m done here.”

“Don’t worry…” Bai Zemin narrowed his eyes at the jade tree that had remained silent and unmoving after a single word. Annihilation of the Falling Sky had already turned into a sleek golden spear in his right hand, and as he swiftly spun it around his body he said in a low voice, “With the Mana Eater Tree busy fighting against me I doubt those green gargoyles will turn into stone gargoyles after their death.”

“Be careful.” Shangguan Bing Xue whispered, worry evident in her voice.

Bai Zemin gave her a small smile before jumping off the ice phoenix’s back. 

A few gargoyles shrieked and darted towards him as he began to fall from the sky. In response, Bai Zemin coldly snorted, “Go to hell.”

With a swift stab forward, more than fifty gargoyles exploded as their bodies were struck by the terrifying piercing air cannon born from the tip of Annihilation of the Falling Sky. Blood and chunks of flesh, as well as broken limbs, flew everywhere, and the nearest gargoyles immediately dyed red as they shrieked and slashed with their claws towards Bai Zemin.

“Explode!”

Bai Zemin’s voice was charged with magical power, and its effect was immediate.

The bodies of the gargoyles that had been splattered with the blood of their comrades froze as the blood on top of their skin blazed, binding them in place. That blood strangely flowed into their bodies in a second, and before they let out even a squeak their eyes rolled back in their heads as they fell from the sky like flies.

Twenty…. Thirty…. One hundred… Three hundred…. In less than three seconds, over a thousand gargoyles had both their hearts shattered from inside their bodies and fell from the sky lifeless.

At the same time, approximately one hundred crimson-red spears made from the blood of the gargoyles that died at the beginning came together, and as if they were unstoppable pious treasures, turned all enemies on the way to the ground into flesh paste. The spears did not simply pierce their bodies but after piercing them made them explode when inflated like balloons.

Bai Zemin only needed about 5 or 6 seconds to reach the ground, and by the time he touched down as soft as a feather, there were already more than 5000 Third Order gargoyles that had lost their lives. If not for him simply wiping out those who were obstructing him that number of 5000 would definitely be ten times higher!

Looking at the jade tree still silently, Bai Zemin took a moment to sense the surroundings. His movement speed had dropped considerably as his Agility had degraded by approximately 10% because of the terrifying pressure in the area. In fact, Bai Zemin believed that if it wasn’t for his Strength being above 5000 points it would be difficult for him to move and any living being with less than 2000 Strength points would definitely not be able to stand up while those with less than 2000 Stamina points would probably be crushed to death by the pressure.

‘Soul Manipulation.’ Bai Zemin chanted in his heart and his aura immediately changed.

“Oh?” 

The weak but clearly signaling exclamation sound of how surprised the so far silent Mana Eater Tree sounded into Bai Zemin’s hearing. Weirdly, however, the Mana Eater Tree did not immediately attack but instead let Bai Zemin do whatever he was doing.

Bai Zemin was genuinely shocked in his heart. Until now, regardless of whoever the enemy he faced was, they always attacked him immediately when Soul Manipulation came into play. 

Was this Mana Eater Tree overconfident and so sure of its victory? When Bai Zemin asked himself this question, he couldn’t help but smile in his heart.

‘If I were the Mana Eater Tree and I had such an absurd skill like that, I would probably feel invincible after all too.’ Not to mention the fact that Bai Zemin, regardless of how powerful he might have proven to be so far, was still a level 100 soul evolver stuck at the peak of the Second Order.

If this were a typical novel, the main character would probably be annoyed with the other party as he was being underestimated and his pride could be hurt. However, Bai Zemin felt the opposite; joy.

The more his enemy underestimated him, the higher the probability of victory would be!

Underestimate me and overestimate yourself all you want, at the end of the day it is you who will fall, not me!

Furthermore, Bai Zemin knew that the Mana Eater Tree that possessed the extremely rare Mana Devouring skill that was even more terrifying than Manipulation-type skills had the qualifications to not put anyone in its eyes. Unfortunately, Bai Zemin had already articulated a foolproof victory plan.

Challenging? It was definitely going to be a great fight to the death and extremely hard to contend with, but Bai Zemin was confident that the winner would be him no matter how many tricks the Mana Eater Tree had hidden up its sleeve.

[You have activated Soul Manipulation and chosen the following skills to evolve during the corresponding time limit: Regeneration, Drain Life, Dark Mist].

Leaving aside Regeneration, which was the base skill of Overlap Regeneration, this was the first time Bai Zemin used Soul Manipulation in Drain Life and Dark Mist.

Under normal conditions, he would definitely not choose those two skills to be his sidekicks for a battle to the death against an extremely terrifying enemy. However, against the Mana Eater Tree, things were different.

At the same time as Bai Zemin activated Dark Mist and from every corner of his body a sort of jet-colored smoke was released and quickly spread over 200 meters around him and even penetrated the soil, the Mana Eater Tree’s voice rang out from the jade tree.

“Are you done with your preliminaries, Human King?”

Bai Zemin slowly opened his eyes, and ignoring the explosions in the sky caused by the battle between Shangguan Bing Xue and the army of gargoyles, he nodded calmly, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“It’s nothing…” The more than 100 branches of the jade tree suddenly began to slowly move, like crawling snakes, and grow in size as they pointed at Bai Zemin and gradually approached, “Just thank me by giving me a good battle and we’ll be even. The last time I had a pleasant match was with a level 287 Naga King, but I think you’ll be able to entertain me some more.”

Bai Zemin couldn’t help but chuckle and shrug his shoulders. As it seemed to be, his enemy was really confident in his victory, huh?

But then again, it was reasonable.

Bai Zemin noticed that even though he had just upgraded Dark Mist to a Third Order skill, its effects didn’t seem to work against the Mana Eater Tree too much.

Blindness? The Mana Eater Tree was a tree, it didn’t need eyes to see or sense where its enemies were.

As for whether the Mana Eater Tree’s physical attack had been reduced by 20% as it should have been, Bai Zemin would find out soon enough.

However, what he really cared about was neither Blindness nor Weak Attack…. What Bai Zemin really cared about was the side effect of the third characteristic of his Dark Mist skill.

Weakly glancing over Dark Mist’s evolution path, Bai Zemin smiled in a rather mysterious manner as he said in a low voice, “I guarantee you will definitely enjoy this battle…. In the beginning, that is.”

“In that case, let’s start the game!” The Mana Eater Tree ignored Bai Zemin’s last words and immediately attacked.

Jade branches strong enough to easily shatter a battle tank twisted in the sky at high speed, and as if they were real snakes bit toward the motionless Bai Zemin. 

The air heated with the brush against the branches, producing small sparks of fire as proof of how fast each jade branch moved and how terrifying the power they carried independently was.

* * * * * * *

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