Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 1512 - 1511 - Phantasm Forest

Lind had made his escape but unlike before he used his full strength to travel once he was sure he was not going to be detected. He employed Annabelle, Shoti, and even Kora's stealth skills they had taught him.

The world was a blur until he finally felt the instability of a border. He stopped well short of it and crossed it as Liam. There were several bridgeheads as they were highly militant powers near the Ruins.

Thanks to the recent chaos, anyone leaving was hardly checked while those arriving faced severe evaluation. Liam was also registered as arriving legally months ago so it was not an issue.

Once more, he got out of sight and rocketed away. He did not want to be anywhere nearby when someone had it occur to them to check the Sovereign Tiers registered to enter the Ruins.

While he would normally not worry, the incident was too large. They were scrambling to see what the Inheritance was, yet he knew they would start searching for certain answers.

Chief among them being how did Lind Frey suddenly appear in the middle of the camp. His disguise was not so easily changed in a short amount of time, thus he ran.

A week after leaving the Inheritance he was over 500 thousand kilometers away.

Such a distance would take months but foot or even an artifact but he had tore through space and other methods.

Anyone following his trail would spend a very long time trying to find him as he had also hopped directions anytime he tore through space.

With any luck, he bought himself enough time to discard Liam and make a new disguise.

Thankfully, he had prepared several alternatives but his recent breakthrough meant modifying them too.

HIs cultivation realm was no longer suppressed easily! Just being Liam at the checkpoint had been a task in praying to the spirits no one noticed his realm was not really at the Crystal Tier.

Eventually, he found a place he intended to visit that most avoided.

The 4th layer allowed a lot of unique environments to be neighbors but sometimes it was not purely Immortals that created them but events.

One such place was called the Phantasm Forest.

It was once a thriving empire focused on nature and despite how harmonious that sounded, it was brutally warlike. Nature was not kind. Lind likened them to hardliners that refused to bend no matter reality.

Cultivators were like that if they got stubborn individually but entire powers like that were rare. The human or demon supremacist powers might stick to their ideology but they often remained pragmatic to advance their power.

It was better to assume they would betray the plan once their goals were achieved.

The empire supposedly began a crusade to expand their borders. Not an insane thing by any measure as many powers attempted that every few decades or centuries depending on their level.

The legend went that they wiped out a power protected by a supreme sect, a name lost to history because it was killed in the forest in front of him.

In fact, everyone died that came to fight them. No one was quite sure if it was an artifact or formation but the entire empire lit up like a sun before plants exploded outward to consume all the cultivators in range!

The empire was consumed with it, or at least that was the assumption.

Lind felt the instability in the air preventing any flying at all even as a Sovereign Tier or a dragon. There were no birds but whistles and warbles were heard. They were wrong though.

They were not the sounds of life but unlife. The Phantasm Forest was a place of the dead. Souls endured but were considered alive for Immortals, yet there were stories of something else living on that was not the person at all.

Lind had never encountered such things that were not an illusion or some other special circumstance but the feeling from the twisted trees spoke to him almost like the Inheritance of Death.

Unlike the Inheritance, however, there was no sense of danger. He did not feel comfortable though. It was like he was walking over his own grave.

Considering the number of times he had died or nearly died, that was not a feeling he enjoyed.

The ground was stone as well. Like the black sand back at the multiple Ruins site, it was a stone with striations of faint blue and violet. The bothersome part was it seemed to move!

It was not an optical illusion or anything simple like that. He felt the flow of earth Qi was just as unstable as the air.

Still, the total lack of the living was due to not even bandits trying to use the place. Some had entered it and returned but they were always wrong.

It was like not all of them came back out of the forest. Lind was there to study it and use it as a place to upgrade his next disguise.

He found a small hill outside the border of the forest and made a tunnel into it by simply carving it out with his claws. It left no Qi marker and allowed him to use the leftover material to hide the entrance.

It was simple but effective. He then engraved various weavings inside the cavern to hide his aura as it would be difficult to do manually during his upgrading process.

Once he confirmed there was not an iota of Qi or aura outside the hill, he sealed it up with only the tiniest crack to allow air flow.

The scruffy Crystal Tier than fully dissolved and he felt comfortable as he relaxed for a moment. He finally looked down at his robes and smiled sadly.

He did not get as much mileage out of them as he would have liked.

He had hoped to be Liam for years. Still, the experience was humbling. Keeping a low profile was much harder than he imagined!

Was he so out of touch?

A person's self image was not reliable. Changes happened over time and what some would consider drastic changes in personality from meeting years apart, the person in question would just think they were living normally the whole time.

It was not hypocrisy, unless they broke Oaths or lived directly opposite to what they claimed they did, it was just life was not a static existence.

He sighed as he thought which disguise to use next. Radiant and Sovereign Tiers were out as they were powerhouses in the 3rd and 4th layers. Everyone knew their names or at least knew roughly how many there were.

They were too powerful not to be tracked.

Crystal Tiers were far more common in the 4th layer and thus were treated like peak existences only in medium powers and below.

It left him with some security to not be treated poorly but also not draw much attention.

Yet, he found it also came with expectations. Crystal Tiers were so common that even he forgot how powerful they were even when compared to higher tiers.

Other cultivators would look to him for answers as they were more approachable than Radiant or Sovereign Tiers.

"Shard Tier it is then." Lind would face discrimination but Immortals still held the privilege of free travel.

He also decided to become a demon.

Cyntilla had helped him with it long ago and he felt bittersweet she had not lived to see it. She had not liked the fact he could not change his eyes but he had a solution for that.

Shard Tier demons or humans could have injuries that were dangerous to heal. The eyes was one such area.

Especially if he revealed truthfully he had the Talent in them. Repairing such profound organs was not easily done and Shard Tiers struggled to get resources together.

He spent a solid month mastering his new foundation. Haro was dormant all that time but Lind could tell he was recovering nicely. Once he was sure he could regulate his power, he summoned out the dirty chainmail, leathers, and armor plate he had Forged for his new disguise.

The Forging was not his best intentionally but not so poor as to be mistaken for anything other than genuine low grade 7 items. A few things were medium grade 7 with even a peak grade 6 storage bracelet.

It was a mix of someone still striving to survive.

He then pulled out the last item that was not so simple. It was a strip of cloth that looked like it was a basic bandana but it was actually a pseudo Dao grade item.

Its sole purpose was to suppress auras to see what he wanted them to see. It was not even his. Annabelle had crafted the design, he simply made sure demonic Qi was used on it.

His tanned skin then shifted to dark lavender. His muscles reflowed to a more warrior-like physique that most demons had. Scars appeared on his body from blades, arrows, and so forth.

There was even a burn on his backside. Immortal injuries were common on demons so it would be damned odd if he had none.

He even went so far as to study how weapons cut flesh and scarred over to ensure they looked real.

The burn, though, was one he had endured long ago. He simply recreated it from his memory.

An emerald eyed demon now stood in the cavern but his black ring was still visible. He sighed as Haro was needed to hide it. He did his best with some perception wards on the armor but it was only a trick at best.

He put on the armor and completed it with a worn short sword and dagger. The sword was not one of Cyntilla's but he had based it on her style.

A worn but experienced demon warrior now stood with a hood and blindfold on. He checked his wards and nothing was in range. He then shimmered as he turned to shadow!

He appeared in the forest edge and froze. There was indeed no one but he felt it. Fiend Qi! Fiends were there!