novelraw Chapter 284 : How Despicable!
Chapter 284 : How Despicable!
"Are you saying this small tree sapling might be what grew from that Bodhi fruit from years ago?"
A small tree sapling on the verge of dying, just withering away, didn't look anything like the legendary Bodhi tree.
"The Bodhi tree, as a heavenly and earthly spiritual object, has extremely strict requirements for its environment. Abundant spiritual energy alone is not enough. It can only grow normally when it resides in the legendary Celestial Breath Spirit Soil. Otherwise, as time passes, this Bodhi tree will only wither more and more, until it completely dies... In my memory, this should be the only known Bodhi tree on the Spiritual Abyss Continent. Finding another new Bodhi tree, who knows when that might happen. If this Bodhi tree completely dies, there might not be a second one on this continent."
The little Pagoda Spirit said so much, but Chu Sang's attention was caught by the first few lines. She looked up at it and asked, "You just said, Celestial... what soil?"
"Celestial Breath Spirit Soil! Hmph, ignorant human, you don't even know about such a spiritual object!"
"There's a piece of it on the back mountain of Lingqing Sect."
"Huh?"
Now it was the Pagoda Spirit's turn to be dumbfounded. It bristled slightly, "Do you know what you're saying? Celestial Breath Spirit Soil is a special spiritual soil born from heaven and earth. Your sect's back mountain just happens to have a piece? How is that possible?? If it were that simple, Bodhi trees would be everywhere! You must have mistaken it for something else!"
"...Um, it's true." Chu Sang nodded sincerely. She was quite confident in her memory. "I obtained it from a secret realm many years ago, but it never found much use, so I casually planted it on the sect's back mountain. Usually, it's used to grow some spirit plants and herbs for Sixth Senior Brother to refine pills. Other than that, it doesn't have much use. If you hadn't mentioned it today, I might have forgotten about it entirely."
She paused, then said in a low voice, "However, the spirit plants and herbs grown in that soil are indeed more potent than those grown in ordinary areas. They can greatly shorten the growing period while maintaining their medicinal properties... I was even thinking about getting a few more pieces of this soil to grow vegetables."
"Ah ah ah! You wasteful villain, that's the famous Celestial Breath Spirit Soil, and you want to use it to grow vegetables?!" The little Pagoda Spirit nearly fainted from shock. What kind of oddball was this master it was following?!
Seeing her speak with such certainty, the Pagoda Spirit was half-believing, half-doubting. "Your sect's back mountain really has Celestial Breath Spirit Soil?"
"Why not?"
If such an outrageous thing happened to someone else, the Pagoda Spirit would absolutely not believe it. But coming from Chu Sang, it actually had some credibility. It couldn't help but sigh, "You really have some dog shit luck!"
"By the way, didn't you say earlier that there would be guardian beasts near the Bodhi fruit? Where are those beasts hidden?" Chu Sang gripped her sword tightly, looking around but not seeing any traces of beasts.
The lakeside was too quiet, eerily so.
"Given the proud nature of great beasts, they absolutely wouldn't allow outsiders to enter their territory. You've come this close without any response. Perhaps after so many years, that beast has already died, or maybe the Bodhi tree withered, and there was no value in continuing to wait, so the beast left." The Pagoda Spirit made a reasonable guess.
Wouldn't this Bodhi tree then be to her advantage?
Chu Sang's heart leaped with joy, but to be cautious, she didn't rashly approach. She probed first to avoid causing too much commotion that might attract other demon beasts. She sent out a puppet first, and finding no response, she cautiously approached.
Just as she carefully dug out the pitiful little tree sapling and put it into her Qiankun bag, the small patch of exposed ground beneath her feet shook violently, suddenly flipping over. Caught off guard, she sank into the lake water. As soon as she opened her eyes, she faced a pair of huge, dark green beast eyes appearing at the bottom of the lake, becoming clearer and clearer, looking down at her from above. Those eyes were larger than her entire body, gazing at her as if observing an ant.
Chu Sang's entire body immediately broke out in goosebumps, a thought flashing through her mind—damn, she'd fallen into a trap!
She hadn't expected this demon beast to be more cunning than humans, even learning to catch a turtle in a jar!
With her fire spirit root, she wasn't well-suited for underwater battles. Chu Sang retreated slightly against the water flow, when suddenly countless undercurrents in the lake water surged upwards, forming one chain after another, entangling her entire body and tightening suddenly like venomous snakes.
Chu Sang finally saw the true face of that demon beast. It was a huge underwater dragon turtle, with a pressure like tidal waves frantically assaulting her, possessing strength at the half-step Great Perfection stage.
Damn, thankfully she had been cautious. The talisman at her fingertip burned, instantly transporting her to the shore with a substitution talisman, and she took off running.
"Roar!"
The dragon turtle burst out of the water. The entire small island in the lake was its avatar.
Chu Sang didn't dare to look back, raising her hand to throw out the Primordial Soul-Chaser, straddling it and soaring forward on the flying sword.
The dragon turtle pursued relentlessly behind her, its speed extremely fast, covering dozens of meters with each step forward.
Chu Sang had no choice but to use every trick at her disposal, desperately fleeing for her life, frantically layering various enhancement talismans, speed talismans, and flash talismans on herself. Still, the distance between them was constantly shrinking.
The Pagoda Spirit shouted, "Quick! Run towards that path on the left, the exit is in the valley five li ahead!"
Chu Sang immediately turned her sword, flying towards the path on the left, entering a valley.
The passage in the valley was narrow and cramped, making it difficult for the dragon turtle's massive body to squeeze through. Wherever it passed, countless rock walls were knocked down, with large chunks of falling rocks collapsing.
"Boom!"
While running, Chu Sang also had to be wary of being crushed into meat paste by the falling rocks.
Fortunately, the valley was rugged enough to slow down the dragon turtle's advance. When she reached a certain spot, her eyes suddenly lit up—she had found the exit!
She leaped in, and her vision turned to darkness. The noise in her ears quickly dissipated. When light returned to Chu Sang's eyes, she found herself in an extremely spacious courtyard, deserted with only the sound of the wind.
Compared to the seventh floor, the eighth floor should have been more dangerous. She had stayed in this place for half a day without noticing anything unusual. She used her divine sense to explore several li in all directions but didn't detect any traces of demon beasts. Could the eighth floor be empty?
Chu Sang leaned against the wall to stand up, unable to make sense of it for a moment, but at least it was better than being chased and killed by demon beasts as soon as she appeared.
She searched for the exit leading to the ninth floor.
Passing through the eighth floor was smoother than all the previous floors combined. Before long, she found the exit to the ninth floor. Just as she was about to go through, the voice of the Pagoda Spirit, which had been absent for half a day, suddenly appeared in her mind,
"Ah ah ah, Chu Sang, can you hear me? Don't go over there! Absolutely don't go! Going there is suicide!!!"
Her footsteps suddenly halted, and she took a step back, asking in astonishment, "Little Pagoda Spirit?"
"Waa ah woo woo, you can finally hear me speak, that's great." The Pagoda Spirit wept with joy. "As soon as you entered the eighth floor, I lost contact with you. I wanted to warn you quickly that this place is very strange, don't go any further. The entrance ahead is not a passage to the upper floor, it's a dead end. But no matter how I called out, you couldn't hear me. Seeing you were about to enter, I was nearly worried to death. I shouted once more, and you finally responded!"
"...You mean to say that the great beast of the eighth floor blocked your power?"
The Demon-Locking Pagoda had weakened over too many years, while the demon beasts inside had evolved through millions of years of endless struggle. A small portion of the demon beasts had become increasingly powerful, actually able to block the power of the Demon-Locking Pagoda for a short time?
For both the little Pagoda Spirit and Chu Sang, this guess was somewhat terrifying.
It meant the strength of the eighth floor's great beast had probably reached a level beyond their imagination...
In the seemingly empty and quiet courtyard, Chu Sang's hair stood on end, cold sweat streaming down her back. It felt as if countless eyes were watching her from the shadows, the whistling wind sounding like the breath of a giant beast.
She swallowed hard, taking several steps back, staring intently at the "entrance" before her. A black mirror appeared in her palm, which she directed towards the "entrance". What reflected in the mirror wasn't a passage at all, but a huge bloody maw of indiscernible shape!
That great mouth was like an endless abyss, with thousands upon thousands of rows of sharp teeth writhing with the flesh, making one's scalp tingle and stomach churn.
"Whoosh—"
A black and red tentacle several dozen meters long suddenly lashed out at her. Chu Sang was prepared and swung her sword to cut it.
This sword strike barely caused any damage to the tentacle, but she was thrown back several hundred meters by the force of the tentacle. The ancient courtyard also disappeared, and she found herself standing on a rolling lava volcano. Dozens of agile tentacles emerged from the roaring flames, and she could see the full appearance of that monster.
Unlike any demon beast she had seen before, this thing couldn't even be called a demon beast anymore. More accurately, it should be called a monster...
It was like an octopus that had mutated with dozens of legs.
Where the head should have been, there was instead a deep concave area, transformed into a bloody maw surrounded by countless sharp teeth, constantly opening and closing, churning. Looking closely, there were still remnants of flesh and bone fragments between the dense teeth, as if it had just devoured the corpse of a demon beast.
Why hadn't she seen a single demon beast on the eighth floor? Could it be that the other demon beasts... had all been eaten by this monster???
This absurd thought crossed Chu Sang's mind.
"Little Pagoda Spirit, what kind of monster have you raised in this pagoda? Did you know about this? Could it be that there's only this one monster on the eighth floor, with no other demon beasts?"
"That's not right, I clearly remember there were several great beasts on the eighth floor. How come not a single one can be seen now?" The little Pagoda Spirit quickly reacted, pointing a trembling finger at the tentacled monster before them, its voice shaking, "Were they... all eaten by it?"
"This thing is in your Demon-Locking Pagoda, and you didn't know about it? This creature certainly didn't appear out of thin air. Where did you get such a monster from?"
"I-I don't know either. This demon beast must be very skilled at concealment. After so many years, I never knew of its existence. I didn't expect it to have secretly devoured all the other great beasts on the eighth floor. Those great beasts were all at the Great Perfection stage. It actually ate so many Great Perfection stage demon beasts, so its current strength, probably..." The more it spoke, the more its voice trembled, its body shaking more violently. The Pagoda Spirit now didn't know whether to call itself unlucky or fortunate.
This demon beast could now forcibly block the power of the Demon-Locking Pagoda. If it were really allowed to continue growing, perhaps when it finally broke through the power within the pagoda, it would directly swallow the pagoda itself!
Fortunately, Chu Sang had made this journey, otherwise it wouldn't have known about this at all.
"It's very strange. I've never seen this kind of demon beast in any beast compendium of the Spiritual Abyss Continent. Is it possible that this isn't a demon beast from the lower realm at all?" Chu Sang's voice deepened slightly. "Aren't you a divine artifact from the upper realm? You must have spent some time in the upper realm. Did you accidentally swallow something while you were there? The fact that this thing wasn't detected when it first entered the pagoda suggests it's highly likely that it infiltrated as a juvenile. If it could devour Great Perfection stage demon emperors even as a juvenile, with such terrifying strength, there's a nine out of ten chance it's not a demon beast from the lower realm. It's very likely some kind of creature from the upper realm."
"It-it's possible."
The Pagoda Spirit truly couldn't remember when it had encountered this monster. As far as it could remember, it had frantically devoured all sorts of powerful things wherever it went, converting them into its own power.
Who would remember what they had for dinner millions of years ago??!
This thing was as disgusting as a parasite.
"Sang Sang, don't get distracted, be careful of its tentacles," Karma Burns the Three Realms warned.
Chu Sang snapped back to attention, dodging the attack. She fired three arrows simultaneously at the tentacles swooping down from above.
It was clearly a fire-attribute demon beast, and spiritual weapons of the same fire attribute didn't have much killing power against it. Chu Sang quickly switched to the Primordial Soul-Chaser, tilting her head to dodge as she activated the fourth layer of her sword technique, slashing horizontally at the tentacle on the left.
The power unleashed by the sword technique was enough to boost this strike by a major realm.
This strike still didn't sever the tentacle, but it left a deep wound. Black and red blood sprayed from the tentacle's wound, instantly corroding a large area of the ground where it fell.
The demon beast let out a high-pitched, piercing scream. The injured tentacle shrank back, while several more tentacles attacked even more ferociously.
Chu Sang's offensive power couldn't match this demon beast, but her escape speed was definitely first-rate. With the support of various magical tools and talismans, she could barely protect her life under several waves of the beast's attacks. At the same time, in this life-and-death extreme battle, her sword skills were becoming increasingly proficient.
Another tentacle strike aimed at her heart meridian. This time, Chu Sang fiercely cut it off with one sword strike.
Plop.
Half of the tentacle fell to the ground, and the movements of the other tentacles paused for several breaths.
But immediately after, black and red flesh buds rapidly appeared on the cross-section of the severed tentacle. Within a few breaths, a new tentacle had grown.
Damn it, this monster was already so powerful, and it even had such terrifying regenerative abilities. It simply wouldn't let people live!
She couldn't continue entangling with it like this. She had to find the exit quickly.
"Where is the passage to the pagoda top?"
"Let me think, it seems to be in..." The Pagoda Spirit pointed to a location, but deflated a second later.
Chu Sang looked in the direction it pointed and couldn't help wanting to curse. Good grief, this ugly thing was quite cunning, actually using its body to cover the exit. The exit was right under its body...
How were they supposed to get out???