Chapter 67
An incense stick’s time later, the two came down in front of an ancient tree.
Lush branches, dense foliage, over a hundred thousand meters tall.
The canopy spread outward like an umbrella, a full ten thousand meters across, standing under it, they were two grains of sand at the foot of a mountain, that was not an exaggeration.
Ethel’s mouth hung open from the second she saw it, her gaze crawled up and down, and every pass produced another Wow.
"Demon Emperor, this tree... it’s so tall! The trees beside it aren’t even half its size..."
"No, no, no, not even a tenth!"
Soren stepped through the void and slapped a palm against the thick trunk, the movement looked like nothing, it stripped the tree of every secret it had.
[White Umbrella Tree, common species.]
[An ordinary one grew up to a thousand meters.]
[Here, where medicinal potency was abundant and conditions optimal, it could reach ten thousand meters.]
[This one reached a hundred thousand because the Spirit Soul of a powerful Spirit expert resided inside it.]
[In life, this Spirit Soul was master of this mountain range. An Upper-Tier Spirit Emperor of the Black Crow Spirit clan, well-versed in pharmacology and alchemy, known as the Spirit race’s Black Crow Alchemy Emperor, this location was his backyard herb garden.]
[When the Lower-Tier Spirit Ancestor of the Ice Heaven Alluring Fox clan fought the Heaven-Robbing Black Dragon, their power forcibly reshaped the region and formed Black Dragon Mountain.]
[The Black Crow Alchemy Emperor was shaken to death by the shockwaves of two Ancestor Realm powerhouses clashing. Before dying she swallowed a pill to preserve a remnant of her soul, leaving her no choice but to reside inside this White Umbrella Tree.]
Is this guy not the unluckiest bastard who ever lived?
She’d been growing herbs in her own backyard, living a comfortable life.
Then two people started a fight and dragged it to her doorstep, they flattened her house, they shook her to death doing it, with nothing else left, she stuffed her Spirit Soul into one of the few saplings the garden still had, and she’d been stuck in it ever since.
Then the Encyclopedia kept going, and the picture changed.
[Sealed inside the White Umbrella Tree, the Black Crow Alchemy Emperor was immune to the sonic waves, after years of evolution her Spirit Soul fully merged with the ancient tree.]
[Devouring the mountain’s medicinal potency day and night as energy, the White Umbrella Tree evolved into a new species: the White Umbrella Tree Spirit.
[It could not uproot itself and leave Black Dragon Mountain. Its strength was no less than an ordinary Upper-Tier Spirit Emperor.]
[Take absolute care not to be devoured, once the Tree Spirit devoured a humanoid form, it would acquire the ability to take a humanoid shape.]
Soren more or less had it, the Spirit Soul had fused with the tree, swapped medicinal potency for Spirit energy, and spent over a hundred thousand years cultivating itself into a Tree Spirit.
The faint Spirit energy he’d caught earlier was probably the last wisp left in that Spirit Soul, once it went, the thing would merge completely with its surroundings.
At that point it could devour anyone it liked without leaving a trace.
Black Dragon Mountain wasn’t a place just anyone could walk into, and before it burned off that final wisp, Soren had tracked it here.
Rustle.
Leaves moved behind him, he turned around, face blank.
Branches and trunk were twisting, reshaping themselves, the canopy swept down at them.
In a blink it had woven a sturdy cage and shut the two of them inside.
"Ah!"
Ethel’s scream lasted less than a second, thick vines caught her and lashed her tight against a branch.
A voice came up as if from deep underground.
"Ho ho ho."
"After so many years..."
"This old woman finally sees living people again."
An aged face assembled itself out of bark. It hung directly over Ethel, inches from her, built from shifting leaves and fluttering strips of bark.
"Hehe, this little girl is a top-grade delicacy."
The laugh was deep and raspy, from the tree hollow that served as her mouth, a vine tongue shot out.
Tears swirled in Ethel’s eyes, the vines around her body tightened, and after that she couldn’t make a sound.
"Back in the day this old woman had considerable beauty, I enchanted thousands of handsome young men."
"Hehe, what a pity, trapped here, fused with a broken tree, wind and rain, struck by lightning, scorched by sun, until I turned into this."
"I can’t even remember how many years I’ve lived."
The vine tongue came closer and closer, Ethel’s pupils shrank, she shook all over, suffocating.
Then the old Tree Spirit stopped, and let out a strange cackle.
"If this were the past, I would have devoured this little girl first."
"But I am no longer the Black Crow Alchemy Emperor who cared about appearances, surviving is what matters."
"Compared to this little girl, it’s you, Lord Demon Emperor, who makes this old woman’s heart pound"
"You’re a man, it makes no difference, devour you, and I gain the ability to take your likeness."
"And my strength will climb past my old peak."
"Hahaha, the heavens treat me well."
Her hideous head shot toward Soren, in that split second every branch and vine turned into something meant to wrap or impale.
Soren let out a soft harrumph, barely audible.
Then he stomped.
Demonic might erupted off him, it felt like something trying to slam heaven and earth, split apart since the Primordial Chaos era, back together, and crush everything between them into dust.
The old Tree Spirit hung frozen in the air, she could not advance and she could not retreat.
The shock broke and she screamed. "Hea... Heavens! What a demonic might!"
"He isn’t a Middle-Tier Demon Emperor, he’s Upper-Tier! No, that’s not right, this demonic might doesn’t lose to a Lower-Tier Demon Ancestor!"
She regretted all of it, but it was too late.
Soren already had one of the vines in his fist, feeding demonic energy into it to reinforce its tensile strength.
Then he pulled.
A tree a hundred thousand meters tall came out of the ground, the sky-blotting mass came down with a boom that flattened every other sound in the valley.