After advancing roughly five hundred li, Lin Xiao and the others spotted several white bone skeletons scattered on the forest floor ahead. The four of them halted at once.
The battle skeleton ahead also stopped.
If their guess was correct, these skeletons had likely perished at the hands of those vines.
Lin Xiao circulated his spiritual force and tried to manipulate the skeleton frames.
Yet whether because too much time had passed, or because their original owners had not been particularly powerful, the bones snapped and collapsed with the slightest movement.
He tested them one by one, and the results were the same. Several even crumbled directly into bone dust.
Clearly, these people had died long ago. Even their bones were nearly reduced to ash.
Lin Xiao could not use them to refine battle skeletons.
This was expected. Not everyone who entered could have been a Martial Saint, with skeletons sturdy enough to endure.
Moreover, even Martial Saint bones, after so much time, would be unfit for use.
If that were the case, it meant the tree demon, or whatever strangeness extended those vines, had existed for an extraordinarily long time.
“Continue forward.”
Lin Xiao immediately sent the battle skeleton ahead again. They followed behind and pressed on.
After another roughly five hundred li, Lin Xiao had seen over a hundred scattered skeletons along the way.
None were suitable for refining, either too damaged or too weak.
During those five hundred li, the four encountered no further vines or other dangers.
Yet Lin Xiao’s sensation of being summoned remained.
After advancing another three hundred li or so, he saw a massive accumulation of skeletons ahead. Their number reached thousands, even tens of thousands, with heaps of bone ash besides. No one knew how many had truly died here.
The sight shocked all four.
Lin Xiao swiftly scanned the pile with controlled spiritual force. None met the standard for refining at his current level of power.
A few could still be used, but only for low-level battle skeletons. In the end, Lin Xiao abandoned them all.
“This must be where that thing is.”
Long Tutian swept his gaze around, surging his divine sense to probe every direction.
Lin Xiao, Huo Ruyan, and Qing Yan grew fully alert, searching the surroundings.
Yet they found nothing.
“If it is a tree demon, it should be capable of movement. Perhaps it left after suffering severe wounds.”
Lin Xiao said, “All the same, my summoning sensation has not faded along the way. Even with the vines injured and withdrawn, it persists.”
The three frowned at that.
Qing Yan asked, “So the thing summoning you earlier was not those strange vines? It was not luring you, but something else?”
Lin Xiao replied uncertainly, “That is possible. Yet from the spot where the vines appeared to here, the sensation weakened. At this point, it is as faint as when we first entered.”
“That is odd.”
Long Tutian and the others were baffled. “If the vines were not responsible and something else is, the feeling should grow stronger, not peak where the vines emerged. And if the vines were luring you, the sensation should have vanished when they retreated.”
Lin Xiao was equally puzzled.
Huo Ruyan could make no sense of it either.
“Let us press on. Stay cautious. If it is something massive, it may prove more dangerous than the vines.”
Long Tutian said.
The three nodded and continued.
Once past the area densest with skeletons, Lin Xiao felt the summoning sensation intensify again.
“The feeling is growing stronger once more.”
He told the others honestly.
“Could something lie within that pile of skeletons? Perhaps those people did not die to the vines at all.”
Huo Ruyan speculated.
At those words, Lin Xiao and the others tensed, sharpening their vigilance. Lin Xiao signalled, “Speed up.”
“Hiss! Hiss!”
Yet at that very moment, countless thin vine roots suddenly erupted from the ground at terrifying speed, stabbing towards the four.
More precisely, towards Long Tutian, Huo Ruyan, and Qing Yan.
From the outer edges, vines wrapped around ancient trees and hurled them at Lin Xiao.
Other vines bound boulders and wrenched them from the soil to smash down.
Clearly, the vines no longer dared pierce Lin Xiao directly and planned to strike him with external objects.
The other three faced direct stabbing assaults.
The attack was ferocious and lightning-fast, as though aiming to end the fight swiftly.
“That thing again!”
Long Tutian roared, swinging both fists to shatter the boulders and ancient trees hurtling towards Lin Xiao.
“Blood!”
Huo Ruyan shouted at once.
“Pfft!”
Skin split on Lin Xiao’s arm. He forced a stream of blood out with origin force.
Huo Ruyan clapped her palm. The blood instantly became mist, spraying over a vast area ahead and drenching countless vines.
“Eeee~~~” A shrill, spine-chilling scream rang out. The drenched thin roots shattered directly into blood mist.
Countless vines from behind and every direction cracked open, spraying plasma. They retracted into the ground and all sides at extreme speed, vanishing from sight in a blink.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Long Tutian smashed all the incoming boulders and severed trunks. Lin Xiao circulated spiritual force and easily blocked the rest.
The hurled trees and boulders carried little force. Evidently, the vines’ aim this time had been to devour the cultivation of the three companions.
“Could the vines be right beneath us?”
Qing Yan looked down at the ground and spoke involuntarily.
“Even if underground, they would be extremely deep. With our strength, we probably could not reach them. Besides, the thing only fears my blood. It is hard to strike effectively. I keep feeling this place is unsafe.”
Lin Xiao said.
The three nodded. They felt the same unease. The vines had been repelled, yet standing here still brought a sense of disquiet.
They all hastened forward.
Ahead, skeletons grew ever scarcer, while Lin Xiao’s sensation intensified.
“Child…” After several hundred more li, that ancient, hoarse voice reached Lin Xiao’s ears again. It was very close now, yet seemed ever weaker.
“The sensation grows stronger, but the voice weakens. I wonder if the vines’ injury is the cause.”
Lin Xiao said, uncertain.
The three could not tell either and simply continued.
After another several hundred li, no skeletons remained in sight.
“Suppress…” The hoarse voice seemed to come from directly ahead, entering Lin Xiao’s ears once more. It was close, as though within tens or hundreds of li.
Yet very faint.
Faint as the speech of someone on the brink of death.
This time, however, the call had shifted from “child” to “suppress”. Lin Xiao had no idea what it meant.
“We must be near. Stay alert.”
Lin Xiao gripped the Yaoguang Broken Sword and warned the others.
The three remained fully on guard.
After one more hundred li, Lin Xiao and his companions suddenly burst out of the forest. The scene before them left all four wide-eyed and speechless.
