Chapter 351: Chapter 68: Ancient Ruins, Giant Tree Underground
Once the toxins had been thoroughly cleansed, An Zhisu’s condition finally stabilized, allowing Ling Yunpo to take in his surroundings.
To be honest, although he had already accumulated over five hundred years of Refining Mansion Cultivation, it was only now that he truly realized its benefits.
The more flawless the Jade Mansion was, the faster the Qi Sea would rotate, and the quicker the probability of True Yuan regenerating from the Qi Sea.
An Zhisu had been battling in the miasma for a while and had already been incapacitated by the poison infiltrating her body. From beginning to end, Ling Yunpo didn’t rest, as the speed at which the toxins spread within his True Yuan was not faster than the rate at which his Qi Sea regenerated True Yuan.
Hoisting his now out-of-danger Senior Sister up, Ling Yunpo carefully examined their surroundings.
This underwater ruin… No, it should not have been underwater originally.
The path they had entered through had steps, but underwater passages have no need for steps (after all, there’s buoyancy), which signifies that this ruin was originally within some sort of depressed valley.
The valley was later submerged by water, turning the entrance of this ruin into the bottom of a deep pool, hence it was occupied by the cunning poison serpent.
However, as it stands, the terrain from the entrance into the deeper parts of the ruin gradually slopes upward, therefore, up to this point, the rest of the ruin has not been eroded by water… Whether the poison serpent had gone further in, that remains unknown.
Ling Yunpo inclined to think that it should have gone in, since the Jiaolong had at least Transformation Rank cultivation, possessing an intelligence nearly equal to that of humans.
Faced with such a ruin, it is not likely to have left it unexplored.
After taking An Zhisu around the interior, Ling Yunpo confirmed that the ruin had indeed been completely ransacked, leaving nothing behind.
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Standing in the central hall, Ling Yunpo began to ponder again:
Logically, a Golden Core Realm Great Perfection Sword Immortal should effortlessly subdue a Jiaolong.
But the frenzied Sword Immortal was indeed mad and unpredictable— who’s to say? Perhaps he suddenly made a mistake, revealing a weakness…
It won’t do, I still need to get closer to the surface to confirm.
As Ling Yunpo was thinking this, he suddenly heard the Kunlun Mirror say:
“There’s a space below.”
“Ah?” Ling Yunpo paused for a moment, before looking down at his feet.
Beneath his feet lay a green stone floor, covered in dust, but upon closer inspection… it seemed there were indeed some carvings, only obscured by a thick layer of dust accumulated over a long period.
Ling Yunpo pulled out the Green Duckweed Sword and executed the post-rain silence of the empty mountains, using Water System Sword Qi to remove the thick layer of dust and debris from the floor, revealing the original carvings beneath.
Hm…
After examining it for a while, Ling Yunpo felt it didn’t resemble a formation, but rather…
A step technique?
On closer inspection, each of the lines was made up entirely of arcs, with radii roughly equal to a person’s stride.
If it weren’t for the Green Duckweed Sword teaching him the Cloud-Parting Eight Trigrams Step, Ling Yunpo might not have thought of this, but now he immediately recognized that these arcs represented the trajectory of a person’s heels pivoting.
This was a step technique.
He studied it for a while and realized that this step technique seemed to have the same origin as the Cloud-Parting Eight Trigrams Step, but was obviously much more complicated and profound.
Perhaps Dao Ye True Person came here in the past, having found some clues elsewhere, and knew that this step technique was hidden here… Of course, much time has passed, and it can’t be verified anymore.
Ling Yunpo then traced the pattern, walking the entire step technique flawlessly from start to finish.
Just as he completed the last step, the ground suddenly shook and then rapidly split along the cracks, collapsing and sinking in.
Ling Yunpo quickly floated up on the Immortal Sword, grabbing Senior Sister An who nearly fell with the collapse, and then glided downwards.
It seemed that beneath the floor was a natural crevice, seemingly bottomless to the naked eye. Accompanied by continuous earthquakes and shaking, numerous small stones fell along the edges into the abyss, also without any echo of impact on the surface.
Ling Yunpo had no choice but to cast the Universal Pure Tone Minor Illumination Technique, lighting up the surroundings.
After an indeterminate amount of time passed, a vague outline finally appeared below.
It wasn’t some huge fortress or palace but an enormous, dead ancient tree.
Hmm, a tree?
“Ah Jing… this tree?” Ling Yunpo didn’t dare to descend directly but cautiously inquired of the Kunlun Mirror.
“It’s dead,” the Kunlun Mirror gave a definite reply, “It’s a tree demon.”
“A tree demon?” Ling Yunpo was somewhat surprised.
Among demons and spirits, the rarest were those born from inanimate objects, followed by plant-based entities. Tree demons were not uncommon, but such a large one… Ling Yunpo had never seen before.
He carefully descended to the bottom and saw that the large tree was almost thirty feet tall, leafless, its branches withered, indeed dead.
Near the root, there was a piece of tree bark that had been peeled back.
Under the bark was the upper body of a woman, gently embracing a skeleton, which still wore the tattered robes of a Daoist, clearly not belonging to either the Three Pure Ones or the Dualistic Schools.
Ling Yunpo looked closer and realized the woman’s lower half was nearly fused into the tree trunk, or rather…
“Fool! This woman is the tree demon,” the Green Duckweed Sword reminded him, “After the death of a tree demon, the body can’t maintain its transformation and thus reverts to a half-tree appearance. This tree demon clearly destroyed her own dantian to commit suicide.”
“And this skeleton?” Ling Yunpo asked again.
“Probably her husband,” the Kunlun Mirror speculated.
“Don’t be so romantic, Ah Jing,” Ling Yunpo said discontentedly, “How can you tell they were lovers from that?”
“Look at the expression on her face. Isn’t it very similar to the way Senior Sister An looks at you?” the Kunlun Mirror argued.
Ling Yunpo saw that it was indeed similar; the tenderness in her eyes was like water, the love almost overflowing from within.
“Ah, now that I remember,” the Green Duckweed Sword also suddenly spoke up, “the Daoist robe on this skeleton is what the True Persons of the ancient Emei Sword Sect used to wear.”
“So he was from the Emei Sword Sect,” Ling Yunpo nodded in understanding.
What a pity, this skeleton belonged to the Human Race!
Alas, you two weren’t even of the same species, how could you have fallen in love?
“It seems like another tragedy from that era,” the Green Duckweed Sword lamented, “Conflict between humans and demons has been the trend and flow of the entire world, but within this tide, there occasionally are those who swim against the current, such as those who fall in love across species…”
“Do you think there’s something wrong with them?” the Kunlun Mirror asked in astonishment.
“Wrong?” the Green Duckweed Sword repeated and then responded, “How could there be anything wrong? It’s not up to us to decide which race we’re born into.”
“Even if it’s like the Sun Sword Master, whose affair with a demon caused significant losses to the Human Race, I only feel it’s a pity. In today’s world, where would those issues even arise?”
After silently listening to the end, Ling Yunpo had to admit it was indeed the case.
In ancient times, falling in love with a demon was almost tantamount to the grave sin of betraying one’s race; but now, the Human Race had been ruling the Cultivation Realm for over a hundred thousand years, and the spirit of racial strife had all but vanished.
If disciples from Shushan went out on a training expedition and passed by a village, where they heard someone had taken a demon as a bride, whether to kill or not was often a matter of mood.
If they were in a decent mood and heard that although she was of demonic nature, she had not committed any bad deeds, they would pretend not to see and just leave. This happened nine out of ten times.
Otherwise, if they went to exterminate the demon, they might end up being hated and regarded as enemies by the human husband, which would be quite bad luck indeed.
Reining in his thoughts, Ling Yunpo braced himself and began to examine the corpses of the tree demon and the skeleton.
Indeed, at the waist of the Daoist robe on the skeleton, he found a storage bag that had not decayed.