The moment the Xuejun Saber plunged into the brain-like mass, the creature began to thrash violently, while the surrounding sounds dissolved into piercing shrieks and shrill howls.
Chen Chuan could feel the shuddering, struggling force traveling up the blade, yet his grip remained rock-steady, without the slightest tremor.
At that moment, wisps of luminous mist drifted out from the blade, wrapping around the entire brain-like mass.
The ambient noise grew deafening, the soundwaves churning almost into physical form. It was not merely the mass before him; the entire tree seemed to tremble in resonance.
One could see the heads curled within the branches changing color one after another. The faint light drifting from them gradually faded away, as though the brain mass was draining every drop of nourishment from them.
Yet it was useless. Chen Chuan stood like a reef amidst a roaring sea, unmoving no matter how the invisible air currents and mental waves battered against him.
Those forces were halted right at the periphery of his biological field. Enclosed further by the layer of milky-white mist that had wrapped around him, it was as if he were shielded inside a cocoon.
As time ticked past, more nourishment was drawn from the trunk and boughs. The trunk, once brimming with biological vitality, slowly shriveled and lost its luster. Foliage and branches withered away, turning a pale, ashen gray.
Chen Chuan's gaze remained fixed on the brain-like mass. He sensed the life force within it gradually ebbing away. At the very final moment, it seemed to let out an almost human wail of sorrow. The surrounding boughs shook violently one last time, and then all movement ground to a halt.
He held his posture for a moment longer before slowly drawing the blade from the creature's near-rotten shell. Just then, sensing something within, he reached out to grasp it. An object broke through from inside and drifted directly into his palm. He looked down—it was a plump, fruit-like thing, crimson all over with a rough surface.
Is this... a relic?
Had the tree grown to such proportions because of this object?
As he pondered this, a sudden cracking sound came from beneath his feet. Fine fractures appeared across the bough he stood on, and creaking cracks spread along the trunk. Around him, branches snapped one by one and plunged into the depths below.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan leapt down into the air. He spun the long blade in his hand, and upon landing on the ground, thrust it straight down into the scabbard planted upright in the dirt. With a crisp clink, the blade settled firmly into its sheath.
Behind him, a deafening rumble erupted. The massive tree could no longer sustain its own weight and collapsed in an instant. As it crashed to the ground, the impact brought earth and rock cascading down from above. Fractured gray-white debris danced in the air before fluttering down like ash.
He turned to look back. The shattered brains had dissolved into dispersing clouds of mist, drifting upward into the bright light streaming down from above, as though finally liberated.
He stood there for a brief moment, then lifted his saber and walked toward the exit. But as he stepped onto the soft dirt, he heard the crunch of something snapping beneath his feet.
He glanced down. It was a pile of white bones, some clearly belonging to children. They had originally been buried deep in the soil, only to be churned up by the roots during the tree's final death throes.
From what was visible before his eyes alone, there were well over a hundred skeletons. Judging by the bone structures and remnants of clothing, most likely belonged to Confluence natives, with a smaller portion from Great Shun people and soldiers of the former imperial house.
The extra brain tissue grafted onto the branches had undoubtedly been harvested from these people.
Pausing briefly, he proceeded along the corridor of this underground space. Ascending a flight of cut-stone stairs, he emerged into a spacious hall.
A large group of people lay sprawled across the floor. They had originally been kneeling there, but the impact of his mental surge had knocked them unconscious, sending them tumbling to the ground. In front of them sat several severed heads, arranged neatly along an altar up ahead—evidently sacrifices prepared for the True Form Tree.
He looked at the people on the floor. Perhaps this tree had once been their means of survival, but once such a thing matured, it was destined to devour flesh and blood without end, its appetite only growing larger.
In particular, its yearning for a leap in life rank would eventually exceed anything this small town could support. Once they could no longer supply enough flesh, they would become the sacrifices themselves.
That outcome was practically inevitable.
He did not linger over the people on the floor. Having suffered the brunt of his mental surge, even if they regained consciousness, they would be reduced to nothing more than basic physiological instincts.
Walking out of the hall, he spotted a staircase leading upward and made his way toward it. At that moment, his gaze flicked downward.
A figure appeared below. Judging by the biological field, he was likely a third limit fighter. The man had clearly been outside the range of the mental surge and had escaped being stunned. He had rushed in with a face full of fury, but upon catching sight of Chen Chuan, his rage instantly turned to abject terror, and his body began to tremble uncontrollably.
Chen Chuan spared him only a single glance before turning his eyes away and continuing upward, as if paying him no heed at all.
Once Chen Chuan had moved past, a look of secret relief washed over the man's face. Yet that expression had barely formed when grotesque lumps began bulging across the surface of his skin, quickly followed by the same horrific swelling across his face. It was the mutated tissue in his body undergoing a spontaneous, frenzied growth.
Realizing something was terribly wrong, he frantically tried to suppress the abnormal growth, but the mutated tissue completely refused his control. It proliferated wildly, erupting from deep within his body and bursting through from beneath the skin.
In just a brief moment, he was reduced to a grotesque mass of flesh. The mass wriggled violently at first, but after a short while, it went completely still.
Against fighters below the limit, Chen Chuan hardly needed to expend any real effort. A mere nudge of his mental power was enough to mislead the mutated tissue inside their bodies into believing an abundance of nutrients had become available. It would then aggressively absorb all the host's bodily resources to fuel its frantic growth, literally draining the person to death. And once deprived of a host, the tissue naturally could not survive either.
Before long, he ascended the stairs and returned to the plateau above. In the distance stood a scattering of townspeople and armed guards, all trembling where they stood.
Though the guards held their rifles, they were wrought with extreme tension, their hands shaking faintly as they stared at him with eyes brimming with dread. Not a single person dared to pull the trigger. Some were even screaming desperately, ordering their subordinates to lower their raised muzzles.
They had already witnessed what had just transpired. Wild rumors were currently spreading through the town that the "true god" they worshipped had angered Great Shun, which in turn had dispatched a martial artist to purge it.
A martial artist. As people who had lived in the Confluence for generations, they understood far more deeply than the inhabitants of Center City what that title truly signified.
Chen Chuan paid them no mind. Once he returned, he would notify the Defense Department. Whether these townspeople had been complicit in those horrific deeds was not something he could investigate one by one; the aftermath would be left for the Defense Department and the local garrison to handle.
He retraced his steps toward the exit. Just then, several off-road vehicles drove over and pulled up one after another just ahead of him. The door swung open, and Baomi rushed out in excitement. Turning toward Chen Chuan, he saluted with immense fervor and said, "Sir, please get in!"
The mercenaries in the other vehicles who had served alongside him likewise raised their hands in an excited salute. From his earlier display, they had already deduced that the man before them was unquestionably a martial artist.
They had actually been hired by a martial artist? And had even operated alongside him? If they bragged about this later, nobody would believe them!
Chen Chuan nodded to him and the others, then took a seat in the passenger side of the off-road vehicle. After Baomi climbed in, he asked cautiously, "Sir, may I ask your family name?" He quickly added, "If it's classified, just pretend I never asked!"
Chen Chuan said, "It doesn't matter. Earlier, I needed to come here to verify something, and it wasn't convenient to disclose before I was certain. Now the matter has been handled. My surname is Chen. Chen Chuan."
Most people here had never heard of his name, as information regarding martial artists was not easily shared with the lower ranks.
Yet Baomi's lips trembled. In great excitement, he said, "I heard from my old comrades in the military that the General of State Subjugation of the former imperial house was beaten to death with bare fists by one of our martial artists. At first I thought it was the old principal, but word was that it was someone else... Could that have been...?"
Chen Chuan gave a slight nod. "Wei Guochan was killed by me."
Baomi's breath caught in his throat. He, along with everyone nearby who heard the words, began to tremble all over, their minds and bodies shuddering with awe.
Chen Chuan said, "Commander Baomi, let's head back."
"Yes, sir!"
Baomi struggled to steady his nerves and started the engine, turning the vehicle back toward the route they had come. He said, "Officer Chen, don't worry. I guarantee we'll make it back to Shengu City before nightfall!"
Before long, the convoy reached the checkpoint they had passed through earlier. The mercenary team had already taken control of it ahead of time.
It had hardly cost them any effort, however. When that wave of mental power had swept this way earlier, even though it had weakened by the time it reached the checkpoint, the guards had still been affected. Only Baomi and his crew had felt nothing, allowing them to take the outpost with absolute ease.
Once the off-road vehicles broke through the checkpoint, every single man was flushed with inexplicable excitement, frequently glancing toward the vehicle Chen Chuan was riding in. It was difficult to imagine that they were truly sharing a ride with a martial artist.
In the past, some of them had received guidance from Principal Yao, but Yao Zhiyi had merely shown his face before departing, leaving the actual training to the instructional officers beneath him. Contact of this kind was truly a first.
Carried by this exhilarating mood, the convoy crossed the wilderness at high speed, returning to Shengu City before night fell.
Chapter 877