In Jinren Alley, a street vendor was hawking candied hawthorns when he suddenly felt a chill overhead. He looked up—just in time to see a fist-sized fruit dropping straight toward him.
"Huh? Fruit falling from the sky?" he muttered, instinctively reaching out to catch it.
The moment the fruit landed in his palm—
It took root and sprouted.
His skin cracked. Flesh twisted. Bones reknit themselves. Three breaths later, the human shape was gone—replaced by a vine-wrapped "Sower" crowned with golden ginkgo leaves. Its face was sealed beneath brown, horny carapace, yet beneath that shell, whatever remained of a voicebox kept growling.
"Kill… kill… kill…"
The energy barrier protecting the Luofu was already riddled with holes. The invading branches had borne ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fruits.
The fruits fell like rain across every corner of the Xianzhou. Any citizen they touched was transformed instantly. Any fruit that struck the ground or brushed an object would root itself and slowly ripen—until it, too, became a mindless Sower, driven only by slaughter.
The next second, alarms wailed through the entire city.
"Enemy attack—! Enemy attack—!"
General Teng Xiao appeared on the command platform in an instant—broad-shouldered, gripping a greatsword, eyes cold as he swept the encampment.
"All units to battle stations! Every Cloud Knight—move now! Suppress the riots within the city!"
Within The Scalegorge Waterscape, Dan Feng stood before the Ambrosial Arbor, dragon eyes fixed on the darkness ahead.
It will come. It has to.
A fresh sprout burst through the ground amid the buildings—
And then—
BOOM!!!
The surface exploded. In the span of a heartbeat, the sprout thickened into a massive trunk. The old Vidyadhara site collapsed wholesale under the violent upheaval.
Upon the great tree's trunk bloomed countless faces—each with eyes gently closed, each exhaling verdant breath that masqueraded as holiness.
"Shuhu," Dan Feng said coldly.
The half-lidded eyes slowly opened. Lips moved.
"Vidyadhara High Elder… remnant of the Imperishable… why do you stand before me…"
The voice did not come from any mouth.
It echoed directly inside Dan Feng's mind—like ten thousand people whispering at once.
Dan Feng did not answer. He raised his fingers, and Cloudhymn Art activated in an instant.
Moisture in the air condensed into a monstrous wave. The boundless sea beyond the Scalegorge answered his will, heaving up a tidal surge that rose ten thousand zhang high.
The crushing weight of water slammed into Shuhu's trunk. Cracks snapped and splintered—
But the giant tree did not fall.
Its fissures sealed in an instant. In their first exchange, the Vidyadhara High Elder had failed to meaningfully affect Shuhu at all.
Shuhu chuckled low.
The tree's placid faces twisted one after another—warping, shifting—until they took on Dan Feng's own likeness.
"Is that all your attack amounts to?"
Before the words even finished—
An invisible psychic shockwave erupted.
Dan Feng had no time to react.
A blood-red sky and rotting earth crashed over his vision. Corpses—countless bodies that resembled him—were piled into mountains. And he stood atop the corpse mound, holding a still-beating heart in his hand.
"The High Elder's inheritance…" Shuhu's laughter crawled into his skull. "Looks like you're nothing more than executioners."
Dan Feng's pupils contracted violently. He had no idea when Shuhu had deployed this mind-piercing domain—
The Blood-Smeared Prison Realm.
"Dan Feng—watch your enemy!!!"
A sharp shout detonated through the air. A crescent blade of icy sword qi skimmed past Dan Feng and crashed into Shuhu's trunk, punching straight through—
Yet before it could even pass beyond the bark, the wound had already healed, sealing the cut shut.
"Another one…" Shuhu's hundreds of faces—split by the slash—twisted smoothly into Jingliu's features, voice dripping with mockery.
Jingliu said nothing.
Her sword intent surged like a storm. Every strike carried killing cold that hammered Shuhu again and again. But the moment her blade qi cut into the bark, the wound regenerated, choking off the strike before it could push even an inch deeper.
"I am Shuhu. I am ten thousand ages."
Thousands of whispers braided into a single echo, speaking directly into their minds.
"From me onward, you shall obtain true immortality—"
On the other end of the Luofu, two sisters huddled in the ruins. They were still children, meant to be in school—now trapped behind shattered walls, listening to screams outside.
"Sister… are we going to die?" the gray-haired girl whispered, trembling.
The black-haired older sister didn't answer. She only tightened her arms around her little sister.
The ground writhed.
A lump of flesh crawled out of a crack, slowly gathering into a vague human face.
"Child… do you want to live?"
The older sister recoiled, dragging her sibling back, and clapped her palm over the gray-haired girl's eyes.
The flesh continued to whisper.
"Accept the Abundance's blessing… you will never hunger, never suffer… forever… alive."
The gray-haired child's eyes were covered—but her small hand still reached forward unconsciously—
"Hanya… don't…" her sister's voice shook.
"—Get lost!!!"
A blade of golden light cleaved down.
A towering giant wreathed in gold, holding a formation saber, drove the mass of flesh deep into the earth like a nail.
General Teng Xiao stood atop the ruins, his face iron-black with fury.
"Shuhu… you dare lay hands on children!"
"Each time one overcomes death," the flesh—already hacked to ash—still writhed anew, spitting words like razors, "is supreme joy."
"Teng Xiao… I'm very curious… what will you use to kill me this time?"
As it spoke, the ash fell silent. The connection was severed completely—Shuhu had cut away that portion of itself without hesitation.
Teng Xiao's expression only darkened.
A large portion of these fruits—these Sowers—had been made from the corpses of Abundance followers already slain. Raising dead matter back into motion was one of Shuhu's most horrifying methods.
Now Sowers rampaged everywhere across the Luofu, and fragments of Shuhu's flesh were dispersed throughout the ship. Even if the two within the Scalegorge managed to defeat Shuhu's main body, it could still fully resurrect through those other pieces of flesh.
"This time… you've given me a real headache…"
Within the Blood-Smeared Prison Realm, Dan Feng—already forced into a berserk dragon-frenzy state after transforming—was nearing the limits of his stamina. Worse, the realm's erosion gnawed at his sanity, shaving it away bit by bit.
But Shuhu's regeneration was almost unsolvable—and the realm's corrosive pressure only continued to intensify.
"Jingliu…" Dan Feng's dragon eyes began to blur. "I… might not be able to hold…"
Jingliu gritted her teeth and drove her sword into the roots carpeting the ground, anchoring herself by force.
"Giving up before the end…" she rasped. "That's not your style… Dan Feng…"
Shuhu's crown slowly lowered. Verdant branches and leaves folded like a gigantic maw, shadow swallowing the two completely.
"Accept the Abundance's embrace… the torment of death will forever leave you…"
"Shut up… you abomination…"
The buzzing in Dan Feng's mind was so loud he could barely hear Shuhu's whispering, but he could still guess the intent.
"That face of yours… disgusts me…"
The leaves engulfed them.
The Blood-Smeared Prison Realm returned to stillness.
Then—
BOOM—!!!
A streak of crimson light, like a falling star, tore a裂口 through the scarlet sky.
Flames erupted.
In a single instant, Shuhu's crown burned to ash.
Light from the Scalegorge poured down, washing over the two. Bodies that had been crushed into near-immobility finally gained a sliver of breathing room.
In the smoke and dust, a figure rose slowly.
Crimson armor sheathed his entire body. Ability Energy surged like a raging storm, sweeping the earth—interlaced roots incinerating to nothing.
"Sorry," Huo Linfei said, lifting his head. A short sword danced idly between his fingers. Beneath the blue visor, fire blazed in his eyes.
"I'm late."
Then he pointed the blade at the immense tree.
"Come on, Shuhu…"
"Trade a few moves with me."
For the first time—
The thousand faces of the giant tree showed shock.
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