Chapter 619: Mushroom Forest

“Your situation right now is worse than you think. Look at how those things around you are reacting.”

A chill ran through Su Ming’s heart. He immediately followed Lin Yu’s hint and scanned the surroundings.

At first, he saw nothing unusual. But when he contracted his divine sense tightly and, relying only on his eyes, carefully observed those glowing plants, a cold sweat immediately broke out along his spine.

Those plants were moving.

Not swaying from a breeze, but a slow, purposeful writhing.

The glowing patch of grass closest to him had once lain flat on the ground, but now those blue-glowing blades had turned into tiny tendrils, silently stretching toward where he was sitting in a coiled position.

Farther off, the strange tree that flowed with golden sap had its thick roots slowly pulling free from the soil, inching this way at a tooth-aching pace.

They were closing in.

“What the hell are these things? They’ve become sentient?” Su Ming flipped his wrist. Without using spiritual energy, a few poisoned steel long needles slid from his sleeve.

“They’re not sentient.” Lin Yu sneered inside the ring, his tone carrying gravity. “It’s instinct. I just scraped through some residual memories in the ancient texts. The laws of the spirit realm differ from the human realm. The lifeforms here, plants and strange beasts alike, are extremely bloodthirsty, especially toward foreign flesh that doesn’t belong to this place.”

Lin Yu paused, lowering his voice further.

“The human scent on you, and the blood you just left on the grass— to these natives, you’re a block of monk-meat radiating a peerless aroma. They’re slowly surrounding you, getting ready for a feast.”

Su Ming’s eyes flickered. His mind spun rapidly.

“If those plants surround me, even if I hack a bloody path out with residual spiritual power, I’ll die elsewhere once that energy runs dry.”

“This place isn’t suitable to linger. I must immediately find a relatively safe spot and observe the environmental patterns.”

Decision made in an instant, Su Ming acted.

“Master, I have to mask my scent.” He said inside his Consciousness Sea while quickly retrieving a small black porcelain bottle from his storage pouch.

He had bought this “Corpse Powder” back at the sect. It had originally been for masking living scent at Iron Wall Pass, but unexpectedly it came in handy here.

Without hesitation, he sprinkled the pungent powder on his clothes and around his wounds.

The nauseating putrid stench instantly covered the metallic sweetness of the blood.

Sure enough, as the scent changed, the glowing blades of grass that had been inching closer paused for a moment, as if puzzled why the delectable prey had suddenly turned to rotten meat.

“Go!”

Taking advantage of the gap, Su Ming gritted his teeth, clenched against the fierce pain in his right arm, shoved himself up with one hand, and sprang out like a leopard.

Ying reacted extremely fast. The instant Su Ming rose, she transformed into a streak of black lightning and landed back on his left shoulder.

Su Ming did not choose to run for open ground; instead he headed in the opposite direction, charging toward a “mushroom forest” composed of giant purple-spotted mushrooms.

“You’re crazy? Diving into that pile of disgusting things?” Lin Yu muttered lowly in the ring.

“Open ground leaves me exposed. I can’t run far in this condition. The mushroom forest’s complex terrain works well as passive nodes for laying concealment formations.”

Su Ming dashed while calmly responding.

His steps were feather-light, each footfall avoiding those glowing plants, landing only on dull rock or shadowed patches.

However, this spirit-race terrain clearly had no intention of letting an outsider escape so easily.

Just as Su Ming reached the forest’s edge and prepared to use the shadow beneath a giant mushroom cap to hide,

“shh… drip…”

A creepy dripping of viscous fluid suddenly rang overhead.

That sweet, cloying scent that had been fading suddenly intensified by at least ten times!

“Cheep—!!!”

Ying on his shoulder gave a warning cry. Her wings, which had hidden their golden sheen, instantly revealed a sharp metallic luster.

Su Ming jerked his head up.

Beneath the cap of that enormous purple-spotted mushroom, countless tiny “mouths” had split open.

Thick, purple-glowing goo streamed from those mouths like raindrops, showering down toward his head!

“shh… drip…”

The sickeningly sweet odor skyrocketed to an unbearable level. Su Ming’s pupils contracted as he looked up. The numerous suction-cup-like mouths beneath the huge cap had fully opened, dark purple light boiling within.

“Disperse!” Lin Yu suddenly barked in the Consciousness Sea. The Soul Body’s radiance flashed violently inside the Xuantian ring.

Almost at the same moment, a skyful of purple slime poured down like a sudden violent rain, blanketing Su Ming’s head.

He didn’t hesitate. He drove his right foot hard against a rock, using the recoil to hurl his body into an awkward roll to the right. Without spiritual energy supporting him, this was already his physical limit.

“Sss!”

Most of the goo splattered onto the spot where he had stood, the moss that had once given off a faint glow hissing mournfully as it turned into a pool of black-smoke-steaming pus.

But Su Ming was still half a beat too slow.

Several thumb-sized droplets of purple slime hit his left shoulder precisely.

“Ssssh—”

The remaining protective spiritual glow on his robe peeled like thin paper before the goo, crying out with an earsplitting shriek as it dissolved at a visible speed. Su Ming didn’t feel burning, only a sudden chill in his left shoulder.

He glanced down; his eyelids twitched violently.

The fabric on his left shoulder had already turned to charcoal-colored ash. The slime had reached his skin. Even skin hardened by repeated tempering with Like Water Art and the Dao foundation Kintsugi method—skin as tough as a magical treasure—was instantly scorched red, ulcerated, exposing the pulsing red flesh beneath.

“This stuff is corroding my protective spiritual energy!” Su Ming sucked in a cold breath. If his body weren’t at Golden Core realm, those few drops likely would have melted his clavicle through.

“Cheep—”

At this life-or-death moment, Ying on his shoulder let out a sharp, sibilant cry.

Her wings, which had hidden their gold, suddenly spread. The edges of her dense black feathers flashed with a stomach-dropping metallic gold. The Edge principle was fully activated!

Ying became a black-and-gold streak, even pulling a faint sonic-boom trail through the air, and shot straight at the giant mushroom cap overhead.

“Don’t brute force it!” Su Ming snarled, left hand groping frantically at the storage pouch.

But Ying was too fast. She sliced through the air like two crossed golden blades, carving a perfect cross in midair.

“Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!”

A series of dull cutting sounds rang out. The tiny mouths that had been spewing slime wildly were like fragile hoses before those metal-glossed wings, cut clean at the root.

Purple juice sprayed into the air, scattering like a grotesque blood rain.

The giant purple-spotted mushroom emitted a low vibration, like a beast’s wail. The surrounding air rippled visibly under that resonance.

Ying rolled nimbly in the air, using the rebound to land back on Su Ming’s shoulder. Her golden iris-rings spun rapidly; the metallic sheen along her feather edges dimmed quickly. Obviously, for one still in its juvenile stage, such a burst could not be sustained for long.