Chapter 635: This Is No Tree, This Is a Mighty Being Who Has Lived for Ten Thousand Years!

Su Ming slowly straightened up, offering no superfluous excuses. He docilely turned around and followed behind the left guard, walking toward the stone gate. The right guard followed closely with his staff, sealing off any route of retreat.

A faint glimmer flickered across the surface of the Xuantian ring, and Lin Yu's voice echoed within Su Ming's Consciousness Sea, carrying a lazy, teasing tone: "Those tree lumps are rather alert, aren't they? They've directly pegged you as one of those rats hiding in the gutters of the Dark Current Sect. But that's fine too, saves you the trouble of racking your brain to fabricate some excuse to knock on their door. Sometimes, being a prisoner under escort is actually safer than being a visitor of unknown origin."

"They don't know I can understand the spirit race language, that's the first Information Gap." Su Ming replied calmly in his mind, his footsteps neither hurried nor slow, each stride as precisely measured as if it had been calculated with a ruler.

Passing through that ancient stone gate, the scene before him transformed entirely.

This was a natural corridor woven together by countless luminous ancient trees. The ancient trees lining both sides did not grow wildly and crowd against one another like those in the outskirts of the Gloomlight Forest; instead, they displayed a rigorous arrangement pattern. The glowing natural grain patterns flowing across their trunks interconnected and merged, forming circulation circuits of living energy in mid-air that were nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.

Su Ming habitually activated his "Observation of the Minute" technique.

Deep within his pupils, faint azure formation lines spun at tremendous speed. The surrounding world instantly shed its colorful exterior, transforming into pure energy pathways.

"What a grand undertaking." Su Ming's breath caught slightly.

He could see that each of these orderly arranged light trees was a massive formation core in its own right. And their colossal underground root systems were buried deep within the soil, linking the entire forest spanning tens of thousands of miles into a single whole. This was no natural corridor at all, but a super defensive grand formation using the entire forest as its formation base!

This "life resonance" type of formation structure shared a strikingly similar underlying architectural logic with the top-tier Sect Grand Protective Formations of the human cultivation world, such as the Cloud Hidden Sect's Zhou Tian Celestial Star Grand Formation. But the difference was that human formations forcibly subjugated heaven and earth spiritual energy to drive them, while the formations here followed the natural instincts of flora growth, driven by the vast and boundless Life Essence.

"The formation mastery of these spirit races seems to follow a completely different path from humanity's." Su Ming silently imprinted the structure of these formation circuits into his Consciousness Sea, storing them deep within his memory.

Lin Yu let out a cold snort, his tone carrying the arrogance of a Grand Master from his previous life: "Crude. Far too crude. There's none of the exquisite ingenuity and adaptive flexibility of artificial craftsmanship. It all relies on ten thousand years of accumulated time, piling up an absurdly massive amount of Life Essence to brute-force everything. It's like how human cultivators use formations to leverage power and redirect force, while these fellows just pick up an entire mountain and hurl it at someone. Sheer force creating miracles, nothing more."

"But in this place where spiritual energy cannot be replenished, that kind of brute force is lethal." Su Ming didn't argue, he only grew more cautious in concealing his own aura.

At the end of the corridor, a dazzling green light gradually expanded.

The moment Su Ming stepped out of the corridor, his footsteps involuntarily halted. The scene before him, even for a formation cultivator like him who had witnessed countless marvels of the cultivation world, evoked genuine awe.

Between heaven and earth stood a colossal luminous banyan tree towering hundreds of zhang high.

This tree was simply too massive. Its crown spread like a sea of green clouds that blotted out the sky, completely enveloping the vast underground space. What was even more peculiar was that the trunk of this luminous banyan tree was hollow.

Within that extraordinarily wide trunk, countless sturdy branches and hanging, resilient vines were interwoven to form a layered, well-arranged three-dimensional city.

Su Ming witnessed a vivid tableau of daily life. Countless spirit races of all shapes and sizes traversed those "branch streets" that were stacked layer upon layer and emanated a soft glow. Spirit race children covered in green leaves laughed and giggled as they climbed and chased each other along the banyan's thick aerial roots; lithe spirit race women carried baskets woven from vines, harvesting the glowing fruits growing on the trunk, humming ancient and melodious songs as they worked.

At the very base of this city, the banyan's colossal mountain-like root system plunged deep into the earth. Verdant life force, like viscous liquid made manifest, flowed unceasingly upward along the pathways of the roots, injecting an inexhaustible vitality into this entire three-dimensional city.

"This is no simple city." Su Ming's pupils contracted slightly as he stared intently at the life circuits flowing within the tree trunk. "This is a living... super formation."

The two guards seemed long accustomed to this kind of awe-struck expression. The right guard gave Su Ming a shove with his staff, coldly urging him in the spirit race language: "Walk faster. Stop gawking around."

Su Ming withdrew his gaze and continued forward with downcast eyes.

Escorted by the two guards, he climbed along a spiraling wooden staircase into the middle section of the luminous banyan's trunk. Eventually, they stopped before a door formed from thick wooden planks that had grown naturally.

The guard pushed the door open and shoved Su Ming inside, then with a "bang," the wooden door sealed tightly shut. Heavy footsteps sounded from outside, clearly indicating the two guards had taken up positions like door gods.

This was a "guest room" converted from a living tree hollow.

The room was not large, but the natural wood grain patterns on the walls emitted an extremely warm, pale yellow glow. A fresh, refreshing fragrance of greenery filled the air, involuntarily easing the tension in Su Ming's nerves.

The furnishings inside the room were simple, yet all were characteristic living facilities of the spirit races: in the corner lay a sleeping couch woven from layers of soft vines; in the center of the room, a shallow depression in the floor held a pool of crystal-clear spiritual spring water; and on a wooden stump table nearby sat several glowing fruits emitting a faint, sweet fragrance.

"The treatment isn't bad." Lin Yu's Soul Body drifted out from the ring and leisurely floated around the room. "Water to drink, fruit to eat, and you're not sleeping on cold stone slabs. At least they didn't throw you into some lightless dungeon like a death row prisoner. This shows those elders haven't made up their minds yet, and it also proves that these Neutralist wood spirits have indeed retained a measure of inherent kindness."

"Just house arrest." Su Ming walked to the wooden table but didn't touch those glowing fruits.

Using this gap while awaiting review, he turned his gaze to the walls of the tree hollow.

These walls were not dead matter, they were a living part of this ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan. Su Ming pressed close to the wall, carefully observing the intricate wood grain patterns that resembled the blood vessels of a human body.

"Counting the risks: if I probe too deeply and arouse the vigilance of this giant tree's main body, my lie about having used all my trump cards would collapse on its own. Counting the rewards: if I can glimpse the core mysteries of this life circulation cycle, it would be a tremendous boon for my deductions on the path of formations."

Su Ming calculated silently in his heart. Then, he extended his right index finger, forcing out a wisp of Ruo Shui spiritual energy a hundred times finer than a strand of hair. Carefully, tentatively, he gently touched it to the thickest wood grain.

"Hum..."

The instant his fingertip made contact.

A thunderclap seemed to detonate within Su Ming's mind!

Through the faint resonance of that thread of Ruo Shui spiritual energy, he perceived a world of life force vast as an abyss. That power was too immense, so immense that his soul felt like a single grain of millet before an ocean. It was a super "life circulation" system, centered on this ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan, connected to the earth veins spanning ten thousand miles in every direction.

This was not merely a tree. This was the body of a terrifying mighty being who had lived for over ten thousand years, having completely merged itself with the laws of heaven and earth!