Chapter 665: Elder Woodheart, You're Faking Death a Bit Too Hard!

Su Ming pressed the green leaf against his forehead and sent his divine sense probing inside.

Within his Consciousness Sea, a vast and intricate light-and-shadow map, as complex as a sky full of stars, instantly unfurled. Countless green threads representing the laws of life, like the blood vessels of a human body, interwove and entangled across this map, ultimately converging toward the massive light point at its center that represented the ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan.

Seeing this, Lin Yu also set aside his playful mood. His Soul Body stopped devouring and hovered in midair, its luster dimming slightly as he carefully studied that earth vein map through Su Ming's Consciousness Sea.

"Disciple, magnify the few main veins in the northeast, near the edge of the Nether Abyss," Lin Yu's voice deepened, carrying less playfulness and more gravity.

Su Ming complied, and with a subtle stir of his divine sense, he zoomed into that region.

In the image, the green threads representing the flow of life force suddenly became blurred and indistinct as they approached an area in the northeast called "Withered Wood Cliff." It was not that the formation diagram itself was damaged, but rather that whoever had drawn it had deliberately employed an extremely sophisticated array illusion technique here, concealing the true spiritual energy circuit.

"See that?" Lin Yu sneered. "An illusion technique like this might fool those spirit race formation masters, but in this old man's eyes, it's painfully obvious. The spiritual energy circuit there appears severed, but in truth, deep underground, it forms a massive vortex, ready at any moment to draw the surrounding life force back in reverse."

Su Ming's brow furrowed slightly. "Master means... this is a hidden card deliberately left by Elder Woodheart?"

Lin Yu fell silent for a breath, the luster on the surface of his Soul Body flickering faintly. "A ten-thousand-year-old tree has lived longer than anyone, and schemes deeper than anyone. He showed the entire Greenwood Court a facade of decrepitude, of being on the verge of collapse at any moment, while secretly hiding away a portion of his purest life force through this method. If this old man isn't mistaken, beneath that Withered Wood Cliff must lie his capital for a comeback."

Su Ming shifted his gaze away from Withered Wood Cliff, redirecting it toward several key nodes of the outer defensive formations.

"Since Elder Woodheart has his own schemes, then I must have my own escape route," a sharp glint flashed through Su Ming's eyes.

He sat cross-legged and placed his lifebound formation plate before him. Su Ming possessed a natural ability to deconstruct this kind of ancient and rigid formation structure.

Over the next two shichen, he was like a tireless precision mechanism, mentally simulating every critical node of the outer defensive formations recorded in the jade slip, and covertly left behind his own backdoors at the three most essential positions.

By the time he finished, a thin layer of fine sweat had already spread across Su Ming's forehead. This kind of divine sense operation, precise to the extreme, consumed far more mental energy than a life-and-death battle.

He let out a long breath and put away the jade slip.

Just then, the shadow that had been perched on the windowsill suddenly flapped those wings shimmering with purple-gold light and landed on Su Ming's shoulder.

"Cheep-"

Shadow lightly pecked at Su Ming's collar, turned its head toward outside the tree hollow, and let out an extremely faint warning.

Su Ming immediately reined in his focus.

Outside, a flurry of panicked and heavy footsteps, accompanied by faint sobbing, pierced through the soundproofing runes and reached inside the tree hollow.

Another day had passed, drawing closer to the ten-day deadline. The entire Greenwood Court had been completely shrouded in the pall of death.

Outside the tree hollow, the panicked footsteps gradually faded into the distance, as though patrolling guards were driving away some spirit race member who had fallen into despair and attempted to end their own life. The suppressed sobbing seemed especially desolate under the deep blue curtain of night.

Su Ming sat cross-legged on the stone bed, his expression utterly calm.

The deathly pall of the ten-day deadline had not shaken his Dao heart in the slightest. Instead, it acted as a superb whetstone, honing his will to survive to an ever sharper edge.

"Crack."

A faint sound, inaudible to ordinary ears, echoed from within his body.

The barrier that had originally stood between the mid-stage and late-stage of the Golden Core realm, under the ceaseless erosion of Void spiritual energy, finally shattered completely like thin ice.

In that instant, the Golden Core within his dantian abruptly expanded by a full circle, and the deep blue formation lines inscribed upon it erupted with brilliant radiance. The Ruo Shui spiritual energy in his meridians, like a parched riverbed meeting sweet rain, greedily devoured the residual spiritual energy all around.

Su Ming's aura surged upward, step by step.

Late-stage Golden Core!

He slowly opened his eyes, and deep within those pupils seemed to lie a bottomless ocean. His spiritual energy purity had not become muddled from the realm advancement. On the contrary, because of the thinness of the spirit realm's spiritual energy, it had become even more refined. As for his spiritual energy reserves, they had directly more than doubled.

"Haah..."

Su Ming let out a long breath of turbid air, clenched his fist, and felt the power in his palm that seemed capable of easily crushing rock.

Just as he was about to rise and stretch his aching bones and muscles a little.

"Wait."

Within his Consciousness Sea, Lin Yu's voice suddenly sounded, interrupting Su Ming's movement. That voice was extremely low, carrying a barely concealed vigilance.

Lin Yu's Soul Body stopped wandering within the Xuantian ring and hovered in midair, those illusory eyes fixed dead on the ground below.

"Master, what is it?" Su Ming immediately restrained his aura and withdrew his divine sense inward.

"There's movement. Extremely deep. An extremely hidden fluctuation." Lin Yu's voice slowed to a crawl, as though carefully distinguishing something. "This fluctuation is like a massive spiderweb tightening deep within the soil. The frequency... is identical to those life-devouring fungal filaments that old bastard Dry Leaf released a few days ago. Except this time, the scale is more than ten times larger."

Su Ming's eyes lowered slightly, and he let out a cold laugh.

"It seems this old fox can't wait any longer." Su Ming responded within his Consciousness Sea. "The ten-day deadline approaches. The Lord of the Nether Abyss applies pressure from above, and he digs at the foundation from below. He's trying to use this period while Elder Woodheart is dormant to completely rewrite the earth vein foundation of the spiritual plant cultivation zone, so that when the final battle erupts, he can directly hollow out the Greenwood Court's very roots."

Since the prey had already begun to take the bait, then it was time for him, as the bait, to go out and reel in the net.

Su Ming stood up, and with a wave of his hand, withdrew the residual formation masking the Void spiritual energy gathering in his meditation room. He straightened his gray-green robe, thoroughly restrained the sharp aura from his recent breakthrough, and once again donned the modest, steady appearance of a human race guest official who carried a hint of concern for the realm and its people.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door of Qingyou Residence.

A night breeze laced with a faint smell of decay wafted toward him.

Su Ming was just about to step forward.

Suddenly, every muscle in his body went rigid, and a chill shot from the base of his spine straight to the crown of his head!

Without any warning, without any fluctuation of spiritual energy as a precursor.

A vast, abyss-like intent, ancient and weathered yet with a barely concealed frailty, completely ignored the many layers of defensive formations outside Qingyou Residence and descended upon Su Ming's Consciousness Sea like an invisible mountain, crashing down with a thunderous weight!

This intent was too vast. So vast that Su Ming's freshly advanced late-stage Golden Core cultivation, before this intent, was like a tiny boat on a raging sea, ready to capsize at any moment.

Elder Woodheart!

He had not been dormant at all!

"You little human..."