Chapter 678: Woodheart Awakens, This Battle Will Decide Life and Death!

Through the layers of formation barriers surrounding Greenwood Court, Su Ming could just make out a full moon radiating an eerie purple glow at the edge of the horizon. It was slowly climbing toward the center of the sky with an unstoppable momentum.

The spirit realm’s purple moon was a sign that death energy had reached its peak.

“The Lord of the Nether Abyss is waiting for the right moment,” Su Ming said as he rose to his feet and carefully stored the remaining Divine Sap of the Sacred Tree in a jade bottle. “Once the purple moon reaches the center of the sky, he’ll cast his mark from afar and detonate the death energy.”

Just then,

a flurry of wings beat urgently through the darkness above the underground river.

A faintly glowing, emerald-green vine leaf pierced the darkness like an arrow and landed precisely in Su Ming’s palm.

Su Ming held the leaf between two fingers and swept it with his divine sense.

There were only six hurried, messy characters on it, inscribed by Ye Qing using a secret spirit-race technique.

“Purple moon rises, enemy here.”

Su Ming pinched the leaf between his fingers, and it crumbled to ash. He slung his lifebound formation plate onto his back. His gray-green robe snapped in the wind above the underground river.

“Let’s go.” Su Ming lightly tapped the black rock with his toes. His whole body seemed to merge with the water vapor as he silently swept toward the first main root.

.......

Outskirts of Greenwood Court.

The moment that eerie purple moon finally broke free of the horizon and rose to the center of the sky, it was as if some dreadful switch had been flipped across the world.

In Gloomlight Forest, the ancient trees, which had glowed softly for hundreds or even thousands of years, seemed to suffocate beneath an invisible force. Within seconds, the light in their crowns went out completely. The fluorescent swamp stretching hundreds of miles became a silent sea of black.

Beneath the purple moon’s radiance, three dark-purple figures appeared without warning in the sky directly before Greenwood Court.

All three wore loose robes, their faces hidden in the shadows of their hoods. Yet the pressure emanating from them was like three mountains, each thousands of feet tall, hanging upside down. It forced the defensive formation surrounding Greenwood Court, formed from tens of thousands of light trees, to groan under the strain with a teeth-grinding creak.

“Manifestation Realm...” Elder Panshi stood atop the highest section of the city wall, his half-petrified fists clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone white. His voice carried a bitterness he could barely conceal.

Three mighty beings at the Manifestation Realm. The Dark Current Sect had sent every last one of its forces for this day.

In the sky, the dark-purple figure in the middle raised his head slightly. A pale chin showed beneath his hood.

“Woodheart, how much longer can you hold on?” His voice was not loud, yet it boomed beside the ears of every spirit-race member. It held a complicated mix of compassion and grim resolve. “Hand over the root veins. You know very well that we aren’t trying to slaughter our own people. We only want the spirit races to survive.”

The figure on the left gave a cold snort, death energy roiling around him. “Those cowards in the Qiming Sect guard a broken seal and call it protecting heaven and earth. In truth, they’re making our entire race die alongside that Abandoned Land! Break the seal today and unleash the calamity, and we’ll gain the power to break through the world’s boundaries. It’s our only way to survive!”

The figure on the right said nothing. He simply raised the bone staff in his hand. A mass of pure black flame burned silently at its tip.

These three were not mere villains. They were radicals among the spirit races. They believed that instead of waiting to die in this cage, where the laws were incomplete, it would be better to unleash the calamity completely and stake everything on surviving.

A deathly silence fell over Greenwood Court.

No one answered them. Everyone knew that a clash of ideals could only end with life and death.

“Since you refuse to see reason, don’t blame us for showing no mercy.” The figure in the middle slowly closed his eyes and raised both hands toward the sky.

The instant he moved, the purple moon hanging high above suddenly twisted violently.

A terrifying will, a hundred times stronger than that of the three elders at the Manifestation Realm, crashed down from behind the purple moon.

The Lord of the Nether Abyss did not reveal his true form.

Across the boundless Void, using the purple moon to draw upon the death energy, he simply pressed a palm lightly toward Greenwood Court.

What a palm it was.

It nearly blotted out the entire sky. Countless decaying mountains and rivers, dried-up seas of blood, and the silent wails of billions of living beings flowed across its dark-purple surface.

This palm did not target the outer defensive formations. It locked directly onto the three main roots a hundred zhang underground!

“Boom!”

Before the palm even arrived, its terrifying suppression of the laws made the ground of Greenwood Court sink three chi in an instant. Countless spirit-race members who had no time to flee spat blood; some even had their bones crushed.

Deep underground,

Su Ming had already hidden himself in the fissure where the first main root met the underground river.

As that sky-shrouding pressure seeped through a hundred zhang of earth, Su Ming felt his heartbeat skip. His cultivation had only just reached the peak of the Golden Core realm, yet before a power that seemed to embody the will to destroy heaven and earth, he was still like a dying lamp in a gale, liable to go out at any moment.

“Don’t try to withstand it! Conceal your aura!” Lin Yu shouted in the Consciousness Sea. His Soul Body spun wildly inside the ring, shielding Su Ming’s divine sense.

Su Ming clenched his teeth and drove the Like Water Art to its limit. Pressed almost flat against the icy black rock, he turned himself into a lifeless pool of stagnant water.

Just as the sky-shrouding giant palm was about to crush the earth above him,

“Alas...”

A long sigh, heavy with endless age and weariness, came from the core of the root veins at the deepest point underground.

Elder Woodheart, the ancient being who had lived for ten thousand years and had always been reluctant to act, had finally awakened completely.

“Rumble—!”

The entire earth began to tremble violently. At the center of Greenwood Court, the hundreds-of-zhang-tall ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan, whose branches and leaves had already begun to wither, suddenly erupted with an incredibly dazzling emerald radiance.

This was no ordinary burst of vitality. Elder Woodheart was burning the last of his lifespan and origin power!

Countless thick branches from the light trees, each as sturdy as a dragon, surged upward like raging waves. They rapidly intertwined and coiled in midair, forming a towering emerald pillar of light dozens of zhang in diameter. With unyielding resolve, it slammed into the descending, sky-shrouding palm.

Pure vitality.

Absolute death.

These two forces, embodiments of the spirit realm’s most extreme laws, collided ferociously in midair.

There was no deafening explosion, only the hair-raising sound of the laws tearing apart.