Chapter 681: Withered Wood’s Cruel Hand!

The stone platform serving as the false formation core collapsed completely, dragging the Dark Current elder into the quicksand and the turbulent earth veins below. But before Elder Panshi could breathe a sigh of relief, a hair-raising tearing sound suddenly came from deep within the collapsed rubble.

“Riiip—”

A dense, dark-purple mist surged out between the cracks in the stone. Within it, a mass resembling a tangle of hair writhed frantically, greedily devouring the death energy and vitality left in its surroundings. In just two breaths, it swelled into a purple-black root tendril over a zhang thick. Its surface was covered in disgusting malignant growths, each one throbbing violently as it raced upward along the channels of the second main root like a rabid dog.

Elder Panshi had just started forward when Elder Genxu behind him, eyes bloodshot, roared with all his might, “Stand back! That’s a Life-Devouring Mother Filament! That beast Dry Leaf actually buried such a vicious, utterly ruthless trap underground before he died!”

Elder Genxu’s hands trembled violently around his wooden staff, and his shriveled lips were nearly bitten bloody. He knew all too well what this thing was. If they tried to cut it down by force, the mother filament would instantly burst into millions of strands of poisonous fluid, completely contaminating the main root for dozens of zhang in every direction. If they did not cut it down, it would gnaw its way straight to the core of the root veins.

Su Ming crouched on the black rock. His Observation of the Minute had already laid bare the structure of the purple-black mother filament.

If the mother filament contaminated the main root, it would inevitably affect the water-curtain formation plate he had set up. When the defensive line collapsed, he would be the first one in danger, deep underground.

“Elder Panshi, seal the three underground river openings on the left! Don’t leave so much as a crack!” Su Ming called to Elder Panshi.

Elder Panshi paused for a moment, but the sight of Su Ming’s methods for burying the enemy elder was still fresh in his mind. Without the slightest hesitation, he slammed both fists into the ground. Three thick basalt walls surged up with a crash, completely cutting off the water on the left.

“Elder Qingluo, use your vines to drive it from behind! Remember, don’t touch it. Just use vitality to herd it!” Su Ming’s fingers danced, and a deep blue light blazed from his lifebound formation plate.

Elder Qingluo snorted. The vine whip at her waist shot out like a spirit serpent. Rather than striking, she made the vines grow wildly behind the mother filament, releasing a dense surge of wood-attributed vitality.

The mother filament was already insatiably greedy. Sensing the immense vitality behind it, it instinctively wanted to turn around and devour it. But Su Ming flicked his fingertip, and a surge of even purer vitality suddenly welled up in a hidden circuit in front of it.

This surge came from the false formation Su Ming had left in place when he set up the array earlier.

The mother filament paused for half a breath. Its simple instincts made the judgment at once: the “prey” ahead was much more tempting. It abandoned Qingluo’s vines and frantically burrowed through the formation opening Su Ming had deliberately left open.

Watching from within the Xuantian ring, Lin Yu’s Soul Body glimmered faintly as he chuckled to himself. “That old monster Dry Leaf thought he was clever while he was alive. The hidden trap he left behind is just as stupid.”

The mother filament slithered faster and faster, as if it could already smell the sweetness of the core root marrow.

But when it smashed through the invisible barrier at the end of the circuit, what met it was no sweet vitality.

It was a rocky chamber steeped in the death energy of countless earth-vein corruptive forces.

Su Ming clenched his five fingers, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. “Seal!”

The formation opening that had been left ajar snapped shut. Ruo Shui spiritual energy surged in from every direction, forming an indestructible water curtain around the entire rocky chamber before tightening abruptly!

At last, trapped in the narrow chamber, the mother filament realized something was wrong. It instinctively tried to release death energy to dissolve the stone walls, but the chamber was already filled with an even more poisonous corruptive force. Death energy poured in from outside, while the vitality it had devoured began to run wild in its terror. Two utterly opposing laws clashed violently inside its bloated body.

“Thump! Thump! Thump!”

Separated by thick layers of rock, all the others could hear was a string of dull thuds that set their teeth on edge. The mother filament’s root segments burst one after another. Dark-purple poisonous fluid splattered throughout the chamber, but the Ruo Shui light curtain held it back. Not a single drop seeped out.

Elder Qingluo watched the rocky chamber gradually fall silent. A cold, heavy gleam flashed through her dark-green eyes. With a flick of her wrist, her vine whip transformed into countless sharp wooden spikes. They stabbed through the cracks in the rock and into the area beyond, sealing off every possible escape route.

“Nothing raised by Dry Leaf will get back to the root veins today, not even an inch,” Elder Qingluo said coldly, her voice brimming with disgust and lingering fear.

Just as everyone thought all was settled, an extremely fine, faint purple-black sprout slipped through the edge of the water curtain from a crack in the rocky chamber. Concealed by the shadows, it shot straight toward Su Ming’s sleeve.

It was the mother filament’s final gamble, formed from all the origin it had gathered before dying. It wanted to possess this human body, so full of vitality.

Su Ming stood where he was without even raising an eyelid.

“Cheep!”

A crisp, sharp cry burst from the shadows. Shadow darted out like a black bolt of lightning, her ink-blue wings drawing an afterimage too quick for the eye to follow.

Her purple-gold feathers swept across the air. The Edge Art’s razor-sharp sword intent flashed in a chilling line of light.

“Ding!”

The sprout, capable of corroding even stone, was pinned to the black rock beside them. It writhed violently a few times and let out a faint, miserable cry before finally turning into a puddle of purple-black stagnant water.

Only then did Su Ming stroll forward. A wisp of Ruo Shui spiritual energy spilled from his fingertip, wrapping the puddle into a transparent water sphere. He carefully sealed it inside the Jade Box in his storage pouch. Something containing the Dark Current Sect’s death-energy origin would surely come in handy someday.

Once he had finished, Su Ming turned and reached out a finger to gently scratch the neck feathers of Shadow, perched on his shoulder.

“Not bad,” Su Ming said evenly, though his touch held a hint of fondness.

Shadow contentedly narrowed her purple-gold eyes and raised her little head, seeming to accept the praise, more or less.

Elder Genxu hurried over and carefully inspected the defenses around the second main root. He confirmed that the lingering poison Dry Leaf had left behind had been cleared away completely, with only a few extremely faint marks where death energy had pierced through.

Just as everyone was preparing to set up the defenses again, a dazzling azure light suddenly illuminated the underground space.

The light did not come from above, but from the far northeast, deep in the distance: Withered Wood Cliff.

The moment they sensed that azure light, every spirit-race elder present shuddered. The ancient, timeworn feeling it gave off seemed to cross ten thousand years and strike directly at their souls.

Countless leaf-shaped phantom shadows faintly appeared on the rock walls, trembling slowly to a strange rhythm.