TN: Hi! New readers may be confused about the chapter number, but I am currently dumping all available chapters I have from the now-closed CG site to this one. I only picked this up from previous translators, so apologies for not having the earlier 100+ chapters. However, the first 24 chapters are translated on other sites as shown on the novel page, and I will also be translating them in due time while updating newer chapters here as well.
And old readers, welcome back! I will continue uploading with my regular schedule on every Saturday (or Sundays if I forget what day of the week it is 😂). And once I’ve finished chapter-dumping, I’ll have a new chapter for you all today as well~!
Meanwhile, the jubilant treemen, who were celebrating their victory and overconfident in their own abilities, had no idea that the two people they thought they had captured and subdued were now sitting comfortably inside the giant earthen sphere, chatting away.
“That’s a good plan,” Yan Mo said, offering his approval as soon as he sat up.
Yuan Zhan smiled smugly. He tried to pull Yan Mo into his arms but was met with a kick. Unfazed, he held the other’s ankle and said, “The Black Forest is so vast, and those treemen can control the trees. It’ll be very difficult for us to find Bing and the others, or to locate their stronghold.”
“Instead of searching in vain, let’s have them take us there themselves.” Yan Mo nodded. When Yuan Zhan had winked at him, he roughly understood his plan. Yuan Zhan’s ability could help them escape the forest, but to do so, he needed to know where everyone was.
“Right, I knew you’d get it.” Yuan Zhan poked a few tiny ventilation holes. Earlier, to keep the mist out, he’d sealed the entire sphere.
“Did you hear what they were singing?” Yan Mo asked Yuan Zhan to extend his wrist so he could check if he’d been affected by their singing.
Yuan Zhan nodded. “At first, I was dazed by their singing. But then you started singing too, so I focused on your voice. Gradually, the treemen’s songs stopped affecting me.”
Yan Mo didn’t think this had much to do with his singing. It was likely related to Yuan Zhan’s own abilities. Perhaps high-level warriors, as long as they remained vigilant and kept their wits about them, wouldn’t be so easily tempted by the treemen’s songs.
The only question was whether these treemen also had ranks among themselves, and if there were warriors with even more formidable abilities.
“Merfolk mainly eat fish, and dwarves eat the same things we do, but these treemen treat humans as one of their prey—that’s a bit of a problem.” Once their stances were opposed, Yan Mo felt that even if they could communicate, they might not necessarily become friends.
“You’re worried that after we rescue Bing and the others, the rest of us might get lured by the treemen too, aren’t you?” Yuan Zhan didn’t wait for Yan Mo to answer, he’d been thinking about the same thing. “My powers can’t suppress them, and we can’t exactly set the entire Black Forest ablaze—it wouldn’t even catch fire.”
“Threats should be used sparingly,” Yan Mo said cryptically. There were some things he couldn’t spell out.
Yuan Zhan gave a savage grin. He didn’t need his Lord Priest to remind him. He knew exactly what to do next. He’d already tried it—even though he couldn’t kill those treemen in one go, trapping a few and bringing them out wouldn’t be difficult.
Yan Mo was also considering whether he should extract some highly toxic venom from the lab—just enough to scare those treemen.
“I’m heading to the temple. I’ll be back soon.” Some scum point increase is truly unavoidable, Yan Mo sighed, then vanished before Yuan Zhan.
Yuan Zhan’s eyelid twitched. The dull ache from the wound on his left side—which he had been deliberately ignoring—suddenly became more pronounced.
An hour later, Yan Mo reappeared inside the earthen sphere and discovered they were still in transit.
“This Black Forest is vast. The treemen must live deeper inside.”
“Shh.” Yuan Zhan, who had been eavesdropping and observing the outside situation, raised a finger.
Yan Mo fell silent.
The footsteps of the treemen outside had slowed, and their singing had taken on a more meaningful tone.
“~That human is an ability warrior who can manipulate earth. If we toss him into the Child’s Pit, he might burrow into the ground and escape~”
“~Use the Netherflower. No matter how powerful a warrior is, they cannot escape it~”
Inside the earthen sphere, Yuan Zhan and Yan Mo exchanged glances. Yan Mo whispered to him, “What is the Netherflower?”
Yuan Zhan shook his head. He hadn’t heard of it either.
Yan Mo pondered for a long time, then pulled a tightly tied small pouch from his medicine bag and handed it to Yuan Zhan. “If you smell a certain scent and feel dizzy, or if your body starts to go numb, find a way to pour the powder into your mouth. It’s a bit bitter but don’t spit it out.”
Yuan Zhan wasn’t afraid of bitterness. He took the powder and asked, “Can’t I take it now?”
“Absolutely not!”
“But what if I pass out quickly…”
“Then that’s just your bad luck.”
The earthen sphere was shattered from the outside. To feign exhaustion and poisoning-induced unconsciousness, Yuan Zhan had no choice but to let the treemen outside break the sphere and pull them both out.
The treemen tried to separate them, but Yuan Zhan held Yan Mo in a death grip. The treemen struggled for ages, nearly snapping his arms in the process, yet failed to pry them apart. In frustration, they simply tossed both of them into the same pit.
“~Should we use the Netherflower?~”
“~They’re already unconscious~”
Just as Yuan Zhan and Yan Mo began to relax, they heard a deeper, more melodious bass voice sing in a tone that brooked no argument, “~These are Level 4 warriors. Use the Netherflower on them!~”
Yuan Zhan pressed a hand to his lips, already prepared to swallow the bitter medicine his priest had given him at any moment.
But the power of the Netherflower clearly exceeded both men’s expectations. A treeman held something up to their noses. Yuan Zhan didn’t catch the scent, which caused him to react a split second too late. By the time he realized something was wrong, his body suddenly convulsed violently, as if struck by lightning. After that, he could no longer move a muscle, and it felt as though he had lost all sensation in his body.
This sensation was completely different from the numbness caused by a man-eater bee’s sting—at least that had some tingling sensation—but the Netherflower left him utterly devoid of any bodily sensation, though his mind remained fully lucid.
The pouch with the medicine powder fell to the bottom of the pit, going unnoticed by the treemen.
Yan Mo suffered the same fate, which piqued his curiosity about the Netherflower’s properties to the extreme.
“~Separate them~ ”
At that command, Yan Mo was pulled out of the pit by several branches. Yuan Zhan could no longer hold him tightly. His limbs had lost all control. Just as he was about to be tossed into another empty pit nearby, the deep male voice suddenly uttered a cry of surprise.
“~How can he carry the aura of the Everlasting Clan! Stop! Bring that human before me~”
With his eyes closed, Yan Mo sensed the branches wrapped around his body pause briefly in midair before changing direction.
A vine brushed against his body, sliding along his skin.
The treemen nearby sang in a murmuring chorus, “~I’ve been wondering why I can’t feel any hostility toward this human. So he’s one of the Everlasting Clan too… Wait, that doesn’t make sense~.”
“Why would an Everlasting member look like this?~”
“~A hybrid of a human and an Everlasting Clan?~”
Very well, so the concept of hybrids already existed here. But considering that most of the humans here were descendants of some god, some person, or some magical creature, it was no wonder they knew this term—after all, their ancestors were hybrids from the very beginning!
“~Oh my, I simply can’t believe it—humans can actually have children with the Everlasting race~”
“~This half-breed is truly ugly~”
Shut up … ugly my ass!
“~Oh my, so ugly, so ugly. He has no beautiful leaf crown, nor a sturdy body. He even only has two arms~”
It would be terrifying if he actually had more than two arms, okay?
“~Poor thing~”
“~But he can talk~”
“~Ahhh, yes, yes, he hasn’t completely lost his Everlasting bloodline. At least he can still talk~”
By this point, Yan Mo was completely speechless. So, in the eyes of this group of treemen, his only redeeming quality as an Ancestral God Priest was that he could still speak? Just listen to the pity and sympathy in their voices!
“~No, he’s not a half-breed~” The bass voice shattered all the treemen’s illusions in an instant.
He never was. The only possible connection Yan Mo could think of between himself and the Everlasting Clan was the fruit in his belly.
“~What?~” the treemen cried out in shock. “~If he’s not a half-breed, then why does he have the aura of the Everlasting race?~”
“~Because…” The bass voice seemed puzzled as well. Its branches slid back and forth over Yan Mo’s lower abdomen before finally singing, “~Oh, because this human is carrying the bloodline of the Everlasting Clan~”
Bullshit!
“Pfft!”
“~Oh oh oh!~” A piercing soprano soared, “~A human who has united with the Everlasting Clan, a human who possesses the bloodline of the Everlasting Clan—shocked, aren’t you, brothers?~”
Yan Mo was so startled he nearly opened his eyes without managing to hide it.
“~Oh my, why is that ability warrior coughing up blood?~”
Yan Mo, “……” It wasn’t him coughing up blood.
If it weren’t for the fact that Yuan Zhan couldn’t move right now, he would definitely have pounced on and eaten his Lord Priest alive!
‘Why on earth is my priest carrying another man’s child?! That’s impossible! If he’s going to have a child, it can only be mine!’
Wait a minute… could it be… that I’m an Everlasting Clan member?
Yuan Zhan, who steadfastly refused to believe his priest would bear a child for any other bastard, now began to deeply doubt his own bloodline.
Yan Mo, suspected of carrying an Everlasting Clan’s seed, was led away by the deep, resonant voice, drawing quite a crowd of treemen along the way.
Near the Child’s Pit, things grew quiet. Yuan Zhan snapped his eyes open and saw a branch reaching toward his chest, its tip clutching a black seed the size of a thumb.
“~Oh~” came a melodious cry of surprise, but the treeman immediately burst into laughter: “ “~Well, well, you’re truly an ability warrior—you actually managed to open your eyes. But with the Netherflower, you’ll never escape. Just stay put in the Child’s Pit~”
The branch cut open his chest with sharp wooden thorns and forced the black seed into the wound.
Yuan Zhan felt no pain. From the neck down, he had completely lost sensation.
The treeman who had planted the seed staggered away, humming a tune, and Yuan Zhan began to survey his surroundings.
He was slumped in a deep pit, just deep enough for him to stick his head out, and wide enough for him to sit in a crouched position with his knees drawn up.
His eyelids drooping, he strained to look down at his chest. His leather battle armor was torn, but no blood was flowing from the wound—had it healed?
He desperately wanted to see where the seed had been buried, but since he couldn’t lower his neck, he couldn’t see any further.
He raised his head to look beyond the pit.
Yuan Zhan’s gaze hardened, and soon his expression turned ferocious.
All around him, as far as the eye could see, lay numerous people buried with their heads exposed from the soil. One of them, not far from him, belonged to Bing, who had gone missing two days prior.
Bing’s eyes were wide open, yet the expression on his face was extremely strange. He looked as though he were in the midst of a daydream so beautiful it was almost surreal, his face radiating a look of profound joy and enchantment.
However, from Yuan Zhan’s perspective, he could clearly see a slender, pale-green sprout emerging from the pit where Bing lay.
The sprout swayed in the breeze, appearing extremely delicate. At its tip were two green buds, and beneath them grew a dozen or so delicate tendrils. These tendrils curled or stretched, appearing almost translucent in the sunlight. They looked utterly adorable whether viewed up close or from a distance.
But no matter how adorable this sprout might be, it had grown out of a human body!
Although Yuan Zhan couldn’t see anything below Bing’s neck, he could guess what was there.
The Child’s Pit—so this was the Child’s Pit!
Mo had once told him that wherever humans or beasts had died and their bodies had been buried, the plants there would grow exceptionally well the following year, because corpses made the soil fertile.
These damned treemen were clearly well aware of this, and they were actually using them—living, breathing beings—as soil to grow their offspring!
Within Yuan Zhan’s line of sight, he could still make out quite a few heads—mostly warriors who had gone missing from the Yuanji Tribe.
Of those faces he could make out clearly, every single one bore an expression similar to Bing’s, yet no tender shoots had yet sprouted from their bodies—including the warriors who had gone missing alongside Bing.
How could the tender shoots on Bing’s body grow so quickly?
Yuan Zhan suddenly had a bad feeling.
Looking further into the distance, he could already see small, fully formed saplings. They weren’t tall or large, rising only about a foot above the ground, but both their branches and overall shape already closely resembled those of the treemen. And wherever these saplings had sprouted, there were no human heads to be seen.
Behind the one-foot-tall saplings stood two-foot-tall trees, and so on, layer after layer, all the way to small trees about half a person’s height in the back.
Among the fully grown saplings, numerous adult treemen were moving about, seemingly tending to them. Once the saplings reached half a person’s height, they became quite lively, deliberately stretching out their branches to entangle nearby adult treemen or playfully tangling with one another.
Yuan Zhan could hear a series of rustling sounds, like the wind sweeping through the forest. The sounds seemed cheerful—perhaps the little trees were laughing?
Yan Mo saw this scene as well, and he finally couldn’t help but open his eyes.
If it weren’t for the human heads protruding from the pit at the center, this green space where the little tree people were being raised would look so harmonious, friendly, and full of vitality!
But when he considered that beneath every sapling in that grove lay a corpse, and that at least one wronged spirit was wailing and weeping on every tree, Yan Mo couldn’t help but feel a chill run down his spine.
Emerging from the grove where the saplings were nurtured, the path was filled with birdsong and the fragrance of flowers—a scene entirely different from what they had witnessed over the past two days at the edge of the Black Forest.
The trees deep within the Black Forest were not as dense as he had imagined. The terrain here was undulating, featuring valleys, rugged peaks, and vast stretches of grassland.
Clear streams gurgled through the woods and golden sunlight filtered through the foliage. The colorful wildflowers bloomed in the grass as the crisp chirping of birds intertwined with the songs of the treemen. Occasionally, a beast or two darted through the trees.
Golden sunlight? Yan Mo’s gaze fell upon the stream and was instantly captivated.
This wasn’t just a figure of speech—he truly saw a shimmering golden glow.
What was that? What were those golden, sparkling specks in the stream?
Yan Mo couldn’t believe his eyes. If he wasn’t mistaken, the countless pebbles and crushed stones in the stream—including the sand and gravel at the bottom—were all natural, exposed gold deposits!
Ha, this was a world that would enchant any human who set foot here. Even if they didn’t yet regard gold as a valuable metal, the scenery and abundance of resources alone were enough to intoxicate anyone.
Yan Mo swallowed hard. Even he, upon seeing such high-quality, naturally exposed gold deposits that was plain to the eye, couldn’t help but feel his heart race.
Where did this stream end? Was it at that small hill? Could the entire slope beneath that hill be made of gold?
After mulling it over, Yan Mo suddenly burst out laughing.
Even if he got his hands on this gold deposit, so what? Use it to build a house? He’d find it too glaring!
In a time when simply filling one’s stomach was a struggle, gold was, at best, nothing more than a trinket.
However… he wondered if the people of the Three Cities would treat gold as a treasure? If more distant civilizations had already developed metalworking technologies, perhaps this gold could prove extremely useful.
In his previous life, Yan Mo had always harbored a question: Why do all notable civilizations on Earth regard gold as a precious metal—and as a symbol of power and status?
Apart from its aesthetic appeal, gold in ancient times was neither edible nor usable as a weapon. Why was it elevated to such a lofty status? Was it simply because it was rare? But before large-scale mining and exploration techniques existed, weren’t all metals scarce? Bronze could even be used as cookware or weapons! So who exactly bestowed such noble status upon gold?
Did gold still have uses in ancient civilizations that modern people were unaware of?
Yan Mo’s thoughts wandered further and further, and he even forgot to hide his musings.
“~You’re awake?~” The treeman accompanying him seemed quite surprised, but seeing that his body was still immobilized, it didn’t pay him much mind.
“~Where… are you taking me?~” Yan Mo reined in his racing thoughts and tried to speak, discovering that he could still control the muscles in his throat.
“~I’ll take you to meet our Sama~,” the deep male voice replied.
Sama? Not shaman? He felt like he’d heard that word before, but where?
Yan Mo racked his brain and finally recalled that in his past life, while searching for herbs in the mountains, he had encountered a mountain tribe. The ancestors and gods of that tribe were called Sama. It was a minority ethnic group that revered women and followed matrilineal clan customs. Their Sama was actually a grand shaman who served as both priest and leader.
The treemen called themselves the children of the Mother Goddess and the descendants of the God of Life. So, was their Sama their leader?
“~How much further?~” Yan Mo felt miserable. No one would feel comfortable being bound and pinned beneath someone’s arm.
“~We’re almost there~”
It took half an hour for the deep voice to say “We’re almost there.” Yan Mo found himself opening his eyes and decided to just look around openly as they went. However, since he couldn’t move anything below his neck, he could only see the ground beneath him.
Along the way, he did spot quite a few familiar medicinal herbs.
The terrain was sloping downward, and he heard the roar of rushing water. He guessed there was a sizable waterfall nearby.
As they walked, the deep voice led him into a wide underground fissure that resembled a canyon.
The fissure wasn’t dark. On the contrary, because there were no tall trees to block the light and the fissure was wide enough, walking through it felt like walking through a sunny, fertile basin.
Suddenly, the fruit that had been lying quietly inside him began to violently jolt against his lower abdomen.
Yan Mo was taken aback. He had clearly lost all sensation in his body, yet as the fruit began to hit his lower abdomen, he felt intense pain at the point of impact. Gradually, sensation began to return to his body.
Just then, the deep male voice spoke again, “~Our Sama is just ahead~”
