Chapter 122: Anomalies in the Divine Wood Secret Realm

"Junior sister? Junior sister!" Yang Hao floated beside Xiao Mo. The Type-3 biological armor on his body had vanished, leaving him looking incredibly disheveled. His mechanical arm was missing all five fingers, and several scars from explosions marred his chest.

Yang Hao called out to Xiao Mo twice, but seeing no response, he reached out to pull her over to check on her condition. Initially, Xiao Mo remained motionless, but suddenly, her face flushed a deep red, and she struck him hard in the chest.

Staggering back, Yang Hao endured the pain from his wounds and raised his wrist. "Lian, run a diagnostic. What’s happening?"

A blue figure emerged from Yang Hao’s wrist and circled Xiao Mo.

"Warning, warning. The subject has been contaminated. The infection has reached the brain. Immediate treatment is advised, or the consequences will be unimaginable."

The mechanical voice repeated in Yang Hao's ears. "Contamination? Is this from the leakage after the tree-body core exploded?"

Yang Hao was perplexed. They had handled such incidents before without ever encountering this; perhaps it was because this time they were dealing with a growth-stage pollutant.

While pondering, Yang Hao pulled Xiao Mo into the Black Scale chariot. "Hospital bed."

Following the command, the seats in the chariot reconfigured, and a bed appeared.

*As I thought,* Yang Hao mused, resting his fingers on Xiao Mo’s wrist as he channeled his water-attribute energy to examine her.

Indeed, he discovered numerous black filaments coiled around her internal organs in her abdomen, constantly eroding them. He carefully injected his water-attribute energy, attempting to cleanse the filaments.

Initially, the black threads recoiled from the stimulus, thrashing wildly and burrowing deeper into the organs, causing Xiao Mo to grimace in pain.

Yang Hao slowed the flow of his energy. Eventually, the black threads, unable to withstand the constant pressure of the water-attribute energy, retreated. They coalesced into a black, spherical mass in front of Xiao Mo's forehead, encased in a layer of water energy.

Yang Hao plucked the sphere from the air, feeling the violent, destructive aura radiating from it, and crushed it, annihilating it within his energy.

"So small, yet so malevolent and destructive. What would happen if a complete core were to rupture?" Yang Hao leaned against the bed, murmuring to himself. He had only succeeded because he was a tier stronger than the tree-body, and since the core itself had already been destroyed, the remaining contamination was like a plant without roots.

After recovering some of his energy, Yang Hao stood up. He glanced at the still-unconscious Huang Di and the sleeping Xiao Mo before piloting the Black Scale chariot toward the main city.

The Purple Sable District guard station was truly ruined. The contaminated soil might take decades or even centuries to recover, and the deep crater would remain for years to come—a silent testament to the battle and the three hundred lives lost there.

Ye Bai and his two companions had waited under the tree, hoping a powerhouse from the guard station would offer them a ride back to Green Forest City. To their surprise, the chariot in the sky ignored them completely, firing its blue thrusters and vanishing toward the city shortly after the battle ended.

"We..."

Ye Bai had intended to ask whether they should set off for the city immediately or check the station, but Yao Ling interrupted. "Ye Bai, the smart-brain seems to have regained its navigation function."

Yao Ling pointed to the map where the location of Yang City had reappeared.

***

Ye Bai looked back at the smoldering ruins. "Don't you want to know what happened at the guard station?"

He glanced at Cao Xiaoseng. Although the monk remained silent, Ye Bai could see the yearning in his eyes.

"What is that smell? It's revolting."

Yao Ling followed Ye Bai to the station, but as they arrived, she was hit by a stench far worse than the smell of the decomposing corpses they had encountered earlier.

Suddenly, her vision blurred. She seemed to see her mother, but in an instant, the figure shifted back into Ye Bai.

"An illusion? Or...?" Yao Ling was sensitive to such things, having studied the illusion arts of her clan. Illusions were often just a way to paralyze the nerves to create virtual images, and they usually required a medium to take effect.

"Could it be that we touched or saw something on the way here?"

"Ye Bai, Xiaoseng, do you feel like things are changing?"

"Hmm? No." Ye Bai turned to look at Yao Ling, only to be startled; she had been replaced by a humanoid mutant cat.

In the blink of an eye, everything returned to normal. Yao Ling was standing there again. "What was that...?"

"You saw the illusion too, didn't you?" Yao Ling asked, her expression grave. Anything capable of trapping them in an illusion without them noticing could easily kill them.

"You said what I saw was an illusion?" Ye Bai looked at Cao Xiaoseng, who appeared calm and unaffected.

"What about you, Xiaoseng?"

Cao Xiaoseng shook his head, indicating he had seen nothing strange.

"Try wrapping your bodies in attribute energy."

It was the best idea Yao Ling had. If the medium was a scent, it might work. If it was visual, they had no choice but to push forward. The fact that Xiaoseng was unaffected suggested the situation wasn't entirely hopeless.

Sure enough, after coating themselves in energy, the illusions ceased. The trio soon reached the site of Yang Hao’s battle.

"This... this is terrifying."

The entire station had been razed. A massive, bottomless pit sat before them, and the surrounding ground had been stripped away in layers. Nearby, they found man-sized blocks of ice containing fragments of the tree-body vines. Ye Bai reached out to touch one, and a bone-chilling cold raced from his palm toward his heart.

"What is this?"

***

Suddenly, Ye Bai spotted a dark, greenish-black fragment near the frozen vines. It was tiny, no larger than a fingernail. He picked it up and tucked it into his pocket.

In Green Forest City, at the boundary between Skywood Academy and Purple Star Academy, there was a place no one visited. Yet, every single day, an old man would arrive with a small wooden stool, a plastic bucket, and a long fishing rod, only to leave every evening. Curiously, he had never once been seen with a fish.

"Old Man Dong, going fishing again? It’s been so many years, and I’ve never seen you bring back a single fish."

Early in the morning, before the sun had fully risen, Old Man Zhang, who was sweeping the grounds, spoke with a touch of reverence as he saw the elderly man. Although Zhang was over eighty, he remembered the man bringing those same tools there since he was a child. Dong seemed not to have aged a day.

Zhang had been curious in his youth, but every attempt to follow him had failed. He knew there was no water in that area, let alone a place to fish.

"Haha, that’s right. If I'm lucky today, I'll catch one," Dong laughed, not slowing his pace as he walked inside.

The world knew of the two entrances to the Divine Wood Secret Realm, but no one knew that right here, where Old Man Dong walked, lay a hidden node to the realm.

For nearly a century, he had come here to 'fish.' No one knew his true age, but his spirit remained as youthful as a man in his twenties. He whistled a tune, his steps following a mysterious, hidden pattern.

Suddenly, Dong vanished, leaving only the sound of his whistling drifting in the air.

"Hahaha, what shall I eat today? Something that flies? Something that runs? Or something that swims?"

Old Man Dong looked delighted. He set his stool down, rigged his gear, and began his day. To an outsider, the scene would be baffling: water poured down from the sky, yet left no trace upon the ground. The rod sat in the air, without a line or a hook.

Dong leaned back comfortably, then suddenly, the rod twitched. His eyes snapped open.

"So eager today? Thinking the old man has nothing to eat?" He pulled on the rod, and a fish with wings emerged. He tossed it into the bucket, which, if one looked closely, was filled with ghostly silhouettes of various fish.

He cast his line again, and shortly after, another fish hooked. "Hmm? Why is the frequency so high today? Has something changed in the Secret Realm?"

Having guarded this place for so many years, he had never seen such activity outside of the annual opening of the realm. *Could it be...?*