Chapter Ninety: Return to Purple Star

After swallowing the immortal tree tea, it first felt no different from ordinary tea water. Apart from a slight bitterness and its thirst-quenching effect, there was nothing remarkable about it.

But this tea was different: bitter at first, then sweet, sorrow giving way to bliss. With his eyes closed, Ye Bai recalled every scene from the radiation zone. From the anomalous assault on the tower, to the underground laboratory, then to Zone C, and finally Zone B, he seemed to relive it all as though watching a film.

Old Zhu looked at Ye Bai and Cao the Little Monk with their eyes shut, and a rare smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. A faint green glow shimmered over both of them.

Why was immortal tree tea so precious? Because it was plucked from the first batch of mutated tea trees in the early years of the Dark Age. That tea tree had undergone the baptism of the very first surge of elemental power, and the tea leaves contained, however faintly, the source power of the wood element. Not much, but enough to repair the body’s minor injuries and make the flow of elemental power within the body smoother.

“That tea is unusual, isn’t it?”

Yaoling did not ask why Blood Vengeance had been willing to expose his identity before her, nor why he had invited the three of them to drink tea.

“Nothing but a crude thing, unworthy of Miss Yaoling.” Blood Vengeance likewise said nothing more about his identity, as though he had returned to being nothing more than the station chief of a small guard post, merely a vulgar man who happened to know the identity of the person before him.

“It is Dark Spring tea,” Yaoling said calmly, without looking at anything else in the small chamber. Her gaze remained fixed on her own clean, glossy nails.

Blood Vengeance’s whole body jolted, though the movement was not obvious on his heavily muscled frame. He walked to the wall where the daggers hung and gently stroked one of the crimson blades, then let out a quiet sigh and said, “Miss Yaoling is wise.”

The moment he said those words, the aura he had built up from the moment he entered the guard station was instantly shattered, and his tone immediately weakened.

“Dark Spring tea, grown in the central lands of the old Flame Nation, is the only sacred tea tree that still survives in this world. Because it has been influenced by the conditions of the Dark Age, it was among the first plant-based mutated beasts to change. It is now a king-tier mutant beast, and within ten miles in every direction it dominates the land. Neither other mutant beasts nor supernatural beasts, and not even the Heavenly Wood King, dare approach it lightly. How did the captain of the Blood Squad obtain leaves from such a divine tree?”

Blood Vengeance smiled bitterly inwardly. In truth, when he took out the Dark Spring tea, he had been gambling on whether Yaoling would recognize it, and for that very reason he had even used the name he himself had coined for it.

The sacred tea tree. Everyone in this age knew that there was a divine tea tree in the center of the ancient Flame Nation. If one could obtain its king crystal, one would surely rise to greatness in a single bound. Yet Dark Spring tea was rarely heard of. People only knew that the mother leaves of the sacred tea tree could be used to forge divine artifacts, while the child leaves were as sharp as blades, able to sever gold and iron with ease.

But few knew that at the very beginning of the sacred tree’s mutation, it had been blessed by the source of wood element power, and that its first leaves possessed the power to restore and repair the body. No one had ever heard of such a thing, let alone tasted it. By now, the tree’s original leaves were long gone, and only the king crystal still retained that effect.

Yaoling had only read of this sacred tea tree in the clan’s records, where the miraculous effects and taste of Dark Spring tea were described.

She had not expected to taste such a rare tea here. If she had not grown up from childhood soaking in medicinal baths prepared by her family, perhaps she would now have been like Ye Bai and the others, savoring medicinal tea to regulate the body.

“Captain Blood, what an elegant scheme.”

Yaoling’s sudden leap of thought was a little too much for Blood Vengeance to follow, but after thinking it through, fine beads of sweat surfaced on his forehead.

“You knew that Yaoling is of the Medicine family, that she has been raised since childhood in medicinal baths, and that anything related to wood-element power, whether beneficial or harmful, would be met with tremendous resistance by her. You had already guessed that this Dark Spring tea would have little effect on me, hadn’t you?”

Yaoling’s face gradually turned cold, her voice rising little by little, carrying a hint of accusation as her eyes fixed tightly on Blood Vengeance.

Her black pupils slowly receded, and in their place appeared green, flower-like irises. With a sharp thud, she stood up from the chair.

At once, Blood Vengeance felt as though he had fallen into a green world, everywhere filled with man-eating flowers ready to devour him. It was also as though he stood at the center of petals spinning faster and faster, and he could not tell when he had fallen into an illusion.

The flower’s mouth opened wider and wider, as if it could swallow the entire world. The petals spun more and more swiftly, and Blood Vengeance felt that his consciousness was about to be sucked into that world, that he was on the verge of confessing all his secrets.

He took a step forward, but within the illusion he was already at the edge of the flower’s maw, and beneath the whirling petals his vision had gone hazy.

Suddenly, his whole body shook. Blood began to surge from his black pupils until they were completely filled. Cold sweat covered his face, and Yaoling gave a muffled groan. She had been about to retreat a few steps, but instead, using the chair behind her for support, she sat back down.

The now-clear-headed Blood Vengeance hurriedly dropped to one knee and said, “Miss Yaoling, I had no such intention whatsoever. I only wanted to know what happened all those years ago. We ten brothers could not have died in vain; they are watching from heaven. As their eldest brother, how could I live in peace? I have endured all this time only because I wanted an explanation.”

—

“Yaoling, what did that sleazy old man want with you?”

Ye Bai held the Radiant Blade in his hand and savagely hacked down a clump of grass as thick as a bowl. The instant it broke, juice sprayed from the severed stem in all directions.

Yaoling and Blood Vengeance had not been alone together for very long. Less than an hour later, they came out.

When they emerged, Yaoling’s expression was unreadable, and Blood Vengeance’s was the same.

Ye Bai sensed that something was off and suggested returning to Violet Star Academy. This time, the station chief did not stop them. When they left, he did not escort them himself; he merely had Old Zhu see them out of the guard station.

From behind, Yaoling would occasionally tease Cao the Little Monk, or help Ye Bai cut down the larger plants. A faint smile hovered at her lips, and she could not sit still. She had turned once again into that lively, adorable, and tearful girl.

“The station chief?” Yaoling blinked, then grinned when Ye Bai called Blood Vengeance a sleazy old man.

“Nothing much. He only asked about treatment and recovery through wood-element power. The station chief said he wanted to help Old Zhu remove the scar on his head.”

Yaoling did not tell Ye Bai or Cao the Little Monk the true reason Blood Vengeance had sought her out. The Blood Killing Squad, Blood Vengeance—there was too much entanglement there, so much that she did not dare step into it. She feared that once she fell in, she would never be able to get out. For ordinary people with no background, like Ye Bai and Cao the Little Monk, the less they knew, the safer it would be for them.

With a soft spurt, Ye Bai brought down yet another plant. A few drops of juice splashed onto the corner of Cao the Little Monk’s mouth. He instinctively stuck out his tongue to lick it, his expression initially calm, but then he immediately grimaced and spat several times onto the ground.

“Ha, ha, ha.”

Cao the Little Monk’s childish reaction made Yaoling laugh. She had not expected that Cao the Little Monk did not know that after the Dark Age, most plant juices were bitter. She took a bottle of purified water from the backpack on her back and handed it to him so he could rinse his mouth.

Cao the Little Monk took the water and stared at the severed stems and leaves before him, as though trying to memorize them. Only then did he gulp down several mouthfuls of water.

Yaoling was left blinking in surprise by his behavior. She had not expected Cao the Little Monk to be so endearing in everyday life.

Yaoling looked at the foolish little monk before her and smiled softly, revealing twin dimples in her cheeks. Then she sighed. Blood Vengeance, the Blood Killing Squad—she had thought all of that was history, never expecting to run into it herself and become entangled in it.

Blood Vengeance, the Blood Killing Squad. Perhaps to humanity now that already possessed elemental power, they were merely a group of assassins with greater strength, a deep understanding of human and mutant beast anatomy, and the ability to deliver fatal blows with shocking precision.

But in the early days of the Dark Age, where would there have been so many people with elemental power? Aside from the Three Kings and chosen individuals like the first patriarch of Yaoling’s family, who had been favored by heaven, perhaps no one else even knew what elemental power was.

That was when the superhuman project was launched in earnest. It had been a plan laid down by civilization before the Dark Age, but had been delayed again and again for reasons ranging from insufficient resources to world peace. The coming of the Dark Age shattered the peaceful world at once. Countless mutant beasts swiftly destroyed civilization, shrinking the spaces where humans could live to a tiny fraction of what they once were. In an instant, in the blink of an eye, humanity fell from the apex of the food chain to its lowest rung. Animals, mutant beasts, and even plants began to eat people.

Only then did humankind understand the importance of strength. By pooling all human resources, they selected the strongest among them. Most of those chosen were elite soldiers. Before the Dark Age, these people had always been in training, their physical condition maintained at peak level. Even more terrifying were the martial masters, who looked frail and weak but had already broken through the limits of humanity to reach the Body Tempering stage. These people had devoted their lives to martial arts. Men in their fifties or sixties had blood and vitality more vigorous than those elite soldiers, and could unleash what they called astral force.

The superhuman project was restarted. With all humanity united, research on super-serums began, and the elite soldiers selected from various regions were divided into four battalions.

The Demon Shark Battalion, the Demon Crocodile Battalion, the Demon Tiger Battalion, and the Demon Eagle Battalion. All the elite soldiers were scattered among these four battalions, one hundred men each. The martial masters and those who had possessed special abilities even before the Dark Age were reorganized into a fifth battalion: the Heavenly Martial Battalion.

The super-serum was developed in less than three months. At the time of inoculation, everyone knew they might die, yet they still resolutely accepted it.

The result was much the same as in the initial experiments: a success rate of less than fifty percent. In an instant, the four battalions were reduced until only two remained, and even those continued to dwindle day by day. It took half a month before the situation gradually improved. In the end, among the elite soldiers of the four battalions, only one battalion’s worth survived, and they were collectively called the Demon Crocodile Battalion.

At that time, the Heavenly Martial Battalion had fewer than seventy people. After receiving the super-serum, fewer than thirty survived. Yet those thirty people then vanished without a trace, and even now no one knows whether they live or died.

Several of the members of the Blood Killing Squad had originally come from the Demon Crocodile Battalion. Back then, the Demon Crocodile Battalion had been like a sharp sword, and with superhuman strength and sound tactics, it helped humanity reclaim many territories.

During that era, the Demon Crocodile Battalion was truly a hellish god of slaughter. Strength, speed, and astonishing recovery, combined with the murderous instincts of elite soldiers—wherever they went, the earth was stained with blood. Wherever their blades pointed, the ground ran red. There were humans, and there were mutant beasts.

They rose quickly, and fell even faster. Cellular exhaustion, genetic collapse. In less than ten years, the Demon Crocodile Battalion vanished, and Blood Vengeance vanished with it.

When Blood Vengeance appeared again, he came together with nine others. Each of them possessed elemental power, and none of their faces had aged; they still looked as they had in youth. Yet their combat ability was even stronger, and they could often defeat ten men by themselves. Even several Star Core warriors could do nothing against them.

The Blood Killing Squad, like the Demon Crocodile Battalion, rose quickly and fell even faster. Like a meteor flashing across the sky, it too vanished into silence.

Yaoling was still thinking about her conversation with Blood Vengeance when Ye Bai’s voice reached her ears.

“Yaoling, Little Monk. We’re at the main city. Violet Star Academy is here.”