Book 4, Chapter 269: Destroy Forms And Break Chains

When the Frost King Saber sank into the red brain-like thing, it started trembling violently. The voices also turned into shrill screeches and howls.

Chen Chuan could sense trembling and resistance traveling up the saber, but he kept his hands tightly around the hilt and didn’t let it sway in the slightest.

Wisps of light rose from the blade and wrapped around the brain.

The sounds became even louder. The soundwaves even looked like they had gained physical form. The brain wasn’t the only thing trembling anymore. The entire tree started shivering.

The brains on the branches changed color. The light on them started fading away, as if the red brain was absorbing nutrients from them.

But it was useless. Chen Chuan was like a coral reef standing in the centre of the sea as he let the shockwaves and mental energy attack him. He didn’t budge at all.

His biofield blocked all of the attacks. The milky white fog also surrounded him, so it made it seem like he was covered by a cocoon.

As time passed, nutrients started being extracted from the rest of the tree. The lively branches began shriveling and losing their shine, while the leaves withered and turned a grayish white.

Chen Chuan’s eyes remained fixed on the red brain. He could sense its vitality spilling out. At its final moments, it let out a cry resembling that of a human. The branches thrashed for a bit, and the tree finally stopped moving.

Chen Chuan stayed in his position for a while before slowly pulling out the saber from the red brain’s almost entirely rotten body. Just then, he sensed something and squeezed his hand. Something forced its way out from within the red brain and flew into his palm. It resembled a plump piece of crimson fruit with coarse skin.

Was it... an artifact?

Was the tree able to grow to such an extent because of it?

While Chen Chuan was thinking about it, he heard cracking sounds underneath. The branch he was standing on started breaking, and the cracks were spreading outward. The other branches were also falling down.

Once he saw this, he jumped down with his saber repositioned at his side. When he landed at the bottom of the hole, he pushed his saber back into the sheath that had fallen down and was sticking out of the ground.

The tree let out a loud groan. It was finally unable to keep its large body upright and crumbled. It caused such a huge tremor that the dirt and stones in the square fell into the hole. The gray-white bits from the branches floated into the air for a bit before falling.

Chen Chuan looked around. The shattered brains had turned into a fog that rushed upward into the light, as if they had been freed.

He stood still for a while before turning to leave. When he stepped on the now loose soil, he heard suspicious crunches.

He looked down and saw bones. Some of them belonged to children. They should have been buried in the ground, but when the tree started struggling, its roots had pushed them out.

Just from a quick glance, there were more than a hundred bodies. Based on the structure of their bones and remaining bits of clothes, most of them were merged space locals. Only a handful were from the Great Shun Republic or the imperial army.

The new brains should have been from these people.

Chen Chuan stood still for a bit before heading to the underground tunnel. There was a stone staircase leading up. He took it to a spacious hall.

A large group of people were sprawled there. They had been kneeling when Chen Chuan attacked the people above with his mental energy and fainted. Before them were a few headless corpses. Their heads were placed on the altar in front of the unconscious people. By the looks of it, they were going to be offered to the Tree of True Forms.

Chen Chuan cast a glance at the unconscious people. They might have depended on the tree to survive, but as the tree grew, its appetite was going to grow, and it would need more and more flesh.

Since it wanted to transcend, it would eventually demand so many lives that it would be far beyond what the village could provide, and once the villagers couldn’t give it what it wanted, the villagers would end up becoming the offerings.

This was a destiny set in stone.

Chen Chuan ignored the unconscious people. After being hit by his mental energy, even if they woke up, nothing would remain in their minds except basic survival instincts.

He left the hall and saw a staircase leading up. As he headed over to it, he looked down.

A person had shown up. Based on his biofield, he was a Third Limit martial artist. He had been outside the zone of his mental attack, so he wasn’t affected. He had rushed over angrily, but when he saw Chen Chuan, his rage turned into fear, and he started trembling.

Chen Chuan looked away and walked up the stairs with no intention to bother himself with the man.

The man was delighted, but soon after he started smiling, large lumps started appearing on his body and face. This was a sign that his mutated tissue was growing wildly.

The moment he noticed this, he tried to stop it, but his mutated tissue refused to listen to him and kept growing.

After a while, he became a deformed lump of flesh. He squirmed around for a bit, but soon, he stopped moving.

Chen Chuan didn’t need to use much energy to fight against martial artists under the Fourth Limit. He could just use his mental energy to trick their mutated tissue into thinking that their bodies were full of nutrients, so it would start absorbing all the nutrients in the body to grow until it sucked the body dry. Once the mutated tissue no longer had a host, it wouldn’t be able to survive as well.

He soon returned to the surface. There were some villagers and guards further away, but they were trembling at the mere sight of him.

The guards might be holding guns, but they were so nervous that their hands shook. They were staring at him in fear and didn’t dare to fire at him. Some of them were even shouting for the others to lower their guns.

They knew what had happened just now, and word was spreading in the village that the True God had angered the Great Shun Republic, so they sent a martial arts master to kill him.

As people tracing back their generations in the merged space, they knew better than those in Central City just how strong a martial arts master was.

Chen Chuan ignored them. Once he went back, he would tell the World Ring Defense System about this. He couldn’t possibly check who among the villagers were involved in human sacrifice, so he would leave it to the World Ring Defense System and the merged space military.

As he walked to the exit, a few SUVs drove over and stopped beside him. When the door opened, Bao Mi rushed out excitedly, turned to the side, and saluted him. “Please get in, sir!”

The other agents who had served in the army before also saluted him in excitement. From Chen Chuan’s display of strength just now, they were sure that he was a martial arts master.

They had actually been hired by a martial arts master and worked together with him? Even if they boasted about this, no one would believe them.

Chen Chuan gave them a nod and got into the front passenger seat of the SUV. Bao Mi asked tentatively, “Could you give us your name, sir? If it’s confidential, just pretend I never asked.”

“It’s okay. It’s not a secret. I couldn’t tell you my real name earlier because I needed to see whether the tree is really here. Now that things are settled, let me introduce myself. I’m Chen Chuan.”

Most of the people hadn’t heard about him before, because martial arts masters’ information wasn’t revealed to those not among the powerful.

Bao Mi shivered and said, “I heard from a former comrade of mine that one of our martial arts masters killed one of the imperial army’s conqueror generals with his bare fists. I thought that it was the chancellor, but he said that it was someone else. Could it have been you?”

“Yeah. I killed Wei Guochan,” Chen Chuan confirmed.

Bao Mi’s breathing quickened. The others started trembling as fear rose in their hearts as well.

“Let’s go, Captain Bao Mi,” Chen Chuan said.

“Alright!”

Bao Mi forced himself to calm down and started the SUV. “Don’t worry, Officer Chen. I promise you that we can go back to Deep Valley City before night falls!”

The car fleet soon arrived at the checkpoint, and Chen Chuan saw that the other agents had occupied it.

They hadn’t needed to do much to claim the place, because the mental attack had reached the checkpoint too. Even though it had become weaker by this point, the sentries were still affected. Only the agents weren’t harmed, so they were able to seize the place easily.

After the SUVs left, the agents were incredibly excited and looked at the SUV where Chen Chuan was. They couldn’t believe that they were traveling with a martial arts master.

While Yao Zhiyi had taught some of them, he left soon after showing his face. The instructors serving under him were the ones in charge of teaching them. This was the first time they were so close to a martial arts master.

It was with great excitement that the car fleet shot through the wilderness and returned to Deep Valley City before night.

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