Wuxiang and Xiao Hei

The moment the scream rang out, Flender rushed in the direction Ma Hongjun had left.

At this point, no one was in the mood for idle chatter anymore, and they all stood up warily.

The Dark Soul Cat also got up from the ground, twitched its nose, and looked puzzled.

Liu Erlong initially wanted to go over and check on the situation, but then realized that the camp was more important, and she should trust that Flender could handle the current emergency.

Chen Feng looked at Tang San and asked:

"Xiao San, can you sense what's happening?"

Tang San was focused on treating Zhu Zhuqing and didn't have the energy to constantly communicate with the surrounding plants.

After inquiring about the situation from the surrounding trees, he shook his head and said:

These plants know nothing.

"Oh?" Chen Feng looked somewhat surprised; this was the first time Tang San's ability to communicate with plants had failed.

Either the thing that caused Ma Hongjun to scream was indeed strange, and the plants didn't have enough intelligence to discern it, so they couldn't provide any useful information.

Either Tang San's authority over these plants is insufficient, or some life form with higher authority has appeared.

Which one would it be?

Not long after Flender left, the group saw three figures emerge from the dim forest.

Three figures? Chen Feng narrowed his eyes. Were they just passersby he'd stumbled upon?

As the three figures approached, everyone's faces showed astonishment.

One of the figures was Flender, which is nothing special. The key is the other two, who look exactly alike.

Moreover, they were all Ma Hongjun!

"Holy crap, Old Ma, does your pee have a splitting function?" Oscar stared wide-eyed at the two Ma Hongjun in front of him, who were almost identical.

"What kind of splitting function is this? I don't even know what happened. I just finished peeing and then I saw him. It gave me a fright," one of the Ma Hongjun, said helplessly.

Family members, who would understand? I just went into the woods to relieve myself, and suddenly I saw another version of myself! What a terrifying experience that is!

Especially in the dim light of the woods, this would be a truly terrifying event if the story were set in a different context.

The other Ma Hongjun remained silent, merely observing everyone with curiosity. This made it easy for the others to recognize that the one who had spoken was the Ma Hongjun they knew.

Chen Feng secretly breathed a sigh of relief; he had thought he was about to witness a scene involving a real and a fake Ma Hongjun.

"Then what exactly is going on?" Dai Mubai looked at the fake Ma Hongjun, puzzled.

Flender shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure either, but I brought them all back."

Although he could recognize his own disciple, he also needed to find out the origin of the other clone. Otherwise, if something like this happened suddenly when they were searching for Soul Beast, it could really scare them to death.

Chen Feng looked at the two men who were practically identical, and a name gradually came to mind. He turned to look at the Grandmaster and found that the Grandmaster was also looking at him at that moment.

"Is it that thing, Grandmaster?"

"Most likely." The Grandmaster nodded.

"What kind of riddle are you two playing?" Zhao Wuji asked, arms crossed.

"You tell him, Xiao Feng," the Grandmaster said.

"Okay." Chen Feng nodded slightly, then looked at the two Ma Hongjun and said:

"Among all known Soul Beast, none are capable of completely replicating life, but there are a few Soul Beast that can achieve similar effects through illusions and other means."

"An illusion?" Tang San was slightly taken aback, then immediately activated his Purple Demon Eye, revealing the true nature of the fake Ma Hongjun to him.

"This is a wooden figure!"

A wooden figure!? Everyone was very surprised. Flender patted the fake Ma Hongjun's shoulder and asked in confusion:

"It doesn't feel like wood at all, otherwise I would have noticed it earlier."

"This is an illusion it's giving you, Dean Flanders. Your senses have been deceived by the Illusion Demon Tree," Chen Feng said.

"The Illusion Demon Tree? Is that the origin of this wooden figure?" Tang San asked.

"That's right, it's a very magical Soul Beast. It can split off a part of itself to mimic the shape of surrounding creatures, and the split-off part can also create illusions to deceive the senses of other creatures, thus achieving a mimicry effect," Chen Feng explained.

He looked at the fake Ma Hongjun, who was curiously examining him, and said with some surprise in his eyes:

"Illusion Demon Tree under a thousand years old can only deceive the sense of sight, those over a thousand years old can deceive the sense of smell, and those that can deceive the sense of touch are already very advanced among Illusion Demon Tree."

No sooner had Chen Feng finished speaking than the fake Ma Hongjun abruptly spoke up.

A somewhat stiff smile appeared on his face, his voice was deep and had a wooden tremor:

"Illusion Demon Tree, my race. You may call me that, like this."

"You can talk?" Ma Hongjun, who was standing to the side, was startled.

"Learning from you, just now," said the fake Ma Hongjun, or rather, the Illusion Demon Tree, slowly.

Although its grammar is somewhat strange, everyone can understand its meaning.

Chen Feng was somewhat surprised that the Illusion Demon Tree could speak, and he asked:

"May I ask Geometry your cultivation level is?"

"Cat, pretty much," the Illusion Demon Tree said, glancing at the Dark Soul Cat.

"Then what brings you here, sir?" Chen Feng was somewhat surprised by the cultivation level of the Illusion Demon Tree.

It wasn't that he thought it was too high, but rather that it was too low. Plant-type Soul Beast with less than 20,000 years of cultivation could actually speak; this was clearly beyond his expectations.

However, the other party has only recently learned to speak. The most outstanding ability of the Illusion Demon Tree is imitation. Given sufficient intelligence, it is understandable that it can imitate human speech, although it does challenge conventional norms.

It's somewhat similar to a parrot mimicking speech, except that the Illusion Demon Tree's current intelligence allows it to express itself through human language.

In response to Chen Feng's question, the Illusion Demon Tree paused for a moment, seemingly organizing its thoughts.

Having just learned to speak, it is clearly not yet able to communicate with people completely and without difficulty.

No one urged them; they waited quietly for the Illusion Demon Tree's response.

After a while, the Illusion Demon Tree spoke:

"I need to be smarter, more so, to learn."

Everyone's expressions were somewhat strange; trying to understand this incoherent and illogical way of expressing themselves was truly difficult.

It was fine when the meaning was simpler, but now that the meaning has become more complex, the Illusion Demon Tree, which has just learned to speak, obviously doesn't know how to express itself.

The Illusion Demon Tree noticed everyone's confusion and tried to explain itself more clearly, but the more anxious it became, the less it could explain, leaving everyone even more bewildered.

Xiao Wu walked up to Chen Feng and gently poked him with her finger. "Boss, it's your turn to step in."

Chen Feng rolled his eyes. "Are you treating me like a translator? Even translators have their limits, okay?"

Although he can analyze the meaning of what others want to express based on animal behavior, it doesn't mean he can translate what others want to say just from a few ambiguous words.

However, Chen Feng wasn't without options. Being able to speak was already an improvement, and with the right methods, it was still possible to successfully communicate.

He pondered for a moment, then asked the Illusion Demon Tree:

"You want to learn, right?"

The Illusion Demon Tree nodded quickly, "Learning, good."

"Goodness, even a tree knows to learn; this world is too complicated," Ma Hongjun muttered under his breath.

"Yeah, you're not even as good as a tree," Oscar retorted.

"How am I not as good as you? I'm working very hard now, okay? It was you who was the one who liked to slack off the most back in the Shrek Academy," Ma Hongjun said indignantly.

Oscar was furious that his wound had been reopened, but he couldn't find any reason to refute it.

Because Ma Hongjun is right, he was indeed quite arrogant back then, and he was even worse than Ma Hongjun at that time, and he couldn't compare to Dai Mubai at all.

The main reason is that I can't find any goals, and I don't know what I can do in the future.

It wasn't until Chen Feng and his group arrived at the Academy, and Oscar guessed Chen Feng's identity, that he finally found a direction: to follow in the footsteps of this big shot, Chen Feng.

It's obvious that Chen Feng is destined for great things, and he's the only one who can appreciate the deliciousness of Oscar's food, so following him is a perfectly good idea.

Later, Oscar met Meng Yiran, and in order to be good enough to be worthy of her, Oscar became completely engrossed in the project.

Chen Feng ignored the two bickering over there and continued his translation work.

What kind of content do you want to learn?

The Illusion Demon Tree seemed not to understand the question, and simply repeated:

"Smarter, even more so."

Chen Feng frowned and pondered for a moment, then seemed to understand and asked:

"You don't have any specific content you want to learn; you just want to become smarter, right?"

"Yes, they're smart. Nobody here is smart." The Illusion Demon Tree nodded quickly.

"To be honest, this requirement is a bit vague." Dai Mubai shrugged. "Are we supposed to give it a lesson?"

"It probably doesn't mean class; the students here aren't very bright," Chen Feng pondered for a moment, then asked:

"Are you thinking of a place where everyone is smart?"

"Yes, yes, yes." The Illusion Demon Tree cheered, and that stiff smile reappeared on its face.

To be honest, this is only because these people have already started chatting with the Illusion Demon Tree. If they didn't know the situation, suddenly seeing someone giving them a stiff smile in the forest at night would be a bit terrifying.

"Ahem." Chen Feng coughed lightly, subtly adding some branches to the campfire to make it brighter.

"I think I understand what the Illusion Demon Tree means. It probably wants to observe more humans and become smarter by imitating them."

Chen Feng looked at the Illusion Demon Tree and asked:

"If you want to imitate humans more, it will be difficult in this forest. You'll have to go outside, but the problem is, can you even move?"

"Movement is possible," the Illusion Demon Tree said.

"Well, if you trust us, we can take you out. As for where to go," Chen Feng looked at Flender.

"Dean, would you mind having someone like this in the Academy?"

"We can find a place for it. There's a forest behind the Academy where it can go, but it must ensure it doesn't harm my students. That's the most basic condition," Flender said.

"I cannot harm, hide, discover, or," said the Illusion Demon Tree.

"If you can hide yourself well, that would be best; it would save you a lot of trouble." Chen Feng said, then suddenly changed the subject, "But I have a question: why did you even think of contacting us?"

The main characters in both the Original Work and the Manga have visited Sunset Forest, but none of them experienced anything like this, so Chen Feng is curious about this change.

"I will observe you for two days," the Illusion Demon Tree said.

"Oh? But although we didn't harm the Dark Soul Cat, we did kill a Evil Serpent before, did you know that?" Chen Feng raised an eyebrow and asked.

"That Evil Serpent, awful, disgusting." The Illusion Demon Tree shook its head and said, then pointed at Tang San, "He's close to me."

"I see." Chen Feng understood somewhat.

The reason the Illusion Demon Tree came was because, during its two days of observation, it discovered that their attitude towards Soul Beast was different from that of others.

During their trip to Sunset Forest, they primarily focused on driving away the Soul Beast they encountered. The only exception was the Evil Serpent, which they killed directly. However, the Illusion Demon Tree itself disliked the Evil Serpent, so it didn't care much about it.

Tang San's strong life force made the Illusion Demon Tree feel close to him, which is why it noticed Chen Feng and his group.

Chen Feng believes that their attitude towards the Dark Soul Cat was a key reason why the Illusion Demon Tree made its decision.

"Speaking of which, Xiao San, the Illusion Demon Tree isn't a bad choice," Chen Feng suddenly said to Tang San, remembering something.

The Illusion Demon Tree has the ability to split its branches to mimic others, and its own growth rate is quite good, so it will not suffer any damage from splitting.

In terms of Life Force, the Illusion Demon Tree meets the standard and also has certain functionalities, which perfectly suits Tang San's requirements.

"Mimicry? That sounds pretty good." Tang San pondered for a moment and nodded.

However, he didn't rush to absorb the Soul Ring, but instead looked at Zhu Zhuqing and said:

"Zhu Zhuqing's condition is still unclear. I plan to deal with the Soul Ring issue after she's fully recovered and can take advantage of Xiao Ao's Recovery Tofu."

"Alright." Chen Feng also wanted Zhu Zhuqing to wake up as soon as possible.

The Illusion Demon Tree wasn't in a hurry, so it simply stayed at the camp with everyone else.

Now, two of the three who needed Soul Ring have already obtained them, and Tang San, who doesn't have Soul Ring yet, has also found a suitable target, so everyone has relaxed a lot.

They didn't need to spend any more energy searching for Soul Beast the next day, so none of them intended to go to bed early.

A group of people sat in a circle around the campfire, and they also brought over the Illusion Demon Tree and the Dark Soul Cat, planning to have a campfire discussion.

"Speaking of which, should we give these two names? We can't keep calling them by their race names, can we?" Oscar suggested.

"The Illusion Demon Tree is good at imitation, so let's call it Wuxiang), and the Dark Soul Cat can be called Xiao Hei)," Chen Feng said.