Chen Fan's Adam's apple bobbed. He suddenly remembered how, last winter, the most famous genius boy in town had suddenly vanished. Back then, the townspeople had said he had been chosen by the gods and gone to cultivate on the Sacred Mountain.
Thinking about it now, the boy's parents' eyes had been swollen from crying. They had not looked like they were shedding tears over their child's "good fortune" at all.
"Those missing people... were turned into monsters by aberrant energy?" Chen Fan's voice trembled.
Before his eyes appeared that twisted giant tree, its trunk densely covered in human faces. Some still retained expressions of agony, while others had already been completely swallowed by the bark.
Chen Ke snorted coldly, tiny ice crystals forming at his fingertips. "It isn't that simple. Aberrant energy first erodes a person's will, making them approach the source of contamination on their own. Like moths flying into a flame—by the time they realize something is wrong, they have already been completely assimilated."
He suddenly raised his hand, and the ice crystals shot toward a distant bush. A rabbit covered from head to toe in tentacles shrieked as it rolled out. Beneath its once-cute fur, its veins glowed an eerie purplish black.
Chen Fan stumbled back half a step, his back striking a cold tree trunk.
Yet Chen Ke slowly stepped forward. An ice blade precisely severed the rabbit's tentacles, and the monster dissolved into a puddle of foul-smelling black water. "This is only the lowest form of contaminated entity. The truly dangerous ones..."
Before he could finish, the ground suddenly shook violently. Countless vines burst from the earth, their serrated leaves stabbing straight at the two of them.
The chill around Chen Ke surged, and the vines froze into brittle ice the instant they touched