Encountering the Demon Empress Shiji

The two Guiding Envoys of the Forbidden Ground Secret Chamber were both powerful demon clan cultivators with immensely profound cultivation, yet they bore no hostility toward Ning Xiaochuan and the others.

The Forbidden Ground Secret Chamber truly was a strange place. It seemed completely beyond the jurisdiction of the Heavenly Dream Demon Emperor.

After the two Guiding Envoys led Ning Xiaochuan, Yue Mingsong, Treasure Pearl Earth Treasury, and Little Red through the gate in the cliff face, they vanished without a trace. No one knew where they had gone. With a thunderous boom, the gate closed again, and a stone staircase descending into the darkness appeared.

Ning Xiaochuan walked at the front, following the stone stairs into a labyrinthine underground passageway.

There were many separate stone chambers within the underground passageway. Every chamber housed at least one living being. There were not only human cultivators, but also many demon clan creatures of every strange and bizarre appearance.

Yet within the secret chamber, the demon clan and the human race did not fight each other.

"Newcomers? You've just arrived at the Forbidden Ground Secret Chamber, haven't you? Planning to venture into the Returning Ruins?" An emaciated old man emerged from a rather spacious stone chamber and asked Ning Xiaochuan with a smiling face.

The old man had green hair, skin like tree bark, and legs formed from countless intertwined roots that had taken root in the soil.

"A Tree Demon?" Ning Xiaochuan asked.

The old man shook his head and smiled. "Actually, this old man is human too. I belong to the Treant Clan."

The Treant Clan did indeed exist and was considered one of the higher human races.

However, Treants were rarely seen in the Northern Frontier, which was why Ning Xiaochuan had mistaken him for a Tree Demon.

"So