While Ash and the other two continued searching for a way to translate the Book of Evil Spirits and headed to Uncle Pablo's home, Wu Heng's farm had already changed beyond recognition.
The surrounding land had turned a dark red, resembling wet soil after acid rain, and looked impossibly soft.
But when one actually stepped on it, it proved to be highly elastic, a little like stepping on a slab of pork under fresh-meat lighting.
It felt as though the earth itself were alive.
Yet if one picked up a clump of dirt and crushed it between their fingers, it seemed to be perfectly ordinary soil.
In the central area, seven tombstones had appeared at some point.
The tombstones were ancient and worn, barely over a meter tall, planted crookedly in the ground as though they had endured countless years.
Around them stood dozens of evil spirits in silence. Their clothes were tattered, and their bodies and limbs bore signs of alteration.
Some had arms extended three meters long and transformed into plows, capable of cutting two furrows at once.
Others had elongated bodies stretching for over a thousand meters, like water pipes. Yet they moved as nimbly as long snakes, their bodies hollow and entirely designed for irrigation. Their pumping performance rivaled that of a bottom-suction submersible pump—and they were perpetual-motion machines, the kind that needed no fuel.
Some had grown seven or eight arms, specifically for planting and similar work.
In the fields around the farm, the Sealwood trees that had rapidly sprouted, each resembling a coconut tree, continually withered away as though burned to ash.
Fist-sized tree cores flew out from their roots.
Together with the ash drifting through the air, they fell into the basket beside Wu Heng.
These were materials for alchemical potions.
Something Ash