Immortal Master Enters the Wildwood, Immortal Arts Can't Match a Fart's Bang

"Squish."

One foot came down, splattering sticky black mud more than half a foot high.

The young disciple at the very back of the group hurriedly yanked his right leg out of the sludge.

He vigorously rubbed the sole of his boot against a nearby tree trunk.

Those white-faced, white-soled boots that had once been embroidered with the Azure Firmament Sword Sect outer sect's cloud patterns had long since lost their original color, completely plastered over with a layer of black, foul-smelling mud.

Great clumps of dark gray miasma filled the surroundings.

There was not even a breath of wind in the forest. The air was stifling, and the stench of rotting leaves that seemed not to have dispersed for centuries, mixed with the sour reek of unknown animal carcasses, burrowed straight into the cultivators' nostrils.

Visibility was extremely low.

At most, they could see three or four steps ahead.

This mountain-search party, composed of five Qi Refinement disciples from the Azure Firmament Sword Sect, was currently struggling through waist-high brush.

The captain at the front held a palm-sized bronze disc.

Whenever this Spirit-Seeking Compass was taken out in the inner city, spiritual energy fluctuations within ten li would appear clearly across its surface.

Now, the faint glow on its surface flickered on and off.

The red needle meant to indicate direction spun madly at the center of the disc.

It spun twice and jammed, then abruptly whirled several times in the opposite direction, unable to stop at all.

The spiritual energy around Immortal-Breaking Mountain was simply too chaotic.

Not only was it thin, it was mixed with vast amounts of violent demonic energy. The Spirit-Seeking Compass had completely become a useless piece of scrap metal, incapable of pinpointing any target's location.

Irritably, the captain slapped the underside of the compass twice, then simply stuffed it back into the storage pouch at his waist.

As the young disciple shook mud from his feet and slapped away the prickly wild grass clinging to his clothes, he muttered with a look of utter disgust.

"This damned forest really isn't fit for human habitation."

His longsword had not even been drawn from its sheath. He had been using it entirely as a walking stick to push aside the grass.

"In the middle of the night, we came all the way to this godforsaken wilderness just to hunt down a mortal without spiritual roots."

"If word gets back to the sect, those senior brothers and sisters in the inner sect will laugh their teeth out."

He rubbed the last clump of mud off his boots, his heart full of irritation.

"The City Lord is making a mountain out of a molehill too."

"He's just some mud-legged peasant from the outer city. At most, he's a little stronger than usual. Did he really need to scatter all of us out here to eat this mouthful of stinking mud?"

The tall disciple in the middle of the group sneered twice.

He drew a yellow talisman paper covered in cinnabar runes from his sleeve and waved it between two fingers.

"What do you know? This is called a Blood Demon causing havoc. The higher-ups gave us a death order."

The tall disciple raised his chin, utterly unconcerned by the pitch-black surroundings.

"But don't complain too much."

"If we really run into that mortal named Lu Chen later, none of you better fight me for him."

Pinching the talisman in his hand, the tall disciple's tone brimmed with contempt for mortal lives as mere grass.

"My high-grade Fireburst Talisman has been itching to taste blood for a long time."

"No matter how strong he is, he's still just flesh and blood."

"Throw this talisman at him, and it'll blow that lowly mortal hide and cheap bones of his straight into a pile of ash."

"We'll scoop up the ashes in a cloth sack, toss them into the City Lord's main hall, and this assignment will be wrapped up."

The captain suddenly stopped.

He sharply turned around and lowered his voice as he berated his reckless subordinates.

"All of you, shut your mouths!"

The captain's gaze swept across the faces of the four behind him one by one.

"You really think you're strolling around the medicinal garden on the sect's back mountain?"

"Nighttime is when Immortal-Breaking Mountain is most deadly. In the dark, the greatest taboo is exposing the aura and sounds of living people."

"If you keep shouting nonsense and draw out those things from the depths, you won't even get the chance to swallow a life-saving pill!"

The tall disciple sheepishly tucked the Fireburst Talisman back into his sleeve and said no more.

The group began inching forward again.

They had not even taken a dozen steps.

Splash!

The ground beneath a short, fat disciple at the back of the group suddenly gave way.

Before he could make a single sound, his whole body plunged downward.

The patch of ground that had looked no different from an ordinary pile of dead leaves was actually a bottomless mud bog.

The dead branches and leaves covering its surface were instantly swallowed by black sludge.

The short, fat disciple's body rapidly sank, and in the blink of an eye, the mud had risen to the roots of his thighs.

"Save—"

His mouth opened wide in terror.

Several thick, dark green vines suddenly shot out from beneath the mud.

Sliding silently through the black sludge, they coiled around his ankles.

The vines' surfaces were covered in sharp barbs.

The barbs instantly pierced through the thin layer of protective true qi around the disciple's legs, stabbing brutally into his flesh.

A searing pain, accompanied by the weakness of blood being frantically drained from him, shot straight to the short, fat disciple's head.

Bloodthirsty Vine.

A low-grade demonic plant that lurked beneath the bogs of Immortal-Breaking Mountain, feeding on the blood and flesh of living creatures.

The short, fat disciple completely panicked.

His hands rapidly formed seals as he tried to mobilize the true essence in his dantian and cast a spell to save himself.

"Fireball Technique!"

He hurriedly recited the incantation.

Normally, in the city, he could casually conjure a fire spell the size of a water vat, enough to burn down an entire brick house.

Yet here, in this miasma-choked forest where spiritual energy was thin to the extreme, it utterly failed him.

Only a tiny ball of red light appeared in his palm.

After straining for a long while, the fireball was barely the size of an adult's fist.

The flames around its edge flickered in the damp, cold air, ready to go out at any moment.

Gritting his teeth, the short, fat disciple could only hurl that pitiful fireball fiercely at the vines tightly wrapped around his calves.

"Sizzle—"

The fireball struck the dark green vines.

A small puff of exceptionally foul white smoke rose.

There was no roaring blaze.

No immortal art power that swept through everything like dead leaves.

Those pitiful sparks could not even burn through the vines' outermost old bark, leaving behind only a thumb-sized black mark.

That inconsequential scorching not only failed to drive back the monster.

It thoroughly enraged the vines beneath the mud.

The thick dark green branches suddenly tightened, their barbs wildly churning through flesh.

An immense pulling force came from underground.

"Aah!!!"

The short, fat disciple let out an incomparably shrill scream.

His entire body was dragged down another half foot. Black mud instantly rose past his waist, and it was about to swallow him whole.

By then, the captain had already rushed back.

He gripped the hilt of the flying sword on his back with one hand.

Clang!

The flying sword left its sheath.

The captain's face flushed red as he forcibly pressed what little true essence he had into the blade.

A faint blue glow lit up along its edge.

He lunged to the edge of the bog, raised his sword, and viciously slashed at the several taut dark green vines beneath the surface.

The blade severed the vines.

Dark green, fishy-smelling juice splattered everywhere.

The captain grabbed the short, fat disciple by the collar, braced his feet, and dragged and hauled him bodily out of the bog.

The remaining three disciples hurried over to help.

In a flurry of panic, they dragged him onto a patch of somewhat firmer ground nearby.

The short, fat disciple collapsed on the ground.

He gulped down huge breaths of air.

Both his calves were covered in horrifying bloody grooves torn open by the barbs. Flesh curled outward, and blood streamed straight down his trouser legs.

With trembling hands, he pulled out a Spring-Returning Pill from his storage pouch and shoved it directly into his mouth, swallowing it dry.

Once the pill entered his stomach, the bleeding in his legs finally stopped.

But his entire face was deathly pale, without the slightest trace of blood, and he lay there unable to get up for a long while.

The lofty arrogance of an immortal sect disciple he had displayed moments ago had been ground to dust by that sudden mud trap.

The surrounding air dropped completely to freezing point.

The young disciples' breathing grew heavy.

No one complained about dirty boots anymore.

Nor did anyone mention that bullshit about using talismans to blow a mortal into ashes.

They had thought this was merely a slaughtering mission conducted from on high.

But now, they suddenly realized.

Without the support of abundant heaven-and-earth spiritual energy, in this deep mountain forest that devoured people without spitting out bones, these so-called cultivators were not in much better circumstances than those mortals from the outer city.

This had become a fight for survival where every step was fraught with peril.

The captain did not bother with the subordinate on the ground tending his wounds.

He took out the Spirit-Seeking Compass at his waist again.

Its needle was still spinning erratically without any pattern.

He simply put the compass away, crouched down, and his attention was drawn to something unusual on the ground ahead.

It was an extremely wide and deep track.

The track extended forward, vanishing into the denser miasma ahead.

The captain crawled two steps along the track.

This was not the trail of an ordinary beast.

It was a massive ravine, fully half a foot deep and more than two zhang wide.

Every dead branch and leaf in the ravine had been crushed to pieces. Even the hard layer of weathered rock on the surface had been completely compacted, forming an unbelievably smooth earthen groove.

The captain stretched out his hand.

His fingers pressed against the soil at the bottom of the ravine, soil that had been thoroughly crushed.

There was no residual spiritual energy at all.

Something mentioned in the sect's secret order suddenly flashed through his mind.

The thirty-thousand-jin City-Guarding Stele.

The captain's fingers suddenly trembled against the dirt.

He raised his head and stared blankly into the impenetrable darkness ahead.

A drop of cold sweat rolled down his chin and splashed onto the back of his hand.

"Found... found it."

The captain's voice shook uncontrollably, his upper and lower teeth chattering against each other.

"That Blood Demon."

"It's right ahead."