Fifteen minutes later, Li Xiao spotted a mass of tree roots. His spirits lifted, and he immediately followed the roots forward, quickly arriving at a secret chamber.
Inside the chamber, Sima Qianli sat cross-legged on a cushion. Before him stood an alchemy furnace. His palms were pressed together, one eye shut and the other rolled white. His shriveled body seemed even more shriveled now, having evolved from dried radish into dried ginseng.
Most striking of all was his head. A small sapling had burst from the crown of his skull and was thriving vigorously.
"Sima Qianli?"
Li Xiao stared at the old man before him in surprise, taking quite a while before recognizing Sima Qianli's identity.
He then introduced Sima Qianli to the newly arrived viewers, but halfway through, a puzzled expression appeared on his face. If Sima Qianli truly was only what he had described—a fossil from the Sima Family—how could he have appeared in a place like this? And the branches growing from Sima Qianli's body were far too suspicious.
Something was wrong. Very wrong!
"Does anyone know what kind of tree the sapling on Sima Qianli's head is?" Li Xiao leaned closer to Sima Qianli's head and carefully examined the sapling. In the end, he failed to identify its leaves, so he asked aloud.
The sapling's leaves were crescent-shaped, broad within and narrow without, with exceptionally smooth edges. If plucked off individually, they might even be mistaken for fine jade.
"I've never seen it before," Ou Zhizi said.
Mo Yunqingzhu hesitated. "It looks so familiar. I feel like we've all seen something similar before."
"Familiar?"
Li Xiao instantly rifled through the memories in his mind, comparing the shapes of every leaf. Then his eyes widened as he realized that these leaves greatly resembled those on the branch