Xu Ying's face changed slightly, he quickly lowered his head and sniffed the faint sweet fragrance in the air, took out a small porcelain bottle from Storage Bag, poured out a few pills and distributed them to everyone.
"It has a psychedelic floral fragrance with a lot of mixed ingredients." She stuffed a pill into her mouth and chewed it twice quickly, "Keep it under your tongue and don't swallow it. It can neutralize most of the psychedelic effects."
Everyone took the pills as instructed. The faint bitter taste melted at the base of the tongue, and the sweet fragrance surrounding the nose suddenly became vague and distant.
Liu Suifeng raised the array disk to eye level, and swept the detection aura accurately toward the source of the fragrance. The outline of a large tree was outlined on the disk, with a twisted tree body, low-hanging branches, and strange dark green leaves. Under the scanning of the detection aura, dense fluctuations of spiritual energy were emitted.
"It's the tree in front." Liu Suifeng pointed to the crooked-necked ancient tree a hundred steps ahead. The light yellow flowers on it were lush and green, and the fragrance came from there. His voice was filled with a bit of uncontrollable nervousness, "Its spiritual power fluctuation has reached Foundation Establishment Peak Stage. To be precise, it should be Half-Step Golden Core."
"Half-Step Golden Core? A tree? Are you right?" Du Heng turned to look at him.
"You can't be wrong. The trees in this forest have absorbed the Qi and Blood and spiritual power of monks who died thousands of years ago. They are no longer ordinary trees. Spirit Plant that can cultivate is not uncommon, but this tree is only one step away from Golden Core, which can be regarded as a very high level of cultivation. It takes the initiative to release fragrance to lure us closer, which is not a good thing."
"Senior Brother Ming's route doesn't seem to be dangerous. What should I do? Do I want to avoid it?" Du Heng looked at Liu Suifeng's array. The pale golden line passed not far from the ancient tree. It didn't look like it was under attack.
"Let me try." Ling Shuyao flashed his fingertips, and another scout puppet fell to the ground silently from the storage ring, and tentatively approached the crooked-necked ancient tree at an extremely slow speed.
Fifty steps. Thirty steps. Twenty steps.
When the puppet walked about twenty steps away from the ancient tree, a sudden change occurred. Several thick dark green vines silently broke out of the dead leaves at the feet of the puppet. They were so fast that even Liu Suifeng's formation disk only had time to catch two afterimages, and they wound towards the puppet.
The puppet almost immediately made a dodge action, but it was a bit late. Before it had time to retreat, one vine wrapped around its left leg, another locked its waist, and two vines clasped its left and right arms respectively. The four vines exerted force at the same time and yanked in different directions. The puppet's limbs were instantly pulled into a large character, and the dark copper gears at the joints made a sharp metallic friction sound.
Ling Shuyao's fingers flew, and the puppet struggled with all its strength. The spirit wood shell of the shoulder joint was pierced by the barbs on the vines, and the debris fell.
But the power of the vines was too great, and it continued to tighten. The puppet's struggles became increasingly weak, and in less than three breaths, it was completely dragged deep into the roots of the ancient tree.
Ling Shuyao retracted his fingers with no expression on his face. "The puppet was scrapped. The poison of the barbs on the vines is highly corrosive and the joints melted away."
Before she finished speaking, the ground around the ancient tree suddenly surged violently, and more than a dozen vines broke out of the ground at the same time, stretching towards where they were.
"Retreat!" Lin Chuan chopped off two vines that were coming towards Xu Ying with one sword. The aqua blue light on the sword collided with the dark green juice of the vines, making a corrosive sound.
But the vines were faster than them. In a few breaths, the vines had spread behind them and were closing in from both sides to form a semicircular circle. It seemed that they wanted to drag several people away for digestion.
Liu Suifeng gritted his teeth, took out four formation flags from Storage Bag, and placed them around. Spiritual power was injected into the formation disk, and the flags glowed brightly.
Confining Quicksand Formation.
The formation spread rapidly from the feet of several people, and the ground within a radius of ten feet instantly turned into quicksand, sinking more than a dozen vines and part of the roots of ancient trees. The continuous flow of sand slowed down the encirclement speed of the vines.
Du Heng and Lin Chuan protected the two wings on the left and right, and the broad sword and long sword slashed at the incoming vines at the same time.
Du Heng's broadsword is powerful and heavy. It can cut off three or four vines with one strike, but new vines will soon fill the gap from the side. Lin Chuan's swordsmanship is more precise and accurate. Each sword just hits the joints of the vines, cutting off the entire vine.
The two men were flying with their swords, constantly cutting off the tentacles of the vines, blocking the nearest path of the vines, and buying time for the others.
Ling Shuyao stared at the vines in front of him, Divine Sense fully opened, carefully observed the attack methods of the vines, and finally found a flaw.
She controlled the remaining three war puppets and lined them up behind everyone. Her eight arms deployed their swords, shields, spears and crossbows at the same time, laying down a metal defense line along the retreat route.
"Let's go!"
The five people found the opportunity and quickly advanced along the defense line set up by the three puppets.
The vines twisted wildly behind them, and new tentacles kept emerging from the ground to try to stop them. However, Du Heng and Lin Chuan blocked the most ferocious attacks on the left and right. Coupled with the restraints of the puppets and Law Artifact, the vines were still unable to break through the defense line.
Everyone cut all the way in until they were ten feet away from the ancient tree. The vines seemed to be blocked by some invisible boundary and retracted underground one after another. The turbulent ground around the ancient tree became calm again, and the twisted lines on the crooked neck tree trunk slowly closed up, and even the sweet fragrance became much weaker.
The five of them walked to a gravel slope in one breath before stopping.
Du Heng thrust the broad sword into the ground, and the old wound on his shoulder blade began to ooze blood again, but he didn't care about it and just gasped for air. Lin Chuan was not much better. The moon-white brocade robe was stained with the dark green juice and broken leaves of the vines, and the aqua aura on the sword had dimmed a bit. Liu Suifeng A fart He sat on the pile of rubble, with the formation disk resting on his knees. The Spirit Rune logos on several formation flags on the disk had dimmed, as they were all consumed in the retreat. Xu Ying quickly walked over to Du Heng to check his wounds, and distributed pills to restore spiritual power and Qi and Blood to everyone.
Ling Shuyao counted the damage to the puppets. The scout puppets were completely scrapped. One war puppet had an arm torn off by a vine, and the shield of another was corroded with a palm-sized hole. She silently took the damaged puppets back to the storage ring one by one.
"What on earth is that tree?" Du Heng regained his breath, unscrewed the water bag and took a few sips, and wiped the water stains from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, "How come Half-Step Golden Core's tree is more difficult to deal with than that Blood-Eyed Devil Ape?"
"It is the mutated Spirit Plant that absorbed Thousand-Year Battlefield Qi and Blood. Its own spiritual power exceeds that of the ordinary Demon Beast. It is indeed more difficult to deal with when it is unable to move."
Ling Shuyao was leaning on a piece of gravel, with a faint trace of spiritual power still remaining on his fingertips. "The pulling force and reaction speed of the vines even exceed Qi and Blood Realm's physical training. If it hadn't been for Daoist Liu's Quicksand Array that slowed down its encirclement speed, we might have been dragged under the roots of the tree to be used as fertilizer."
Liu Suifeng squatted half-crouched on a piece of gravel, with the array disk resting on his knees, and his fingers moved quickly across the disk, comparing the ancient wood data just recorded with the traces of spiritual energy detected previously. After the comparison, he suddenly fell silent for a moment, and his fingers stopped on the disk.
"Everyone, there is something strange happening."