As Ashlock watched Diana rip apart a cultivator a few stages higher than her, he understood why the demonic cultivators were treated as dangerous savages.
Just hours ago, Diana had been her usual self—a bit cold and serious but still a rational-thinking individual. But now, as she tore out the women's thorax and began to eat it... he struggled to see her as the same person.
Stella stood off to the side of the fight, trying to find a safe way to step in without getting her own arm torn off. It was clear to anyone watching that Diana's strength was far from ordinary. "Is she consuming her life force for a temporary powerup?" The signs pointed to no... but how else could this sudden increase in power be explained?
After a while, Diana lay on top of the woman's breathless corpse and seemed to have passed out again—Stella used this opportunity to acquire the spatial rings from the bodies that had been pushed through the portals.
As Stella got to work breaking the seals on the rings to search them for beast cores, black vines snuck through the cracks in the stone courtyard and devoured the unattended corpses.
While waiting for them to be devoured, Ashlock focused on the Star Core sealed ring. Unlike Stella, who had spent only moments breaking each ring seal, he had been at his for a while now—he could tell he was close. A barrier seemed to surround the ring, and as he poured more spatial Qi into the barrier, it began to crack.
Then it shattered, and he found himself inside the ring. Inside were a few beast cores, Evergreen family robes, some Qi-infused chains, and various other items. Unfortunately, none of the things seemed very useful to a tree, so he let the ring clatter to the ground, drawing Stella's attention.
Stella rushed over, "Ash, you broke the seal?" She picked the ring up, and her eyes went wide, "Thank you!"
Without another word, she ran back to Diana while clearly searching through the ring for useful things.
Minutes went by, and notifications began to flood Ashlock's tired mind.
[+21 SC]
[+53 SC]
[+47 SC]
"Such low points." Ashlock muttered within his mind, "I need to start hunting higher realm cultivators and beasts if I want to continue this growth rate."
Ashlock watched Stella drag the unconscious and barely alive Diana off to the side and tie up her limbs with the chain letting off a hint of Qi. She then began to feed her some beast cores she found and other pills.
He paid them no mind. Rather his attention was focused on the ravaged corpse of the peak-stage Soul Fire cultivator. It was an objectively gruesome sight, but Ashlock felt nothing except a cold lack of empathy.
"Have I become a psychopath? What's wrong with me?" Ashlock looked the body up and down but still felt nothing—except maybe a little hungry.
The human part of his mind was revolted, disgusted, and at a loss for words. He had seen many deaths in this world, but this one felt different. Was it the fact that just a single stage separated them, and she had died such gruesome death right before him?
"She died because she was weak and inferior," Ashlock said without thought but paused. "What the hell?" When had this change in mindset come about? Had he always completely disregarded all human life except those close to him?interesting ones, such as the glowing mushrooms he had decorated the central courtyard with.
"Time to actually use some of this space." Ashlock's spiritual sight now covered the entire pavilion as his canopy shrouded the mountain peak. "Training courtyard is fine how it is, although that wall really needs to be fixed. The fish pond is... well, they are dead."
It was unsurprising but still sad. Either the fish had starved to death, or a bird had eaten them while he had been asleep. Overall that courtyard would have a better use later, so he had the garden or the runic formation left to use.
The garden was an absolute mess. With the reduction of sunlight due to his canopy and the absence of gardeners for years, it had overgrown into a nightmare of weeds straight out of an apocalypse movie. Unfortunately, few precious spiritual herbs had survived the years of neglect.
"The soil seems perfect, and the environment was already organized and set up to house plants." Ashlock thought of asking Stella, as this was technically her home, but she seemed busy for now, and he was the patriarch of the sect.
Ashlock chuckled, "I think it's safe to say I own this mountain and pavilion now. And maybe even this entire area once I spread out my roots some more."
Creating a load of random mushrooms that granted random small boosts to cultivation and selecting the garden as the location to grow them, Ashlock felt his Star Core happily provide the required Qi. In real time, he watched the courtyard of weeds evolve into a mushroom paradise.
"Now, to check on my disciples." Ashlock switched his view to the central courtyard.
Diana looked better. Which wasn't saying much considering the state she was in before.
Her skin was still covered in black veins, and her eyes were dyed black, but she seemed saner and wasn't trying to bite Stella's face off.
However, even Ashlock, with his limited knowledge of this world, could tell feeding her beast cores was a temporary solution to a bigger problem.
Diana had gone cold turkey and managed for a while, but after being pushed too far in the recent battle, it seems she succumbed to her heart demons, which seemed like a fancy way of saying she relapsed as a drug addict.
Maybe the truffles he was growing could help, but they still needed a week to grow, so for now, Diana would need to either recover on her own or remain chained up until the truffles were fully matured.saw it as an integration into the forest network. A way to connect with his fellow trees and maybe even his children.
Lowering his defenses and deliberately opening his roots up like one would open their pores, he allowed the mycelium in.
A wave of fear assaulted him. Although not in the emotional sense, he was still rational. But his entire body seized up as if he were about to die. The equivalent of tree adrenaline flooded his system, and he suddenly felt fully awake, as if it was midday rather than midnight. It was time to fight.
His body had gone into a weird state as if there was an impending doom—which there kind of was with the cultivators still at the mountain's base.
The forest was terrified, which in turn, made him too. Without thinking, he took control of the situation and flooded the mycelium network with his overwhelming presence.
The fear subsided, and his body managed to calm down.
His root continued delving deeper into the forest, under the clueless noses of the cultivators loitering about overhead.
As more mycelium was welcomed into his roots, Ashlock noticed something. The more Qi he injected into the network to calm the poor trees, the more sugars, proteins, and water he received.
He had been using Qi to replace these necessary things a tree needed to grow throughout his life, as there was none in the mountain rock. With this abundance of new resources, his root began to speed up its growth rate as these useful substances were injected.
"For some reason, I feel like a real tree now." Ashlock laughed as he tunneled further. He passed the roots of some normal green-leaved trees. He didn't feel anything special from them or much Qi. A few seemed in the low stages of the Qi realm and clearly hadn't developed a conscious.
So what was flooding the mycelium network with fear? Was it these trees doing it naturally, or was it something else?
And then Ashlock's root passed the roots of his child, the very first demonic tree he had planted—relief mixed with a hint of curiosity washed through the mycelium and into his root.
Ashlock could tell instantly that the baby demonic tree had cultivated far enough to have developed consciousness, and it seemed to recognize him as its Father.