The tipedes could not roar nor screech, but the thunderous cttering of hundreds of thousands of feet was errifying.

  Baiyun watched from the windows at the back of the carriage as the guards fled with all their might, dispersing to split the swarm of tipedes. But the se quickly shrank away into the distahe guards reduced to the size of ants, then night-invisible specks.

  The bull was simply too fast for him to witness more.

  He sighed, feeling a tinge of sympathy for the guards. It was thanks to their dangerous work that this operation ossible. But in the end, was it not merely the whims of a young master seeking thrills? From Ying Shi's generosity with the artefacts, he didn't seem to be exactly g in funds.

  A mere ro the ground could lead to a deadly stumble, just as unreasonable as the demands of their master.

  His thoughts were interrupted as Mohei ran up to him.

  "Baiyun? You stomach looking out of the window too?" he asked in shock.

  ...this kid. Baiyun ughed dryly.

  The bull charged at full speed, cirg the edge of the twisted forest. It was by no means a small forest, but in just a minute of frenzied charging, it arrived at the opposite side!

  "Halt!" Yingtao called out.

  The bull came to a screeg stop and the carriage behind it spun. But before it came to a full halt, Ying Shi forced the door open a out!

  "Go!" he yelled!

  With those words, he took off running. The disciples roared ba response as they spilled out of the skidding carriage, rushing after him as well.

  "Wait, wait, waitt!"

  Mohei yelled as one of the guards stumbled past him to squeeze out of the carriage first. Just as he made atempt to get out, Fei An shot past him with a burst of wind, ughing as she took off flying towards Ying Shi.

  Baiyu out with Jingfe. But as he nded, he felt a veil of wind envelop him. It was the spell from before that made his footsteps light as air!

  "Thanks!"

  He nodded gratefully. Jingfeng must have realised it would be hard for a servant like him to keep up physically.

  Somehow, Mohei was the st disciple to squeeze out of the carriage. Only Yingtao ran further behind, keeping a careful eye out to ensure no o lost.

  The hoard of disciples yelled as they rushed into the dark forest. Now that the tipedes had been lured out, it was better for them to be loud. That way, it would be easier to keep track of everyone's position even with limited visibility.

  Without the need for stealth, they found arance quickly this time. Baiyun was almost disappointed he couldn't harvest more mushrooms. He would have to ask Jio split the spoils ter.

  Cck cck!

  A Gatekeeper tipede reared its head and ss mandibles.

  Yingtao leapt high into the air and jumped from tree to tree vertically with little heed to gravity. In mere seds, she weaved through the trees and shot past Ying Shi, reag the front of the party!

  The tipede recoiled, but it was too te.

  Yingtao smmed into the tipede from the sheer momentum, smashing its head backwards into the stone walls of the cave. Her hands reached out with fingers arched like talons. With a horrifying ch, her fingers pierced through the carapad sunk into grey matter.

  "Hahhhh!"

  She leaned backwards and pulled with all her might. Her muscles bulged as she ripped the massive creature out of the tunnel in one go and smmed it into a cluster of trees, the deafening sound of crushed stone apanying it!

  Loud splintering filled the air as the trunks of several trees were demolished. They began to topple, but came to a stop against other trees. The forest was simply too dense for them to hit the ground.

  A cloud of stone dust flooded the cave entrance as crushed rod sand rolled into the depths beh, their little thuds eg in a strange rhythm. Yingtao smashed the tipede's head to pulp with a punch food measure, before wiping the gunk off her hands. It no longer moved, save for a few occasional leg twitches.

  No oopped to ent on the kill.

  The disciples covered their noses and mouths as they rushed into the , not wanting to ihe rock dust. Baiyun quickly pulled out a rag and tied it around his mouth before following them in. He could see the massive gashes left on the walls from its feet forcefully being ripped out by Yingtao.

  Ying Shi and the guards pulled out nterns, their light revealing the grotesque nature of the tunnel. Dried blood, mould and mysterious stains caked the walls. A faint stench filled the air. Fei An frowned and jured bubbles of air around both her and Jingfeng's heads.

  As they desded the uneven ground, the tunnel narrowed.

  Mohei looked backwards anxiously. But with the disciples packed tightly behind him, he couldn't leave uhey agreed to all turn around.

  Yingtao suffered most as the only adult in the group. She was too tall for the tunnel and could only craardly.

  "We're here."

  The disciples entered a rge underground chamber, the ceiling expanding to a height of 3 to 4 metres. Yingtao sighed in relief, finally able to raise her head and stand once more. The foul st intensified and the disciples gagged, staring at Fei An and her brother in envy.

  Down here, there was little visible rock. The garbled roots of the forest formed the walls and ground of the biological caverns.

  The stale winds howled eerily. Nonsensical winding tunnels draped in darkness surrouhem; what little light the nterns provided was not enough.

  "I-I help!" Mohei said.

  He summoned a ball of fme from his hand a float into the air. Baiyun his was one of the ideas he gave Mohei. Aside from bat, balls of fmes could also be floated into the distao illuminate dark tunnels.

  But Qinghe's small hand snatched it out of the air and s out.

  "No need."

  She raised her staff and struck the ground. From its tip, orbs of light flowed out like a stream. Dozens of orbs floated into the many tunnels, lightning up the tless paths ahead. It was still a horrid maze, but they could finally see what y ahead.

  "Ah! You..." Mohei gritted his teeth.

  It seemed someone didn't want her job stolen. Baiyun patted Mohei on the bad stopped him from shouting.

  The sudden light seemed to have attracted attention and faint scuttles echoed all around.

  Several small tipedes rushed by in panic. They were less thare long and had soft whitish-grey exoskeletons, uhe shiny bck ptes the adults had.

  Mohei screamed and raised his spear, but Ying shi caught his hand and stopped him.

  "Stop. Do not harm the tipedes unless necessary, much less the harmless brood. If we affect the health of the , the Lifesap harvests won't be good. This was stated during the meeting."

  "Hn..." Mohei grumbled.

  Ying Shi sighed and grabbed one of the little tipedes, holding the squirming creature before Mohei's horrified eyes.

  "Look, they have no io fight. Otherwise, they'd be lured out by the smoke bombs as well. Take a-"

  At that moment, a worker tipede revealed itself behind the bends of a tunnel and charged towards him! Yingtao appeared before it in a fsh and crushed its head with a bare hand. She grinned for whatever reason.

  "...self defence is an exception." Ying Shi said.

  He tossed the little tipede aside a scuttle away. A few of the disciples snickered, but were silenced by his gres.

  Ying Shi reached into his bag, finally pulling out the aforementioned qi pass.

  It was a round pte of metal, covered in trigs of alternating gold and bck simir to a bisected onion. The rings cttered as he rotated them with his fingers and adjusted the rows of inscribed sigils on them.

  Baiyun casually swept his divihread over the pass, sensing clumps of qi had formed above it. He frowhe artefact was by no means poorly made, but its design was far more unsophisticated than he imagined.

  With how indistinct the qi was, it was fairly difficult for inexperienced users to make out the slightest flow of qi. Ying Shi might be petent, but he was too young to have much mastery over qi trol.

  Ying Shi took the lead with the pass in hand and marched ahead. But his eyebrows were furrowed; beads of sweat trickled down his face as he clutched the pass in hand. Baiyun shook his head and wondered why Yingtao wasn't using the pass instead.

  Fei An seemed very ied in it and floated slightly into the air to peek over Ying Shi's shoulder, only to be swatted away like an oversized fly.

  Baiyun frowned. Something was off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

  It took him a moment to figure it out, but he finally realised the atmosphere was far too rexed. Though each of the disciples kept quiet, they walked leisurely as if they were just on a casual stroll. The only exception was Mohei, whose footsteps were shaky with fear.

  None of them seemed to be paying much attention to their surroundings.

  How reckless.

  Baiyun had heard enough stories of cultivators meeting their demise due to pcy. Well, not that he of all people had the right to pin, given his ret reckless behaviour.

  Regardless, he was on full guard. He would diligently sweep his thread of divine sense in a spherical pattern, searg for fields of qi sense as well as cheg Ying Shi's pass occasionally. His ears were perked, trying to listen for threats from beyond.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud.

  Baiyun's eyes twitched. All he could hear was the footsteps of the disciples! It wasn't as if they were walking particurly loudly; rather, it was the deafening silehat made even the slightest sound stand out. But it infuriated him to no end.

  He tapped Jingfeng's bad leaned into his ear.

  "Jingfeng."

  "Eh? Ying Shi said not to talk..." Jingfeng whispered back.

  "Yes, but this is important. Could you use that spell of yours to dampen everyone's footsteps?"

  "Ah... It would be fine if it were just the two of us, but I don't have enough qi to sustain the spell on everyone for long. Also, you might not know this since you don't cultivate, but most people only sustain about 5 spells at once..."

  Baiyun's face went bnk. To think the day would e when he'd be treated as someone clueless about magic...

  And only 5 simultaneous spells? It seemed that while this world had advanced Martial Arts, their spellcasting was underdeveloped.

  Baiyun nodded, but he could not help but feel a little disgruntled.

  The trek tinued for another 10 minutes.

  "We are almost there." Ying Shi whispered.

  The disciples looked at each other iement, gesturing to each other. But Baiyun was baffled.

  Why had Ying Shi stopped here of all pces?

  Baiyun had figured out how to read the pass by now. The rings and sigils of the pass served to adjust the type and iy of qi detected.

  The clumps of qi above the pass represented what the pass could detect. The pass had been steadily accumuting clumps as they walked, now numbering more than 100. By cross refereng what his divihread detected, Baiyun cluded the pass had a range of about 5 kilometres, though anythied past the 3 kilometre point seemed to be unreliable. Past that point, the clumps seemed to ge in size and flicker randomly.

  Even with so maed targets, the proje was only palm sized. It was a rge part of why Ying Shi found the pass so difficult to use. Baiyun had a simple workaround, he simply visualised the same proje in a rger scale within his mind.

  Most clumps were about the size of a grape. There were also 10 smaller clusters each about the size of a . The map was 3 dimensional in nature, so further downwards, there was a watermelon sized clump, surrounded by a swarm e-sized clusters.

  Baiyun figured the grapes were most likely the Lifesap sources, from how sistent their size was. As for the watermelon and es, that was without a doubt the Soul Queen and her Elite Warriors.

  He had no good guesses as to what the s were, but they were likely miseous objects that just happeo be in the range of strength the pass was deteg.

  While the pass had a fairly rge range, due to Ying Shi's poor mastery, Baiyuimated he only could detect things within a 100-metre radius around them. Ying Shi should have detected 2 grapes and a , but he was leading them to the sized cluster.

  Baiyun's p was interrupted by Sanguaedly pointing to the ceiling.

  "There!" he whispered.

  A strange root jutted from the ceiling. It was huge and pinkish-white, damp and covered in tless pin-sized holes. A droplet of greenish-gold liquid g to its tip, the grouh it covered in a small puddle of the same substance.

  Lifesap!

  Fei An began to jump excitedly, and the disciples whispered to each other.

  Ying Shi took a spatial gourd from his bag and raised it to the tip, while Qinghe raised her staff and eled wood qi into the root to coax the Lifesap out.

  Baiyun could not help but doubt himself for a moment.

  Could he have overestimated the tree? It made sense for a tree of this size to have many feeding roots if it o nourish so maipedes, so he didn't think the 10 s could be the feeders.

  He swept his divine seo the pass once more.

  Meanwhile, Ying Shi frowned.

  "Odd. The sap isn't flowing smoothly."

  "This root has been drained past its limit." Qinghe mused. "This is pretty weird... the tipedes don't normally drink enough to harm the tree."

  Baiyun frowned as he attuned with the pass once more.

  Then his heart sank. This root... it was not the cluster they had approached!