Saving the White Moonlight Chapter 53

The system studied it carefully and finally realized where the strange feeling came from. Host’s life-bound bean sprout… no, the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine seedling, was gone.
Its attention immediately turned to the palace reshaped by the needle-leaf spiritual plant. Could it be…
The system mourned silently for that terrifying spiritual plant. Meeting an enemy as cunning as Host, your death is not unjust. Who told your master to cultivate and transform you into something so “fat”?
The system understood its host’s character very well. She was the typical sort who would not rise early without profit. If that spiritual plant’s root stem had not let Host taste benefits, she would never have spent so long struggling in this palace and consumed so many spirit stones.
Otherwise, with its all-powerful Host, she would definitely have had another way to escape from here.
This time, the system guessed correctly. Yan Zhuguang had indeed done something to the needle-leaf spiritual plant. Was the needle-leaf spiritual plant allowed to ambush her, while she was not allowed to act against it?
Yan Zhuguang had tested the grass leaves that fell on the square. After leaving the main body, aside from their own toughness, they did not contain any unusual power.
According to Yan Zhuguang’s guess, all that special energy was gathered in the root stems. This might also have been how the person who cultivated the spiritual plant had deliberately modified it.
After the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine “fought” that root stem earlier, Yan Zhuguang understood that the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s root stems were very sensitive. If the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine wanted to strike secretly, it absolutely could not attack those root stems directly.
Unlike the root stems, the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s main body did not have such powerful perception.
Yan Zhuguang had used the formation to cut the grass leaves not only to consume the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s energy and weaken its vitality, but also to numb its senses. Then, amid the chaos, she had let the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine attach itself to the cut wounds and silently invade the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s body.
Yan Zhuguang closed her eyes and sensed the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s condition.
It had already slipped quietly into the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s body through a severed leaf wound and was moving around inside that huge plant.
Under Yan Zhuguang’s control, the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine inside the needle-leaf spiritual plant released small amounts of toxin again and again. While moving, it quietly waited for these toxins to spread through the whole plant.
Yan Zhuguang sensed the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s feeling inside the needle-leaf spiritual plant while using it to understand the plant’s inner condition.
At some unknown point in the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s movement, Yan Zhuguang vaguely felt surging energy ahead. Her thoughts moved, and she ordered the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine to sneak toward that direction.
Boom.
The “palace,” which had finally quieted down earlier, was suddenly crushed down by a great force. The needle-leaf spiritual plant, which had been calm, seemed to suffer a strong shock. The whole plant began thrashing wildly.
Yan Zhuguang raised a brow and urged the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine to speed up and rush in that direction. The response she received was the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s frantic self-harm.
It kept tearing off its own leaves, throwing down handful after handful. It seemed it had already sensed the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s presence.
The needle-leaf spiritual plant wanted to cut off its leaves to stop the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s invasion, but this was not as immediately effective as breaking off a root stem.
Earlier, the root stem had escaped for two reasons. First, Yan Zhuguang had not known it could be ruthless enough to break off part of itself. Second, the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine had been overwhelmed by the root stem’s rich energy. It had been slowed down and had not continued deeper.
This time, both Yan Zhuguang and the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine were mentally prepared.
Nothing else mattered. It only needed to rush straight toward the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s energy core. As long as it controlled the energy core and sent toxin into the plant’s root system, the job would be done.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine moved extremely fast. Even though the needle-leaf spiritual plant wanted to pull away the grass leaves on its body to stop it, it could not keep up with the vine’s movement speed.
Soon, Yan Zhuguang sensed that the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine had entered a place filled with energy.
The aura of this energy was almost exactly the same as what Yan Zhuguang had felt from that root stem. The only difference was that the energy here was far richer than that earlier section of root stem.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine trembled all over with excitement. Even Yan Zhuguang, its master, could almost no longer suppress it.
With the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine as the core, a huge wave of toxin was suddenly released. It quickly spread in every direction through the abundant fluids inside the needle-leaf spiritual plant.
Yan Zhuguang opened her eyes. The frenzied plant changed color at a visible speed, from its original green to a dark, inky green that faintly shone with an eerie light.
Then countless tiny openings split across the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s sprout. It inhaled fiercely, and that needle-leaf spiritual plant, which covered an extremely wide area, instantly became a shriveled shell of grass and collapsed entirely.
After a while, even those shriveled grass shells vanished.
The grand palace was left as nothing but heaps of mud. The clawing, threatening needle-leaf spiritual plant could no longer be seen.
In the ruins, a tiny glowing sprout slowly rose. The green light wrapped around the sprout suddenly burst open and swept through the whole palace area.
Even Yan Zhuguang could not help closing her eyes. At the same time, Yan Zhuguang’s expression changed slightly, and she could not hold back a muffled groan.
A powerful energy rushed into Yan Zhuguang’s body in an instant. In only a short time, the spiritual channels in her body could not withstand the impact of this powerful force and shattered inch by inch.
That energy came through the life-bound contract and quickly tore Yan Zhuguang’s body apart from the inside.
And it was not over. The fierce power was still pouring through Yan Zhuguang’s body, rampaging everywhere and washing through that badly damaged body.
After watching for a while, the system could not bear it. It could not help shutting off its scan of Host’s body.
But Yan Zhuguang herself, aside from that first muffled groan, did not make a sound. Her face, besides unavoidable redness and cold sweat, showed no other expression.
The system had seen many hosts. Only this one could make it feel admiration.
Yan Zhuguang endured the pain of her spiritual channels breaking inch by inch and gathered the scattered wood spiritual energy in her body. She began activating the Wood Spirit Body to repair her damaged body.
The newly repaired channels were much wider and much tougher, but they still could not withstand the impact of that powerful energy. Yan Zhuguang took the risk of using the newly entered energy directly without passing through her spiritual core, turning it into her own power to stimulate the Wood Spirit Body and speed up physical repair.
In this repeated breaking and repairing, Yan Zhuguang’s body was practically reborn. Some buildups and toxins that the marrow-cleansing pill had not cleared before were also forced out, mixed with the blood and filth created by her damaged body.
When Yan Zhuguang’s spiritual channels finally became wide and tough enough, she stopped using the external spiritual energy to directly stimulate the Wood Spirit Body. Her spiritual core spun rapidly and began absorbing the strange energy pouring into her body.
This was pure wood spiritual energy, mixed with the poison spiritual energy carried by the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine. It flowed into Yan Zhuguang’s spiritual core. Not only did her wood spiritual energy keep growing, even the hard-earned poison spiritual energy inside her spiritual core increased.
The Greenwood Rejuvenation Art circulated quickly. Before this external energy had fully transformed, Yan Zhuguang’s realm began stirring.
With a soft pop, as if a thin window paper had been pierced, Yan Zhuguang directly advanced to middle Foundation Establishment under that force’s impact.
And it was not over. Energy was still being sent to her. Yan Zhuguang kept circulating her technique. Although she had only just broken through to middle Foundation Establishment, her realm began faintly pushing toward late Foundation Establishment.
At the same time, the threads of poison spiritual energy shared by the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine also began to feed back into Yan Zhuguang’s spiritual root under her deliberate guidance. Her spiritual root, which had originally been transforming neither quickly nor slowly, suddenly advanced a large step toward a poison spiritual root.
Now, almost twenty percent of Yan Zhuguang’s wood spiritual root had transformed into a poison spiritual root. At this rate, the time when it truly became a poison spiritual root was not far away.
Yan Zhuguang’s cultivation kept breaking through, and the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine, which had received most of the needle-leaf spiritual plant’s energy, was also being pushed forward by this unique energy.
The tiny sprout stretched longer inside the dazzling green light. It grew several feet, almost the length of an adult person. Its shape was no longer that earlier sprout. It finally looked like a “vine.” On its round, crystal-clear body grew tiny paired leaves, evenly spaced in pairs. It looked truly adorable.
The only thing that still resembled its earlier form was the deep green color that had never changed no matter how much it swallowed.
Both master and plant were breaking through. The area once ruled by the needle-leaf spiritual plant seemed to fall into endless peace and silence. Only the constant shining light showed that this place was not ordinary.
And what was Yun Mixue, who had entered the hidden realm with Yan Zhuguang, doing?
In one area of the hidden realm, lush green mountains stretched one after another. In a place that should have had no wind, the leaves at the treetops actually swayed slightly several times. A shadow fell on the leaves, forming the faint outline of a round shape.
Looking up, it was actually a white cloud.
The hidden realm’s blue sky was cloudless for ten thousand miles. Such a cloud floating there looked especially out of place.
This cloud should not have appeared here in the first place, because it was the cloud carriage Yun Mixue was riding.
Yun Mixue was following the drawing Yan Zhuguang had given her, searching one marked symbol after another.
This hidden realm was very strange. It not only restricted her spiritual sense, but also suppressed her strength to late Core Formation.
She had Nascent Soul strength, but she could not use teleportation, could not use spiritual sense, and could not even fly through the air. She had to use the cloud-riding spell to travel.
Earlier, when she and Yan Zhuguang were about to separate, Yun Mixue had wanted to return the silk cloth Yan Zhuguang had stuffed into her lapel. But before she had time, the teleportation formation separated them.
Now, Yun Mixue could only use her fastest speed to find Yan Zhuguang’s whereabouts as soon as possible. But because of the restriction on spiritual sense, this thought had become much less efficient.
However, with Zhuguang’s cleverness, the place where she was would definitely not stay quiet. She should create some unusual movement to show her presence. Yun Mixue did not need to search inch by inch.
Yun Mixue rode the cloud carriage around the mountains several times. After driving off some demon beasts that attacked her, she prepared to leave.
But when passing over a mountain ditch with dense woods and heavy shadows, she vaguely sensed a familiar aura. It flashed and vanished, and soon she could no longer sense it.
This feeling…
Yun Mixue stopped above the mountain ditch for a while. After hesitating, she finally decided to leave first.
This mountain would not run away, but Zhuguang was in great danger alone. She could not abandon Zhuguang. It was better to find Zhuguang first.
Yun Mixue calculated the place where she had stopped and headed toward the water area ahead.