Long Qiqi and Tushan Youyou went to great lengths to deal with what they saw as the biggest threat looming over Dan Peak at the moment - the Devouring Demon Willow!
They planned to fell this demon willow behind Qin Ran's back. After all, how could they let this demonic powerhouse that was clearly of a different ilk sleep so soundly by their side? If they did not get rid of it early, it would definitely cause trouble later.
Qin Ran had done a systematic study of the Devouring Demon Willow a long time ago, back when he first encountered its willow catkins. After experiencing a series of incidents involving the Devouring Demon Willow, he further perfected his research.
And his research findings were "accidentally" seen clearly by Long Qiqi.
Using Qin Ran's research on the Devouring Demon Willow, Long Qiqi deduced a poison tailor-made to deal with the Devouring Demon Willow. With the poison formula, ingredients, furnace and conditions for pill refining, concocting the poison was quite straightforward.
It did not take Long Qiqi too long to refine three vials of potent poison specifically targeting the Devouring Demon Willow.
In the living room, she distributed the poison to Tushan Youyou, Li Shiyin and Chasing the Wind, and lamented: "It would have been better if sister Youyou's spell matrixes had progressed faster. If we could first set up an extinction array and then administer the poison, we could minimize the risk."
What an uncannily similar approach to Qin Ran's. Upon hearing this, Li Shiyin couldn't help but glance at Long Qiqi several more times, wondering to herself, are you master's disciple or am I master's disciple?
"There are some points you need to take note of..." Long Qiqi said gravely after the lament, briefing them on the final precautions:
"One, the poison may not be as effective on the Devouring Demon Willow as I deduced; two, Tribulation Thunder Pill is still the killer blow; three, the Devouring Demon Willow is stronger than a Primeval Spirit, we still don't know how much strength it has left, be extremely careful."
"I speculate that its corporeal form is actually quite easy to deal with, the real trouble lies with its Primeval Spirit."
Li Shiyin and Chasing the Wind exchanged glances. They understood what Long Qiqi meant and nodded at her.
"Alright!" Long Qiqi rallied, "Let's do our best, we must get rid of it!"
Li Shiyin went out first with her sword. As usual, she was practicing her swordplay outside the log cabin. While practicing, she somehow drifted to the Sword Washing Lake, and at some point, a porcelain bottle slipped off her body and smashed right next to the Devouring Demon Willow.
"Sorry, senior! I didn't mean it." She quickly apologized to the willow tree and squatted down to pick up the broken shards.
But Long Qiqi was sly and vicious by nature. The poison she concocted was extremely potent and aggressive. As soon as it touched the Devouring Demon Willow, a reaction could be seen on the tree. Visibly, the willow leaves on the willow whose trunk was as thick as a grown man's fist rapidly withered and turned yellow.
"Poison?" A hoarse furious voice sounded out of nowhere.
The next moment, several willow branches elongated into whips and lashed towards Li Shiyin.
Li Shiyin had been keeping an eye on the Devouring Demon Willow. Seeing the branches move, she already had her sword at the ready. She backflipped to evade the attack and sent out a sword qi to slice off one of the branches.
Upon seeing this, Li Shiyin was relieved. A dignified ninth rank Demonic Beast, the Devouring Demon Willow, had its branch cut off by her. Long Qiqi was right that its corporeal form had become very weak.
Not wanting to confront the poison-stricken Devouring Demon Willow head-on, Li Shiyin retreated to keep some distance over the Sword Washing Lake, close enough to prevent the Devouring Demon Willow from calming down to expel the poison, but also far enough to avoid facing it alone.
"Chasing the Wind!" She shouted loudly to signal that Chasing the Wind could come out now.
As her voice faded, a white shadow shot out from the log cabin and headed straight for under the Devouring Demon Willow.
Chasing the Wind was going for a point-blank poisoning. Li Shiyin dared not let down her guard and pushed her battle spirit secret art to the maximum, charging forward to divert some of the Devouring Demon Willow's power.
By now, more than fifteen, sixteen willow branches were whipped up by the Devouring Demon Willow to do battle. Even with her battle power fully unleashed, Li Shiyin would be hard pressed to fend off attacks coming from all directions. Before long, she failed to hold on and was whipped aside.
Suspending in midair, Li Shiyin looked towards the Devouring Demon Willow. She saw Chasing the Wind also whipped up into the air, covered in lash marks.
"?" Li Shiyin was baffled. She had fought off ten branches alone and he was beaten to such a state by five, six branches?
Just as she was about to hurl abuse at Chasing the Wind for being useless, she suddenly noticed two black rings missing from his tail. Taking a closer look stealthily, she spotted a small black tiger with a porcelain bottle in its mouth disappearing into the shadow under the Devouring Demon Willow trunk.
Instantly, Li Shiyin understood. Chasing the Wind had not only administered poison, but also planted the Tribulation Thunder Pill and Earth Flame Pill under the Devouring Demon Willow.
As it was, according to Long Qiqi's plan, the first two steps had been perfectly executed. Poison administered, Tribulation Thunder Pill planted, Li Shiyin shouted loudly again, "Tushan Youyou!"
Another white shadow emerged from the log cabin and dashed to in front of the Devouring Demon Willow.
Judging from the flawless execution of the first two steps, something ought to go wrong at this third step.
The exquisite face of the peerless beauty Tushan Youyou broke into a smile as she smashed the final porcelain bottle onto the Devouring Demon Willow, laughing: "Uncle Willow! I would never have thought that in the end, it's me personally sending you on your way!!"
"Ah Youyou..." The hoarse voice rang out from nowhere again. But there wasn't a shred of panic in it this time. Instead, the voice was full of laughter as he sighed: "You've finally come, good child. Uncle has been waiting for you for a long time!!"
Hearing this, the smile on Tushan Youyou's face faded bit by bit, because she suddenly realized a problem. She had her own hidden motives, she knew Qin Ran had a scheme, and she also knew Long Qiqi had a scheme. Then surely, as an ancient sly fox and demonic overlord of the devil path, wouldn't the Devouring Demon Willow have a scheme too?
Of course it would!!!
Then what could its scheme possibly be? Clearly...
Horror stirred in Tushan Youyou's heart. Not daring to tarry one bit more, she only wanted to flee.
But after tricking her all the way here, how could the Devouring Demon Willow possibly let her escape so easily?
In a flash, all the willow branches on the Devouring Demon Willow's trunk lengthened and thickened, lashing murderously at Tushan Youyou. The overlapping willow branches formed a dense net filling the sky, leaving Tushan Youyou no path of escape in the short run. She could only face them head-on.
So what was the Devouring Demon Willow's end goal in pulling off such an elaborate ruse for Tushan Youyou?
Fruits of the dao!
Other than the Lingnan Immortal Sect, Tushan Youyou possessed the most fruits of the dao!
She had swindled all the fruits that belonged to everyone else at the last moment under the pretext of begging for her life. Although she coughed out more than a dozen under Qin Ran's duress, who knows just how many more were hidden deep inside her bottomless trench...
Except the Devouring Demon Willow, because those were originally its fruits that it had devoured.
And the fruits that Tushan Youyou still held were apparently even more than Qin Ran had imagined, for the Devouring Demon Willow to make such a suicidal gamble.
Li Shiyin was but a Foundation Establishment junior, and Chasing the Wind merely a juvenile Profound Yin Spirit Tiger. The Devouring Demon Willow did not take such insignificant beings seriously at all. After Tushan Youyou's appearance, all its attention rested exclusively on her.
Witnessing the terrifying battle between the Devouring Demon Willow and Tushan Youyou, Li Shiyin and Chasing the Wind exchanged a knowing glance. Without a word, Li Shiyin signaled Chasing the Wind with her eyes. Their tacit understanding allowed Chasing the Wind to instantly grasp her intention. His consciousness stirred as he retracted his shadow doppelganger.
Li Shiyin then made a hand seal to trigger the Tribulation Thunder Pill without the slightest hesitation.
Qin Ran had held back nothing in tutoring Long Qiqi and Tushan Youyou on academic subjects like pill refining and spell matrixes.
But for the sealing method of treasures like the Tribulation Thunder Pill and Earth Flame Pill, only Li Shiyin knew it.
"Boom..."
A azure tribulation lightning bolt cracked up from underground in reverse, piercing through the Devouring Demon Willow as it tore open the grey clouds above!
"Tribulation lightning again! So it's you!! Qin Ran!!!"
The Devouring Demon Willow unleashed agonized shrieks that reverberated through the skies.
The clouds ripped open by the tribulation lightning suddenly rained.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
