Chapter 691: Familiar

Elder Qiuxi reacted very quickly as he hollered, “Protect Her Highness!”

The surrounding people, especially the Black Guards, rushed to this side quickly. They were fast, but the ground cracked even quicker.

The gullies spread even more rapidly, and the crowd dispersed in all directions. Even so, some still fell into the cracks on the ground.

The entire team was immediately in a mess.

Many of the rolling leaf firs that were moving comparatively slower couldn’t escape the fate of dropping into the cracks.

Looking at the many rolling leaf firs that were broken or had even disappeared, Chu Liuyue finally understood why they were escaping in such a hurry earlier.

Crack!

A deep sound was heard.

Chu Liuyue looked down and saw a crack quickly spread from the side of her feet.

Tuan Zi suddenly jumped up from her shoulders and went forward.

“Tuan Zi!” yelled Chu Liuyue in shock when she saw it jump over the cracks and head to the Mystic Forest’s depths. “Come back!”

Tuan Zi paused for a moment and turned around to look at her before going further in.

Chu Liuyue’s heart tingled. Is… Tuan Zi asking me to go over? What exactly is it doing?

Chu Liuyue didn’t have time to think about it as she clenched her teeth and rapidly followed the fiend.

“Liuyue, where are you going?” Mu Hongyu felt something flash across her eyes, and Chu Liuyue disappeared from her spot. She was dazed as she yelled at Chu Liuyue’s back view.

A cold wind blew past her ear—Qiang Wanzhou had already silently followed her.

“Hey…” Mu Hongyu wanted to stop them, but the duo’s figures had gradually disappeared.

She glanced at Ye Ranran. “What should we do now?”

Ye Ranran widened her eyes. “We’re naturally going to follow!”

Before I came, I already made an agreement with my mentor and the Cabinet Master that I definitely wouldn’t be Liuyue and Wanzhou’s burden. Even if uncertainty and dangers lie ahead of me, I have to go!

Mu Hongyu nodded in determination. “Okay! Let’s go!”

Then, the two of them braved themselves and followed the other two almost simultaneously.

In the blink of an eye, the four of them left consecutively.

The forest was currently in a state of mess as the gullies on the ground kept expanding. Everyone was thinking of all sorts of ways to escape, and nobody noticed that the few of them had disappeared during that short period of time.

On the other end, with Elder Qiuxi and Elder Duanmu’s help, Shangguan Wan had it much easier.

After an unknown period of time, the messy situation finally and gradually appeased.

The ground was covered by gullies that were so deep one couldn’t see the bottom, and some of them were wide enough to swallow a person whole. It looked very terrifying.

The originally lush greenery was damaged and became broken trees and twigs in no time. Many people here were also injured because they couldn’t escape in time.

Cracked branches, broken leaves, dust, bloodstains… It looked like a mess at one glance.

Shangguan Wan took a deep breath in, and terror and anxiety still filled her face. “W-what exactly is going on? Is it an earthquake?!”

Mu Qinghe knitted his brows tightly, glanced at the increasingly dark sky, and boomed, “I’m afraid… not! If I didn’t guess wrongly, this should’ve been caused by that ninth-grade fiend…”

Jiang Yucheng followed Mu Qinghe’s line of sight. “What fiend is it? How can something that hasn’t broken through to become a legendary fiend have such formidable strength?”

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen a ninth-grade fiend before. Not talking about others, just Shangguan Yue alone back then had a ninth-grade Nine-Colored Heavenly Pheasant. However, it didn’t seem to be so powerful…

Just one holler, and it could actually cause the ground within miles to crack?!n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Shangguan Wan bit her lips and felt conflicted.

On the one hand, she was quite fearful. On the other hand, she also wanted to go see for herself what kind of fiend it exactly was.

If it’s already so formidable before it breaks through, then… Won’t it be even more unimaginable when it truly becomes a legendary fiend?

Jiang Yucheng unwittingly moved his steps and suddenly felt that he had stepped on something weird beneath his feet.

He looked down. “What is this?”

Moving away the fallen leaves and dust, he saw that he was actually stepping on a thumb-wide… branch?

It turned out to be a rolling leaf fir branch.

Jiang Yucheng heaved a sigh of relief in his heart.

The previous commotion was too huge, and it caused many rolling leaf firs to fall. This was why many of their branches were exposed in the open.

He raised his head to kick it, wanting to kick that branch away. But the moment his feet touched that branch, he saw that it suddenly extended and wrapped around his foot.

Jiang Yucheng knitted his brows and vaguely felt that something was wrong. He lifted his leg to get rid of it, but he realized that the branch wrapped around him even more tightly.

Jiang Yucheng’s face turned cold, and he raised his sword to slash it.

Whoosh!

That branch suddenly hurled and threw Jiang Yucheng toward a deep gully.

“Yucheng!”

“Eldest Young Master!”

The crowd gasped in shock when they saw this scene.

Quite a few people rushed over, wanting to pull Jiang Yucheng back. But after the earlier mess, the crowd wasn’t that close to each other anymore.

In addition, the incident had happened too suddenly. Before they could even take action, Jiang Yucheng’s figure had disappeared within that gully.

“Lieutenant Mu! What exactly is going on?” asked Shangguan Wan angrily.

But before Mu Qinghe could say anything, he suddenly felt something amiss and lowered his head. At some point, branches had tightly wrapped around his feet.

In actual fact, it wasn’t only him. Almost everyone present met with the same predicament simultaneously.

Whoosh!

Whoosh! Whoosh!

In a moment’s time, the rest were gradually thrown into different gullies.

Even Shangguan Wan couldn’t say anything in time before she was directly dragged down by the branch beside her feet.

Very quickly, everyone’s figures disappeared within the forest. Then, the gullies on the ground gradually closed.

The previously torn and rotten rolling leaf firs had quickly recovered their original appearance respectively.

A light wind blew past, and countless fallen leaves gathered together. The Mystic Forest then recovered its previous appearance as if nothing had happened.

Roar!

A frightening and angry roar was heard again.

Black clouds tumbled in the sky, and the entire forest was dark as a faint red mist spread around. Wherever the red mist spread, the leaves would rapidly wilt and then fall.

In no time, the originally lush leaves had all fallen, leaving behind bald trees.

However, everything hadn’t stopped. The red mist continued brewing, and silently, the branches also started to become dry.

Without saying, the trunks started to shrink and quiver intensely.

At first glance, the dehydrated trees under the dark sky in the forest looked like skeletons that were about to pick a fight. It was sinisterly horrifying.

…

Tuan Zi was very fast, and it kept running toward the inside. Every time it ran a distance away, it would still turn around to look at Chu Liuyue to ensure that she was following it before continuing onward.

Chu Liuyue followed behind it closely in this manner. Tuan Zi was still doing okay earlier, but it suddenly became weird after the ground started to crack.

The further in they went, the more Chu Liuyue confirmed her inner guesses. Tuan Zi really wants to bring me somewhere!

Seeing Tuan Zi’s agile figure, Chu Liuyue was confused. Why is Tuan Zi so familiar with the Mystic Forest?

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