As a spirit tree, Ashlock had always been able to see a few meters around his body, including his roots. However, his view range was significantly increased with the {Eye of the Tree God} skill and his escalating cultivation. Though one thing had always been a constant. His inability to see through things. Which unfortunately included rock, making the vision from his roots rather pointless and boring. Apart from the occasional deposit of silvery spirit stone ore, there was nothing but darkness and dull grey stone.
But that had changed. Ashlock could feel a dull pain, a breeze, and the faintest sensation of warmth.
His very deepest root was being gnawed on, thousands of meters down into the mountain, below ground level. He had encountered a monster of some kind. Now that he focused on it, the pain was quite intense. It felt like knives were being stabbed into his toe—which wasn't far from the truth.
"Agh. Holy shit, this is fucking painful!" Ashlock internally grimaced as he came root to face with a monster. All he could see was the inside of its gullet and yellowing teeth chomping on his root as if it were a dog to a bone.
Ignoring the pain and moving his view up a bit to where the root first broke into the tunnel, Ashlock could now see the creature. It was a grey-furred rat with beady eyes perched on its hind legs next to a mine cart, and unless the rusted minecart was fun-sized, this rat was larger than a person. "First Larry, and now this rat. Can't anything be normal-sized?"
With his root already partway inside the monster and the unbearable pain, Ashlock decided to kill it. He tried to cast {Devour}, but the skill wouldn't activate. So he tried again, but still nothing. "Huh? Does my {Devour} skill not work far away from my trunk?"
The pain was getting intense the more he focused on it, so Ashlock decided to try burning it alive with his lilac Qi. His Soul Core hummed thousands of meters above, and Qi rocketed down the root. The silvery spirit stone ore glowed as the Qi passed, giving it a boost, but with his Soul Fire cultivation, sending Qi throughout his body had become far more efficient.
"Take that, you fucker." Ashlock felt like a god passing judgment upon a foolish bug.
The rat seemed to sense something was coming a second too late—lilac flames burst from the root, and the rat exploded in a fiery blaze of superheated guts. Ashlock wasn't sure why, but his spatial Qi seemed very effective at causing things to explode.
The blast echoed through the cramped mineshaft and made the walls tremble—blood and guts painted the walls, and the rusted minecart was blown off its wheels and lay tipped on its side off the makeshift rails. There were random bits of wood to make the rails somewhat even, and clear sections weren't connected properly.
With the pain gone, Ashlock could finally think and take time to observe the new area.
"So this is what the inside of a spirit stone mine looks like." Ashlock assumed that was its original purpose. He hadn't seen any evidence thus far of cultivators mining for coal or iron, and Ashlock hadn't come across anything other than spirit stones during his descent through the mountain.
Seeing a minecart in this world felt odd, but perhaps inventing a railway system was inevitable for any humanoid race wishing to transport many things over a predefined distance. Did other cities in this world have a metro system? Maybe trams? It was a funny thought, but the mortals of this world did need a way to get around, even with their increased strength and endurance due to Qi.
If a railway could exist down here, Ashlock found it hard to believe it never crossed the mind of anyone to put them in cities. "So why wasn't a railway constructed on the staircase up to the Ravenborne peak to carry building materials?"
Ashlock had watched ordinary mortals lug stones up the mountain to construct the palace. "Is iron expensive in this world? Or the cultivators just like to see the mortals struggle... Do the mortals have spatial rings?" Ashlock hummed, "Or... is it because of the beast tides? It would be rather silly to waste so much iron on infrastructure that will be left behind after a few decades—"
A weird scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard broke Ashlock from his wandering thoughts.
Searching for the source of the sound, Ashlock saw a snout emerge from the tunnel's darkness... and then another and another. Finally, an entire horde of man-sized rats crept out of the dark and looked around with their beady eyes. They sniffed the stale air as if trying to locate the predator that had obliterated one of their brethren.
Ashlock was naturally detached from the situation. Unlike human cultivators with their silly flesh prisons that could be torn apart limb from limb by a pack of famished man-sized rats, he was not in danger nor had any real stakes in the events. He was a mountain-spanning tree, with his main body a Mount Everest amount of rock away.
But he finally had direct access to a potential hunting ground with monsters that would hopefully provide more credits than birds. So what bothered him was how he could profit from this discovery.
Blowing up rats with his Qi in an abandoned mine was great and all, but if it didn't net him any sacrificial credits as his {Devour} skill had a limited range, it was all for naught and a pointless waste of Qi.
"My roots are wide enough now for someone to crawl through, so I could transport pieces of the rats up to my trunk and then cast {Devour} for credits." The ability to transport things through his roots via a slow-moving sap was already part of his {Deep Roots} skill. His spiritual gaze lingered on the blood-stained walls of the mine, "But I will need to limit the amount of Qi I use as the corpse needs to be more than a paste on the wall."
The rats approached the scene, and once they mutually confirmed there was no threat, they scampered over each other to lick the walls and slurp up any bits of organs they could find.
Unfortunately, none of them paid much attention to the dangling root—a slight issue as his homebrewed Qi attack, which involved setting himself on fire with his spatial Qi, had a limited range of zero meters.
Ashlock made his root sway around slightly, the most movement he had ever exhibited since he was reborn. None of the rats cared. "Maybe once they finish their meal, they will be interested?"
Time passed, and the rats left after cleaning every drop of blood from the walls. Not one of them even gave a passing glance at the root.
"Alright, back to the drawing board. My roots grow fast but far too slow to explore the cavern or chase down the rats. My {Devour} has a limited range... what about {Root Puppet}? Assuming it doesn't have a limited range like {Devour}, I could take over a rat corpse, draw the others into a fight and then blow it up to kill them all. The only issue is I need a corpse..."
If the pain hadn't been so excruciating, like being stabbed in the foot with a knife, Ashlock might have considered this plan earlier instead of vaporizing the rat instantly. "It's okay. I just need to get a corpse somehow. Should I call Larry down here?"
Ashlock looked at how narrow the tunnels were and concluded Larry, with his wide body and titanic size, wouldn't fit down here even if he shrunk by half. "So I need to come up with a solution myself."
Ashlock skimmed his list of skills.
[Demonic Spirit Tree (Age: 9)]
[Soul Fire: 3rd Stage]
[Soul Core: Amethyst (Spatial)]
[Summons...]
{Ashen Prince: Larry [B]}
[Skills…]
{Eye of the Tree God [A]}
{Deep Roots [A]}
{Magic Mushroom Production [A]}
{Language of the World [B]}
{Lightning Qi Protection [B]}
{Root Puppet [B]}
{Qi Fruit Production [B]}
{Transpiration of Heaven and Earth [C]}
{Devour [C]}
{Hibernate [C]}
{Fire Qi Resistance [C]}
{Basic Poison Resistance [F]}
Ashlock groaned as he realized the only skill that could help him here. "It just had to be fucking mushrooms, didn't it? So, in a world of mountain-splitting sword attacks and Dao manipulation, I will defeat this newfound foe with the power of magic mushrooms! How heroic..."
It was silly but perfect for the situation. Ashlock's mushrooms could grow anywhere his roots were, and the dangling root from the ceiling of a mineshaft was no different.
Summoning the menu, he scrolled through the hundreds of options. "I don't want to give the rats divine inspiration nor poison them. If anything, I want to make the tastiest and most fragrant mushroom of all time."
Making a mushroom that released poisonous spores would be a waste of Qi when he could make a cheap and tasty one and bait the rats to try and eat the mushroom from the harmless root. Ashlock hit the create button after also adding a slight glowing effect for maximum exposure.
In real-time, he watched white dots like warts appear all over the black root, and he also commanded his root to slowly continue into the tunnel and grow along the walls.
"These rats will be like a moth to a flame."
***
"Diana. Was this always here?" Stella paused in her tracks. Red Vine peak loomed ahead, dominating the skyline with its majesty. A poorly maintained dirt path overgrown with weeds winded through a lush forest of evergreen trees surrounding its base.
The overwhelming amount of green made the scarlet-leaved tree at the forest entrance stand out like a sore thumb.
"Oh, by the immortal lords, it's multiplying." Diana deadpanned at the tree, which seemed almost identical to Ashlock. She then rubbed her templed and sighed, "Didn't we leave for half a year? What nonsense has that tree got up to now."
Stella ignored Diana and rushed toward the tree with childlike curiosity. "Ash, is that you!" She called as she approached its trunk. The soil around the small tree had an acidic smell, red berries the size of one's thumb danged from its branches in clusters, and a half-dissolved maggot-infested corpse of a small rodent lay near its trunk.
Scrunching up her nose, Stella placed a hand on the tree's bark and tried to feel for the presence of Qi. Her eyes lit up when she felt the slightest tingle, but it was far below Ash's cultivation level.
Diana came up beside Stella and also placed a hand on the trunk. Then, a moment later, she stepped back and shrugged, "Seems like an average demonic sapling to me. Not cultivated much yet, likely only consumed a few corpses."
Stella also stepped away with a frown, the tingling sensation of Qi leaving her fingertips. "Mhm, just a random demonic tree, then?"
"Perhaps. I honestly have no clue. Never seen a demonic tree grow around here as they are usually chopped down." Diana tapped her chin as she looked around, "We can just ask Ashlock about it when we get back."
Stella nodded, and the two continued down the path.
Oblivious to the monster lurking overhead and watching their every move.
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