Gwendolyn stood beside him. The icy divine radiance around favonovel.com body stirred softly, forming a thin radiant barrier that kept the surrounding fog shut out.
She stared into the thick, almost solid mist in front of them, and favonovel.com brows drew tighter. “How do we get through? The fog’s too thick. Spirit sense can’t penetrate it at all, and those threads of spiritual force are strange.”
Jared closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath. The chaotic force inside favonovel.com began to move, slow and steady. It flowed along his meridians, spread outward, and turned into an invisible purple stream that reached into the fog ahead.
Chaotic force was the primal power born when the world first opened. It contained all things, and it restrained every kind of spiritual power.
The moment those threads, woven from wood-aspected spiritual power, touched the chaotic force, they reacted like ice thrown under a blazing sun. They melted away in complete silence, leaving behind not even the faintest trace.
A moment later, with the chaotic force supporting it, Jared’s spirit sense finally pierced the dense fog and reached the scene hidden in its depths. He sensed it clearly. Deep inside the fog lay countless paths, tangled and crossing over one another.
Some led to traps bristling with spikes. Some ended in dead paths like bottomless chasms. Others wound toward swamps steeped in deadly poison. Only one path was narrow and real, winding forward into the depths of the Shrouded Wood. That was the only correct path through the Shrouded Wood.
Jared slowly opened his eyes. A flash of purple divine radiance slipped through his gaze as favonovel.com turned to Gwendolyn and said, “Stay with me. Don’t stray from my path.”
“No matter what you see, don’t touch the mist around you.” Jared’s warning came low and firm.
Gwendolyn gave a small nod and stayed tight behind Jared. The ice-blue radiant barrier around favonovel.com strengthened again as favonovel.com kept watch on every shift in the fog around them.
The instant Jared and Gwendolyn stepped into the Shrouded Wood, the world seemed to change color.
What had been a fairly bright sky dimmed all at once. The heavy mist didn’t close in little by little. It came like a rising tide, surging at them from every direction. In the blink of an eye, it swallowed both of them whole.
The fog was so thick it almost felt solid, pressed against the skin cold and slick. It was like countless invisible hands brushing over them, testing them, and at the same time sending a wordless warning.
A warning not to push forward carelessly!
The chaotic force inside Jared began moving on its own, and the violet barrier spread out in an instant, covering both favonovel.com and Gwendolyn.
The moment that dense mist touched the violet barrier, sharp sizzling sounds burst out, as if the fog were being seared by blazing fire. It melted away fast, turning into thin strands of spiritual essence that were drawn straight into the chaotic force.
Gwendolyn didn’t stand idle either. Ice-blue divine radiance raced across the surface of favonovel.com body. Any mist that tried to slip past the violet barrier and creep closer to them was frozen into fine shards of ice crystal.
The ice crystal gave off crisp clinking sounds as they dropped.
But before they could even reach the ground, fresh waves of mist swallowed them completely and erased them from sight.
“The will of the forest is stronger than we thought,” Gwendolyn spoke under favonovel.com breath, favonovel.com voice drawn tight.
“It’s watching us. Measuring whether we’re good or evil. Testing how strong we are,” Jared said.
She could feel it clearly. The wood-aspected awareness hidden inside the thick fog had grown more active than before. It was as if it had moved in close to study them, weighing whether they were qualified to set foot in the territory of the Sylvan Kin.
“Stay close to me. Don’t let your attention drift.” Jared’s voice stayed even, but there was a weight in it that left no room to argue.
His spirit sense remained drawn tight the whole time. His chaotic force turned into an invisible snake and carved a narrow passage through the dense fog.
On both sides of the passage, the fog kept rolling and surging as if it were alive, pressing inward without pause. It was trying to seal them inside. But the suppressing effect of the chaotic force was simply too overbearing.
The threads woven from wood-aspected spiritual power dissolved the instant they touched the purple light of chaos. They couldn’t get anywhere near the two of them.
The two of them moved forward carefully along the passage Jared had opened.
As they went deeper, the fog grew thicker and thicker, visibility dropped lower and lower, and the wood-aspected spiritual essence in the air turned heavier by the moment. There was even a faint scent of grass and trees in the air, mixed with a trace of rot that came and went. That was the sign of a spirit vein beginning to rot, only the dense fog covered it well enough that it wasn’t obvious yet.
Up ahead, Jared’s chaotic force kept probing the way forward, steering them around one trap after another hidden in the fog.
Some traps were sharp tree roots that suddenly burst out of the ground. Those roots were hard as iron, glimmering with a dim green light. The instant someone touched one, it would coil up around them and lock them down tight.
Some traps were poisonous mushrooms disguised as the great black stone. They looked ordinary, but they gave off a colorless, odorless poison. Breathe in even a trace of that toxic gas, and the whole body would go numb while cultivation scattered away.
And some traps were poisonous spores hanging in the air, invisible to the naked eye. Those spores drifted through the thick fog. The instant they touched a cultivator’s skin, they burrowed into the body at once, gnawing through the meridians before anyone could guard against them.
Luckily, Jared’s chaotic force restrained every kind of power. Those traps never even got close to them before the purple light of chaos swallowed them whole. They broke apart into wisps of spiritual essence and were drawn straight into Jared. Not only did they fail to harm either of them, they ended up feeding the chaotic force inside his body instead.
Gwendolyn stayed right behind Jared, favonovel.com eyes moving over everything around them. Every so often, favonovel.com struck too, using the Frost God’s power to freeze whatever had slipped through and make sure the two of them stayed secure.
Like that, the two of them pushed forward through the fog for about the time it took an incense stick to burn.
Just when it started to seem like they might keep advancing this smoothly, a faint disturbance suddenly came from up ahead. It sounded like something moving fast, with the soft rustle of branches and leaves scraping together. Along with it came several weak yet tightly condensed auras, rushing toward them.
Jared stopped on the spot. His spirit sense spread out in a sudden surge and locked onto those auras in an instant.
There were five of them, all between the fourth and fifth tiers of the True Immortal Realm.
Their auras were condensed and steady, heavy with wood-aspected spiritual essence, blending perfectly with the aura of the forest.
Without careful sensing, there was no way to detect them at all. And those auras carried clear wariness and hostility. They were obviously coming straight for them.
“Someone’s coming. People from the Sylvan Kin…” Jared spoke to Gwendolyn in a low voice, a note of caution under the calm. “Their cultivation isn’t high, but they’re well hidden. Most likely one of the Sylvan Kin’s patrols, guarding this Shrouded Wood and keeping outsiders from forcing their way in.”
Gwendolyn gave a small nod. The icy divine radiance around favonovel.com turned sharp in an instant as favonovel.com readied herself for a fight. “Want me to move in and subdue them?”
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