Chapter 13 Undead Root

The white-robed man pierced by the long spear wasn't dead yet, but with his lungs and spine crushed, he naturally couldn't speak. Su Zhou didn't have the energy to listen anyway. He merely scanned the two 'demon soldiers' before him, who had pushed their spiritual power to the absolute limit, causing the blood vessels on their faces to bulge.

Demon soldiers, worthy of the name 'demon'. At first, when they hadn't fully activated their power, they were just like ordinary humans. But once they pushed their power to the limit, the faces and hands that weren't covered by clothing instantly filled with woody, cyan veins like tree roots. These roots pulsed with the rapid surging of the demon soldiers' flesh, blood, and spiritual energy, revealing an inhuman, alien quality.

These two demon soldiers were fearless of death, or perhaps they knew they couldn't escape. Without a word, the one on the left raised a crossbow and fired an arrow, then drew a curved blade from his waist and charged forward, slashing at Su Zhou's neck. The one on the right, like a beast, crouched low and leaped forward, attacking Su Zhou's knees and ankles with an armor-piercing cone.

Even when possessed by the Undying Root, people could still distinguish between beauty and ugliness. The demon soldier on the left with the blade had quite handsome features, the type that wouldn't be out of place as a guard in front of a royal palace. The one on the right was more ordinary, his face covered in tree roots that actually obscured his ugliness.

But soon, neither of them would need to worry about their appearance: Su Zhou swung his spear like a club, using the first demon soldier's body as a weapon, smashing the left demon soldier's entire head into a concave shape. Eyes, teeth, and blood splattered everywhere, even reaching the body of the demon soldier on the right.

Taking advantage of his companion's head being smashed, the demon soldier on the right thrust his armor-piercing cone at Su Zhou's knee with all his might, then prepared to retreat—he couldn't win in a fight, so he could only try to disable the other party and then make a quick escape.

The plan was quite good, but it ran into problems from the very beginning.

Su Zhou gathered spiritual power in his knee, the triangular spirit patterns layering upon each other. He simply lifted his knee and thrust it forward, and the demon soldier's armor-piercing cone not only failed to pierce his skin, but was instead sent back even faster than it had been thrust.

Before the demon soldier could react, the cone pierced through his throat backwards, and Su Zhou grabbed his head, twisting it off as easily as a bottle cap.

The scene was extremely bloody, warm blood mixed with cyan tree sap splattering and flowing across the snow. In a matter of seconds, the three white-robed demon soldiers had lost all combat power.

In short, when Su Zhou returned to the small village with two mostly intact heads and one not so much, all with cyan roots dangling from their necks, the escort team looked at him as if he were a monster—or rather, some kind of mysterious being.

"This guy, when he was fighting us, he was holding back so much?!"

"These guys' heads have been pulled off, but they don't seem to be dead—is this cyan root the Undying Root? It's quite tough."

Su Zhou threw the three heads on the ground, where they rolled a few times on the frozen earth. It was clear that the demon soldiers were indeed not dead; their necks were even slowly regenerating, stopping the bleeding.

"...After being implanted with the Undying Root, people are no longer people, but demonic creatures."

Mo Ganxiu stepped out from the stunned crowd. As the eldest, he was probably used to seeing these undead monsters, whose mouths were still opening and closing even without a body, seemingly begging for mercy or cursing.

The old man pulled out a rather exquisite rectangular bronze box from his waist, then pressed the mechanism on it. Immediately, a jet of flame shot out from the nozzle at the front of the box, scorching the cyan Undying Root and quickly turning it to charcoal.

--They even have such ingenious clockwork devices? That's right, the Zheng Dynasty here has lasted for over five hundred years, and if world history is purely based on time, this is a relatively modern age.

As Su Zhou watched with interest, Mo Ganxiu explained softly, "It's fortunate that Young Swordsman Su pulled out the Undying Root. If you had only brought back a head, we would have to trouble you to go back for another trip later—as long as the Undying Root is implanted, even if the head is crushed into pieces, as long as it's taken back with the roots and placed in blood and spiritual liquid, the roots can regenerate into that person, and they'll even have the memories they had before death."

"After defeating a demon soldier, you need to use fire or thunder methods to scorch the roots, or cut them into tiny pieces, to completely sever their immortality—but cutting them into tiny pieces is too much trouble. We don't have time to do that on the battlefield, so we all carry portable Vermillion Bird Boxes with us to completely kill these undying demon soldiers."

"They don't actually need heads." At this time, the long-haired woman who was knowledgeable about medicine, a swordswoman named Liu Xizhao, also stepped forward. Without any hesitation, she picked up the head that Su Zhou had smashed to pieces, using her inner strength to pry open the deformed skull and show Su Zhou the inside.

It was a mass of tangled tree roots, soaked in cyan-white sap. At first glance, it really looked a bit like brain matter.

Zhou Buyi also stepped forward, looking at the demon soldier's head on the ground, its mouth still opening and closing, with a blank expression. He shook his head and said, "Demon soldiers don't need food; they only need to drink water and bask in the sun to maintain basic activity—but if they want to fight or recover from injuries, they need to absorb flesh and blood."

"The Tai Bai Mountains are snowbound, making prey hard to find. Even if they find a few, they are far inferior to humans… They can't find other sources of blood."

"So, is it the Undying Root that's alive, or the original demon soldier?!"

Even Su Zhou couldn't help but feel a chill down his spine when he saw this scene, along with a strong sense of disgust—was this what it was like to be implanted with the Undying Root? The entire body was occupied by the roots of the divine tree, it was less like implanting bloodline and more like being controlled by an Undying Root that possessed a regenerating corpse!

"Don't think too much, Su Zhou. This world has souls. The souls of these demon soldiers are transferred in the 'ritual', or rather, 'possessed' by the divine tree root. It is true that the Undying Root occupies and controls their original bodies, but the person is still the same person, if you count it by soul."

"Although it looks creepy, it's not as exaggerated as you think… Your thinking is still constrained by your original world without spiritual energy."

Yala's words freed Su Zhou from the strong sense of revulsion. After shaking his head and calming down, he understood the process of creating demon soldiers—through a ritual, the souls of people are transferred to the divine tree bloodline, which is the Undying Root, and then the Undying Root is used to control and erode their own body that has become an empty shell.

In this way, besides the fact that they themselves have become almost immortal descendants of the Divine Tree, their physical damage is just a 'severely damaged hull'. To put it simply, demon soldiers are all pilots controlling flesh and blood mecha. Their bodies injuries are simply robots that need to consume flesh and blood resources to repair, so they can recklessly use intense spiritual power circulation methods that are almost demonic, unleashing strength greater than their own.

Of course, that doesn't prevent Su Zhou from smashing their heads with a single spear strike.

At this point, at least no one in the escort team thought that Su Zhou was on the side of the An Dynasty—although demon soldiers are called soldiers, they are essentially elite troops that have undergone mysterious rituals and had the Undying Root implanted. The ones that remain now are basically battle-hardened veterans who have been fighting the Righteous Army for decades, and they are extremely precious.

To use the lives of three demon soldiers in a self-inflicted wound scheme with an outrageously low success rate?

The Demon Emperor is not an idiot, and even if he is, his strategists and counselors are not.

"Alas, it's not just them."

With a sigh, Mo Ganxiu, who had completely burned a demon soldier to death, stood up. He raised his hand, rolled up his sleeve, and showed his withered arm. Su Zhou turned his head to look, and was shocked—because there were some cyan leaf-colored veins spreading on Mo Ganxiu's arm!

"Decades ago, tens of millions of people died because of the Demon Emperor's tyranny. Their flesh, blood, and souls were absorbed by the divine tree, and the power of the divine tree completely permeated this land."

Seeing Su Zhou's extremely genuine and undisguised expression of surprise, Mo Ganxiu confirmed again that this guy really didn't know anything about this. The old man pulled back his sleeve, looked at the demon soldier's corpse on the ground, and shook his head, "The longer you stay on the front lines, the easier it is to be eroded by the wood energy and grow these wood roots. I don't know martial arts, and I only build some equipment in the rear, and I'm already like this…"

"This is, Familiarization…"

In his heart, Su Zhou couldn't say anything. He just felt again the terror of the Great Existence. According to Yala, the Banyan Undying Tree was just a remnant of the 'Tree of the Great Path' that had not yet awakened, yet it could affect the entire world, causing people all over the world to gradually transform into its own familiars, whether they wanted to or not…

This kind of power… must be eradicated!

In the silence, the team set off again, but this time, Su Zhou carried three heads with dangling wooden roots on his waist, and in the original mountain wooden house, a temporarily excavated pit buried all the dead ordinary people.

There was nothing else Su Zhou could do for them. He could only kill a few more demon soldiers and strengthen his determination to destroy the An Dynasty and the Divine Tree.

The long trek was tedious, and Su Zhou didn't find any other demon soldiers along the way.

Just as the Tai Bai Volcano rumbled once again, Zhou Buyi, who was leading the way in the front, breathed a long sigh and stopped tiredly.

"We're here. That's where the Divine Weapons are forged."

He raised his hand and pointed to a gap in a mountain peak not far away, a recessed saddle.

Su Zhou concentrated and looked.

Then, he saw—a simple but complete stone fortress located not far from the Tai Bai Volcano.