Chapter 161 (Start of Book 3) (Patreon)

Out of the poisonous frying pan. Into the polluted fire. Chen Haoran was hurt enough to die three times over and tired enough to sleep through the world ending. His exhaustion seeped into his bones and hung like weights across all his aches and pains. It was because of this that he let himself go when they charged into the Tenth Green Hell. Surely he could be forgiven for taking a moment to collect himself?

As always, it was his careless mistakes that damned him.

He had been warned the Green Hell was a terrible, toxic environment. It wasn’t until the Yellow Dragon was poisoned that he realized he’d underestimated it. Yellow qi sizzled and died where it met green fog. The entire outer layer of the Yellow Dragon was stained a sickly green and the poison sprawled out like branches in its body. The Yellow Dragon roared in frustration. Chen Haoran could feel his qi mutate and twist as the poison infected it, turning into a weapon against him. Becoming so putrid that sensing it was nauseating to the mind. If the Yellow Dragon was not covering them there was no telling what their fate would have been. He could wager a guess however as the thorny branches of poisoned qi reached their gnarled hands toward them.

30-thousand-year-old Stainless Purity Lotus.

A lotus flower bloomed in Chen Haoran’s hand. Pure white light radiated from petals of the same color. As harsh as the White Tyrant’s but in a different way. A saint’s severe halo compared to the Tyrant’s naked blade. It passed through the Yellow Dragon unimpeded and banished death. His poisoned qi was stripped, the miasma pressing them driven back, the dead soil beneath their feet purified. The light kept expanding some 50 feet in all directions before stopping and impossibly a place of peace was created in the middle of Hell.

A heady scent filled Chen Haoran’s senses. Too fresh air mixed with what he could only describe as church incense. The sudden reversal left him even more nauseated than before and he was not the only one. Phelps gagged and Xie Jin’s paled even more as he held in his wracking coughs. Chen Haoran fell to his knees and dropped them. Weakness finally overcoming his limbs. The Yellow Dragon curled protectively around them, staring off into the jungle.

Chen Haoran was thankful for the protection because he truly needed a moment. His bones ached. His chest felt like an elephant was sitting atop it and pain throbbed in his heart and stomach. His meridians had been pushed to their limit and then some. His left hand in particular twitched without pause. It shouldn’t be this way. His regenerative powers and the medicines he took fixed the reality of his wounds but could do nothing for the memory of them. The constant fighting. The near deaths. The consecutive draining of his reserves without break. The body remembered and the mind was all the more burdened for it. As above, so below indeed. Chen Haoran was tired. He wanted nothing more than to wrap himself in a blanket and forget the world in his sleep. He wanted a plush mattress and cold pillows. A drink in easy reach. He wanted time to collect himself after the beating life handed him.

Chen Haoran wanted this. Needed it. But he was not alone.

Priorities

He carefully placed a hand on Xie Jin’s shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” Xie Jin weakly said. He was sickly pale and his qi a candle in the wind. Like it could be snuffed any second. Xie Jin had his own brush with death after all. Chen Haoran’s gaze fell to the bump on his hand where his finger used to be.

And unlike him, Xie Jin didn’t have a ridiculous body to power through it.

Chen Haoran let the thought merge into the background of his head. He brushed a hand down Phelps’s back. The sloth crooned and nuzzled his leg with his snout. Out of all of them, he was fine if a little tired and Chen Haoran was thankful for that.

“I’m sorry,” Xie Jin suddenly said.

Chen Haoran was startled. “For what?”

“The Trial. Fighting the Empire. And now this. It’s all my fault.” Xie Jin dragged lines into the dirt as he clenched his hands. “If I wasn’t so greedy. None of this would have happened.”

Chen Haoran sighed. “Then I can say the same. Don’t take it all on yourself. I chose to follow you. What happened in the Trial is just bad luck.” He handed over the Metal Lily, that lifesaving treasure. “And if it weren’t for you grabbing this from Lu Aotian we would have never escaped.”

“You did all the work. All the fighting. I would have died. We all would have without you. ” Xie Jin pushed the Metal Lily back. “Keep it. You’re the only one who can use it.”

“Not anymore. I used up all my spirit stones getting us away from the Crystal Transformation. I can’t power this thing anymore.” Indeed. Were it not for the Spirit Stones he’d probably be in an even worse state than Lu Aotian had been after using the Metal Lily. The Crystal Transformation treasure required too much qi to use. A price that he wouldn’t be able to pay for a long while.

Xie Jin shook his head. “Even so. Please.”

Chen Haoran conceded and took the treasure. Now was not the time to debate. He reached into his bag and handed over medicines and qi-recovering supplements to Phelps and Xie Jin. These they accepted without complaint and they all silently consumed then and restored their energies.

Around them, the dark jungle of the Green Hell loomed. It had been daytime when they made their escape from the Trial Pyramid but as soon as they had crossed the border it was as if all the light was swallowed up. Even the sky here was green, and the Sun could not be seen even through the few openings in the tree cover. In a way, it was like the environment within the Trial Realms, or more likely the Trial Realm was modeled after the Green Hell. Had it been developed for that purpose? To prepare people to enter the Green Hell itself? If so then it was a poor job because having been in one left Chen Haoran in no way prepared for the other.

The various jungles of Zumulu were defined in part by the trees that grew there. The trees around the borders of Zumulu were dense, choking things that seemed to only exist to make travel difficult. The trees within the Deep Jungle were towering pillars that covered the sky but created a bright home for the lands beneath them. The obscuring shadows of the Basin’s black trees blocked prying eyes from the hidden beauty within. So what did it say about the Green Hell that the trees looked like they would tear Chen Haoran’s flesh and feast on his marrow?

Giant, fiend-like trees loomed over them like devils, shadowed within the green fog. Their branches were akin to grasping talons, plumed with grey leaves. Thick mottled grey-green trunks bled black sap from recesses that from afar gave the appearance of a giant crying blood. There was no order to their growing. The devil trees grew around each other, above each other, in each other, through each other. One tree grew in the middle of the dying remains of another, having seemingly bursted out its trunk. Another bent and grew sideways, spearing straight through another tree and out the other side. Great roots emerged from dead earth and trampled over fallen trees, claiming victory over fallen enemies. More roots strangled trees from above, coming from a horizontal tree that had been lifted into the air by another rising under it. Black sap ran in rivulets where clawed branches carved into it but the bloody giant seemed intent on not going gently.

Wild. That was the only way Chen Haoran could describe it. Wild and vicious. This was the environment of the Tenth Green Hell. That wasn’t what made him uncomfortable, however. It was the quiet. Despite the violent scene in front of him the jungle was quieter than a grave. There was no roar of beasts, no chirping birds, or singing insects. No buzz, wail, screams, or cries. Not even the sound of wind whistling. Here in the Green Hell, all life in Zumulu went silent.

Chen Haoran nervously scanned the underbrush. Quiet was good for people, not for the world. He stretched out his sense and found nothing. He could individually count all the leaves of all the trees around him but he could not find a single bug or worm. No nests or lizards or anything that might call this place home. Unnerved he reached out for the Yellow Dragon, connecting their vision. What he found did not help him. All he could see was sickly green. No ebbs or flows of energy. Just a single motionless wall. He couldn’t even make out the shape of the trees he knew to be in front of him. The Yellow Dragon was blind here.

“For all my wanderlust I never thought there’d be a day where I would ever step into the Tenth Green Hell,” Xie Jin said. He looked sad, defeated even as he observed the jungle. Though when his gaze fell on the Stainless Purity Lotus there was a touch of wonder in his eyes. “I was expecting to die immediately with you, brother, and once again against all odds you have a way to save us. The Lotus we gave you must have seemed like a joke.”

“It wasn’t,” Chen Haoran forcefully said. “It was not a joke. Nothing I received from you and your family was.”

Xie Jin was taken aback but soon smiled. It wasn’t a happy one. “Thank you, Brother Chen. For everything. Of all my regrets, meeting you is not one.”

Chen Haoran punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t talk like that. You make it sound like this is the end.”

“This is the Tenth Green Hell, brother.”

“And here we are. Alive in it. And we’re going to get out alive too. We didn’t survive all that bullshit just to die here.” Chen Haoran breathed deeply and forced himself up. “Now come on. I want to get further away in case the Garrison’s Crystal Transformation decides to risk following us. Then we can figure out to get away from here.”

Xie Jin shook his head. “You don’t understand. We can’t get out of here. No one would risk following us and getting trapped in here.”

Dread gripped Chen Haoran’s heart. “What do you mean?”

Xie Jin smiled that damned sad smile of his. “It wouldn’t be called hell if it were easy to leave.”

“We’re only at the edge,” Chen Haoran said. “We can wait here for the Garrison to leave and walk back out.”

“Brother Chen, can you see the way we came?”

Chen Haoran whirled around. Behind them was the valley that led to the Trial Pyramid. He had only gone straight when he dashed into the Green Hell and they hadn’t even gone that far in.

So why couldn’t he see anything? Why did his sense not cover the distance?

“Xie Jin what the hell is going on?” Chen Haoran’s voice was tight. His hand twitched for his sword.

“The Tenth Green Hell is like a special Secret Realm or a natural Bewildering Formation. The specifics and the principle aren’t clear and don’t matter. The fact is that this hell doesn’t spit out its visitors easily. We could retrace our steps exactly and only go deeper into the jungle.”

“But people have escaped here before. You told me all about them. How did they do it?”

“For the few famous escapes, there are countless more who were buried here forever.” Xie Jin shrugged. “And of those who escaped they are one and all some of the strongest cultivators in Zumulu’s history. All we know is what they deigned to share and what they shared wasn’t everything. The powerful are tight-lipped like that.”

Chen Haoran pressed a hand to his forehead. The burst of energy he used to stand up faded and his knees sank to the ground. No escape? Was that it? “There must be something?”

“The only thing all the stories have in common is that they were lost before they finally found a way out. Some took months. Others took years. The Sunset Emperor came and left in a week.” Xie Jin did not look at him. “I’ve never heard of Liquid Meridians making it out.”

Phelps softly chirped, raising his arms and wrapping them around Chen Haoran’s waist but he couldn’t bring himself to pick the sloth up. He did move one of Phelps’s arms higher, however, to keep access to his storage bag clear. It was a move made out of instinct rather than any real serious need.

He paused, staring at his storage bag. A natural bewildering formation he said? Then he yanked it open and pulled out the golden compass Patriarch Qi had traded his life for. “Xie Jin what about this? It’s a Formation Compass. You said the Green Hell is like a Formation right? Can we use this?”

Xie Jin looked at him in surprise. “Brother Chen you know how to use Formations?”

“Well no, this was a payment,” Chen Haoran awkwardly replied. “Do I need to?”

Xie Jin helplessly laughed. “To use a specialist’s tools yes. I’m no Formation Expert either.”

Unconvinced, Chen Haoran fed qi into the compass, ignoring the tinge of discomfort in his strained meridians. The face of the compass separated and unfurled like flower petals, revealing a single needle inside with various symbols and celestial phenomena etched into the body of the compass. He tried using his qi to divine its operation but he managed to do was make the needle spin endlessly.

He dropped it. “Fuck.”

Chen Haoran’s mind furiously raced and he went over everything he knew about the Green Hell. It wasn’t much admittedly. It was one of those places everyone talked about but didn’t go into detail about. What did he know? It was dangerous. Hell Bugs came from here. Gu returned here after their shaman’s deaths. The three deadliest poisons in Zumulu’s history were brought out from here….

“Xie Jin,” Chen Haoran slowly said. “When you told me about the Three Killers you said samples had been brought back. But who did it? One guy for all three? Multiple?”

Xie Jin’s face scrunched up in thought. “There was one guy notorious for bringing out Prince Killer and using it to start a civil war. I think he was the first to use it? Prince Killer was the most commonly used of the three. It was a team that brought out Nature’s Exile and Trial of the Heart and they became famous for using them on each other. I can’t remember any others who were said to have brought them out but there were a couple more incidents across the centuries until all three were used on the Sunset Emperor during the war.”

Chen Haoran drummed his fingers across Phelps’s head. An idea blooming in his mind. “So what you’re saying is multiple people brought out the same three poisons? People who didn’t enter the Green Hell at the same place?”

“I suppose that could be the case?” Xie Jin frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“How is it possible that in this big ass jungle that no one talks about, people other than the original discoverers could find and bring out more samples of the Three Killers? They can’t be that common, even for this place. And the odds of them being randomly stumbled across are even lower….” He locked eyes with Xie Jin. “Unless there was a place they all went to and got them from.”

Xie Jin paused and Chen Haoran could see the gears turning behind his eyes. “They could have shared the source. Or sold it. The strong walk in completely different circles than us, the things they trade we could break our heads for but never acquire.”

“They’re cultivators,” Chen Haoran pointed out.  “In what world do they share the source of their deadly incurable poison?”

“It’s the Tenth Green Hell, only the brave or the foolish would come here.”

“But people have come here. And people have left. If it were me with such a dangerous weapon I wouldn’t admit it at all on the off chance someone could do what I did.”

“It could have been reserves from the original stock,” Xie Jin countered. “Not everyone who’s used the Three Killers has been to the Green Hell. The source might not have been shared but the poisons themselves certainly were.”

“By the original users? Those same guys who used them to cause a lot of violence and presumably died violent deaths. Those guys left reserves for other people to use?”

“Brother Chen you’re making a lot of assumptions here based on nothing but stories.”

He was. He so very much was. But what else did they have, did he have, but this?

“So what?” Chen Haoran bit out. “If I’m wrong I’m wrong and we die. If I’m right? We might have a way to leave. There’s got to be some trick to it or a way to figure it out in here.” He stood up again, with feeling this time, and swung Phelps onto his back. “I don’t intend to be fertilizer for these ugly ass trees or turned into bug crap. Not after all the bullshit we went through to survive.” He held out his hand to Xie Jin. “Are you with me?”

Xie Jin’s expression firmed and he grabbed Chen Haoran’s hand without hesitation. “Always brother.”

“Let’s blow this joint then.”