In a woods-turned-jungle a few kilometers away from the top-grade spirit stone mine, a great battle erupted.
The Master and his four henchmen tried with all their might to open a pathway for their escape, but even with their trump cards being used one after another, whether they were martial skills, spirit artifacts, or alchemy products, they failed to contend with the might of Lilian's living jungle.
Hundreds of Blooming Stage Demonic Plants weren't something that a few Core Formation Realm cultivators could compete with, especially when all of them were working together like a single entity. Even Gin, who was considered a great advisor by the Master, severely underestimated the might of Demonic Plants working together.
If he had known earlier, he would have advised the Master to just let themselves be captured and think of an escape plan later. But unfortunately, how could he have known that? All the Demonic Plants working together was unprecedented, never been heard of. Sure, a few of the same species would work together, but not different species.
In the end, the Master's group failed miserably. Defeated by the Demonic Plants' living jungle controlled by Lilian. They all died without a complete body.
Some time later, the dense jungle receded, returning to an ordinary stretch of woods once more. Beneath it, inside a spacious tunnel she had carved out, Tamina silently observed as the Demonic Plants returned to Lilian one by one.
The shock and astonishment on her face were beyond words. She had already thought Leyvi and Anda were abnormally gifted, but she was wrong. There was another one, perhaps even more extraordinary.
Where did she find so many Demonic Plants? How could she possibly control them all at once? What kind of power is this? Are all members of the Leyan Family this abnormal?
Tamina's mind was flooded with questions, but she kept them to herself. Deep down, she had a premonition that the Leyan Family would one day become famous across the world. Her decision to have Dastan establish future cooperation with Anda felt more and more like a wise investment that would bring immense benefits.
Meanwhile, above ground, the other ladies who had sensed the commotion caused by the battle finally arrived. Valenia, Ava, and Cempaka stepped into the woods, only to find the fight already over.
"They're already dead? Madam Lilian handled them on her own?" Valenia asked in surprise, gazing at the mangled remains scattered across the clearing.
Ava, standing beside her, was equally shocked. She found it hard to believe Lilian had done this alone. Judging by the sheer scale of destruction across the battlefield, Ava knew that even she wouldn't have been able to defeat them all by herself.
The Lilian that Ava knew was always cheerful and utterly obsessed with gardening, so much so that Sayu had to be assigned just to make sure she didn't neglect her cultivation entirely. And whenever she needed something from Leyvi, Lilian would shamelessly use her outrageous melons to get her way, even though Leyvi would've probably granted her request without the need for such tactics anyway.
"Is this why that panda brought her to this Mystic Realm?" Ava muttered under her breath as she crouched to inspect the remains scattered across the ground.
Behind her and Valenia, Cempaka stood silently as usual, her expression as unreadable as ever.
"Hm? Something's wrong…" Ava suddenly frowned.
As a body cultivator, she was intimately familiar with the state of the human body after death. After her recent progress in understanding human anatomy down to the cellular level, she noticed something that shouldn't have been possible. She noticed that certain cells that should have already deteriorated were still… active.
"I might be overthinking, but we should get rid of the remains too," Ava said cautiously.
But the moment the words left her lips, all the body pieces, large and small, began twitching, wriggling, and sliding across the ground.
"WHAT??" Valenia and Ava exclaimed in unison, their eyes widening in disbelief.
The scattered remains of the Master's group began to quiver, each fragment pulsing with unnatural vitality at the cellular level. Microscopic tendrils of essence energy wove through the gore, cells multiplying and fusing seamlessly, knitting together with eerie precision. Blood and tissue flowed like liquid, converging into a single point on the blood-soaked earth.
Ava and Valenia froze, their shock palpable as the mass coalesced. Muscle fibers aligning perfectly, skin forming smooth and unblemished, bones crystallizing into place with faint, wet pops. In moments, a naked man stood before them, his body flawless, as if sculpted anew, his veins subtly glowing with residual essence power. His eyes burned with venomous hatred.
"Hmph! The stupid cage is finally gone!" he spat, his voice low and furious. "Fuck! I swear I'll get my revenge!"
Before anyone could react, he activated a glowing emergency escape spirit artifact, a fist-sized orb clutched in his hand. It flared with blinding light, enveloping him in a massive, shimmering sphere. With a deafening whoosh, the orb rocketed into the sky, launching him far beyond the woods in an instant, leaving only a trail of displaced air and the stench of blood and flesh.
Ava blinked, snapping out of her shock. "He's not dead… that guy regenerated… but how?"
The entire scene was so grotesquely unnatural that Ava's mind struggled to comprehend it. Even cultivators at the Nascent Soul or Soul Formation Realm couldn't possibly reconstruct their physical bodies from mere scraps of flesh. And not only that, he even used the remains of others' bodies to recreate his. How was this even possible?
Valenia was no different, silent, wide-eyed, and utterly shaken by the event she saw. Even Cempaka, whose expression rarely changed, briefly showed a flicker of disbelief before her face returned to its usual blank calm.
Several minutes passed in uneasy silence before Valenia finally spoke, turning toward Ava. "Ava, his face. You saw it clearly, right?"
Ava furrowed her brow, trying to recall. "Hmm… I think I've seen him somewhere before, but I can't remember who."
"I know him," Valenia said, her tone steady but cold. "In fact, Big Madam particularly hates this guy."
"Eh? Who?" Ava asked, curiosity piqued.
"Do you remember the Alchemy Competition? He was the alchemist who placed fourth—Ori Oregano."
Ava's eyes widened slightly in realization. "Oh, right. It was him. I remember now. Does this mean he used an alchemy product to revive like that?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe," Valenia replied, her gaze still fixed on the bloodstained ground.
"But I've never heard of any alchemy product capable of that. It could be some rare treasure he found instead…"
The two continued to speculate for a few minutes more, trying to piece together what they had witnessed, before finally deciding to report everything to Anda.
---
After Lilian reported that she had killed the intruders but failed to capture the Master, Leyvi and Anda finally stopped rushing. They mounted the Celestial Cloud together and returned to the spot where they had left Bodo to retrieve him.
Shortly after, another report arrived from Valenia, informing them about Ori Oregano's bizarre revival and escape.
"I never would have expected that the one who came to this island to steal our things turned out to be that bastard Ori Oregano. He must be the Master. No, I should have considered the possibility earlier. The Slavemaker Pills require a lot of human essence to make, and he's the only alchemist with that much blood on him," Anda said, recalling the horrendous stench she had endured during the Alchemy Competition.
"But aren't Slavemaker Pills a Tier-5 alchemy product? Has he already reached the Alchemy Prince level?" Leyvi asked.
"Hmph! Obviously not. Someone backing him must have refined those treacherous pills. Medicine Valley...they aren't as virtuous as it seems. What kind of heinous deeds were they committing behind everyone's back? We should expose them one day," Anda suggested.
Leyvi smiled wryly. It seemed the family motto would never truly be upheld. Yet as much as he did not want to meddle, their paths had already crossed, and Ori Oregano would likely hold grudges, given the kind of person he was.
So instead of being passive, they probably should have prepared for a countermeasure much earlier. After all, Medicine Valley was a top-level organization with great influence in the South Region. If they really were using the Slavemaker Pills to turn people into their slaves, it would be a huge problem in the future.
"By the way, I didn't know Lilian had gotten that strong. She beat all of them alone, huh? My gardener wife has surpassed me," Leyvi said, recalling the report.
Back then, Lilian had been a super introverted, mute girl who blushed constantly. Now, she had changed so much.
"Hehe… not alone. She has an army of Demonic Plants. In the future, she will conquer the world!"
"Ugh… please don't…" Leyvi groaned, rubbing his temple. His panda wife already seemed to have a tendency for grand ambitions. Please don't add another one.