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The Desolate Tree took a thousand years to bloom, another thousand years to bear fruit, and another thousand years to mature.
In other words, it would take three thousand years for each Desolate Tree to bear a ripe Desolate Fruit. Each Desolate Tree could bear one or two Desolate Fruits every three thousand years. At most, it could bear three Desolate Fruits.
The Desolate Tree that Chu Mu's group had encountered had three ripe Desolate Fruits. It had to be said that it was a kind of luck.
No matter how many fruits it bore, each one of them was the crystallization of the Desolate Tree, where its heart's blood was, just like a child.
Plucking the Desolate Fruits was like stealing a child. How could the Desolate Tree not be furious?
In a sense, the Desolate Tree was not a real tree. A real tree was a plant. To a certain extent, the Desolate Tree could be considered a member of a foreign race.
The furious Desolate Tree began to tremble. Its hundreds of trunks became soft and began to sway. Chu Mu suddenly felt like he had been locked onto.
Immediately afterwards, a terrifyingly powerful Desolate Qi descended and pressed down on his body, binding him as if he had been tied up by invisible ropes.
The sound of something tearing through the air was so dense that it made one's scalp tingle. The several dozen swordsmen were all dumbfounded and felt a chill run down their spines.
The hundreds of trunks turned into steel whips and lashed out at Chu Mu. Chu Mu's expression changed as he was extremely shocked. He hurriedly brandished his two swords to block.
However, he did not have the advantage of being on the ground in the air. Even if he used the various techniques of a sword master to the extreme, he still could not block the tide-like attacks of the furious Desolate Tree.
Chu Mu's body was like a wooden board in the middle of a stormy sea. A tree trunk as thick as a little finger suddenly swung down. Chu Mu hurriedly used his Golden Breaker to block it.
The power of the tree trunk was beyond Chu Mu's expectations. He did not have time to use any defensive spells to dissipate the power of the tree trunk. The broken gold sword had already flown out of his hand, but the tree trunk was still swinging at him, shattering the protective sword qi and the invisible protective sword qi.
In this moment of crisis, Chu Mu activated his low-grade inner armor and blocked the tree trunk's attack. With a bang, he was sent flying to one side. Numerous tree trunks rushed over, and the fastest among them had already formed a circle around Chu Mu's body, trying to bind him tightly.
Once entangled, Chu Mu would have no chance of escaping. At the most critical moment, a yellow-brown sword token appeared in Chu Mu's hand, and he immediately activated it.
The sword token turned into a yellowish-brown light that expanded and enveloped Chu Mu's entire body. At the same time, even more tree trunks wrapped around Chu Mu, trying to entangle him.
However, what they entangled was a ball of light that was emitting a yellowish-brown light. Moreover, the ball of light was rapidly shrinking, disappearing in less than three breaths of time.
The several dozen swordsmen rubbed their eyes, unable to believe what they had just seen.
Chu Mu's disappearance made the Desolate Tree even more furious. Hundreds and thousands of tree trunks crazily grew longer and longer, rushing at the several dozen swordsmen like pythons coming out of their holes. Immediately after, the twenty desolate corpses also let out terrifying roars and rushed at the swordsmen.
It had to be said that these swordsmen were very unlucky. They did not gain anything, and instead became the target of the Desolate Tree's anger.
…
"Secret Art: Sky Traversing."
The Heaven Origin Sword Qi surged and gathered all over his body, finally condensing into a pair of sword Qi wings on his back, allowing Chu Mu to finally stop his high-speed fall and fly freely.
It was a wise choice to spend seven hundred thousand academic credits to choose this flying secret art. Otherwise, even if Chu Mu had used the Passage Sword Medallion to escape from the furious Desolate Tree, he would not have been able to escape the fate of falling to his death.
The huge sword Qi wings flapped as Chu Mu circled in the air. He first adapted to this feeling, then quickly rushed downwards.
After using the Passage Sword Medallion, Chu Mu escaped from the furious Desolate Tree's attack and appeared here. This place was like a bottomless abyss. The moment he appeared, he quickly fell downwards.
The surroundings were pitch-black, and he could not see anything below. However, Chu Mu had to go down, because there was something like a roof above him that was incomparably hard and indestructible.
Although he had only mastered the first layer of the Sky Traversing secret art, it had already provided Chu Mu with a lot of convenience. After flying down a few hundred meters, Chu Mu saw the ground.
After descending, the sword Qi wings rapidly faded and finally disappeared. Chu Mu found himself in front of the gate of a palace. The gate of the palace was nearly ten meters tall, and there were countless desolate beast diagrams on it, appearing thick and mysterious.
Chu Mu's gaze fell on the gate, slowly moving upwards until it stopped at the plaque on the gate. His eyes narrowed, and his pupils contracted.
"Heaven … Desolate … Earth … Palace …" Reading each word, Chu Mu's heart suddenly surged with an indescribable shock.
Could this be the real Heaven Desolate Earth Palace?
The ones from before were all fake. They were just places that one had to pass to enter the real Heaven Desolate Earth Palace, just like the corridor?
For a moment, Chu Mu's heart was incomparably complicated, and his mind was in chaos. It took him a while to sort out his thoughts and regain his calm.
He took a deep breath. No matter what, since he was already here, there was no reason not to go in.
He lifted his feet and took a step forward. Every step seemed to become heavier. Regardless of whether the path was long or short, Chu Mu still walked to the gate of the palace, stretched out his hands, and pushed with force.
The gate of the palace was not as heavy as he had imagined. Chu Mu only used eighty percent of his strength, and the gate trembled slightly. Then, it slowly opened with a rumbling sound.
Incomparably dense desolate qi surged out like a tide, attacking Chu Mu's body. It made Chu Mu feel as if he was in a desolate qi ocean. After a while, the desolate qi tide weakened, and the gate was opened by Chu Mu.
Without feeling any danger, Chu Mu held the Earth Essence Sword and walked through the gate. He walked into the palace. The broken Golden Sword was sent flying by the furious Heaven Desolate Tree and was lost.
There was no seal, and there was no light source. However, there was plenty of light inside the palace. It was as if it was daytime, allowing Chu Mu to clearly see everything inside the palace.
The roof of the palace was about a few dozen meters high, and the area was not very big. It was about the size of a football field. The four walls of the palace were like temples, with many murals. The murals were all scenes of swordsmen and desolate beasts fighting. It seemed to be some kind of record, but Chu Mu could not understand it.
Soon, his gaze shifted to the center of the palace. There was a pile of stones, or rather, a pile of Heaven Desolate Stones. It was not a small pile of Heaven Desolate Stones. According to a preliminary estimate, there were at least ten thousand pieces.
Ten thousand pieces of Heaven Desolate Stones, even if they were all low-grade Heaven Desolate Stones, each piece was worth a hundred thousand credits. Then, ten thousand low-grade Heaven Desolate Stones would be worth a billion credits.
What could a billion credits do?
Chu Mu did not know. It was too much, so much that it was beyond his imagination. It was beyond his concept, and it made his breathing a little hurried.
He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. After a few breaths, Chu Mu regained his composure and opened his eyes. His gaze shifted away from the nearly mesmerizing pile of Heavenly Desolation Stones to the left and right behind the Heavenly Desolation Stones.
Statues, one statue after another. Every statue was wearing battle armor and had a longsword at their waist. They were all vivid and lifelike, as if they were real people.
When Chu Mu stared at these statues, he could not help but feel shocked. It could not be described with words, and he did not even know why he felt this way.
There were a total of thirty-six statues on the left and right sides. Every one of them was so straight, like a sharp sword pointing to the sky. It was an interpretation of unyielding.
In the midst of his shock, Chu Mu discovered that six of the thirty-six statues had a ball of light floating in front of them. The ball of light released a weak light. It was a yellowish-brown color, as if there was yellow sand flowing inside. It made it impossible to see what was inside.
However, to be able to be placed in a real underground palace, it must be a peerless treasure.
"Thirty-six statues. Perhaps there should be a ball of light in front of each statue, but there are only six left. Perhaps the other thirty have already been taken away." Chu Mu thought to himself.
Perhaps the things inside the remaining six balls of light were different, but Chu Mu's idea was to capture them all in one fell swoop.
Walking forward, Chu Mu did not immediately take the balls of light in front of the six statues, because the statues were all behind the pile of Heaven Desolate Stones.
He began to collect the Heaven Desolate Stones. Fortunately, Chu Mu had obtained a high-grade spatial bracer. Otherwise, he would not have been able to collect all the Heaven Desolate Stones.
After spending some time, Chu Mu collected all the Heaven Desolate Stones. He estimated that there were close to twenty thousand pieces. Not only were there low-grade Heaven Desolate Stones, there were even mid-grade Heaven Desolate Stones. He did not know exactly how many there were, but there were at least a hundred.
After collecting the Heaven Desolate Stones, what appeared in front of Chu Mu was not an empty space, but a two-meter-tall sword stele. The sword stele emitted an ancient and vicissitude aura, explaining the passage of countless years. It seemed to be telling others that it had been here for a very, very long time.
Chu Mu's gaze fell on the front of the sword stele. There were ancient words on it.
Fortunately, before entering the underground palace, Chu Mu had studied hard. He could more or less recognize these ancient but not uncommon words. He could understand seventy percent of the words.
Seventy percent of the content was enough for Chu Mu to understand the meaning of the words on the sword stele. He couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air and rejoice that he had taken the Heavenly Desolate Stone first instead of the six light balls.
The meaning of the words on the sword stele was that the thirty-six statues were actually puppets. Each statue was guarding a treasure. Every swordsman who could enter the underground palace had the right to choose one of them.
It could only be the same. If one was greedy and wanted to get second place, they would alert the puppets and be attacked by them.
This was not the main point. The main point was that each of the thirty-six puppets had the ability to kill a Qi Hai swordsman in an instant.
The restriction to enter the Heaven Desolate Territory was to be below the Qi Hai Realm. It could be imagined that the swordsman who was lucky enough to enter the real underground palace would have sword Qi cultivation below the Qi Hai Realm. What would the result be if such a person faced the puppets that could kill a Qi Hai Realm swordsman in an instant? (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to qidian.com to vote for me. Your support is my biggest motivation.)
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