Chapter 26: Catch me and do whatever you want with me.

“This is the last thing I’ll ask of you,” Li Tianxing’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “If that beast gets the legacy, you, me, your family, the Jade Lake Holy Land… we’ll all suffer. Many will die.”

He paused, emotions she couldn’t decipher swirling in his eyes. “I’m sorry for deceiving and using you, Shuang’er. Hate me. The more you hate me, the better.” His lips twisted into a nearly bleak smile.

“The truer your hatred, the better your chance of claiming the legacy. When the time comes… if you can catch me, do whatever you want with me.”

Li Tianxing’s figure flickered. Stepping left foot over right, he moved like a weightless specter, vanishing with a “whoosh” to the top of a nearby giant tree.

The dense foliage swayed briefly, and then his figure melted completely into the dark green shadows, gone without a trace.

“Huh?” Xie Qiyang’s mind buzzed, blank.

Wait… at least leave a map! Or some hints! I… I’m not saying I won’t cooperate. We could negotiate, right? Do you have to leave so fast?

The thought was quickly overtaken by a more terrifying image—crickets the size of fingernails, glossy cockroaches, furry spiders from her hometown’s back hills…

In a blink, they morphed into massive creatures two or three meters tall, as wide as millstones, brandishing scythe-like limbs, bristling with steel-needle fur, their compound eyes glinting coldly…

Xie Qiyang shuddered violently, cold sweat soaking her back. She frantically scanned her surroundings.

The towering trees cast thick, impenetrable shadows, nearly blocking out the sky. From the branches above came faint “rustling” sounds, as if something was crawling, watching.

She was lost. Where was she supposed to go now?

“Li Tianxing! You bastard! Get out here!!” Xie Qiyang mustered her courage and shouted, her voice piercing the dead silence of the forest.

The response was deeper silence… and then the sudden, violent shaking of several nearby tree canopies, branches rattling loudly.

Xie Qiyang’s pupils shrank, her hair standing on end.

Her body tensed, a chill gathering at her back. Several sharp ice spikes formed silently, hovering in the air, glinting with a faint, eerie light.

“Who’s there?! Show yourself!” she shouted, her throat tight, palms sweaty, heart pounding. This feeling… it was too familiar.

It was like her childhood, in the wild woods behind her hometown. She’d played too long, lost track of time.

The sky darkened bit by bit, the surroundings turning into menacing, blurry shadows. Unable to find her way home, all she could hear was the rustling of leaves in the wind.

That fear of being abandoned by the world, swallowed by endless darkness, fear of the unknown… it was the same.

The branches ahead twitched… was there a snake coiled there? Or something worse?

She shook her head hard, trying to dispel the useless fantasies. She couldn’t just sit here waiting to die! Strike first.

“Swish! Swish! Swish!”

The hovering ice spikes shot forward with a whoosh, piercing the canopy that had shaken the most!

Leaves rained down, but… nothing else. Just a few tattered leaves spiraled to the ground.

Xie Qiyang’s taut nerves relaxed slightly, and she let out a long breath. A false alarm? Maybe just the wind or a big bird?

But staying here was a death sentence. Her gaze swept over the nearly identical trees and dim paths, and she randomly picked one that looked “slightly less bad.”

In the end, it came down to luck.

She took a deep breath, forcing down her fear. Her eyes sharpened, and without hesitation, she plunged into the unknown darkness.

Xie Qiyang trudged forward numbly, ignoring every rustle and movement around her.

Her mind was a mess, filled with fragmented rumors about the Nether Ancient Realm.

She vaguely recalled that this place was overrun with exotic beasts but also hid rare herbs—thousands, even tens of thousands of years old—unseen in the outside world.

There was even a tale that the deepest part of the realm held the Nether Ancient Heavenly Venerate’s legacy and life-prolonging treasures.

The temptation was too great. Countless old cultivators on their last legs had ventured here, hoping to defy fate.

And the result? Forget thousand-year herbs—no one had even brought back a decent blade of grass. The few who crawled out were injured and half-mad, going crazy at the mere mention of “Nether Ancient Realm.”

From then on, this place became a forbidden zone. Only desperate rogue cultivators, willing to risk their lives for low-grade herbs on the outskirts, dared to try their luck.

But this place… how could ordinary rogue cultivators handle it? A single beast would leave nothing but bones.

She stumbled along, unsure how long she’d been walking.

The path beneath her feet seemed to widen slightly, the gaps in the canopy above growing larger, letting in more dappled light. It wasn’t as suffocating as before.

As she walked, the view opened up—a vast, endless ruin abruptly appeared in the forest.

Broken stone pillars leaned toward the gray sky, shattered palace walls and giant beast ribs littered the ground, covered in cracked stone slabs.

Weeds stubbornly sprouted from the cracks, the surroundings steeped in desolate ruin. She could faintly sense the grandeur and glory this place once held.

The spiritual energy in the air was indeed denser than outside—a jackpot for ordinary rogue cultivators. But for Xie Qiyang, with her Lunar Sacred Body, it was barely worth noting.

She didn’t linger, carefully navigating around collapsed beams and bottomless fissures, pressing deeper.

After a while, the scene changed again. Several unimaginable giant trees rose from the ground.

Their exposed, dragon-like roots alone were several times thicker than Xie Qiyang’s entire body.

What caught her eye most was at the base of the trees. Clusters of strange plants grew there, their leaves or petals naturally glowing with dreamy, star-like specks.

This glow was a sign of overflowing herbal essence, marking these plants as at least centuries old.

Xie Qiyang’s heart skipped, but she forcibly suppressed the urge to rush over and pick them.

Her wary eyes scanned the quiet canopy as she slowly bent down, picking up a fist-sized stone from the ground.

The cool stone in her hand glimmered faintly as a thin layer of chilling ice crystals instantly encased it.

With a swift motion, she hurled the “ice chunk” toward the massive trunk of the giant tree.

The stone whistled through the air toward its target.

Just as it was about to hit—

“Screech—!!!”

A piercing, ear-splitting cry erupted from the depths of the dense canopy.

The force in the sound, even from a distance, stung Xie Qiyang’s eardrums, making her head buzz.