Bai hid away for one week. Because of the use of his Immortality, his body had weakened so he needed this week to return to his top condition. Moreover, Bai didn't waste this week, he started meditating, assimilating his new spirit bone and spirit rank. It was great to have a sudden increase in strength, but if he didn't want to affect his foundation, he needed some time to adapt to it, in comparison, with natural cultivation.
His spirit energy became more specialized, now taking different colors as his intents. It wouldn't be much before he completely changed his spirit energy, masters his breathing technique, and be ready to break through titled douluo creating his soul core.
About his torso spirit bone, he discovered that in addition to Immortality and the transformation of his body, it had another skill. However, to make use of this skill, he would need to be at least a normal titled douluo, so it was unusable for now.
Now that Bai was recuperated and at full strength, he was ready for the next Sword God Trial. The truth was that this one a special one and Bai was nervous and impatient to start it.
Following the Sword God words, Bai's talent, sword comprehension, qualifications, and body were ready to receive his position. The only things that he lacked were the mind and the spirit power, his 6th Trial focusing on spirit power.
The trial was to solve Star Duo Forest crisis. Bai didn't know what if it was something related with the Sword God, the only thing that he could learn was that it wasn't about Hei Qi.
Bai didn't know what exactly was the crisis of Star Duo Forest, so he was doubtful of it. The last time that Bai was there, it was just before the first attack of Spirit Hall to his clan. It seemed to be something wrong with Hua Mei who seemed to go on a rampage, but Lingling said that she would take care. Now that he thought, Bai was feeling bad about not thinking about her all this time, but he was truly too busy these last years with Spirit Hall and the trials.
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Bai landed near Star Duo Forest. He chose one of the less crowded sides, not controlled neither for the empires or Spirit Hall. It wasn't as safe as the entrance controlled, but Bai didn't have any problem with it, it was long since he might be warry of the weak spirit beast of the forest and the strong ones to put him in danger, it wasn't like they would be stopped by simples guards.
Something was wrong. Approaching the forest, Bai could see small villages destroyed. The culprits being young spirit beasts. A big quantity of them seemed to have left the forest and attack near villages. For what Bai could see, it didn't seem anything planned, the attacks were scattered and all the beasts were too young to have great intelligence.
Bai decided to not act, it was too late for the villages and it might be related to the crisis. It would be better to act after he learned more about the crisis and he doubted that he would learn anything from these weak spirit beasts.
Bai entered the outer area of Star Duo Forest. He extended his Mind Eye over 10 km, detecting his surrounding, he wouldn't be able to greatly analyze with his maximum radium, but it was enough to a first impression. What he discovered surprised him, the forest was too quiet. There were almost no spirit beasts and he could detect some young 10.000 spirit beast running away. This was very strange, the spirit energy of the outer part was very low, causing to be inhabited mostly by beasts younger than 1.000 years.
If Bai was surprised by this, he became shocked when he arrived in the inner forest. As he was approaching the center forest, the spirit beast became less until they disappeared completely. Not only the spirit beast but even the grass, tree, plants... Once he arrived in the central forest, he could only see a barren land, devoid of any life. It couldn't be called a forest anymore!
Bai bent over, touching the ground. It had become an arid ground, there weren't any nutrients in it, becoming more similar to a dessert than anything else. In a place like this, it would be impossible for any plant to grow. But how could the leafy and full of life forest become like this in so little time?
What surprised most at Bai was that he couldn't detect any aura from it. It was normal to not detect Life, but if some destruction had occurred, he should be able to detect Death. But, he didn't sense anything, it was a completely blank place devoid of any type of energy, nor spirit energy nor any elemental one, becoming the worst place to cultivate anything.
"This is not normal." Bai said for himself "What could have happened here?"
"Rumble!" Suddenly the ground started trembling as if an earthquake occurred. Bai quickly could sense three people near his position, quickly approaching him. Bai instantly recognized who they were, so he quickly ran to meet them. The earthquake became stronger and a sound like of a stampede approaching him could be heart, the strangest was that Bai was unable to sense anything except the three people.
It wasn't long before he could finally see their figures, they were Tang San, Xiao Wu, and Bai Chenxiang. Tang San and Xiao Wu were running away at full speed while Chenxiang was floating over them. She was looking behind them and shooting some light spheres that exploded at the distance.
Chenxiang turned for a moment detecting Bai's presence. She like Tang San and Xiao Wu had a tired and a little fearful look in his faces "Bai! Run!" she shouted.
Bai titled his head confused "W-what?" Just as Xiao Wu passed next to him, she took Bai from the arm dragging him forward.
Bai quickly stabilized, starting running along with them "What happened?!" he shouted shocked.
"No time to tell, we need to run away from them!" Xiao Wu shouted.
Bai followed them running. He turned his head at his back. He couldn't sense anything with his Mind Eye, but he could hear a loud sound and a dust cloud approaching. Focusing his sight, Bai could see thousands of silhouettes in the cloud charging towards them, slowly cutting the distance with them.
Finally, he could see what they were. Thousands of ants were charging towards them!