Apart from the thick fog, everything in front of Ye Xiwen became a bit clearer. He was no longer at the foot of the Nine Secluded Demon Mountain, but at the mountainside. Looking up, he could see a vast sea of clouds. The purple lightning shackles were still flickering with terrifying lightning bolts.
In front of him was a lush and verdant forest. The trees were densely packed, towering into the sky. Some were tall, some were short. The tallest tree was over a hundred meters tall, and these trees had a diameter of more than ten meters.
Under these trees, there was a thick layer of fallen leaves. Obviously, no one had been here for a long time.
There was a strange feeling coming from this forest.
Long Chen naturally understood that the strange zither music wasn't the only obstacle in the Nine Secluded Demon Mountain. According to Li Xuanji, there were many ferocious beasts here, and there were even real beasts from the Demon Race. There were also some ancient beasts that had terrifying lethality.
Fortunately, as long as they were alive, Long Chen was able to locate them in advance.
This forest was very big, and it probably surrounded the entire Nine Secluded Demon Mountain. Hundreds of thousands of young warriors were coming from all directions. The direction where Long Chen was going was mainly occupied by the Shangguan Clan, one of the nine great clans. Of course, there were also warriors from other clans who might have deviated from their original route. The higher they went, the more people from different clans would gradually converge.
All the warriors of the Nine Secluded Demon Realm had gathered here. This was the grandest disciple competition in the entire Nine Secluded Demon Realm.
There were still people within 500 meters of Long Chen. These people were carefully sneaking into the depths of the forest. Long Chen estimated that he had already traveled one-fifth of the way to the peak.
Without any hesitation, he turned into a bolt of golden lightning. His speed was much faster than anyone else's. As expected, there were many ferocious beasts in this forest. Most of the ferocious beasts in the Nine Netherworld Devil Mountain were poisonous beasts. On the way here, Long Chen had seen spiders, scorpions, and venomous snakes. Even large ferocious beasts rarely felt pain. These poisonous beasts might not be very high in rank, but because of their poison, they had terrifying killing power.
Long Chen had seen a kind of poisonous beast called Steel Spider on the way. They were only the size of a thumb, but there were tens of millions of them. These Steel Spiders covered a towering tree, and their color was similar to that of the tree. If an ordinary person's eyes were not sharp, it would be hard for him to see clearly that there were so many steel needles on the tree. As long as he approached, thousands of Steel Spiders would rush at him, but their venom could kill all the warriors above the sixth level of the Divine Martial Arts Realm.
Poisonous beasts like this were densely packed. For the time being, Long Chen called this forest a Poisonous Beast Forest. He was sure that a large number of warriors would die in this Poisonous Beast Forest. After all, among the ferocious beasts, poisonous beasts were more terrifying.
Many poisonous beasts had poisons that even the Divine Martial Arts Realm warriors could not resist.
Because Long Chen's speed was too fast, and he could clearly see the layout of the poisonous beasts with his soul eyes, his journey was basically unimpeded. After two hours, he had already traveled a long distance. He estimated that he had traveled one-fifth of the way, which was almost half of the way to the Nine Netherworld Devil Mountain.
At this point, those terrifying poisonous beasts gradually decreased. Long Chen still had a lingering fear in his heart. He had seen with his own eyes that millions of thumb-sized ants had invaded a small team of warriors and turned them into skeletons in a flash.
This was the rule of competition.
Only by surviving in countless competitions, could it be possible to create a peak warrior. It didn't matter if there were only fifty thousand people left out of these one hundred thousand, as long as there was a real expert among these fifty thousand people.
After arriving at the position in front of Long Chen, the number of poisonous beasts had decreased a lot. He slightly slowed down his pace. According to his estimation, the further he went, the more terrifying the danger would be. If there were fewer poisonous beasts here, then there would definitely be other threats.
At this time, a teenager suddenly rushed into the range of his Soul Devouring Demon Pupil. This teenager staggered and fled, his face was pale. Very soon, he met Long Chen face to face. This teenager was not old, and his cultivation was at the third level of the Divine Martial Arts Realm, the same as Long Chen.
From this teenager's expression and movements, Long Chen could see that he had fallen into extreme fear. It was definitely because there was a terrifying crisis in front of him that he could not resist.
"Run quickly." As soon as he saw Long Chen, he quickly shouted in a mournful voice.
"What's going on?" Long Chen stopped his steps.
The teenager's face was full of horror. He seemed to have been scared to death. At this time, he was more like murmuring to himself. He said in front of Long Chen, "It's too terrifying. I don't know what that thing is. It's really too terrifying. As long as its spores drill into your body, it will immediately absorb all the nutrients in your body. It will grow out of your body, grow out … Ah, so many people have died like this. So many people are trapped in this place and can't go up."
The first danger was the enchanted zither music in the fog, and the second danger was the forest full of poisonous beasts. From this teenager's words, it could be heard that the third danger was in front of them, and many people were trapped in this place.
"What the hell is that thing?" Long Chen asked in a deep voice.
"I don't know, I don't know. The sky is full of its vines, full of barbs. It's simply a terrifying monster. Oh my god, how did I come to this place?"
With that, he no longer cared about Long Chen and directly ran off.
Long Chen narrowed his eyes and continued to move forward without saying a word. When he reached this place, there were clearly more people in front of him. Very quickly, Long Chen joined their group. Most of these people looked like young boys and girls. At this moment, their faces were filled with fear. One by one, they gathered together in small groups and looked ahead nervously. When they reached this place, Long Chen discovered that the surrounding ground was actually shaking violently.
There must have been some kind of shocking creature up ahead.
"This monster should be the species of antiquity that the patriarch mentioned. It's so big. It's really rare."
"Yeah, how are we supposed to find the Saints' Fruit with it blocking our way? Sure enough, only supreme geniuses have the opportunity to compete for the Saints' Fruit."
Species of antiquity.
Under everyone's disdainful gazes, Long Chen did not stop at all and quickly moved forward. Soon, a cliff appeared in front of him. The commotion here was already very big. The ground Long Chen was standing on right now was trembling to such an extent that it was enough to cause an expert to fall.
Looking down from the cliff, Long Chen finally managed to see what it was. There were thick, densely-packed vines in the forest below, directly piercing through the ground. They covered a radius of at least a kilometer, and it was impossible to tell just how many there were. They were like tentacles, waving about in all directions. It was impossible to see where they ended. Long Chen felt that it was very likely that the vines had wrapped around the entire Nine Serenity Demon Mountain.
What shocked Long Chen even more was that the countless vines were a single entity. The creature's body was hidden in the depths of the ground, and the vines were actually part of its tentacles or claws. There were already several thousand of them, so if the vines had wrapped around the entire mountain, the monster would have several hundred thousand tentacles at the very least.
It was these rattan-like tentacles covered in barbs that blocked their path forward.
When Long Chen first saw the monster, he also saw many people trying to rush through the rattan. However, although the rattan looked cumbersome, it was actually very flexible. The speed and strength of its twitching were amazing. A casual twitch of the rattan was equivalent to a peak move of a warrior at the Fourth Tier of the Divine Martial Arts Realm.
As a matter of fact, when a few of them gathered together, they were equivalent to a full-powered strike from a fifth layer God's Martial Arts cultivator.
As long as the cultivators charged in, they would immediately become embroiled in battle with the countless vines. It was quite a chaotic scene.
If that was the case, these vines would not be enough to frighten so many people. They had two other abilities. First, they were immortal. The vines that were cut off could regrow from the ground in a very short period of time. Second, as long as the vines hit someone, countless plant spores would drill out of the barbs. If one was not prepared and the spores drilled into one's body, a horrible scene would happen.
Those spores took root in one's body, as if they had plunged into incomparably fertile land. Using the flesh and blood of the body as resources, they began to grow crazily in a short period of time. The sharp young vines directly pierced through one's internal organs and even reached into one's head. No matter how strong the cultivator was, he seemed to have no resistance against this kind of thing. In a very short period of time, he died miserably while howling miserably. Those young vines pierced through his body densely. Until the cultivator's body was sucked dry, a creature that looked like a sea urchin would appear and immediately turn into the ground.
Long Chen also felt a little frightened. He could see that these countless vines actually came from an enlarged version of the sea urchin-like creature.
"Sure enough, it's different from ordinary evil beasts and ominous beasts. It can't be regarded as a plant-type demon clan. This kind of creature is called an ancient exotic species, just like the Nine Hells Fantasy Butterfly."
From the Nine Hells Fantasy Butterfly, he thought of Lingxi again.
Unconsciously, he seemed to miss her a little. Every time he thought of her, he always had a sweet feeling.
But now, it was still the time to fight desperately.
Long Chen wanted to dig this thing out from the ground and have a look, but there was no time. He chose to directly rush over and ignore the others.
Everyone had their own destiny, and Long Chen couldn't care less about so many people.
But he was very curious. This thing had no eyes. How on earth did it see so many people? Did it rely on smell or something similar to Divine Awareness?