In the days that followed, Chen Ping moved through the treacherous Shadow Forest like a phantom.

He strictly avoided the red zones marked on the sect map. At the slightest hint of anomaly—a sudden silence in the insectsong, a broken branch, a lingering scent of musk—he would unleash his Divine Sense, sweeping the area repeatedly before taking another step.

His caution paid off. He bypassed the territories of several Tier 2 demon beasts and evaded multiple search parties from rival sects.

The harvest, however, was painstakingly slow.

It took a full week of carpet-searching damp ravines to find a single stalk of Flaming Sun Grass. Later, near the outlet of a turbulent underground river, he spent hours stalking a guardian beast—a Tier 1 Peak Ironclad Crocodile. He didn’t fight it fairly; he waited until it was submerged, then detonated two Tier 1 Top-grade Ice Spike Talismans, freezing the water instantly and crushing the beast’s skull in the ice.

From the freezing whirlpool, he retrieved another Amethyst Flower.

Two stalks harvested. Added to the one he had looted from the Shenxiao disciple, he now held three main ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill.

But the Sect required ten ingredients to exchange for a single pill.

Seven more to go.

And a week had already passed.

For Chen Ping, one pill was not enough. With his Waste Spirit Root, he needed a handful of them to brute-force his breakthrough. At this rate of efficiency, he would fail.

Chen Ping sat cross-legged inside a hollowed-out tree root, his brow furrowed in calculation.

The outer region is picked clean. High-quality ingredients are too rare here.

To increase his yield, he had to push deeper into the forest or head toward the high-risk resource points marked on the map.

High risk, high reward.

Just as he weighed the variables, a ripple of Qi washed over his senses.

It was faint, like a pebble dropped into a still lake, but the quality of the Qi was unmistakable. It was pure, dense, and brimming with a vibrant, wood-element vitality that seemed to resonate with the very foundation of life.

Chen Ping’s eyes snapped open.

He instantly retracted his aura, becoming one with the shadows, and crept toward the source of the fluctuation.

Pushing through a curtain of hanging banyan roots, the dense canopy suddenly broke, revealing a small, sun-drenched clearing.

In the center stood a solitary, peculiar tree.

It was short, barely ten feet tall. Its trunk was gnarled and twisted like a resting dragon, the bark a warm, jade-white color. The branches were sparse, but hanging from them were six heavy, fist-sized fruits.

The fruits were translucent, glowing with an inner milky-white light. Natural golden patterns, resembling blooming flower petals, traced their surfaces, releasing a fragrance that cleared the mind and settled the soul.

True Essence Fruit.

Chen Ping’s heart hammered against his ribs.

This was the core of the core. Of the three main ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill, the True Essence Fruit was the rarest and most potent. It contained pure elemental essence that could drastically increase the success rate of the breakthrough and stabilize the cultivator’s foundation. Even consumed raw, without alchemy, a single fruit increased the odds by ten percent.

These trees bloomed once a century and bore fruit a century later. Usually, a tree produced only a single fruit. Two was a miracle.

But this tree bore six.

It defied common sense. It was a fortune that could buy a kingdom.

Chen Ping forced himself to breathe slowly. The greed rising in his chest was dangerous; it clouded judgment.

He expanded his Divine Sense to its absolute limit, sweeping every inch of soil, every leaf, every shadow within a 600-meter radius.

Silence.

Only a few colorful, non-magical birds hopped on the distant branches.

He scanned again. And a third time.

Nothing. No guardian beast. No hidden cultivators.

Heaven helps me?

Even with his paranoid caution, Chen Ping felt a surge of adrenaline. Six True Essence Fruits were worth twelve of any other main ingredient. More importantly, he had the Black Earth space within his Jade Pendant. If he could transplant this tree…

The calculation was instant. The risk was non-existent according to his sensors. The reward was infinite.

He moved.

Like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, his figure blurred, shooting across the clearing toward the jade-white tree.

His hand reached out, fingers inches away from the nearest glowing fruit.

Hum.

A low, resonant vibration buzzed from the void.

Sudden, blinding light erupted from the perimeter of the clearing. A pale yellow light curtain shot up from the ground, curving inward to form a perfect, inverted bowl. It sealed the entire clearing—and Chen Ping—inside.

A Formation.

And not a naturally occurring one. This was a high-grade trapping array.

Chen Ping’s face went cold. The alarm bells in his mind screamed.

He didn’t try to grab the fruit. He didn’t brake. Instead, he twisted his body in mid-air, channeling every ounce of his Mana into his legs, and launched himself vertically toward the closing aperture at the top of the dome.

“Trying to leave? Too late!”

“Stay down!”

“Surround him!”

Voices, cold and dripping with killing intent, echoed from the forest.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Six figures burst from the tree line. They wore uniform earth-yellow martial robes embroidered with a heavy mountain crest.

Thick Earth Sect.

Every single one of them radiated the heavy, suffocating pressure of Qi Condensation Level 9 or above.

They took positions at six cardinal points, their combined Mana pouring into the array, instantly slamming the gap at the top of the dome shut. Chen Ping hit the barrier and was bounced back, landing in the center of the clearing.

Before he could stabilize, the ground behind him—the direction he had originally charged—rippled like water.

Two more figures in yellow robes rose silently from the earth.

Earth Escape Technique.

These two were even stronger—Qi Condensation Level 9 Great Perfection.

Eight people.

Eight elite disciples of the Thick Earth Sect.

They hadn’t just stumbled upon him. They had used the True Essence Fruit tree—a treasure worth dying for—as bait. They had waited, patient as stones, for a rabbit to step into the snare.

Chen Ping’s heart sank into the abyss. A chill shot up his spine, freezing his marrow.

Eight enemies at the peak of the realm. A trapping formation cutting off escape.

Even if he burned every talisman in his arsenal, the math didn’t work.

This was a dead end.

“Heh. We waited a full day, but we finally caught a fish. And not a small one.”

The leader, a massive man with a face like carved granite, stepped forward. He looked at Chen Ping, trapped and isolated in the center of the formation, with the cruel amusement of a butcher eyeing a pig.

“Kid from the Qingyun Sect. Hand over your Storage Bags and every herb you’ve picked. Then, cripple your own cultivation. Grandpa might consider giving you a quick death. Otherwise…”

He licked his lips, his eyes gleaming with savagery.

“I’ll let you taste what it feels like to be buried alive.”

The other seven disciples stepped closer, their smiles sinister. Their combined spiritual pressure pressed down on Chen Ping like eight crushing mountains.

The pale yellow light of the formation swirled around them, cutting off the world outside, severing Chen Ping’s last hope of survival.

A true life-and-death crisis.