"Don't keep walking along that path, Chu Feng," Her Majesty warned.
"That's exactly what I was thinking."
Chu Feng nodded, then stopped following the mountain trail and headed into the forest instead.
Both Chu Feng and Her Majesty believed that the path was nothing more than a tool of deception — it was just that the other party's methods were too refined for him to see through.
And sure enough, they were right.
Once Chu Feng abandoned the mountain trail and pushed through the forest, he no longer found himself circling the same spot. Every step took him to unfamiliar territory, places he had never set foot in before.
However, wandering aimlessly like this was no solution either. After all, his goal was to reach the summit and enter the Burial Spirit Pool.
At this point, Chu Feng was starting to panic. His whole reason for coming here was to enter the Burial Spirit Pool, and now he couldn't even find the place, let alone enter it.
How could he not be anxious? The last thing he wanted was to have made this trip for nothing.
"Eggy, look at that tree."
Just when Chu Feng was at his wit's end, a massive tree appeared up ahead.
Its presence gave Chu Feng the feeling of finding light in absolute darkness.
The tree was different from the others — but not in appearance. In fact, judged by its shape and species, it looked identical to most of the trees in this forest.
What set it apart was that it emitted a faint purple glow. The glow was subtle, but it was unmistakably purple.
The sight immediately brought to mind one of the clues seared into his memory — a single word. Purple.
"Don't approach it yet, Chu Feng. Observe it carefully first. If this tree truly can guide you to the Burial Spirit Pool, there must be more to it than meets the eye. It wouldn't simply appear right in front of you like this," Her Majesty cautioned gravely.
Along the way, both she and Chu Feng had gotten a firsthand taste of the Ancient Snake Clan's cunning. These people were far too devious to hand Chu Feng a clue so easily.
"Mm." Chu Feng didn't dare let his guard down. He activated his Heavenly Eyes and studied the tree with all the concentration he could muster.
Yet he found nothing unusual. He couldn't even see through the tree at all. In the end, he walked straight toward the purple-glowing tree.
Bzzzz— The moment Chu Feng drew near, a swarm of flying insects burst out from within the tree.
They were black, beetle-like creatures roughly the size of bees. At least several hundred poured from the trunk.
More importantly, Chu Feng sensed a powerful threat radiating from the swarm. These insects were extremely aggressive.
"Contain."
Although the insects were charging straight at him, Chu Feng didn't slice them apart right away. Instead, he set up a sealing formation and trapped the entire swarm within it.
With the insects locked away, he approached the tree and used a special technique to carefully cut it open, searching for whatever secret lay within.
When the trunk split apart, however, all Chu Feng found was a single purple gemstone. Nothing else.
The gem was roughly the size of a chicken's egg, with perfectly even edges. It was clearly not a product of nature — it had been formed by a barrier formation.
Chu Feng extracted the gemstone from the tree, and the trunk immediately reverted to its ordinary appearance, no longer emanating any purple glow.
From this, it was easy to deduce that the purple light the tree had been radiating had actually come from this gemstone.
"Could this gemstone be the key to reaching the Burial Spirit Pool?" Her Majesty asked.
"Hard to tell. At the very least, this gemstone gives me no guidance at all. I can't sense anything special about it either," Chu Feng replied.
"Maybe you haven't collected enough yet?"
"After all, the other clue you found was a set of numbers."
"Could it be that you need to gather purple gemstones equal to that number?" Her Majesty said.
Hearing this, Chu Feng's brows furrowed deeply, and a sense of foreboding settled over him.
Because that number was no small figure.