Chapter 79: Burn the Mountain, Rot in Prison

Chapter 79: Chapter 79: Burn the Mountain, Rot in Prison

"RUSTLE... RUSTLE RUSTLE..."

As Su Han stared blankly at the ruin he had single-handedly turned from a forest into a basin, the sound of churning earth reached him.

His ears twitched. Su Han descended, flying toward the source of the sound.

Landing at the bottom of the crater, he watched the ground continuously rise, a look of complete surprise on his face.

’This ruin... can actually restore itself?’

Sure enough, just as he suspected, in less than an hour, the deep pit thousands of miles in diameter that he had created with a single sword strike had completely recovered before his disbelieving eyes.

Fortunately, to Su Han’s relief, only the cratered ground had been restored. The trees that had been turned to ash did not grow back.

However...

Staring at the perfectly restored ground, a bold idea suddenly popped into Su Han’s head.

’If the ground can recover, what about everything else in the ruin?’

The trees in the area directly beneath him had been crushed by his Earth Sword, which was why they couldn’t recover.

But farther out, near the edge, the trees would only have been affected by the shockwave. They certainly wouldn’t have been obliterated into ash like the ones he’d hit directly.

’Could those trees... recover just like the ground?’

At this thought, Su Han suddenly had a new direction for his exploration of the ruin.

He shot straight into the sky and, without a second glance, picked a random direction and flew off.

The power of the aftershock should be the same in all directions anyway, so no matter which way he flew, the distance he needed to travel would be roughly the same.

For someone with no sense of direction, this was simply wonderful.

’Then again... this lack of direction is a real problem. It’s not going to be easy for me to find my way around in the future.’

’Good thing I’ve heard that once you reach the Celestial Human Realm, you start to comprehend the Heaven and Earth Law. My terrible sense of direction should cure itself then.’

Propelled by his Moon Shadow Step, Su Han flew along, lost in thought. In just under half a day, he had already covered three or four thousand miles.

Below him, broken branches and shattered tree trunks began to appear, but Su Han still hadn’t seen a single intact tree growing in the ground.

’So... was I just overthinking things?’

’As expected, the ground can recover because it’s inanimate, but a living thing like a tree, once destroyed, is gone for good. It’s irreversible.’

Just as Su Han was thinking this, a lone, tall tree standing ahead made his eyes narrow.

The tree wasn’t shimmering with golden light, so it wasn’t a Skill Tree.

However, its location allowed Su Han to keenly perceive the problem.

A single large tree stood there alone, surrounded by the withered branches and dead leaves of other broken trees.

This showed that the area was well within the range of his attack’s shockwave, yet this tree appeared to be completely unscathed.

This... was quite intriguing.

He landed on the ground and walked up to the lone tree.

He casually lopped off the branches the tree used to attack him, then thought for a moment before smashing his fist into its trunk.

The trunk snapped in the middle and its roots were torn from the ground. The entire tree now lay on the ground in two pieces.

Having done this, Su Han stood quietly to the side, waiting.

While he waited, he personally witnessed the two pieces of the tree he had broken... the broken ends reconnecting under the influence of a mysterious power, reforming into a complete tree.

Once the trunk was restored, its roots dug back into the earth, and it slowly straightened up, standing tall and proud.

’What the hell... it really can recover?’

He tried a few more times. No matter how he broke the trunk, the great tree seemed able to restore itself perfectly.

It wasn’t until Su Han had broken more than half of its roots that the tree finally collapsed for good, never to recover.

This conclusion made Su Han’s eyes light up.

’In that case, most of the trees in this ruin should be able to recover.’

’If that’s true, doesn’t that mean there might still be some Skill Trees among them that I didn’t destroy?’

At this possibility, Su Han ignored the now-dead tree, took to the air again, and flew forward.

After flying for another half an hour, Su Han’s expression darkened, and he decisively turned around and flew in the opposite direction.

On the ground below lay a very familiar-looking bottle from Prince Jing’s Residence, used for holding Spirit Fruit Juice...

After changing direction, Su Han flew straight ahead with grim determination. A little over an hour later, small patches of forest finally appeared before him.

Su Han paid them no mind.

They didn’t have the slightest glint of gold, so he couldn’t even be bothered to give them a second glance.

Another half-hour passed. After ignoring countless small groves, Su Han finally stood at the edge of a boundless forest that stretched for thousands of miles.

Floating in the air and looking down at the very familiar forest below, Su Han couldn’t help but feel a little melancholic.

It wasn’t that the forest looked familiar that made him melancholic—after all, they were just trees, so it was normal for them to look familiar.

What made him melancholic was... even if this huge swath of trees hadn’t been destroyed by him, and even if there really were Skill Trees in it...

...how long would it take him to check them one by one?

’If only there was a way to make the Skill Trees reveal themselves to me, that would be great.’

Shaking his head, he dismissed the unrealistic idea. Just as he was about to resort to the stupidest method of searching tree by tree, inspiration struck, and he abruptly slapped himself on the forehead.

"How could I be so stupid..."

He had actually forgotten a crucial detail: once a Skill Tree is lit, its flame won’t go out until he has acquired the skill within.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a very useful feature, since he usually extracted the skill immediately after lighting a Skill Tree.

But... vast areas of this ruin were forest. The number of trees in this forest had to be in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions.

Trying to find all the Skill Trees here was like finding a needle in a haystack.

However... finding a needle in a haystack is hard, but what if you drain the ocean?

Standing at the edge of the forest, Su Han cast a Rain of Fire on a nearby tree, which was instantly engulfed in flames.

Since he didn’t deliberately control the flames’ range, after the first tree was lit, the fire quickly spread to several surrounding trees.

After setting a patch ablaze, Su Han flew into the air, casting Rain of Fire every so often as he went.

In the inferno, ordinary trees were burned away, down to their very roots.

’Whatever’s left will be the Skill Trees I’m looking for, right?’

If this were the outside world, Su Han naturally wouldn’t dare do such a thing.

After all... setting fire to a mountain is a crime that’ll land you in prison for life.

But this was a ruin! There wasn’t a single insect or bird in this entire forest.

A forest like this, laid out before him—should he burn it all down? This was practically a gimme!

Flying along, casting Rain of Fire as he went, Su Han was having the time of his life.

In the forest, in a clearing where the surrounding trees had been cut down, Zhao Yang and Lu Feifei were leaning against each other, resting and recovering their strength.

Suddenly, Zhao Yang, who was peeling a fruit for his girlfriend, shot his head up to look at the sky.

"Feifei, did you just feel like something flew over our heads?"

Lu Feifei glanced up and shook her head. "What could there be? This godforsaken forest..."

The moment the words left her mouth, Lu Feifei sniffed the air.

"You idiot, do you smell... something?"