Chapter 669: Sinful Creature, Stay Right There!

The spirit-race Enforcement Team members exchanged uneasy glances, their hands gripping the wooden spikes damp with sweat. On one side stood a deeply respected elder of their own race; on the other, a human guest official who had been entrusted with a mission at a critical moment and had just rendered meritorious service. This sudden reversal left everyone utterly lost.

Elder Qingluo's brow furrowed tightly, her dark green eyes sweeping back and forth between Dry Leaf and Su Ming, a flicker of doubt indeed flashing deep within her gaze. After all, those not of our kind must harbor different intentions, this was her long-standing conviction.

Su Ming leaned against the vines, casually wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. His face was pale, his breathing rapid, appearing frail beyond measure, yet deep within those lowered eyes was absolute calm.

Inside his Consciousness Sea, deductions were madly racing at an astonishing speed.

"If I speak up now to forcefully argue, or even confront him face-to-face with formation theory, it will only drag us into endless bickering. Qingluo already harbors doubts about me, and this kind of tug-of-war could easily breed xenophobia among the spirit race, giving Dry Leaf a chance to breathe. That's the inferior strategy."

"A mighty being like Elder Woodheart must be watching everything from the shadows right now. Since I've already exposed the traitor for him, I shouldn't overstep by playing the judge. The origin imprint I left on the formation plate, along with the distribution map of the life-devouring fungal filaments forty zhang underground, are ironclad evidence that cannot be forged. Feigning weakness will not only clear me of suspicion but also nail this black cauldron firmly onto Dry Leaf's head. That's the superior strategy."

"Moreover, I have Elder Woodheart backing me up. There's no need to fear investigation at all."

The deductions were completed in the span of a spark.

Su Ming raised his head, meeting everyone's gaze. He showed no fury, no rush to argue, only a deep, bitter smile.

"Elder Dry Leaf, if you want to condemn someone, you can always find a pretext." Su Ming's voice was soft, carrying the exhaustion of utter mental and physical depletion. He coughed twice, coughing up another trace of blood. "I am merely a human formation cultivator, my cultivation no more than Golden Core. Just now, in order to repair the earth vein blockage, I already exhausted all my spiritual energy. How could I possibly have the strength left to set traps and secretly plot against a Soul Nurturing stage elder?"

As he spoke, his trembling hand reached to his waist and retrieved his lifebound formation plate.

On the dark golden formation plate, a complex formation line projection now faintly flickered, cast in ghostly light.

"I don't understand factional disputes. I only know that one takes money to help others resolve their troubles. This is what I recorded with my lifebound formation plate: the true flow of spiritual energy forty zhang beneath the ground, and that thing which disrupted the formation... the origin imprint."

Su Ming held the formation plate forward with both hands, his attitude humble to the extreme, as though he were truly just an innocent outsider swept into this conflict. "Who is right and who is wrong, please discern clearly, Elder Panshi, Elder Genxu. I no longer have the strength to investigate further. I will take my leave."

Having said this, he actually closed his eyes, withdrew his spiritual energy, and staggered back half a step, completely placing himself in the position of a defenseless weakling.

Watching this scene from within the Xuantian ring, Lin Yu's Soul Body couldn't help but let out a low chuckle: "What a brilliant move of retreating to advance! Disciple, that knife of yours stabbed deep, and you even wiped the blood clean afterward."

Elder Panshi strode forward and took the formation plate from Su Ming's hands.

A massive influx of earth-attribute life force poured into it, and the ghostly blue projection on the formation plate instantly expanded, hovering in midair.

It was a shocking underground structural map. Dark purple life-devouring fungal filaments, like a dense spider web, coiled tightly around Greenwood Court's earth veins. And at the source core of that fungal network, an origin imprint radiating intense twilight qi and decay laws flickered with unmistakable clarity.

That was Elder Dry Leaf's origin aura, unique and absolutely impossible to fake!

"BOOM!"

The assembly hall erupted as if a pot had exploded. If anyone still harbored doubts before, now this unforgeable origin imprint struck like a heavy hammer, shattering every last lie of Elder Dry Leaf.

"Dry Leaf! What do you have to say for yourself now!" Elder Genxu trembled with rage, raising his wooden staff to point at Dry Leaf, his voice a furious roar of agony and grief. "Could a human have forged this origin imprint too?!"

The doubt in Elder Qingluo's eyes instantly transformed into extreme killing intent. The vines on her body exploded outward madly, like countless venomous spirit snakes, emitting sharp whistling sounds through the air as they dead-locked every escape route of Dry Leaf.

Elder Dry Leaf stared at the floating imprint, his face turning ashen to the extreme in an instant.

He knew he was utterly finished. After all his calculations, he had never accounted for the fact that this human, even in such a critical moment, could have the presence of mind to use his lifebound formation plate to imprint his most secret aura.

"If none of you want to live, then this old man will carve out his own path to survival!"

Elder Dry Leaf let out a despairing roar like a wild beast. Before everyone's eyes, his body burst apart with a thunderous explosion, no longer maintaining that false human form.

"RIIIP,"

A Heavenly Serenity Wood towering dozens of zhang, half-withered, wreathed in rolling black smoke and a nauseating stench of decay, tore itself violently up from the crumbling ground! Those scorched, withered branches, like sharp spears, thrust madly toward the Enforcement Team and elders in every direction.

He had chosen to go for broke, attempting to carve a bloody path out of Greenwood Court by force!

"You want to leave?! Stay right there!" Elder Panshi roared, both fists smashing heavily into the ground. An earthen wall dozens of zhang high shot up, attempting to block the Heavenly Serenity Wood's path.

However, just as Panshi and Qingluo prepared to join forces to suppress Dry Leaf,

In heaven and earth, all sound suddenly vanished.

In the night sky, the stars and moon that had been shrouded by dark clouds dimmed in an instant.

"Sinful creature."

An extremely flat, aged sigh exploded in the depths of every spirit race member's soul.

Immediately after, a light beam only as thick as a water vat, yet green to the absolute extreme, as if it had condensed the very essence of all life in this heaven and earth, plummeted straight down from the nine heavens without any warning!

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no violent surge of spiritual energy.

That verdant green light beam, with a casual air, pierced clean through Elder Dry Leaf's massive Heavenly Serenity Wood true body, from the crown all the way through to the roots.

Elder Dry Leaf didn't even have time to utter a scream. His body, harder than refined iron, before that pure light of vitality, was like residual snow beneath a blazing sun, dissolving instantly.

A mere two breaths of time.

That Heavenly Serenity Wood which had dominated Greenwood Court for millennia, along with the Dark Current Sect murderous aura within it, was thoroughly suppressed, reduced to a patch of dead, lifeless wood dust scattered by the night wind, vanishing to nothing.

The entire scene fell into perfect silence.

All the spirit-race Enforcement Team members, including Panshi, Qingluo, and Genxu, wore expressions of extreme reverence as they dropped to one knee toward the direction of the Banyan's main trunk, bowing their heads deeply.

Su Ming leaned against the vines, seemingly frail, yet those serene blue eyes shimmered with a light of shock.

This... this was Elder Woodheart's true strength! Even on the verge of exhaustion of his lifespan, even facing the suppression of the Lord of the Nether Abyss, this sovereign of Greenwood Court still possessed the terrifying depth to instantly obliterate a Soul Nurturing stage elder!

The internal strife, beneath this one beam of light, was brutally and cleanly extinguished entirely.