Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Over the next two days, Xuan Hao managed to fully recover from his fight with Aria, the guardian of the first celestial gate. At the same time, he also realized that the formation had begun to reproduce the mist from his fight with Aria. The only difference this time around was that the density of the mist increased at a much slower pace compared to how fast it had happened during his fight. Even if after two days, he could still resist the mist with his physical body alone and it would most likely still be another five days before he would be forced to leave the plaza.

Although it seemed like the trial was not forcing him to leave immediately, there was still a time limit for how long he could spend inside. Unless he had enough strength to resist the power of the mist when it reached its full strength.

However, Xuan Hao didn't really care too much about this, as he had already managed to fully recover and had no reason to continue staying inside the trial space. The only thing he could get from staying at this point in time was expand his understanding of formations by observing the formation that was producing the mist and keeping him from leaving the plaza, but… His current strength was far from enough to gain anything useful from observing a complicated formation like that for a few days and that was not even mentioning that his current qualifications as a formation master had only reached the Expert Realm…

Given that an Expert Realm Formation Master was only comparable to the Core Formation Realm in terms of the formations that they could set up, Xuan Hao did indeed feel like he was lacking considering his current cultivation realm. After returning to the sect again, he really needed to spend some time improving on his profession. Not only because it would be useful for him in certain circumstances, but more importantly because he would need to ensure that he didn't fall behind his disciples.

If he really did end up falling behind his disciples when it came to professions, he would no longer be capable of helping them improve in this regard. Although it had been some time since he had been rewarded by the system by an improvement that his disciples had made, he still didn't dare slack off in this regard!

Shaking his head as he decided not to think about this anymore, Xuan Hao got up and turned to look in the direction of the celestial gate that had remained completely unchanged since its appearance two days earlier.

Standing around for few seconds to admire the beauty of the celestial gate, Xuan Hao took a step forward and almost instantaneously crossed the short distance between himself and the celestial gate-

Swish~!

Passing straight through the gate only a moment later. Soon followed by the familiar feeling of space twisting and turning around him in incomprehensible ways before finding himself back on the ground again.

"Huh?"

However, different from the tall trees and demon beast roars in the distance that he had expected, he found himself at the base of a tall mountain piercing straight through the clouds above before disappearing. Even without any knowledge of the mountain that he now found himself at the base of, he was still very clear that this was not the same location that he had entered the celestial gate through two days earlier.

Not just that, but after looking around himself and not just the mountain in front of him, Xuan Hao discovered that the trees of the forest behind him were completely different from the ones he had encountered so far inside the mist covered mountain range. Standing only around a dozen meters tall with normal sized trunks, or in simpler terms, a normal-looking tree that could be found everywhere.

The only slight difference that these trees had from normal trees was their color.

The trunk of the tree was a bluish-green color, while the leaves were a bright red with a subtle glow.

"Hm?" Observing the trees more closely with his divine sense, Xuan Hao also noticed that the weird colored trees also had a subtle aura similar to that of a demon beast around them. Looking even closer, he even noticed that each of the trees had a cultivation base of sorts.

However, different from the cultivation base he had seen in humans, demon beasts or other races like the half spirit race, the trees in front of him seemed to follow a completely different cultivation system!

Thinking about it for a few seconds, this made sense. After all, trees were a bit different from humans or other living things so to speak… And considering that there were several different cultivation systems among humans, like demonic cultivation and the different followers of gods, it only made sense that the trees would have their own unique cultivation system.

"Wait! If the trees have their own unique cultivation path, doesn't that mean that they are sentient to some degree!?" Suddenly realizing what it meant for the trees to have their own unique cultivation system, Xuan Hao could not help narrowing both of his eyes cautiously for a short moment before calming down again the next second.

The reason for this being rather obvious, the trees in question were far too weak. At most the energy contained inside the strongest among the trees had barely reached the threshold of the Foundation Establishment Realm. Far from enough to threaten someone in the Soul Ascension Realm, let alone someone who had already reached a realm comparable to the Fourth Stage of the Soul Ascension Realm.

Rustle~!

Sensing the terrifying power of his divine sense that had momentarily burst forth for a short time, the trees located in front of Xuan Hao all started shivering violently as they began shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye-

Fwhoop~

And before Xuan Hao could understand what was happening, the rapidly shrinking trees began disappearing underground. Hiding away from the terrifying existence that they had just sensed. Even though their intelligence had clearly not fully been developed yet, they still had a basic survival instinct and understood when to run away, or in their case, hide underground.

"…"

Deciding that it might be best to just ignore the somewhat sentient trees behind him, Xuan Hao focused his attention back on the tall mountain that he had appeared in front of after passing through the celestial gate. For now, he had to find out where on the mist covered mountain range he was and more importantly, if he had managed to escape from the formation.

Whoosh~

Not thinking too much about it, Xuan Hao decided to try the simplest way of figuring out if he was still trapped inside the formation. Go in one direction and see if anything ended up stopping him-

BANG!

Not something that ended up taking more than a few seconds before he gloriously crashed into a seemingly invisible barrier and fell to the ground with a rather painful expression on his face. Although he was strong, it still hurt to some degree when flying at full speed into a solid barrier without any preparation.

"So, I'm still inside the formation…"

At the very least, this short experiment allowed him to understand that he was still very much inside the formation… And from the looks of it, he had been teleported to somewhere completely unknown inside the area covered by the formation.

Luckily, the Peak Soul Ascension Realm demon beasts should still be busy fighting over the empty void and the spatial energy that it was slowly producing.

On the not so lucky side of things, he was now in a completely unfamiliar place and had no way to know if there was anything dangerous like the stone pedestal that had created the spatial collapse nearby.

Rustle~

"Hm? The trees are back?"

Just at this moment, the sound of leaves rustling sounded out behind him, inevitably causing Xuan Hao to turn around. Expecting for the scared trees to have popped back up from the ground again.

"This…"

However, what he witnessed was not the expected small trees that had popped up from the ground again. Instead, he came face to face with a giant tree standing close to three hundred meters tall, with countless small vines dangling down from above. In a sense a giant version of the smaller trees.

The problem about this giant version of the smaller, cutter trees, was that the giant tree's cultivation realm was no weaker than that of the Peak Soul Ascension Realm demon beasts he had encountered during his escape from the collapsed void left behind by the stone pedestal.

RUSTLE-!

And from the looks of things, the giant tree did not look friendly, as its large branches swayed menacingly in the air above him. Not giving him enough time to ask the question about how such a large tree had even managed to sneak up on him in the first place.