Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

After eating the Vampiric Touch fruit, Jasmine felt a strange hunger clawing through her body toward the tips of her fingers. Despite the low lighting, she couldn't help but look down at her hand, fully expecting to see small mouths growing through her skin.

"Phew," Jasmine sighed in relief. Her hand hadn't turned into smonstrous appendage, but the hunger was getting to her. Her hand trembled, and it was tempting to scratch at her face and feast on her own Qi...

While Jasmine was trying to regain control, the last cultivator Stella had left alive for her to practice punching on wreathed himself in murky brown soul flames that matched his stained and ripped robe.

Unaware of her intentions, the man took his stance.

As promised, the man had his hands behind his back, leaving his face wide open. He even leaned down to give her a better shot. "Do your worst, little disciple."

"Take this!" Jasmine shouted to hype herself up and twisted her body to deliver the hardest-hitting uppercut of her life straight to the man's chin.

There was a howl of pain followed by a thump.

"Wow, he defeated you with his chin alone," Stella burst out laughing, "Elaine toldabout the appeal of a chiseled jawline, and I failed to see it before, but now I know what she was talking about!"

"That's five laps, Jasmine," Stella added after she calmed down from laughing.

"You're a demon!" Jasmine shouted back.

"Six laps."

"Wha—"

"Seven laps."

Jasmine clamped her mouth shut and silently seethed. Clearly, her Master had becpossessed by a heartless demon and wanted to watch two people suffer for entertainment! With a grunt, she pushed herself up and ignored the dampness of her clothes due to the blood. Her Master really would make her run a hundred laps of the mountain peak, which would take until tomorrow morning to finish if she didn't find a way to win.

Jasmine looked down at her fists. They still hungered like before, but that intense feeling had dulled due to the pain and failure to even make the man blink with an attack she poured everything into.

It took far more effort than moving around her own untamed Qi or nature Qi, which she had becrather attuned to. But after seffort, the earth Qi had strengthened her fingers.

The earth cultivator seemed to sense what she had done as his eyes widened a little. "Interesting," He said gruffly, "I thought that punch took more Qi to defend than it should have. The idea you stole my Qi never occurred to me—"

Jasmine swung her fist into another uppercut as he talked to hit the sspot on his chin, a tactic she had learned from her Master. Yet unlike her Master, who effortlessly cleaved people in half. Her feeble attack only silenced the man and caused her another round of pain.

"That's twelve laps now, Jasmine," Her Master happily reminded her. "If you don't want to run until you pass out today, try to use your head more than your fists."

Jasmine calmed down and looked her opponent up and down. Since the start of the 'fight,' he hadn't moved a muscle, and his arms were behind his back. There was no tlimit on the fight, only a limit on the number of attacks Jasmine could do before the cultivator won.

Stella had talked about punching, which was a very Stella thing to suggest. That was certainly the most violent option and would work if she was the stronger one here, but when faced with an immovable mountain, what else was there to do other than chip away at it slowly?

Jasmine stepped toward the cultivator but didn't curl her hand into a fist. Instead, she placed her palm on the man's chest near his heart and pressed down.

"What are you doing?" The man asked with a hint of concern.

"Just stand there and watch," Jasmine said. She closed her eyes and began pulling on the man's Qi through the power of the Vampiric Touch fruit. Earth Qi flowed into her body like a raging river, and she tried her best to hold onto and control sof it, but she leaked the rest into her surroundings.

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"This is impossible," the man muttered as his soul fire flickered like a dying flame. "How are you taking in so much of my Qi?!"

"No! Stop!" The man stumbled back a step. "Get away from me! I spent years accumulating this Qi..."

"Don't take another step if you want to keep your head," Stella's cold voice echoed through the room, and Jasmine saw the dagger her Master had been playing with floating beside the cultivator's neck.

"This is cheating," the man protested, "How does this not count as an attack?"

Stella shrugged. "I wouldn't consider a palm on your chest as an attack. If you are so concerned, then make an effort to stop her? Flood her with Qi or have better control over your own."

"I can't," the man hissed through gritted teeth. "My spirit roots are too impure to flood her with Qi, and she somehow has greater control over mine!"

Stella laughed at his misfortune. "Your earth Qi is so murky it might as well be swamp water infested with heart demons. How many beast cores did you conswhile forcing yourself to cultivate a Qi unsuited to you?"

"What?"

"Don't play dumb with me," Stella tilted her head, and her blonde hair fell across her mask. "There's a reason I picked you out of all the cultivators here to teach my Disciple a valuable lesson. You are the perfect example of someone who rushed their foundation for a quick boost in power and paid the price for it. Look, you are losing a battle over your own Qi to a little girl who is an entire realm below you right now."

"The fuck do you know?" The man spat to the side and glared at Stella.

"When was the last tyou had a breakthrough despite gobbling down beast cores every week?" Stella snapped back, "A few years ago, I bet. Oh, and how is that injury to your left arm?"

"How did you kno—"

Stella snorted, "When we fought, I noticed all the power behind your two-handed swings cfrom your right side."

"So?" The man grunted. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto Jasmine's arm as she kept draining his Qi. He didn't dare move as Stella's dagger floated a hairs-width away from his neck.

"Here's my theory." Stella crossed her legs and rested her chin on her palm. "You forcefully cultivated earth Qi because it's one of the stronger and easier affinities to cultivate, right? You then rocketed in cultivation with the help of beast cores, never bothering to train or hone your foundations. Always winning through brute strength alone. But then, after many decades, the heart demons consumed your soul. Your cultivation stagnated, and you reached a bottleneck." Stella traced a line through the air as if showing his life story, "Eventually, your rivals surpassed you and cback for revenge. You lost horribly and ran with your tail between your legs to Ashfallen City. Am I right?"

The room fell into silence, and Jasmine was speechless. To her, it had seemed like her Master was messing around and having fun while slaughtering these cultivators, but she had been paying such close attention to every detail?

"You're right," The man admitted as his head fell.

"Jasmine, did you hear all of that?" Stella asked. "This is a pathetic excuse of a cultivator and a fate all too many demonic cultivators reach. It's why they turn to horrible acts like using mortals as pill furnaces to try and create miracle pills that are pathetic versions of the Heart Demon Expelling truffle. They always looked for shortcuts in life and paid the price for them."

"I understand, Master," Jasmine nodded, "I won't slack off on training my foundation."

"Good." Stella clapped her hands once, "You can kill him now."

"Huh?" Jasmine glanced at her Master, wondering if she had heard wrong. The man also looked back in confusion.

"He has served his purpose and taught you many lessons. Now strangle him or rip out his eyes. Anything works," Stella hopped off the cage, "Don't forget a hundred laps are awaiting you if you slack off."

Jasmine ran through the rules of the duel that Stella had stated and realized something. The only way for the man to survive was if he survived 20 hits from her, but if she failed to down him in those hits, she had a day of hell ahead of her.

Pulling back her fist, Jasmine reduced the amount of Qi gathered and punched him in the chest. This time, it was the man who stumbled back and grunted in pain while Jasmine's fist felt rock solid, empowered by all the earth Qi she had absorbed.

Jasmine glanced at Stella, but her Master made no comment about her lack of lethal violence, so she went for another punch and then another. Always making sure to use just enough Qi to make it look like she was trying while not causing the man to pass out or fall, which would guarantee his death at Stella's blade.

"That's twenty hits," Stella said coldly.

"Master, I..." Jasmine lowered her head.

"It seems you have made your choice," Stella said dismissively as she approached the man. "The question now is, will you cto regret it? Either way, a promise is a promise. Mister cultivator, you survived twenty hits from my Disciple, so I grant you freedom."

A portal rippled to life before the man.

"There you go, a rift to the surface. Good luck to you."

"R-Really?" The man asked, and Stella gave him a silent nod.

Through the rift, Jasmine saw a black vine ending in a spike impale the man and lift him into the air. He coughed blood and hung there limply as his body began to dissolve.

"Master?!" Jasmine turned to Stella, "You said he would be free if he survived 20 hits? Why are you killing him?"

"Me?" Stella tilted her head, "What a strange thing to say. I am standing next to you without moving a finger? I only ever promised him freedom. I never said anything about protecting him from others who may want him dead."

"But..." Jasmine watched in horror as the man she had steeled herself to save was devoured before her eyes.

"If a meteor crushed him, or a monster suddenly appeared and was eating him. You wouldn't expectto go save him, would you?"

Jasmine glared at Stella with tears rolling down her cheeks. "You never planned to let him live, did you?"

Stella took off her mask and ran a hand through her blonde hair. "No, I didn't, and you should have suspected that," Stella sighed, "I told him our names, mentioned the truffles, and worst of all, he used people as pill furnaces. Do you even know what those are, my sheltered Disciple? They create pills inside a person's stomach and use their Qi, body, and sometimes soul as ingredients."

Jasmine felt genuine rage through her Master-Disciple link.

Stella's face twisted into a scowl aimed at the chair the mortal man had been strapped to. "Why would I let scum like that live after he has served his purpose? I am more concerned with your naivety, my Disciple."

Stella clicked her tongue. " It looks like I need to double your training. But first, you need to absorb that Qi you stole and then think about your actions while running a hundred and two laps."

"Yes, Master," Jasmine answered dejectedly. Despite her effort, it looked like they had both gone to hell anyway.

***

Jasmine wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve as she huffed out clouds of cold air. It was already midday, and she had only run ten of her hundred laps. Yet she didn't feel that tired.

Jasmine ran near Ashlock and glanced at the bloodstained stone where the man she attempted to save had dissolved into a puddle. In hindsight, she realized how foolish it had been to try and deceive Stella, but a small part of her was still glad she wasn't the one who ended his life.

That aside, the fight had given her a lot to think about concerning her fighting style.

Once her Master was less disappointed in her, Jasmine planned to ask if she could see how the pill was made. Thus far, she had laid awake at night debating on what other affinity to pick, but none had sounded good enough to her to half her cultivation speed as sitting still and absorbing the heaven's Qi was already a chore.

"Ugh!" Jasmine shouted in annoyance across the empty, silent mountain peak. All she had for company was her heavy breathing, clouds of breath, the rustling of the leaves, and the occasional bird chirping. Everyone was off doing work for the sect, leaving her all alone to endure her punishment. "This sucks."

Guilt aside, maybe she was starting to regret being so foolish after all.