General Yeh Muni watched helplessly as Quentin Vilewind vanished into the earth with Evan in tow.

  He clenched his fists. Fire was his domain, not earth. He couldn’t chase shadows underground without burning half the mountain—and that was impossible with the Rooted Spirit Tree beneath them.

  He turned sharply toward Dean Amida.

  “Dean Amida, why didn’t you stop him?”

  But Amida’s expression was unusually grave.

  “I did,” he said quietly. “It simply… didn’t work.”

  Yeh Muni frowned. “Didn’t work?”

  “I launched my strongest mental attack the moment Quentin moved,” Amida explained. “He didn’t react at all.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It is not,” Amida said. “Quentin is a Saint?tier evolver. My mental attacks would never kill him, only disrupt him. But he is already mentally damaged. Using mental interference on a broken mind accomplishes nothing.”

  Yeh Muni had no answer.

  Wendy and Yvonne, still frozen by Amida’s mental bind, could only watch with relief and fear mixed in their eyes. Evan had escaped immediate danger—but he was now in the hands of a madman.

  Meanwhile, Evan was experiencing something he never imagined.

  A soft green glow radiated from Quentin’s body, illuminating the underground darkness.

  Evan felt his own form flatten and soften, merging with soil as they sank deeper. It was like drifting through a dream—weightless, surreal, and terrifying.

  He saw things no surface dweller ever would:

  Burrowing moles carving tunnels.

  Cavern ants building chambers.

  A hibernating crimson?scaled serpent.

  And then—

  A massive grub, pale and slick, wriggling through the earth with surprising agility.

  Evan’s eyes widened.

  A Dung?Eater.

  He’d heard of them—legendary “extract blind boxes.”

  They consumed the feces of countless beasts, and in digesting them, sometimes copied fragments of genetic skills.

  Their extract could contain dozens—sometimes hundreds—of random skills, from E?grade trash to S?grade miracles.

  A gambler’s dream.

  A rich man’s joke.

  Evan smirked.

  He had money. He didn’t need to gamble.

  But the sight was still bizarrely fascinating.

  The deeper they went, the more the mountain revealed its hidden world.

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  Tunnels everywhere.

  Creatures everywhere.

  And roots.

  Roots thicker than Evan’s arm.

  Roots as wide as a tree trunk.

  Roots that pulsed faintly with life.

  The Rooted Spirit Tree.

  If the mountain were a body, these roots were its veins—spreading through every layer of stone.

  Evan finally understood why the earlier battle had shaken entire cities.

  A creature this massive, this ancient, this close to evolving into a fifth?tier Panlong Root…

  Even four Saints hesitated to strike it.

  They weren’t afraid of losing.

  They were afraid of what the tree might do if cornered.

  And with Quentin and Filthsoil operatives lurking, the Saints wanted no surprises.

  Too bad surprises were inevitable.

  Quentin carried Evan all the way to the mountain’s base, then deeper—past stone, past roots—until they reached a wide underground chamber.

  Evan’s body re?solidified, flesh and bone returning as the shadow state faded.

  The chamber was abandoned, littered with old bones.

  But the real horror was the smell.

  Evan gagged instantly.

  It wasn’t the cave.

  It was Quentin.

  Now that they were no longer in shadow form, the stench hit him like a physical blow.

  “Johnny, what’s wrong?” Quentin asked with genuine concern.

  Before Evan could answer, Quentin suddenly clutched his head and collapsed, screaming.

  “Stop! Master, stop! I won’t do it again!”

  Evan froze.

  He didn’t know Quentin had been struck by Amida’s mental attack.

  He thought the madman was simply switching “scripts” again.

  Evan backed away cautiously.

  He’d seen what Quentin did to Zhang Fantie.

  One wrong move and he’d end up as a puddle of black sludge.

  Quentin writhed on the ground for a long time before the pain subsided.

  Then he sniffed the air like a hound and suddenly lunged toward a patch of dirt.

  He began digging.

  Fast.

  His hands blurred, scooping soil like twin shovels.

  Within seconds, he’d carved out a deep pit.

  Evan leaned closer—carefully.

  Inside the pit was a root.

  A thick, finger?sized tendril of the Rooted Spirit Tree.

  Quentin sniffed it, then continued digging along its direction.

  A tunnel formed rapidly.

  Roots grew thicker.

  Longer.

  More numerous.

  Evan followed at a safe distance, hunched over in the cramped space.

  Within minutes, Quentin had carved out a tunnel over a hundred meters long.

  Evan’s stomach tightened.

  He knew exactly what Quentin was doing.

  He was following the roots.

  Straight toward the main trunk.

  “Why are you digging?” Evan muttered. “You can literally turn into a shadow and phase through rock…”

  But then he remembered:

  Quentin was insane.

  There was no logic to follow.

  And if Quentin reached the Rooted Spirit Tree’s core…

  Evan would die instantly.

  A Saint?tier battle underground?

  He wouldn’t even leave a corpse.

  Yet the tree still hadn’t reacted.

  Why?

  Why wasn’t a near?fifth?tier spirit plant responding to a Saint digging into its body?

  Something was wrong.

  Very wrong.

  A mad Saint digging into a near?fifth?tier spirit plant is not a rescue.

  It’s a countdown.