White Night was taken aback by the question.
She instinctively wanted to deny it, but meeting the old woman’s turbid yet sharp eyes, the words died on her lips.
She couldn’t very well say she hadn’t noticed anything.
The changes in this old woman along the journey were obvious to anyone with eyes.
From the frail, withered figure that looked like a gust of wind could blow her over when they first met, to now—her back straightened, her steps steady, even new teeth emerging—this wasn’t ordinary recovery. This was clearly living in reverse.
“I noticed a little,” White Night said, choosing her words carefully. “You look much younger than when we first met.”
“Is that all?” The old woman tilted her head, her face crinkling into a smile.
“Just a tiny bit younger, that’s all. You’re making a fuss over nothing.”
A tiny bit?
Mu Yingying, listening nearby, couldn’t take it anymore.
She held back, but finally couldn’t resist.
“Old lady, we’ve known you for less than a day. The wrinkles on your face have halved, and you’ve grown two new teeth. You call that a tiny bit?”
“You don’t understand. Old folks can occasionally experience rejuvenation.” The old woman waved her hand dismissively, looking utterly unconcerned.
“Rejuvenation…”
The corner of Mu Yingying’s mouth twitched. This old woman really dared to say anything.
White Night watched the old woman’s nonchalant demeanor, and the doubts in her heart grew instead of diminishing.
She was certain this old woman had a deep connection to Hundred Flower Valley.
Those flowers might even be nourishing her.
But White Night showed nothing.
All she could do now was observe. She wouldn’t ask probing questions unless absolutely necessary.
Little Frost never participated in this conversation.
She walked beside White Night’s cart, one hand on the handle, the other resting on her long spear. Her gaze never left the old woman from start to finish.
She didn’t care why the old woman was getting younger. She only cared about one thing: whether this person was a threat to White Night.
So far, no.
Little Frost’s hand never left the spear shaft.
The group continued deeper into the valley.
The further in they went, the denser the flowers bloomed, and the sweet fragrance in the air grew stronger.
The sounds of fighting and killing rose and fell by the roadside, but most of the struggles happened in the distance, not affecting them for now.
After walking for about the time it takes half an incense stick to burn, a distorted roar suddenly came from ahead.
It wasn’t the sound of a weirdness. It was made by a person.
A man with explosively bulging muscles burst out from the flowers by the roadside.
His body still glowed with the red light from recently consuming a flower. His muscles swelled in lumps, tearing his clothes to shreds, revealing skin crisscrossed with furious blue veins.
His eyes were completely bloodshot, pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
Drool hung from the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t look like someone who had gained power, but more like a beast injected with an overdose of stimulants.
The power gained from consuming the flower was too great. His body and mind couldn’t handle it.
He attacked everyone he encountered on the road.
The first unlucky soul was punched into a pile of broken bones by the roadside, his chest completely caved in before he could even scream.
That person’s companion drew a sword to block, but the sword was snapped by the rampaging man’s bare hand. Both man and sword were flung away.
People scattered, but the rampaging man was too fast. He charged wildly through the crowd, hitting whoever he bumped into.
There was no technique, no target—just a mindless venting of violent rage.
“Behind!” Mu Yingying suddenly shouted a warning.
The rampaging man had somehow changed direction and was charging straight at White Night.
That muscle-bloated madman was hurtling toward them like an out-of-control cannonball, with unstoppable momentum.
Little Frost reacted the fastest.
She yanked out her steel spear, planting herself in front of White Night’s cart. Her feet dug into the ground, spear tip aimed at the rampaging man’s chest.
She knew her own strength well. Even with her greatly enhanced physique, facing such a rampaging man head-on wouldn’t end well.
But she didn’t need to win. She just needed to block him for one second, to buy time for Mu Yingying to counterattack.
Mu Yingying had already circled to the side, her Tang Dao drawn.
The rampaging man never reached White Night.
The old woman raised her hand. Just casually raised it. She didn’t even fully extend her fingers, like she was shooing away a fly.
The rampaging man’s body stopped in mid-air.
As if pinned by some force.
He hung there in place, his limbs still moving in a running motion, but his feet couldn’t touch the ground.
Flowers bloomed. From his body.
First his neck. A tiny flower bud pushed out from under the skin on the side of his neck, splitting the skin open. Petals emerged from the opening, bright red, flecked with bloody foam.
Then buds emerged from his shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen.
Bud after bud pushed out from under his skin all over his body, densely packed, like mushrooms sprouting all over a spring lawn.
Each time a flower pushed through the skin, there was an extremely faint pop. Together, they sounded like a muffled fart.
The rampaging man tried to scream. His mouth just opened when a flower grew out from under the root of his tongue, choking off the sound.
In less than three seconds, the muscular, swollen man was unrecognizable.
His entire body was covered in flowers, head to toe, one pressed against another, like a doll made of fresh flowers.
The flower-man swayed twice, then fell to the ground. Dead. Silently.
The entire process, from the rampaging man’s charge to him becoming a flower-man, took no more than five seconds.
White Night was terrified.
Little Frost’s hand gripping the spear was trembling.
Her defensive stance in front of White Night hadn’t even been retracted before the rampaging man was already dead.
Mu Yingying’s blade was held aloft, frozen in place without even getting a chance to strike.
Gu Jiao’s face was as white as paper, her eyes wide, not daring to breathe.
Everyone around who witnessed this scene, regardless of strength, backed away as if they’d seen a ghost.
The old woman lowered her raised hand, gently patted the dust from her clothes as if nothing had happened.
She turned and looked at White Night, her tone flat.
“Little White Night, don’t be afraid. I only act against those who want to harm you.”
White Night stared at the old woman for several seconds.
Her soul body felt cold.
That move just now—the old woman hadn’t used her full strength. She hadn’t even used half of one percent.
She had just casually raised her hand, and a rampaging man who had consumed a flower, whose power had surged enough to crush the vast majority of people present, was snuffed out like an ant.
This old woman’s strength was unfathomable.
Even if their group’s strength were multiplied by ten, they probably still wouldn’t be her match.
They absolutely must not become her enemy.
The old woman seemed oblivious to White Night’s internal turmoil. She cheerfully fell back into step with the group, her pace light and brisk, unlike a white-haired old lady at all.
After this, no person or weirdness dared approach them for the rest of the journey.
The flower-covered corpse of the rampaging man lay not far behind them, the best possible warning sign.
They proceeded unimpeded, continuing deeper into the valley floor.
The path ahead grew steeper. The broken bones underfoot were gradually replaced by a sticky, dark red mud—a mire formed from blood and earth churned together by countless trampling feet.
Finally, the slope ended.
Ahead was not a path, but a cliff.
The ground underfoot abruptly ended, turning into a nearly vertical cliff face. Looking down, the bottom was invisible.
Wind howled up from the valley floor, carrying an unbearably thick floral fragrance that made one’s scalp tingle.
The cliff face was densely covered with flowers, but not the kind you could just pluck from the path earlier. These were all thorn vines.
Vines as thick as arms coiled and spiraled across the cliff face. Each vine was covered in thumb-length thorns, their tips glinting a dark red, as if soaked in blood.
Flowers bloomed among the thorns, one after another, their colors painfully bright. They covered the cliff face from the top all the way down as far as the eye could see, the glow intensifying the further down it went.
Looking from above, layers of multicolored light overlapped, like a massive, glowing deep well.
Breathtakingly beautiful.
Looking at this scene, a strange palpitation suddenly surged from the depths of White Night’s soul body.
She couldn’t say why.
The flowers were beautiful, the light was warm, yet she felt that deep within that light was buried something that made her very soul tremble.
The compass was spinning wildly, its needle whirling incessantly, as if something had scrambled its sense of direction.
“If you want to go down, you have to climb down using these thorn vines,” Gu Jiao said, standing at the cliff edge, her voice dry. “There’s no other way.”
Some who had arrived earlier had already begun climbing.
A burly man reached out and grabbed the nearest thorn vine. The thorns instantly pierced his palm.
He grunted in pain. Blood dripped down his fingers, falling onto the vine.
The flower roots writhed like living things, absorbing the drops of blood.
The man didn’t let go. Gritting his teeth, he continued climbing down.
But his blood kept flowing, from his palm to his wrist to his forearm, faster and faster, as if some force was tearing the wound open. It wouldn’t stop.
By the time he had climbed about a dozen meters, the man’s face was as white as paper, his body beginning to tremble.
He clung desperately to the vine, not daring to let go, but his strength was visibly draining away.
After a few more meters, his fingers finally lost their grip.
His entire body peeled away from the cliff face, silently falling into the bottomless sea of flowers.
White Night watched that person disappear into the multicolored light. The temperature of her soul body dropped a few degrees.
Little Frost tightened her grip on her metal gloves.
She walked to the cliff edge and reached out to touch the outermost thorn vine.
She didn’t use force, just a tentative touch.