As soon as the talisman array was activated, the strange creature was immediately trapped as if surrounded by a cage, unable to move.
“Eek, damn it—” it screeched in frustration, “Little mage, you’d better let me go now, or you’ll regret it!”
Shi Pengpeng scoffed, “Still boasting, huh?”
The talisman array tightened further, pressing down on the creature so hard that it couldn’t even speak, only its teeth chattered incessantly, making a “click-clack” sound.
As the yellow talisman drew closer, about to stick to its body, the creature shuddered and finally opened its mouth, blowing out a forceful breath.
“Whoosh-whoosh-“
A strange wind suddenly rose from the ground, and the entire forest seemed to come alive.
The towering tree crowns swayed, parting to reveal the cold moonlight pouring down onto the creature.
Only then did Shi Pengpeng get a clear look at its appearance.
It had a long, delicate face, with willow-leaf eyebrows and cherry lips— features that were distinctly feminine, yet incongruously framed by a thick beard.
“Hiss, is this thing male or female?” Bai Wanmu muttered in confusion, “Are monsters also into LGBT now?”
“I’m female, a beauty!” the creature shouted, hopping mad, “It’s all because of you meddlesome humans!”
The wind grew stronger, and the talismans at the four corners were ignited once again, turning into ashes and being swept deep into the forest.
“This… this… how is this possible?!” Bai Wanmu’s eyes widened in shock.
Shi Pengpeng’s talisman technique was unquestionably powerful, yet this creature had effortlessly broken her Four Symbols Talisman Array.
How could this not be alarming?
“Strange…” Shi Pengpeng wasn’t afraid, but she was puzzled.
The Four Symbols Talisman Array had clearly trapped the creature earlier, but at the last moment, it had used some kind of demonic technique to make the array lose its target, causing it to spontaneously combust and scatter.
Seeing the situation turn dire, Shan Ren charged forward without hesitation.
The creature, not yet fully free from the talisman’s restraints, moved stiffly.
Shan Ren seized the opportunity, twisting its arm behind its back and forcefully bending it.
With a crisp “crack,” the creature’s elbow was bent in the opposite direction.
Shan Ren then released one hand, intending to grab its neck.
But at that moment, the arm that should have been disabled suddenly moved again.
In its twisted position, it lunged straight for Shan Ren’s chest.
“You can still move?!” Shan Ren was shocked, but it was too late to dodge.
At the critical moment, a hand suddenly intervened—it was Shi Pengpeng, who had swiftly moved in.
She precisely grabbed the creature’s wrist, then executed a spinning back throw, slamming the creature to the ground with a loud “thud.”
Shan Ren was dumbfounded, “Such… such strength!”
“Ugh, ugh, ugh—” The creature spat out a mouthful of mud mixed with rotten leaves, screeching furiously.
With a twist of its elbow joint, its forearm detached and flew toward Shi Pengpeng, “I’ll kill you!”
The severed arm, carried by the howling wind, was as terrifying as a thousand-pound blade.
This turn of events was completely unexpected.
Both Bai Wanmu and Shan Ren cried out in alarm, “Pengpeng Be careful!”
“So that’s how it is…” Shi Pengpeng’s eyebrows raised, and instead of dodging, she spun forward, meeting the attack head-on with a palm strike.
“Slap!”
The moment their palms met, Shi Pengpeng was forced back several steps, his internal organs churning violently.
Unable to hold back, he coughed violently a few times, his face turning noticeably paler.
“Eee “The strange man laughed triumphantly, “Little mage, you’re nothing… Ahhh!! You despicable scoundrel, you have no martial honor!”
The fierce wind suddenly ceased, and a slender forearm fell to the ground.
On the open palm was a talisman paper.
The cinnabar glowed, and the forearm revealed its true form a piece of wood carved into the shape of a human hand.
Shan Ren suddenly realized, “So it’s a wooden puppet.”
No wonder it felt no pain and its joints were so durable.
Bai Wanmu exclaimed, “No wonder the Gu worms couldn’t affect it!”
Gu worms need to enter a living body to act on organs and the mind.
A wooden puppet has no flesh or blood, so it remains unaffected.
It was only then that they understood why they couldn’t sense its presence.
Wood hides in the forest, water conceals itself in the sea.
This dense forest was the perfect cover for the wooden puppet.
“That’s why the talisman trap had it cornered, but then suddenly lost its target. It must have merged its aura with the forest, or rather, it turned the entire forest into its aura.”
Shi Pengpeng hooked the wooden hand with his foot, picked it up, and examined it carefully under the moonlight filtering through the sparse leaves.
The carving on the wooden hand was mediocre, roughly at the level of a mass-produced toy.
The wood was also ordinary, the most common locust wood found in the southern regions.
However, locust wood is known as “ghost wood” because it often grows in shady areas and is easily inhabited by spirits and demons.
The wooden hand was painted with two layers of colored lacquer.
The bottom layer was clearly old, with the paint peeling off, and a new layer had been roughly applied over it without removing the old one, making the surface uneven and increasingly mottled.
Bai Wanmu had already come over, peering at it curiously.
She said with some surprise, “Huh, this wooden hand doesn’t look impressive at all. It doesn’t seem like it could be that powerful.”
Throughout history, there have been many examples of wood being refined into spirits.
However, wooden sculptures lack innate spiritual awareness.
Even if they gain sentience, they usually possess only minor abilities and rarely achieve great power.
But this wooden puppet not only had a sturdy form but could also borrow power from the forest, even deceiving the Four Symbols Talisman Array.
It was clearly extraordinary.
One would expect that a refined wooden puppet of such cultivation would have a remarkable body, made of rare wood or at least crafted with exquisite skill.
Yet this wooden hand was utterly ordinary, even crude.
“Bullshit! What do you know about aesthetics?” the wooden puppet roared in anger.
“This is called ‘great skill appears clumsy,’ understand? And you ”
It glared at Shi Pengpeng, “Give me back my hand, or you’ll regret it!”
Shi Pengpeng: “…You said the same thing earlier.”
The wooden puppet: “……”
“Eee, that didn’t count!” The wooden puppet stomped furiously.
“Now I’m really angry!”
With that, it puffed out its cheeks and exhaled a long breath in their direction.
In an instant, a strong wind rose from the ground, accompanied by a rumbling sound.
The ground beneath their feet began to shake.
“Watch out!” Shi Pengpeng sensed the danger and quickly pulled Bai Wanmu aside.
At the same time, a thick branch, carried by the fierce wind, swept heavily through the spot where they had just been standing.
On the other side, Shan Ren also let out a loud shout, quickly retreating a few steps to narrowly avoid another branch’s attack.
The three of them gathered together, and Shan Ren spoke with urgency, “This is bad. This wooden man can actually control the trees…”
“Eeeek, scared now, aren’t you?” The wooden man laughed maniacally, one hand on its hip.
“I am the wood among woods, the king of all trees. All the trees in the world are at my command. Let’s see how you escape!”
“Don’t listen to its boasting,” Shi Pengpeng said as they retreated together.
“It just infused a part of its demonic energy into that tree, turning it into a wooden puppet.”
Shan Ren: “……”
Even so, it was still quite impressive.
The forest was filled with wood everywhere, meaning the wooden man could create puppets around them at any time, making it impossible to guard against.
“Ugh,” Bai Wanmu scratched her head in frustration.
“Our luck is terrible. We’ve run into a wooden man exploiting a bug, and the three of us can’t even handle it!”
The three of them were considered top talents in their respective sects, but Shan Ren’s physical attacks couldn’t break the wooden man’s body, and Shi Pengpeng’s talisman techniques couldn’t lock onto its aura in the forest.
As for herself, it went without saying…
“Who said that?”
The three of them retreated behind a large tree, temporarily avoiding the wooden man’s line of sight.
Shi Pengpeng turned around and pressed Bai Wanmu’s shoulder.
“Now is the time for you to act!”
“Huh?” Bai Wanmu was stunned, unsure.
“Me?”
“Of course.”
Shi Pengpeng nodded, giving her a confident look.
“Let it witness the might of the mighty Southern Border Gu King!”
“I can’t, my dear minister,” Bai Wanmu said with a guilty expression.
“I’ve already tried.”
Shan Ren chimed in, “Master Shi, you saw it too. This is a wooden man. Master Bai’s Gu insects can’t control it…”
Shi Pengpeng raised an eyebrow.
“Who said anything about controlling it?”
Bai Wanmu: “Then what?”
Shi Pengpeng: “Bore into it!”
Bai Wanmu: ?
Shan Ren: ?
Well… that might actually work.
“Eeeek, why are you all hiding?” The wooden man chuckled eerily, leisurely walking toward a large tree.
“It’s useless. This is my territory. I’ll show you the power of the king of all trees, especially you, little mage…”
“Hmph, who allowed you to call yourself king?” Shi Pengpeng stepped out from behind the tree, looking righteous and loyal.
“In my heart, there is only one king in the Southern Border!”
“?” The wooden man paused.
“…What nonsense is this?”
At that moment, a faint, lingering flute sound suddenly emerged from behind the tree, ethereal and eerie, adding an inexplicable sense of dread to the deep forest.
A rustling sound followed underfoot.
The wooden man looked down and, under the dim moonlight, saw the thick layer of leaves on the ground trembling and bulging.
Suddenly, a small insect emerged from the leaves, crawled onto its foot, and bit down.
The wooden man suddenly realized it was that Gu witch summoning her insects again.
“Eeeek, have you all gone mad with desperation?” The wooden man burst into laughter.
“Gu techniques are useless against me…”
Mid-sentence, it suddenly felt something was wrong.
Normally, Gu techniques only used one insect, and that Gu witch had already released one on it earlier.
However, its body was solid wood, with no blood…
The worm had only bitten through a bit of its outer skin, failing to burrow into its body.
The Witch had failed in her attempt to curse it and had no choice but to sheepishly retrieve the worm.
But this time, it wasn’t just one worm.
Besides the first one, there were a few more, no, dozens, no, hundreds…
No, that’s not it either!!
An endless stream of worms emerged from the piled leaves and soil, swarming up the wooden figure’s legs in a dense, crawling mass.
Ants, cockroaches, centipedes, spiders… almost every insect in the forest seemed to have gathered.
Once these insects climbed onto the wooden figure, they didn’t try to burrow into its body like typical curse worms.
Instead, they continuously gnawed at it with their mandibles.
“The curse didn’t work, but the worms are doing the job,” Shi Pengpeng said.
Curse worms aren’t the name of a specific insect but rather the king of worms selected from countless insects.
The most common method of refining a curse worm is to place various highly toxic insects in a sealed container and let them fight to the death.
The last one remaining is called the curse worm.
Thus, curse worms naturally possess the power to instill fear in other insects.
Bai Wanmu had practiced the art of curses since childhood.
Not only was she skilled in refining and using curse worms, but she was also an expert in handling insects.
She could both command curse worms and use them to control various other insects.
The wooden figure: !
It finally realized, “No!!!”
Almost instinctively, it turned to flee, but there was no escape.
The dense forest was the domain of trees and also the domain of insects.
No matter where it went or how it moved, there were insects everywhere.
The insects gathered in greater and greater numbers.
Soon, in every direction, as far as the eye could see, there were insects crawling.
The wooden figure had no flesh, blood, or internal organs, but at this moment, it truly felt a sense of utter terror.
The wooden figure didn’t fear pain, wasn’t controlled by curses, and could break through talismans with the forest’s cover.
But it was truly afraid of being eaten by insects.
If it were just a few or even dozens of small insects, it might have been manageable.
But now, it seemed like the entire forest’s insects had joined in the feast.
No matter how sturdy the wood, it would likely be gnawed to pieces.
Before long, the wooden figure couldn’t hold on any longer.
Its teeth chattering, it shouted, “I surrender, Grass Witch! Stop this, I admit defeat…”
“How dare you! What Grass Witch?!” Shi Pengpeng roared.
“Call me the Curse King!”Â
The wooden figure: “….”
So, the king you spoke of was this king.