Spirit Pact Hundred Scenes Record

Chapter 18 The Border of the Emerald Forest

The moment the Narwhale plunged into the wall of fog, the world was redefined.

One moment, a clear blue sky, blazing sunlight, howling wind, and three black iron airships relentlessly pursuing them, their pale tail flames trailing behind. The next moment, all of that was shut out, replaced by…

green.

A thick, moist, vibrant green.

The fog wasn't white, but a jade-green hue, as if the chlorophyll of an entire forest had dissolved into the air, filling every inch of space. Visibility plummeted to less than twenty meters; beyond that lay a chaotic, slowly flowing green curtain. Sunlight was thoroughly filtered and distorted, becoming a strange, underwater-like diffused light that shone from all directions, casting no shadows, having no direction; everything was shrouded in a uniform, unsettling green light.

The voice has changed too.

The sound of the wind vanished—or rather, absorbed by the fog. The roar of the engines became muffled and distant, as if coming from the depths of the water. The sailors' shouts were shrouded in fog, becoming indistinct. In their place came another sound: a faint, continuous dripping sound, like the fog condensing and sliding off the ship's surface; a low, rustling sound, like plants growing or breathing, omnipresent; and a distant, faint, drawn-out echo, indistinct whether it was birdsong or something else.

The temperature dropped by at least ten degrees. The damp, cold air immediately penetrated their clothes and seeped into their skin, bringing a bone-chilling cold. Karen shivered, and Xiguang in her arms also shrank back, its golden fur standing on end slightly.

"Maintain course!" Captain Heinrich's voice sounded distant in the thick fog. "Do not change speed or direction! Keep a straight line until I give the order!"

The helmsman responded loudly from the wheelhouse, his voice tinged with tension. Navigating in this environment, where visual references are completely lost, is like walking blindfolded on the edge of a cliff, relying entirely on experience and intuition.

Karen stood on the deck, his hands gripping the ship's railing tightly. The railing was slippery and cold, covered with a fine layer of water droplets. He looked back—the direction he had come from was completely swallowed by the green mist, and the cult's airship had vanished without a trace. This should be a good thing, but for some reason, Karen's heart didn't slow down; instead, it beat faster.

A new sensation came from the silver spirit rune on my wrist: it wasn't the resonance of being tracked, but rather... "crowding".

The psionic environment of the Emerald Forest is too "full".

In Dustlight Town, within the ordinary cloud sea region, environmental psionic energy flows like a gently flowing river—omnipresent yet evenly distributed and orderly. But here, the psionic energy is like tangled vines, a dense jungle, a pot of boiling soup. Countless streams of psionic energy, strong or weak, weave, collide, and entwine within the mist, utterly without rhyme or reason. Karen's spiritual runes passively perceive all of this; a torrent of information floods his consciousness, making him dizzy and forcing him to concentrate just to maintain basic sensory filtering.

Xi Guang's reaction was even stronger.

The cub peeked out from his arms, its amber eyes scanning the thick fog warily. Its ears perked up and twitched slightly, as if trying to catch a sound. A low, continuous gurgling sound came from its throat, not a threat, but more like...confusion and unease.

"What's wrong?" Karen asked softly, her fingers stroking Xiguang's downy fur.

Xi Guang raised her head, her gaze complex. It conveyed a vague idea:

There were many sounds... a jumble of noises... one of them was crying...

cry?

Karen frowned. He listened intently, but heard nothing but the sound of mist. Dawn, however, clearly sensed something more. Lightwing Lions possessed a natural sensitivity to light and life energy, and the vibrant environment of the Emerald Forest seemed to Dawn like a chaotic marketplace.

He closed his eyes, attempting to share the perception of the dawn through the connection of the spirit runes.

At first, there was only a chaotic noise: the whispers of countless plants growing, the chirping of insects fluttering their wings, the rustling of animals moving in the distance, and the rustling of the mist itself flowing. These sounds blended together like an endless symphony of life, vast and chaotic, yet harmonious as a whole.

Then, deep within the symphony, he "heard" it.

Not through the ears, but through a spiritual "hearing." A faint, intermittent, and painful thought, like a thread about to snap, drifted through the depths of the fog:

Pain...so much pain...pollution...spreading...help...help us...

The thoughts were vague, their source and direction unclear, and the information they conveyed was fragmented and incomplete. But the pain was real, excruciating, as if something alive was being slowly eroded and corrupted.

Karen opened his eyes, his face pale. He looked at Leah—she was standing not far away, her hands forming a simple mudra, her eyes closed, clearly trying to sense the surrounding air currents using the Wind Spirit Vein. Grom, on the other hand, was crouching by the ship's railing, holding a modified compass, but the compass needle was spinning wildly, completely useless.

"I sensed something," Karen said, her voice hoarse with tension. "Deep in the fog... there's a spirit in pain... crying for help."

Leah opened her eyes, her green pupils appearing exceptionally deep in the green light. "Specific direction? Distance?"

"I don't know." Karen shook her head. "It was too faint, like an echo coming from all directions. But the light of dawn heard it too."

Grom put away his compass and stood up, his thick eyebrows furrowed. "SOS? In this godforsaken place? Most of the creatures in the Emerald Forest are adapted to chaotic environments, unless..."

His words were interrupted by a loud bang.

It didn't come from behind, nor from the sky, but from below—deep in the sea of ​​clouds.

The ship jolted violently, as if it had struck something. Then, from the thick fog-shrouded sea of ​​clouds, thick, moss-covered vines burst forth from the "water"!

Those weren't vines in the botanical sense. They were as thick as an adult's waist, covered in a dark green, damp cuticle, like the tentacles or roots of some enormous creature. The vines stretched out from the sea of ​​clouds, twisting and extending through the air as if alive, heading straight for the hull of the Narwhal!

The first vine wrapped around the starboard railing, tightening and causing the wood to groan under its weight. The second vine lashed across the deck, leaving a slippery trail that emitted a faint white smoke—the slime was corrosive. The third vine coiled directly toward the mainmast, but fortunately the sailors reacted quickly, hacking and slashing with machetes and axes to barely force it back.

"Strangling Vines!" Grom roared, drawing his warhammer—a dwarven-style one-handed hammer with runes engraved on its head, now emitting a dark red glow. "How did they get onto the surface of the spirit mist? These things usually only nest in areas heavily polluted by the spirit veins!"

"Pollution?" Karen's heart sank. He remembered the painful thought he had just sensed: pollution...spreading...

More vines rose from the sea of ​​clouds. Not just a few, but dozens, even hundreds, like a suddenly awakened, wildly dancing forest, completely surrounding the Narwhale. The ship's speed plummeted, and the engines emitted a mournful wail of overload—the propellers were entangled in the vines.

"All hands on deck!" Captain Heinrich's command was decisive. "Cut the vines! Protect the engines and the rudder!"

A chaotic struggle erupted on deck. Sailors brandished their weapons, battling the living vines. Machetes slashed at the vines, splattering green, viscous sap that emitted a pungent, putrid stench. The vines convulsed violently after being severed, but the broken ends regenerated rapidly, sprouting new, finer tendrils to continue the attack.

Lia joined the battle. She didn't use a weapon, but instead formed hand seals, her lips moving as she chanted ancient wind-borne incantations. The surrounding mist began to swirl, forming small, sharp vortexes of air around her. With a push of her hands, the vortexes shot out like invisible blades, severing two attacking vines at the root with clean, mirror-like cuts.

"Karen! Back to the cabin!" Leah called back, sweat beading on her forehead. Using her ability would activate the Order's tracking mark, but she couldn't worry about that now.

Karen carried Xiguang back, but he didn't leave immediately. His gaze was fixed on the vines, on the unnatural colors flowing across their surfaces.

Within the uniform emerald green mist, the vines appeared...too dark. Almost an inky green, and in some places, their surface displayed strange, vein-like black veins. More importantly, through her spiritual senses, Karen could "see" the flow of spiritual energy within the vines.

Normal plant spirits should possess a warm, gentle, and vibrant green or gold spiritual energy. But these vines… their spiritual energy core is a murky, viscous black, spreading and polluting the surrounding green spiritual energy like ink dripping into clear water. The black spiritual energy flows along the veins of the vines, distorting their structure wherever it passes—accelerating growth but going out of control, secreting corrosive mucus, and becoming extremely aggressive.

This is what "pollution" is.

Karen's heart pounded. He remembered Grom's words: "Strangling Vines...usually only nest in areas heavily polluted by ley lines."

He suddenly looked up, gazing into the depths of the thick fog, towards the general direction from which the painful thought was coming.

Spiritual Vein Vision, activated.

It wasn't a passive perception, but an active and purposeful exploration. Karen focused all her attention on the spiritual patterns on her wrist, following the "echoes" of the painful thoughts she sensed in the light, like a hunting dog tracking a trail of blood, "looking" into the fog.

The view pierced through the thick fog, through the ship's hull, through the churning sea of ​​clouds below, extending ever onward—

He "saw" it.

Deep within the Emerald Forest, on a large floating island about ten miles away, lies a luminous crystal vein. This vein is likely a natural psionic node within the Emerald Forest, normally emitting a soft, rainbow-like glow that nourishes the surrounding ecosystem.

But now, the vein has been eroded.

A black, semi-crystalline substance, like blood vessels or mold, spreads across the surface and within the mineral vein. Wherever the black crystals pass, the once pure crystals become cloudy and dull, and the emanating psionic energy transforms from warm life energy into cold, malicious pollution. The pollution spreads outward along the psionic network of the mineral vein, like poison flowing through blood vessels, infecting the entire ecosystem of the floating island.

Those strangling vines are a product of contamination. They may have originally been plant spirits guarding the mine, but now they have become extensions and claws of the contamination, frantically attacking any life that gets close.

And that painful thought...

Karen focused her senses on the core of the vein. There, the concentration of black crystals was highest, almost completely covering the original crystalline structure. But in the deepest part, there was still a faint, struggling glimmer of light—the soul of the vein, the remnant of the ancient consciousness of this land, being slowly devoured and assimilated by the black crystals.

It is crying for help.

Help... us... the pollution... came from the sky... black stones... pain...

Black stones?

Karen jerked back to reality, breathing heavily. The excessive consumption of psionic energy caused warm liquid to well up in his nose again, and his vision blurred at the edges. He staggered, almost falling, but luckily managed to grab onto a nearby cargo container.

"Karen!" Leah cut down a vine that was attacking him and rushed over to support him. "Are you alright? You're bleeding from your nose!"

"I see it..." Karen wiped the blood from her nose, her voice trembling. "The source of the contamination... is over there..." He pointed in a direction through the fog, "A crystal vein... corroded by black crystals... these vines are just part of the infected..."

Leah's expression changed. "Vein contamination? This is no small matter. If the entire vein is contaminated, the entire Emerald Forest region could be—"

Her words were interrupted by an even louder cracking sound.

A teeth-grinding tearing sound came from the center of the ship. A main vine, three times thicker than the others, rose from the sea of ​​clouds, its surface covered with thick, armor-like black crystals, and wrapped itself directly around the whalebone main frame of the Cloud Whale. The main vine tightened, and the hull groaned as if it were about to disintegrate, beginning to list.

"The port engine has stopped!" Grom's shout came from the stern. "The propeller is completely tangled! We need backup!"

Captain Heinrich drew his longsword, its blade gleaming with a silvery-white light. He leaped into the air and slashed at the main vine. The blade struck the black crystal, creating a series of dazzling sparks, but leaving only a shallow white mark on the crystal's surface.

The main vine remained unharmed and continued to tighten.

The ship was listing at an increasingly steep angle, cargo on deck was sliding, and the sailors were losing their footing. If this continued, the Narwhale would be strangled or dragged into the depths of the sea of ​​clouds.

Karen watched all of this, watching the wildly dancing, contaminated vines, watching the people fighting desperately on the ship, and watching Xiguang, trembling in her arms but still conveying words of encouragement.

Then he looked up and gazed in the direction of the pollution source in the fog.

"We can't keep running away," he said softly, his voice low but filled with determination. "We have to address the root cause. Otherwise, we'll never escape."