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Daily Credit: 15

Sacrifice Credit: 20

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"It's been a week since Stella and Diana left," Ashlock said to nobody in particular as he ignored the system message.

Even Maple had gone with the girls and left him all alone.

Aslock looked around the courtyard, which was deathly silent except for the buzzing of flies around the opened silk sack of human corpses lying next to his trunk. Once again, Ashlock felt blessed for his lack of smell because having rotting corpses so close by would be a nightmare.

However, although he couldn't smell the bodies, resisting the hunger and desire to consume was hard. He was in a constant battle with himself. On the one hand, the corpses were decomposing, so they would make for crappy Root Puppets anyway, and with every passing second, the little flesh left on them was losing their Qi which he could consume for sacrifice credits.

A few hours passed with nothing happening—Ashlock distracted his mind by focusing on cultivation, but with the ambient Qi from the Grand Elder's supernova gone, and the runic formation surrounding him damaged, it felt like a lukewarm jacuzzi rather than a lovely hot one. It was simply unsatisfying and slower than usual.

Letting out a long sigh, he stopped cultivating. It almost felt pointless to focus so much of his mental energy on, as eating corpses was far more efficient for Ashlock. "Darn demonic cultivation technique. No wonder those cultivators go insane. If I had to choose between sitting cross-legged in a cold cave for months to cultivate or eating a beast core, how are those two options comparable?" Ashlock was yet to see a truly powerful demonic cultivator lose their sanity, but he could see how it could happen.

Ashlock cast his spiritual sight to the heavy blob of silk suspended from his branches. Over the last few days, the silk had transitioned from white to a dull grey, like ash. He was excited to see how his first summon's evolution would turn out. Had he made the correct choice? Would a Chaos Spider have been better?

His thoughts wandered as he looked around the courtyard some more. The place was honestly a dump. The once pristine white stone walls of the Red Vine pavilion were now coated in a thick layer of dust and grime. Some of the slanted roofs' black wooden tiles had blown away in the wind or been scorched by the Grand Elder's attack.

The central courtyard was in a terrible state. Blood smeared the wrecked runic formation surrounding Ashlock alongside bits of cloth and monster parts left over from his meals. The training courtyard looked like a war had been fought, and the other courtyards weren't much better.

The herb garden was overgrown with weeds overshadowing the more delicate plants causing them to wither and die due to a lack of sunlight, and the smallest courtyard with a large pound had a few dead Koi fish floating around. Out of all the courtyards, only the one with a mini runic formation that Stella used to meditate was in a somewhat okay condition.

Now Ashlock was no clean freak; even if he had been, becoming a tree changed his opinion on some things. But honestly, something needed to change around here. The girls required servants as they were hopeless at cleaning and looking after themselves.

Ashlock's irritated thoughts were interrupted by a loud thump and a sudden relief of pressure on his branch.

[Evolution of Ashen Prince {Larry} Complete]

Larry looked as majestic as ever, and the system hadn't lied. He looked almost the same, but his presence in the surroundings was far more significant. The increased understanding of the Dao seemed to reflect on the spider's Soul Core stage.

The enormous spider that stood a few meters tall stayed motionless—likely awaiting a command from Ashlock. As the spider was now B grade, Ashlock feared what level of destruction he could cause the Winterwrath and Evergreen families.

"But do I poke the hornet's nest?" Ashlock wanted bodies for communication and more sacrifice credits to further his cultivation. And if he let Larry wreak havoc and eat as many bodies as he wants, he could reach [A] grade.

The two families are likely on high alert right now, scouring the forest for the spider. "Larry, go out into the wilderness beyond the sect and hunt monsters for a month. Then, come back here with some monster corpses for me." Larry complied, and the car-sized spider scuttled off in the direction of the wilderness.

Ashlock decided this was the best course of action. If he sent Larry to kill cultivators so soon, a Grand Elder may come along and eliminate Larry for good. On the other hand, by waiting a month, their alertness for Larry will die down, and Larry may even reach the [A] grade in a month and can then contend with the stronger cultivators.

With Larry gone, silence once again returned to the courtyard. Moments like this reminded Ashlock of why he kept the girls around. He was glad that Stella had recently become somewhat friends with Diana, as their conversations livened the place up.

"Ugh... whoever thought putting a human mind in a tree was a good idea was a sick bastard." Everything about a tree was slow and lonely, but luckily he knew that would change over time. One day this peak will become home to new people, and he will have lots of people to interact with by using corpses to draw on the walls or flashing his leaves with his Qi. "Maybe I should teach them morse code somehow—or something similar. I could create tree code!"

***

Another week passed by.

Ashlock was starting to wonder what Stella and Diana were up to. He had used his {Eye of the Tree God} skill and never caught sight of them anywhere in the city, or at least the part he could see.

Unfortunately, the bundle of corpses had become maggot-infested, and not much of the original humans remained. Deciding to cut his losses, Ashlock cast {Devour}.

[+1 SC]

"Wow... only one credit?" Even with the corpse's condition, Ashlock felt only one credit was low. Had all of the corpse's Qi-filled meat been eaten? Were their bones worth nothing? Now he regretted holding onto the bodies for so long. "I should have eaten them and asked Larry to get me more... darn it."

Luckily his fresh yellow fruits containing a {Demonic Tree Seed} had grown enough to interest some birds. A blue and black feathered bird landed on his branch and looked curiously at the fruit. Unfortunately, the bird seemed to detect the subtle poison in the fruit as it refused to bite.

Before the bird could fly away, Ashlock surged some Qi through his branch, which lit it up with purple flames, and before the bird could even react, the fire of Ashlock's Soul Core burned the bird alive.

Its scorched corpse tumbled to the side and hit the ground with a dull thump.

"Holy shit." Ashlock just looked at the corpse for a while. The only other time he'd managed to kill birds was once accidentally with lightning that was still arcing between his branches after he resisted lightning strikes, and the other was when a bird found his fruit so sour it knocked its head.

Both were accidents. But this time? He had actually succeeded in killing something with Qi on purpose. After eight years of cultivating, Ashlock finally felt like an accomplished cultivator.

Casting {Devour} on the bird's corpse gave him a familiar notification.

[+1 SC]

Ashlock mentally frowned as he watched the black vines retreat into the ground. "Only one point again... sure, the bird was small, but I remember getting more than that before."

Now that he thought about it, his points had been lower for weaker things since ascending to the Soul Fire realm. The mountain of monster corpses had given him around about what he expected, but they were powerful monsters from the wilderness. In contrast, the cultivators and birds he had eaten that were on par or weaker than him had given far fewer sacrifice credits than expected.

A terrible thought dawned on Ashlock. When he devoured a corpse, he would absorb some of their Qi, and the system would reward him with credits he could spend. But as his cultivation advanced, the amount of Qi he needed to absorb to continue growing increased exponentially.

Now, if this was the case and the number of sacrifice credits he got from weaker corpses than him continued to decrease, he had two options. Either he got Larry, Stella, and Diana to keep bringing him stronger and stronger corpses, or he lucked out and upgraded his {Devour} skill.

"Sigh. My dreams of creating a continent-sized chicken farm and endlessly devouring corpses has been ruined." Ashlock calmed down, this was just a theory at this point, and his sample size was too small. He can conduct more experiments when Larry returns with corpses in a month.

***

A day passed. Ashlock awoke to another bird landing on his branch. This one was far bigger than the previous one, almost like a winged lizard with an ugly head and razor-sharp teeth. Unfortunately for this bird... lizard... thing, it hadn't developed the most fantastic sense of smell, and it happily chewed on a poisonous yellow fruit. Once it got to the seed, it swallowed that too.

After eating a few fruits, it flapped its feathered wings and glided off the side of the mountain toward the many human villages. Ashlock followed it with {Eye of the Tree God}, curious if the poison would take effect.

Later that day, as the afternoon sun warmed the land, the creature was in obvious agony. It clawed at its stomach and gasped for breath as its face wrested between panic and despair. Finally, it fell out of a tree and began to roll around the forest floor, and then, after a few minutes, it twitched and eventually ceased all movement. Dead.

Then Ashlock saw an odd thing occur. The creature's corpse began to rapidly decay. Ashlock felt like he was watching a timelapse as it happened so fast. Not even an hour passed, and the creature's skin split open, and a black shoot with a single red leaf emerged.

Was that a baby demonic tree?