While Bai Li was doing his battle, other participants were also fighting their own battles. They wanted to use the early opportunities as much as possible because they knew that the competition would be tough once the later parts started.
The Tando Woodlands were covered with tall and dense trees coupled with vines and other vegetation. So, every disciple travelled through rugged terrain.
A young woman with long white hair tied into a ponytail was jumping through the dense forest to find her prey. She had a knife scar on her left cheek with cat-like eyes. She also carried a slender white sword with many runes on it on her back.
'Just where are all the Spiritual Creatures?'
She looked around, trying to find any Spiritual Creatures, but there were none, not even Tier 1 Spiritual Creatures. And that was unnerving, as she couldn't believe there was such an area in the designated zone.
She had landed in this particular area and had not found a single Spiritual creature, which should be impossible. Her heart grew cold as she sensed something wrong in the surroundings. She wanted to shrug it off, but she couldn't.
There was definitely something wrong here. And then, something lashed at her from behind, making her scalp tingle. She instantly curled up and dodged to the right, barely surviving a whip-like vine.
She rolled on the hard ground and came to a stop by planting her hand on a rock. She stood up in an instant, unsheathed her sword, and slashed to her left diagonally.
A creepy sound of skin being torn apart came as a thin green vine dropped on the ground, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth on it.
The young woman didn't waste any time and sliced the vine in half, making the vine's colour change from green to purple and finally black. She looked in shock as the vine began to dissolve in a strange black liquid and was then absorbed into the ground.
She took a deep breath to enter a battle state. She needed to clear off her thoughts to fight properly; otherwise, she would die without a fight.
Just then, the ground began trembling as if something massive was travelling below it. The young woman flinched slightly and raised her leg. Then, bringing it down, she slammed it on the ground, making ice appear all around her in a small radius.
She clicked her tongue and quickly tore off a piece of her cloth and wrapped it around her bleeding arm. She then looked down at the ice, which was cracking up, and backed away, having her guards fully up.
The moment she left the ice, it shattered as a spike made of tree roots appeared there. It was big, almost double the size of her, and its sharp tip was smeared in a black liquid.
She cursed her bad luck again and again and ran towards where she had come from without looking back. She had a few triumph cards in her arsenal, but she knew they wouldn't work against this kind of Abomination, so her best bet of surviving was to run away from it, as impossible as it was.
She was running towards where she had come from, mostly because of the Strange Tree Spiritual Creature. It had waited for some time before attacking her, which made her deduce that she had actually travelled deep into its domain after she was transported to the boundary.
She didn't know how right she was, but this was her only viable option. She raised her sword and summoned a silver armour from her storage ring, which quickly wrapped around her body as if it were a light cloth. It covered almost every part of her body, including her head, where a helmet was placed.
However, the armour didn't hinder her movements in the slightest as she ran at top speed while cutting down the strange vines. Fortunately, this time, the blood didn't get on her, so she was still safe from the strange mental attack.
However, she felt the ground trembling again, this time with much higher intensity, making her heart go cold. She gritted her teeth as she tried to guess the direction of the spike, but then her body shuddered.
'F-From all sides? Why?'