chapter  567  vivian’s soft heart (part 4)

    aster was really curious about that poison she just used, but before that, they had to find a place to spend the night, though moving at night wasn''t forbidden, the fatigue formations increased their intensity at night.

    rushing in is a crime when venturing outside, in this vast cultivation world where unusual situations happen quite often, moving without a plan or any preparation, is a safe way to end one''s life.

    of course, preparing for each and every situation isn''t possible, but covering the essentials is a must, and this trial is supposed to teach that to the members of the young generation.

    so far, they have been shown the importance of never depending on spatial rings completely, then food securing, observation skills and also the importance of having someone with solid knowledge about poisons in the group.

    additionally, this batch of participants were given the opportunity to learn a couple of extra super important lessons, and by aster''s hand no less, one was to be more careful at the moment of choosing who to rob, since killing and looting others is a given in the cultivation world, and second, that luck is also really important when venturing.

    just look at those junior disciples, where the others were at their wit''s end to find something relatively safe to eat, they each got enough to keep hunger away and also got to talk with their idol at the same time.

    there was also a reminder mixed in the lessons the male disciples were taught by aster, and that is that the one with the bigger fist is the king, they technically knew about it since the sect always put emphasis into it, but they who had their own circles and information about the trial from their superiors, got cocky believing that local snakes could suppress a dragon.

    well, in normal cases that might happen, but when has ever aster done anything that could be considered "normal".

    leaving that aside, once again vivian showed her skillfulness in guiding, she who is used to be in the "dark" had developed an unusual sharp sight for places deprived of light, and surprisingly, the night in this secret realm isn''t completely gradual like normal, instead, the moment the clock hit 7:00 pm, the sky darkened as if it was midnight all of a sudden.

    and now, it was the time for the ones to be in control to change, and also time for another lesson to be taught to the members of the young generation, which is "spirit beasts are most of the times, way more active at night".

    "aghhhh!", the first scream of the night, surprisingly didn''t come from the now grim-looking forest, where danger seemed to wait at every corner, but from the previously relatively safe open plain.

    "what is this, watch out, the beasts on the underground traps were released!", shouted one of the many disciples, that decided to spend the night on the "easy" first stage of the trial, to continue with the help of the sunlight tomorrow.

    "shit, didn''t the seniors assured us that the probability of this happening was of one in a thousand, why are we so unlucky!", said another of the ones that stayed behind on purpose.

    aster who was navigating through the branches of the trees avoiding the ground, next to vivian, heard the ruckus start and he smirked seeing the large group of people that were rushing to the entrance of the forest.

    just for then to crash against an invisible wall and fall backwards.

    "t-the entrance is closed, aghh careful there is a damn snake here!".

    "you blind bastard, it''s not a snake, it''s a centipede, no get away from me!".

    and similar screams could be heard coming from the entrance to the forest, making aster inwardly chuckle.

    ''as i would expect from mom''s "sisters", they are quite something else'', he thought.

    the amount of surveillance that was installed here, surpassed what the public knew, by a lot, if only they knew that everything happening here was being literally recorded up to the last detail, thy wouldn''t be revealing their true colors.

    those smartasses that formed groups and sold information regarding the trial or prepared the juniors from their respective families that just joined so that they could get a better first-time score, didn''t realize that they were just dancing on the palms of the one who created this secret realm.

    all those guys that were now trying to enter the forest, but were failing and then got bitten by the poisonous spirit beasts that were released from their cages, inspected the entrance and didn''t find anything suspicious.

    which isn''t exactly wrong, the entrance was perfectly normal, until a moment ago, aster''s godmother set it so to produce different results depending on a certain situation, in this case there were too many guys that stayed behind on purpose and so, the entrance was blocked.

    since they wanted to stay in the plain too much, then they would only be able to be in the plain, and judging by the level of the spirit beasts that were released, most will only see the plain this time, as they will be eliminated during the night.

    however, that was of no interest for aster, vivian managed to guide them through quite a few kilometers into the forest, without finding any enemies be it other participants or spirit beasts.

    but even using all her skills to avoid most of the enemies, the first purpose of the forest stage of the trial, was to deal with large ambushes, so they were bound to meet one sooner or later, since those clowns from before sucked too much at hiding so they couldn''t count as one.

    so, after that tree gained such a wicked fame, people stopped trying to challenge it, and instead tried to find the detours that will give them as less troubles as possible, which again ended up in creating conflict, since some groups wanted to keep those passages for themselves.

    aster noticed a couple of gazes observing him from both right and left, but then to those guy''s surprise, both he and vivian continued advancing in a straight line.

    "don''t tell me that guy wants to challenge that monstrous tree, information about it is available for each and every disciple at this point, he is just crazy", said the guy at the left.

    "humph, don''t you know him, he is that crazy bastard who has been in the mouth of all the junior female disciples, as well as the senior sisters from almost all the prominent factions, he must think that he is some bigshot even here where talent doesn''t matter", said the guy at the right.

    despite having taken quite some distance, aster of course heard them and he memorized how they looked, below the rags that they were using to cover their faces, he of course was going to give them a nice beating tomorrow, but for now he focused his attention on the tree that became closer with each step they took.

    not only that, but the pressure radiated from the tree was also insanely high, that tree was not an earth realm being, but a sea of knowledge one!

    aster felt the pressure attacking him head and he smirked, this level of pressure was nothing for him, still he snapped his fingers and vivian''s body was covered in a faint golden light, meaning she was now being protected by aster''s paragon body.

    she could have deflected the pressure from the tree with ease, since her soul cultivation focuses on telekinesis, which has the ability to interfere with both physical and ethereal things, but just like vivian had her role when venturing, aster had his, which was both attack and defend depending on the situation.

    vivian saw the pretty golden light covering her and she smiled, as they both arrived at the tree, the pressure released by it wouldn''t be enough to make all the ones that had participated in this trial, take a detour, that list included some really talented people like iris and nerissa after all.

    what came next was what made those who made it through the pressure from the tree, end up having to retreat, or faint to wake up a whole day later like it happened to those who weren''t strong willed enough.

    "the fragrance released by the leaves of this tree cause hallucinations and have sleeping poison in them too... how weird this tree isn''t supposed to have those properties", said vivian with a confused voice, she was confident in her knowledge regarding poisonous things, at least for the earth and transcending realms, since information about immortal grade stuff was rarer, not to mention she can''t currently create any immortal grade poison.

    aster quickly attributed this to his alchemist godmother, the tree was probably raised using an elixir which changed its nature, which though doesn''t sound complicated, getting a noticeably positive improvement is not something that can be easily achieved, otherwise valuable variants like nim which is a yang runic oak, wouldn''t be extremely rare even in the divine firmaments.

    still aster didn''t try to defend himself, with his superior dragon senses, he could notice the smell of poison that filled the air, but didn''t block it with the paragon body like he was doing for vivian, he simply breathed normally, inhaling the poison which should be strong enough to put a giant spirit beast to sleep.

    surprisingly, aster did feel the urge to go sleep, but that only made him smile, the only things that could affect his body bypassing his defenses, without triggering his dragon lineage or the paragon body, were either the positive ones or the ones he purposedly let it affect him, like the ones from the star maidens.

    and since this tree isn''t a star maiden, it meant that its effect wasn''t detrimental, he didn''t even feel that tired, it was more like the sensation of drinking a relaxing tea prior to go to sleep, if he were to compare it to something.

    "oh, so that was it, what a cunning godmother i have, the effect of this tree is never the same, because the result differs, depending on what you did before meeting it, in our case, after resting and even eating until we were really satisfied, the poison of this tree will only give us a nice night of sleep", said aster.

    that being said, this tree''s branches were really thin for its size, so it took them a couple of minutes to find one suitable to act as their bed for today,

    aster descended onto the branch and leaned his back against the trunk of the tree, surprisingly the poison completely stopped trying to infiltrate his body as soon as he did it, as if the tree was deeming him worthy of using it as their resting spot.

    vivian landed next to aster who then retrieved the protection from the paragon body, there wasn''t that much distance between them, around ten centimeters separated their shoulders.

    "the scent of this tree had become so relaxing~", cutely said the pale white-haired girl as she closed her eyes to enjoy the fragrance of the tree, before she unconsciously fell asleep, her body fell sidewards, until her head rested on aster''s shoulders.

    "goodnight", said aster to vivian as he followed her example and closed his eyes to enter the land of dreams, not without looking in a certain direction, there was long ranged attack coming at them.

    but as soon as the attack reached a certain distance, the pressure from the tree, crushed the attack, and then another unusual thing happened... the tree got back at them.

    "aghhh what the hell, the tree never struck back even when we attacked it!".

    "runaway, if they get you, you''ll be out for a moment", said another guy as he tried to get away from this area, just to be smashed against the ground due to the pressure of the tree specifically targeting it.

    ''heh, so since we are its "guests" it will look out for us, while we have a nice sleep, what a good service'', thought aster as he entered the land of dreams, with vivian leaning against him.

    the previous caused the anger and jealousy of a lot of participants, which made them try to attack aster from afar, since he dared to sleep in an open place like that, and accompanied by a beauty no less, while they were suffering not being able to go to sleep, without having to worry about being eliminated.

    needless to say but the result was a lot of participants being suppressed by the tree, while aster slept using their screams as a lullaby.