By now, the land behind Su Zhou was a scene of utter devastation.

If a Powerhouse at the Awakening Tier could be considered a demolition machine, capable of tearing a building to pieces in a minute, then a Powerhouse at the Extraordinary Tier was a merciless, wide-area road roller. They could effortlessly wipe out a forest as if erasing a simple sketch from paper.

Although Su Zhou wasn’t yet at the Extraordinary High-tier, let alone its peak—his Spiritual Power Organs had yet to make his entire body Extraordinary—his current power output was already comparable to a typical practitioner of that tier. It was enough to crush most obstacles, just like the many Arrays he had obliterated along the way.

’After all, if you have a road roller, who would want to take the boring, ordinary path?’

But Su Zhou was also well aware that if it hadn’t been for the fact that these Arrays had gone without maintenance for millennia and had suffered from the severing of Spiritual Qi, preventing them from unleashing even a fraction of their peak power, he never would have been able to barge into the core of Kunlun Mountain, this ancient Immortal Secret Realm of Zhengguo, so easily.

But as the saying goes—kicking someone when they’re down, taking advantage of their predicament... The ugly way to put it is "beating a drowning dog," while the nicer way is "striking at a vital weakness"...

In short, his rampage had not been an act of brainless brute force. He had accurately perceived the Kunlun Secret Realm’s weakness and chosen the most optimal course of action!

His powerful Spiritual Vision allowed him to easily see every fluctuation of Spiritual Qi in the world. This let him sense an Array’s activation in advance and destroy its core at the first opportunity. Meanwhile, his speed allowed him to traverse any dangerous territory in the shortest possible time, not only eliminating the risk of injury but also forcing any enemies attempting to surround him to run themselves ragged.

The Array gradually dissipated. Wiping the sap from his spear tip with a leaf from a Tree-man’s corpse and muttering, "Sticky," Su Zhou sped forward for a while longer before he suddenly sensed something. "A very strong life aura."

He raised his head to the sky.

It was evening in the Secret Realm. The sun was setting, and there was no bright moon. But high in the sky ahead, noctilucent clouds brimming with Spiritual Energy mingled with the afterglow of sunset.

Countless water droplets scattered the light of the setting sun. Pale blue noctilucent clouds drifted through the dimming sky, reflecting light from the ground below. They shimmered with a complex palette of colors, like ripples on water.

"Looks like the Jade Pool is just ahead."

Gazing at the Spiritual Qi-filled Anomaly ahead, an enthusiastic Su Zhou quickly crested a mountain peak.

Standing atop the summit, he gazed down at the vast, beautiful lake before him and couldn’t help but click his tongue. "Whoa. That’s gorgeous."

A vapor swirled over the surface of the lake—presumably the Jade Pool. It neither rose nor dispersed, blanketing the water like an incredibly dense mist of ice crystals and containing extremely condensed Spiritual Qi. In mid-air, a massive cloud formation created an Anomaly resembling an inverted mountain peak. Like a hanging stalactite, it gathered Spiritual Qi from across the sky, dripping Jade Marrow Spirit Water from its tip into the lake below.

A gust of wind blew aside a corner of the vapor shrouding the Jade Pool, revealing that the substance coalesced within was not truly Spirit Water, but a strange kind of Jade Liquid. It was translucent, but when struck by light, it turned a pure azure—the very color of Spiritual Qi as seen through Spiritual Vision.

The material of the Kunlun Mountain Sect’s gate he’d seen earlier looked just like this Jade Marrow Spirit Water solidified.

"This is the ’Jade Dew’ from the fabled ambrosia. It’s a peculiar Spiritual Material with a water base that can solidify Spiritual Qi. You can either consume it as a Spirit Medicine or condense it into Jade Marrow to forge weapons and construct buildings."

Acting as Su Zhou’s external search engine, Yara began to explain before he could even speak. "Don’t underestimate it. Just as solidified No. 0 Holy Water makes for excellent material for sacred weapons, Jade Marrow, while brittle, is remarkably hard. There’s no shame in using it for weapons or construction. It can even function as a natural Spirit Gathering Array."

"It tastes pretty good, by the way. Just a bit hard once it turns into Jade Marrow. You could chip a tooth."

"This much... How long would it take to drink it all?" Given Su Zhou’s usual poverty, the sight of the Jade Pool left him dazzled. But soon, his attention was drawn to the vast peach groves growing around the perimeter of the divine lake.

"Peach groves?" Su Zhou’s eyes lit up, his spirits soaring. "The Peaches of Immortality!"

Through his Spiritual Vision, he could see that after millennia of growth, the peach groves had become towering and lush. Their root systems were layered and essentially a single entity. The smallest-looking Peach Tree and the oldest were, in essence, merely offshoots of the same original tree.

How to put it? The resemblance to the Immortal Banyan Tree was so strong they could have been blood brothers! The only difference was that the Immortal Banyan Tree mainly showed the characteristics of a Banyan Tree and was exceptionally massive, while this was a Peach Tree. Though it was divine and had also formed a forest from a single organism, each tree was of a normal size.

’The Immortal Gods probably suppressed the Peach Tree’s size. After all, for them, the Divine Wood didn’t need to be that powerful and waste nutrients. It was best if all the gathered Spiritual Power was condensed into Divine Fruit instead.’

Su Zhou easily understood this line of thinking. He didn’t dwell on it, instead thinking in all seriousness, ’I wonder if the Peach Tree is sentient and if I can communicate with it. A Tree Spirit with ancient wisdom would actually be far more valuable than the Peaches of Immortality themselves...’