NOVPUBIt must be said, Ruo Mu is indeed the oldest tree between heaven and earth, and the source of the Ancient Longevity Fruit.
Its premonitions, astoundingly accurate.
While Li Fan and Tianyang were slowly making their way back to the Spirit Tree Realm,
a catastrophe destined to result in boundless slaughter quietly erupted.
Moreover, the degree of strangeness of this catastrophe truly exceeded the imagination of the cultivators below the heavens.
Banner Ridge State.
After conducting an investigation and ascertaining that the effects of the tremors had completely dissipated and would not recur,
the rescue and investigation team dispatched by the Immortal Alliance Headquarters, having offered some reassurance, considered their mission accomplished.
They left Flag Ridge State and returned to the Immortal Alliance Headquarters.
This group of people, including the integration cultivator who led them,
was completely unaware of the changes that had imperceptibly taken place within their bodies.
After returning to the Ten Thousand Immortal Alliance headquarters and giving a detailed report,
they went back to their respective state regions.
Until seven days later...
"Cough, cough. Strange, cough, cough... Why do I feel so short of breath?" A God Transforming cultivator named Lixin Sea was in the midst of a secluded meditation within the Tianxuan Mirror.
Suddenly feeling restless, his cultivation progress was forced to a halt.
Not daring to delay, he scanned his spirit consciousness over his body and hastily conducted an examination.
However, he detected nothing out of the ordinary.
"Cough, cough..."
Yet, the worry in his heart did not subside.
He wanted to suppress the cough, but the more he tried, the less control he had.
As if he were about to cough out his lungs, Lixin Sea looked at the pool of fresh blood in his palm and his face turned ashen with shock.
All of a sudden, a name, all but forgotten by the majority of cultivators, flashed through his spirit consciousness like lightning.
Lixin Sea trembled all over, a fear beyond articulation descending into his heart.
"Immortal...Ordinary...Miasma..."
He shivered and hurriedly contacted his teammates who had gone with him to investigate Flag Ridge State.
As expected, without exception.
They all experienced some discomfort in their bodies.
Some light, some heavy.
Even the leading Integration Cultivator, Green Willow Immortal, was somewhat distracted and found it hard to focus his mind.
"It’s over."
The various horrific legends about the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma instantly came to mind for Lixin Sea.
His thoughts at first were a complete blank.
Eventually, coming to his senses, Lixin Sea shared his speculations with his companions.
Since he had the most severe symptoms among them,
the other cultivators were still somewhat skeptical.
Especially Green Willow Immortal, who couldn’t help but reprimand, "What absurdity! The Immortal-Ordinary Miasma has been purified for thousands of years; except within the bodies of mortals, it can no longer be found in the world. How could we unknowingly..."
"Cough, cough..." Green Willow Immortal’s words were inexplicably interrupted by a cough.
After that, the group fell into a death-like silence.
"Stay where you are, don’t run around. I will personally make a trip to the headquarters. Cough, cough..." No longer in doubt, Green Willow Immortal’s tone became extremely solemn.
Thousands of years had passed, and all kinds of information concerning the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma had long become ancient legends.
How to detect it, the symptoms after being afflicted, how to eradicate and purify it...
This data had long been sealed by history, inaccessible to ordinary people.
Even Green Willow Immortal, not a low-ranking official, knew nothing about it.
But he understood the gravity of the situation, made contact first, and then hurried to the Immortal Alliance Headquarters.
After the teleportation light dissipated, there were already dozens of mechanical puppet-like black-clothed cultivators waiting in strict array.
After detailed testing, Lixin Sea’s guess was finally confirmed.
The group of people who went to Flag Ridge State had indeed all been infected with the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma!
Shock, confusion, horror...
In the face of a life-or-death annihilation crisis, the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals responded very swiftly.
They immediately established an emergency team and first gathered and isolated all members of the Flag Ridge State investigation team.
Then, they sent out Puppet Cultivators to go back down to Flag Ridge State underground to thoroughly investigate the source of the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma.
At the same time, they declared a wartime emergency state and temporarily shut down all the state region’s teleportation arrays.
They sealed off the borders of the various states, prohibiting cultivators from entering or traveling.
...
All kinds of measures were implemented simultaneously.
It must be said that in this aspect, the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals truly lived up to one of its titles as the dominant power of the Xuanhuang World.
It’s just a pity that even though the measures of the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals were very fast.
They were still too late.
Seven whole days had passed since the investigation team returned until the symptoms erupted.
Today, the teleportation arrays of the Immortal Alliance had long been spread to every corner of their territory.
Even though a large number of cultivators, due to the influence of the Element Devouring White Fog, would try to minimize interspatial travel,
in the face of such a huge base count, there were still numerous cultivators frequently traveling between the various states.
Seven days.
It was enough to spread the inexplicably erupted Immortal-Ordinary Miasma to every state region of the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals.
The sudden declaration of a wartime state by the Immortal Alliance had already panicked the cultivators.
Assuming it was the outbreak of a full-scale war, they thought the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals was caught off guard and thus made such a hasty decision.
For a time, everyone felt endangered.
But soon, the cultivators discovered something even worse than they had imagined had happened.
It wasn’t war, but the shadow of Ancient Disasters, returning to shroud the Xuanyuan Land after thousands of years!
The preliminary investigation results regarding the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma of Flag Ridge State had come out.
In the past, the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma existed in every corner of the world.
Eventually, through the relentless efforts of cultivators, they believed they had completely eradicated the miasma.
That is what the cultivators thought.
But in fact, in a hollow beneath the ground of Flag Ridge State,
the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma still lingered after a thousand years.
And with the passage of time,
it seemed to have undergone some kind of mutation.
Becoming more secretive and powerful.
Although the methods of handling recorded in history hadn’t become completely ineffective, their actual effects were greatly diminished.
There was a need to research completely new methods of dealing with it.
But before then, the mutated Immortal-Ordinary Miasma had already revealed its fierce and terrifying fangs.
Today’s Immortal Cultivation World witnessed the vast majority of cultivators gathered in the Floating Sky Cities of the state regions.
The concentration of cultivator population was even greater than those of the Cultivators Sects of old!
The spread of the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma was startlingly efficient!
By the time the announcements of the Alliance of Thousands of Immortals about the matter were released, coughing sounds had already spread everywhere.
At first, under the reassurance of the Immortal Alliance’s techniques, the cultivators were somewhat optimistic.
But as more and more cultivators fell to the Immortal-Ordinary Miasma,
panic was inevitable.
The Immortal-Ordinary Miasma showed no mercy.
Once infected, Nascent Souls and God Transforming cultivators were not spared either, no lighter in symptoms or lower in mortality rate than Foundation Establishment or Gold Core cultivators!
The cultivators, driven to despair, tried everything to delay the arrival of death.
But to no avail.
They could only perish in agony and withered form, one announcement after another from the Immortal Alliance.
