35: In this turbid world, a woodcutter is astonished by the immortals.

Cold. Viscous. It felt like drowning in a sea of solidified asphalt.

Consciousness floated in endless darkness and a heavy sense of suffocation. There was no pain, only a bone-deep exhaustion and deathly silence. Chen Feng felt like a piece of rotted wood, completely drained of moisture, slowly weathering away in endless nothingness.

Deep within his Dantian, where his Star Returning Ruins Dao Foundation should have been, there was now only a cold ruin. The dark red, lava-like "Star Remains" dao foundation was dim and riddled with cracks, and the singularity imprint at its core, symbolizing the ruins abyss imprint, was like a candle in the wind, its faint light flickering as if it could be extinguished at any moment. Even worse, a cold, stubborn golden energy carrying the scent of order-bound shackles clung like maggots to the depths of the dao foundation's cracks, continuously exuding an aura of disintegration and contamination.

[Star Returning Ruins Dao Foundation: Severely damaged and dormant... Core ruins abyss imprint exhausted (near extinction)... Cracks (8%)... Immortal Curse erosion (ongoing)...]

[Physical Body: Chaos Star Vortex Dao Body (severely damaged)... Strength dropped significantly... Crack repair stalled... Assimilation layer disintegrated...]

Deep within his life soul, the fate disk nirvana mark, which had merged with the core of his dao foundation, was also silent. Only an extremely weak, intermittent palpitation seemed to be sensing some strange and turbid Law aura from the outside world, transmitting a faint yearning and... repulsion?

He did not know how long had passed; perhaps it was an instant, perhaps ten thousand years.

Bang!

A dull impact, accompanied by the crisp sound of bones colliding with hard rock, jolted Chen Feng from his near-death sinking!

"Uh..." A broken groan, tinged with the scent of blood, squeezed out from the depths of his throat. His entire body's senses, like rusted gears, were forced to turn under the immense impact, instantly feeding back tsunami-like agony! His bones felt as if they were shattering inch by inch, his muscles as if they were being torn apart. Especially at his Dantian, the cold, shackling sensation brought by the Immortal Curse bit like a venomous snake, causing him to instantly curl up!

He violently opened his heavy eyelids. His vision was blurred, and double images swayed. The harsh daylight made him instinctively squint.

Before him was no longer the cold, dead ruins of stars, but a... strange, vast, and turbid world filled with vitality!

The sky was a turbid, earthy yellow, as if shrouded in thick dust for years. The sunlight penetrated this murky canopy, turning into a pale, powerless halo, stingily spilling onto the earth. The air was heavy and viscous. Every breath carried a thick, earthy stench and a kind of... indescribable "Evil Qi" that seemed to be the dust of billions of years of history and the miscellaneous thoughts of all living beings! This Evil Qi drilled into his lungs, not only failing to nourish him but instead carrying a strong suppression and corrosiveness, causing Chen Feng's already exhausted dao foundation to instinctively produce resistance and repulsion!

[Environment: Unknown low-spirit (high-turbidity) world... Law suppression (severe)... Spiritual Qi thin and impure... Evil Qi dense... Warning: Disadvantageous to dao foundation recovery!]

He struggled to scan his surroundings.

This was a vast, undulating mountain range with sparse vegetation. The exposed rocks showed a weathered, grayish-brown color. Low shrubs grew in clusters, their leaves covered in thick dust. In the distance, one could vaguely see huge, steep cliffs that looked as if they had been split by a giant axe, bare, with only some tenacious moss clinging to them. Beneath his feet was hard, cold gray rock, covered in cracks and skid marks from the impact. Clearly, he had fallen from high altitude and crashed onto this hillside.

Su Wanzhao!

Chen Feng's heart tightened. Enduring the intense pain, he struggled to turn his head to the side. Not far away, Su Wanzhao lay quietly amidst a pile of rubble. The starlight battle dress on her body, woven from Star Origin and Chaos currents, had long since lost its luster, becoming damaged and stained with dust and solidified silver-gray blood. Her eyes were tightly closed, and her beautiful face was pale to the point of transparency. The deep Star Vortex Universe imprint between her brows was now reduced to an extremely dim, near-vanished vortex outline, her aura weak to the extreme, like a candle in the wind.

[Su Wanzhao Status: Deep coma! Chaos Star Vortex Dao Body severely damaged and dormant... Origin exhausted... Life fire weak... Immortal Curse erosion (weak fluctuation)...]

Thankfully... she was still alive... Chen Feng's heart settled slightly, then was drowned by deeper worry. This place was filled with Evil Qi and lacked Spiritual Qi; for the two of them who were severely injured, it was like adding frost to snow! How were they to recover? How were they to resist the Immortal Curse that followed them like a shadow?

Just then—

"Oh my, dear mother!"

A rough voice, filled with terror and a heavy local accent, sounded like a thunderclap not far away!

Chen Feng's chaotic senses instantly tightened! Forcing the last shred of vigilance, his gaze like lightning, he looked toward the sound!

He saw a man, about forty years old, wearing a coarse cloth short jacket, with dark, rough skin, carrying a bundle of firewood half a person high, staring at them in a daze down the hillside. The man was sturdy, his palms covered in calluses, clearly a woodcutter who worked year-round. Beside his feet lay a chipped woodcutter's knife.

At this moment, the woodcutter's mouth was wide open, his eyes rounded, staring dead at Chen Feng and Su Wanzhao who had fallen from the sky and crashed onto the hillside, as well as the shallow pit and cracks they had clearly created upon impact, as if he had seen a ghost! The bundle of firewood on his shoulder even slid to the ground due to shock, rolling a few times.

"Hea... Heaven-sent... Im... Immortal?!" The woodcutter's voice changed due to extreme shock, carrying an unbelievable tremor. In his limited cognition, only the legendary Immortals could descend from the sky and smash such a big hole!

Chen Feng's heart sank! Trouble! There were Mortals here! His and Su Wanzhao's current state was no different from cripples; if they were entangled by Mortals or their whereabouts were exposed...

He tried to mobilize a shred of power to intimidate or confuse the other party, but his Dantian was silent, his dao foundation was severely damaged, and he couldn't even condense a trace of Divine Thought. He tried to speak, but only a hoarse, wheezing sound came from his throat, carrying a heavy scent of blood.

The woodcutter seemed frightened by Chen Feng's face, which was covered in dark red crystal cracks and looked fierce (actually due to pain and exhaustion), and took a sudden step back, almost tripping over a stone at his feet. He looked at the two of them with suspicion and uncertainty, his gaze scanning back and forth between the strange crystal cracks on Chen Feng's body and Su Wanzhao's face, which could not hide her peerless beauty even in a coma, full of fear, awe, and a kind of... simple suspicion peculiar to mountain folk.

"No... not an Immortal?" The woodcutter muttered to himself, his voice still trembling, "Could it be... a mountain demon? A fox spirit? Or... a monster struck by lightning?" He clearly couldn't understand the scene before him and could only use the simplest folk legends to explain it.

He hesitated, mustered his courage, and stepped forward two more steps, picking up the woodcutter's knife from the ground and gripping it tightly, seemingly to bolster his courage. He carefully examined the inhuman crystal cracks on Chen Feng's body and then looked at Su Wanzhao's face, which was so pale it didn't look like a living person. Finally, his gaze fell on the extremely dim yet still mysterious Star Vortex imprint between Su Wanzhao's brows.

"Hiss..." The woodcutter gasped, seemingly awed by the profundity of the imprint, and instinctively took another step back, gripping the knife tighter. But this time, the fear in his eyes seemed to be diluted by another emotion—a kind of instinctive reverence for unknown existences, and... a trace of imperceptible pity? After all, Su Wanzhao's beautiful and fragile appearance really didn't look like the man-eating monsters in legends.

"Two... two of you... where did you come from?" The woodcutter licked his dry lips and asked in a hoarse voice, carrying a heavy, probing tone and a thick local accent, "Why... why did you fall from the sky? Are... are you hurt?"

Chen Feng was anxious, but couldn't respond. He could only stare fixedly at the woodcutter, trying to convey a warning with his eyes. But this warning looked more like the fierce glare of a dying beast in the woodcutter's eyes, making him even more nervous.

Just as they were deadlocked—

Hum!

Deep within Chen Feng's Dantian, the silent and exhausted fate disk nirvana mark suddenly... pulsed, extremely weakly! A palpitation, a mixture of indescribable yearning and repulsion, was clearer than it had been in the Burial Star Corridor! It seemed to have sensed, deep within this world, some kind of extremely vast, extremely ancient, yet wrapped in endless Evil Qi... Origin aura! This aura was full of the heaviness and vicissitudes of the earth, and even carried a trace of... forgotten sorrow! It was precisely this aura that caused the imprint to resonate strongly!

At the same time, the Immortal Curse entangled deep in the cracks of the dao foundation seemed to sense the suppression of the thick Evil Qi outside. The golden corrosive light flickered extremely weakly... transmitting a sense of discomfort from being "contaminated"!

[fate disk nirvana mark: Weak resonance... Sensed unknown high-level Earth Origin (wrapped in Evil Qi)... Yearning/Repulsion...]

[Immortal Curse erosion: Weakly suppressed by external Evil Qi... Erosion efficiency reduced (extremely slight)...]

Chen Feng caught this tiny change! A flash of surprise passed through his chaotic eyes. This seemingly turbid world... actually had a suppressing effect on the Immortal Curse? And what was the Origin that the fate disk mark sensed...?

"Hey! Speak... speak up!" The woodcutter saw that the two had no reaction, especially with Chen Feng's gaze becoming increasingly terrifying, and felt his heart go numb. He couldn't help but raise his voice again, with a hint of being fierce but cowardly, "If... if you don't speak, I... I'll call for help! Our Black Stone Village is right at the foot of the mountain!"

Black Stone Village? Thoughts raced through Chen Feng's mind. A Mortal village... meant more Mortals, and also meant potential Chaos and exposure! He must stabilize this woodcutter!

He endured the intense pain in his throat and the exhaustion of his Dantian, using his last bit of strength to condense an extremely weak, yet unquestionable intent, mixed with the last shred of his own fierce Evil Qi (from the Star Returning Ruins Dao Foundation), and stabbed it fiercely into the woodcutter's mind:

"Shut... up! If you dare... to cry out... you die!"

This was not a sound, but a mental impact! To a Mortal, it was like a thunderclap ringing in his mind!

"Ah—!" The woodcutter was hit hard, letting out a shrill scream, and the woodcutter's knife in his hand fell to the ground with a "clatter"! He clutched his head with both hands, his face instantly turning pale, and his gaze toward Chen Feng was filled with extreme fear, as if he had seen a prehistoric Vicious Beast that would devour people! His body shook like chaff, retreating repeatedly, and he sat down on the ground with a thud!

"Mon... monster! It really is a monster! A monster that... that eats people's brains!" The woodcutter was frightened, his Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering, incoherent, crawling backward with hands and feet, just wanting to get as far away from these two "Heaven-sent stars of misfortune" as possible!

Seeing the woodcutter completely intimidated, Chen Feng's tense heartstrings relaxed slightly. His vision went black, and his consciousness sank back into darkness. Before falling completely unconscious, his last gaze swept over this turbid sky, the vast mountain range, and the back of the woodcutter who was fleeing in terror.

Xuanhuang Realm...

Land of Evil Qi...

life plate resonance...

Immortal Curse suppression...

And... this ignorant yet potentially troublesome Mortal...

The road ahead was still shrouded in mist, filled with murderous intent. But at least, for now... he had survived.