Chapter 26 Greed

The food on the round table quickly ran out, and with it, the temptation it held for everyone vanished, while the peach blossoms on the peach tree turned blood-red.

Seeing that there was no more food, those who had lunged at the round table had green light glowing in their eyes, continuously crying out that they were hungry.

"Respected guests, the [First Meal] has been enjoyed, so please continue to enjoy the delicacies!" The mechanical female voice sounded again, this time with undisguised joy.

Gu Ye immediately sensed that something was wrong and shouted to the few people beside him, "Run!"

He took the lead and rushed toward one of the only two doors in the hall, with the others following closely behind.

The others who hadn't gone to the round table to eat also sensed that something was wrong and swarmed toward the doors.

As they turned around, the peach tree in the center began to tremble incessantly, and the peach blossoms upon it fell down in a drizzle.

Those at the round table, as if they had seen some peerless delicacy, lunged madly to the foot of the peach tree, grabbing the peach blossoms and stuffing them into their mouths.

As the peach blossoms gradually diminished, the figures of those who had lunged under the peach tree changed drastically.

Their skin turned into peach tree bark, looking extremely dry and rough, and even their eyeballs turned into wooden beads, as if embedded in their heads; they had all turned into tree people.

The peach tree, which originally had no face, suddenly had all the masks from everyone's faces fly toward it. Even the disguises Gu Ye and his group had made failed completely, and the masks all merged into the tree trunk, where facial features appeared. It opened its mouth wide, let out a long howl, and issued a command.

All the tree people under the tree looked in unison at Gu Ye and his group, who had already rushed quite far away.

"Screech~~~" Following the sound from the peach tree, all the tree people charged toward them at a very high speed.

"What do we do!" Hearing the dense footsteps behind them getting closer, Chu Ling couldn't help but show an anxious expression on his face.

Gu Ye wanted to use a card, but after some attempts, the card remained unresponsive within his spiritual space.

The other Card Masters following behind the group also looked helpless and nervous.

As Card Masters, cards were their foundation for survival; without them, they were just slightly stronger ordinary people.

Among the group, one person's expression was very indifferent, regarding the surrounding danger as nothing. He looked around curiously, as if he were here on a tour.

However, when he scanned over Gu Ye, his expression changed significantly. A flash of fear crossed his eyes, mixed with a hint of excitement and greed.

"This Card Domain is truly peculiar!" Xu Yuanmo sighed to himself involuntarily.

"Of the future One Emperor, Four Sovereigns, and Ten Venerables, five of them started their rise from here."

"It really is a place of good geomancy, but it's no wonder it could be jokingly called the 'Nightmare of Fake trials' by later generations."

Xu Yuanmo hung back in the middle without haste, his eyes always fixed on Gu Ye.

Perhaps because his gaze was too intense, Gu Ye, running in front of him, felt his stare and frowned as he turned his head to glance back.

Xu Yuanmo quickly looked away, putting on an appearance of being downcast and very nervous.

Unable to observe anything, Gu Ye turned his head back and pushed this doubt deep into his heart.

The corners of Xu Yuanmo's mouth curled up, and he laughed wildly in his heart: "Great Emperor of the Burial Domain, I have returned after enduring all tribulations, just for everything that belongs to you."

"Let us start with this Card Domain!"

Just as the tree people behind were about to catch up, a light and ethereal sound of a flute came from the end of the corridor.

Upon hearing the flute music, the tree people seemed to have encountered a natural enemy; they fearfully dared not continue the pursuit, and their speed slowed down.

Seeing this, everyone's faces revealed expressions of surprise and joy.

"Quick!"

Soon, the tree people were left behind by the group, and they arrived at the end of the corridor, where an unremarkable small door appeared in their field of vision.

The decor of the small door was completely out of place with the resplendent corridor, making one overlook it at a glance.

The group stopped at the doorway, but no one moved to push the small door, as no one wanted to be the first to stick their neck out.

"Move aside! Why come to a Card Domain if you're afraid of death? Let your Grandpa Luo see—it's just a door, can it really kill me?"

Now that there was no pursuit from the tree people, Gu Ye finally had time to carefully observe the people who were still alive.

The person who spoke just now was a middle-aged, burly man with a scar on his face. The suit he had originally been wearing was gone, leaving only a shirt.

A few buttons on his shirt were unbuttoned, revealing a gold necklace around his neck.

There were two other men who looked very similar; the two were standing close together, clearly a pair.

There was an elderly man with graying hair and a teenager wearing glasses, whose age should be about the same as Gu Ye and his group.

The two standing closest to the small door were Xu Yuanmo, mentioned just before, and an unremarkable woman.

Everyone's gaze turned in unison toward the burly man walking toward the side door. He swaggered over to the door and casually pushed against the door panel.

But the small door did not budge under his palm. The burly man was clearly stunned, then flew into a rage, shouting at the top of his lungs, "A mere broken wooden door dares to block your Grandpa Luo's path!"

Before he finished speaking, he mustered all his strength and exerted force again, but the small door remained as steady as a rock, without even a tremor.

Just then, the teenager wearing glasses timidly pointed to the handle on the small door: "Th-this door... it seems to be pulled open, not pushed open."

As soon as these words were spoken, Chu Ling let out a "pfft" of laughter.

The burly man's face turned as black as the bottom of a pot instantly. He glared viciously at Chu Ling, who was laughing until he was doubling over, but catching a glimpse of the cold expressions of Gu Ye and the others beside Chu Ling, he could only resentfully swallow his anger.

He sheepishly withdrew his hand, scratched the back of his head, and squeezed out a silly smile: "Many thanks for the reminder, little brother."

Although he tried hard to conceal it, Gu Ye still caught a flash of killing intent and resentment in the depths of his eyes.

Alarm bells immediately went off in Gu Ye's heart, and he secretly raised his guard.

Seeing that everyone was still staring at him, the burly man turned, grasped the handle, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open with force.

This time, he felt no resistance as he pulled the door open, and the few people behind him stared nervously at the slowly opening small door.

If there was any danger, those few would surely run immediately.

After the door opened, the previous flute music sounded again, and what appeared before everyone's eyes was a scene of birds singing and flowers fragrant, with a fresh and slightly damp air from a forest rushing toward their faces.

The room could not be seen to its end at a glance, with only countless large trees standing within it, and soft sunlight falling onto the leaves from some unknown place.

On a swing hanging from a crooked tree, a Green-Clothed Woman with her eyes closed was playing the flute, and the tree was full of various birds.

What was eerie was that the bodies of all the birds were deformed, as if they had been contaminated by something.

Some birds seemed to have experienced a great battle, their deformed bodies still dripping with blood, but the strange thing was that they were still moving their bodies to the music of the Green-Clothed Woman's flute.

They were thoroughly enjoying the beautiful flute music, as if they could not feel the pain in their bodies.