Scene 4 - Survive

Xue didn’t bother to erase her tracks as she moved forward along the forest looking for a spot to rest for the night. She’d found various places to hide away, a hole in the ground, a stone cave, and closed off ravine.

Yet she didn’t choose any one of those for one reason, there wasn’t any scent of creatures staying there. Once an that would be fine, twice and it would be weird, only when it happened thrice that she rejected all those places.

Every sense told her it was fine to stay in those places, but alarm bells rang in her head at how fishy they were. They all had only one entrance, gave off no creatures scent, and was void of all sound.

These places were dangerous she didn’t know why, but her gut told her to keep moving forward. Mear kept an eye on her masters from within the hammer world slightly smiling at how she was thinking on her feet.

If she truly tried to stay in one of those deathtraps she’d given her a good beating. Mear wouldn’t give her any advice unless her master got into real danger. So she sat back lazily watching her master act so careful along with the little birds for a good show.

One by One

Unbeknownst to Xue, a group of contestants followed behind her trail of footprints. It didn’t take long for the group to find the tree branch with the opening. The group of ten looked at each other and one of them whispered harshly, “This will be my spot! All of you scram!”

Some of the contestants showed discontent to being bossed around one of the girls stepped forward. She sneered at the man full of scorn, “Take it you trash! Those who wanna fight for this place go ahead. Those that actually wanna survive to follow me!”

Flicking her orange hair behind her back the girl didn’t look back at the crowd and kept moving forward. Seven of the nine remaining contestants decided to move on figuring that the noise of fighting would draw in wild creatures to attack them.

The two contestants gave each other a death stare pulling out their weapons getting ready to fight. The loud contestant wielded his saber first intent on cutting the man before him down in a single slash. The other held a mace and shield defending with his shield against the sword he swings down with his mace at the swordsman's head.

No fancy moves or powers went off they wanted to avoid the draw of creatures coming to their position. They fought for more than a hundred rounds before the swordsman foot got snagged in a branch and fell. Taking the chance the mace user gathered the force of his weapon and smashing the brain matter of swordsman.

The body fell twitching on the ground, but the mace user wasn’t happy with the result seeing all the wounds on his body. He left the body as is and bandaged his wounds and ingested a pill that made his wounds seal up.

Taking the dead man points he crawled up the tree branch with the hole and sealed the entrance leaving a small part to breathe. With such a good hiding spot he wouldn’t have to worry about passing this test so he decided to get some rest.

It had been a long time since he gotten any good rest ever since the test start. His heavy eyes closed without much thought by tomorrow he’d regain most of his energy he expended in that fight.

Time past by for the man who was sound asleep. He didn’t notice that the tree hole was slowly closing up around him. It was a slow process as the wood surrounded his feet first then his legs then up to his chest. Only when the reached up to his neck did the man wake up in cold sweat unable to move his warm and comfortable body.

Fear gathered in his mind as he tried to activate the qi in his body only to feel needles stick into his body. He noticed he qi and lifeforce was getting sucked up by tree ever so slowly making him unable to break out of this iron class wood.

He started to scream hoping someone would hear him, “Help anyone! This tree has trapped me inside! If anyone helps I’ll give them one hundred points!”

Only his voice fell to deaf ears of the forest no one was going to save him from his predicament. Sighing to himself he opened his mouth to speak once again, “I forf-”

A branch of wood suddenly shot out clogging up his mouth making him choke on his words. The branch didn’t stop there it dug down his throat and entered his stomachs intestines filling every inch of his body missing all his vitals.

The contestant's eyes widen with fear feeling the branch dig around his body feeling his QI being sucked away dry. A realization struck him, he was going to die here alone in a tree branch. All his dreams, all his ambitions were going to fall away now that he couldn’t escape.

Then out of the corner of his eye, a mutilated head came into view. It was the man just a short while ago he killed, his remaining eye looked at him and sneered.

“My, my brother look what greed has brought you I can’t wait to see you at the gates of hell brother! Ke ke ke… KEKEKE!”

Mace started to cry his eyes out trying to his best to claw his way out. His struggling seemed to provoke the branch as without mercy stabbed straight into his brain from his throat. The man's eyes rolled over as root dug into his brain replacing all his fresh with white roots.

When it finished the job the branched retreated from the body as well as the woodlands new resident. Kicking the new puppet out to join it’s new family, after doing so it dragged the body on the floor into the hole next.

The puppet stuttered and trembled as the roots took over the nervous system of the body. Bones could be heard cracking twisting and turning. Of those in the sect they didn’t call this tree a mountain tree, instead, they called it a Demon Tree!