Sage had inadvertently found himself becoming a squick-loving edgelord and couldn’t help but wonder if he could have avoided this path. He’d been randomly reborn into the Lang Clan and their bug using techniques, but he could have chosen to abandon them when they were wiped out to completely cut ties. All those years ago he could have also chosen to die rather than merge with the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent, he’d felt death approaching and had chosen to merge as it seemed a way out. Maybe he could have kept struggling and found another answer that didn’t lead to him having a snake tail instead of legs. Without walking down the path of constantly combining himself with other creatures he might not have comprehended the Law of Poison and then the Law of Corruption which then led him to value these two new techniques so highly.

Then again, I might have died without the Insect Immortal Index before ever reaching the Holy Flame Sect. That serpent might have killed me, and without having venom of my own would I ever discover a Law at all?

After more than a decade at the Clear Sky Academy, most of it spent in the library, Sage finally finished his task and copied down the whole library. He informed Twilight of his departure and they tried to persuade him to stay, but only lightly. He’d always made his stance known from the start, and from how he’d turned down the transportation missions they knew he wasn’t that loyal to their cause. It was an Academy after all, and most of them were also beholden to other organizations or ties as well.

The only failing in this venture was actually the thing that inspired it in the first place. The Ghostwood tree that he’d come here to learn about was not actually within the library’s records. Or at least it wasn’t there in the manner he had been looking for. There was no record of a Ghostwood anywhere in the library as a formal name for anything. All that effort without even accomplishing the original reason he had come to the Clear Sky Academy. Fortunately, the answer was far simpler than he imagined.

One of the researchers stumbled upon a way to fool the Ghostwood tree into believing that they were a soul-type being and allowing them access. There were some test subjects lost along the way, but eventually they were able to get someone into the Ghostwood’s dimension and used a Memory Sphere to record the whole experience for study. The information they received from the ‘Count’ was incomplete just as they suspected and they found that even the Ghostwood inside the other dimension was only an offshoot from something else, and the small pocket dimension led to a much larger one that was covered in Ghostwood trees among other things.

With trial and error, the insects and then Dragoons that were sent in were finally able to survive and then the first Cultivators went in to gather information. Magic Tools and Formation Arrays were developed to build them a sort of ‘beachhead’ in the strange dimension. This was also around the time that the whole of the materials section of the restricted library had been completely copied over. Finding nothing promising in the library they stepped up their efforts in exploring the Ghostwood manually and this led to great progress. With the safe ground made in the larger dimension for a few hundred years now and with Sage leaving the Clear Sky Academy, he now had a chance to get somewhere safe to investigate.

The issue was that the link to the Ghostwood tree was only established on the Inner World where Voctem set it up to use as a possible escape route. Other than that, Sage would have to descend thousands of levels in the Tianxia Capital to return to the tree that Voctem kept in his yard. Due to this issue, Sage decided to do something he was very loath to do: move his Soul Clone off the Inner World. It was only for a short amount of time and only after they’d confirmed the safety of the move for hundreds of years. There were some spirit type beings that inhabited this other dimension, as well as some smaller supporting beasts that lived among the Ghostwood trees in a sort of symbiotic fashion. These small dangers as well as a few larger ones had been solved for quite a long time now so there shouldn’t be any danger for Sage. The only thing that was somewhat tricky was the power of the Inner World’s time dilation.

Unlike the outside world and the Inner World, the dimension that the Ghostwood trees were in did not have an abrupt jump between the rate of time. Instead, there was a sort of strange effect where the further they moved from the entrance to the Ghostwood tree dimension, the slower time flowed. It was almost like the faster time rate of the Inner World was bleeding over into this other dimension. This finding was quite interesting and helped assuage the reason Sage was so adamant on not letting the Soul Clone leave the Inner World. Having his mind in such a rapid time frame gave him so many advantages, so he was quite wary of going without it.

At this moment, Sage specifically rented a room in a very high class inn, one that rented out cultivation rooms with very powerful defensive formations. This was an extra precaution to ensure that he would be protected while his Soul Clone left the Inner World to investigate the other dimension filled with Ghostwood trees. Upon traveling there himself, Sage finally realized why he couldn’t find anything about the Ghostwood trees.

They were merely a byproduct of a greater whole: The Gravegrove Spore. The Gravegrove Spore was not a type of natural treasure, it was actually a Heavenly Material, more specifically a Heavenly Seed. Just like the Seed of Life, Heavenly Seeds have very specific conditions on how they can be used. Once Sage felt the strange resonance in this other dimension, it all suddenly made sense. He searched through the resources he had on Heavenly Materials and found the information on the Gravegrove Spore was quite sparse. It was no wonder he hadn’t realized it was related to the Ghostwood tree as the Gravegrove Spore said only: ‘consumes the souls of the dead to grow a forest of darkness’. The description was correct, but it was far from descriptive enough. It seemed to fall into the category of lesser known Heavenly Materials, which applied to many of the Heavenly Seeds. Their strange nature meant they usually formed into their own forests or localized ecosystems and because of the strange growing conditions it was rare for Cultivators to be bonded with them.

From the looks of things, it seemed like the Gravegrove Spore’s dimension had some unusually dark and Yin-like properties. It also was boring its way through dimensions, and made him wonder if it specifically required a small yin natured dimension in order to grow. Such a condition would definitely be hard to set up, especially if it was needed for bonding. How many people could create a dimension within themselves as a home for a Heavenly Material?

Sage was excited to have finally solved the mystery, but there was a problem. Since the Gravegrove Spore had already ‘grown up’, there was no longer an easy and simple way to integrate it into his own body. Even if he had the Seed of Life that had grown into its own world, the Gravegrove Spore was basically at a similar level. So, while he’d finally figured out what it was, he hadn’t gained that much new information and also was at an impasse on how to handle it.

In this case, it was actually quite lucky that he’d sent in his Soul Clone rather than spending years descending the Tianxia Capital so he could enter the Ghostwood tree’s dimension with his real body. Having wasted only a few days in seclusion, Sage left the inn and finally returned to the task that Guan Zhenyan had arranged for him next.