A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

Chapter 526: A Heart-grabbing Druid

Aksai listened to the lady sect elder’s words with an amused smile on his face, as if she had just told a funny story.

But then, without warning, his smile vanished.

He narrowed his eyes on her.

His black pupils glowed, turning an eerie, haunting shade of green.

“Do it,” he said, his voice suddenly cold like the edge of a blade. “Use that artifact. Let me see if the Iron Mountain Sect is really worthy of my enmity, or if it’s just a sect made of loudmouthed dogs who can only bark but not bite.”

As he spoke, his presence changed.

His Spirit essence poured out, heavy and overwhelming. The vines hanging from the wood-element dome twisted violently. They grew thick and wild, sprouting massive thorns that curled like claws.

The whole battlefield tensed as if nature itself had turned hostile.

The fourth sect elder froze for a moment. A chill ran down her spine. That same helpless feeling from before—the one she felt when her assassination attempt on Aksai failed—washed over her again.

She had buried it deep. But now it rose to the surface like a ghost, wrapping around her heart.

Still, she clenched her fists. Her fingers dug into her palm.

She couldn’t back down at this point.

Her teeth ground together. Her face, pale and stained with blood, twisted with resolve.

She held up the artifact—the red lantern glowing faintly—and whispered under her breath, “So be it.”

Then, without hesitation, she pushed all of her remaining Spirit essence into it.

The runes etched on the lantern flared up with blinding purple light. The Essence Equation symbols danced and burned.

In that moment, the artifact began to feed on her life force. Wrinkles spread across her face. Her back bent. Her hair lost its shine and started turning white strand by strand.

She aged before their eyes—years passing in seconds.

This was the reason the sect elder hesitated to use the artifact earlier. It was a dual-edged sword that could hurt her before it hurt her enemies. It was obtained by the sect from the Cavereach City and given to her on this mission as a last resort.

The artifact was very precious as it could be used to assassinate or directly kill anyone below the Core Formation realm cultivation. But it had a huge drawback. It used the user’s life force as a secondary fuel to activate, making it a less-than-ideal choice for the grand elders of the Iron Mountain Sect to use it themselves.

The sect had merely given this artifact to the lady sect elder formally. Neither the sect nor the lady sect elder could have known that the latter would be forced to use the artifact here.

As the artifact activated, it began to feed on the lady sect elder’s life force like a stubborn parasite who wanted to kill its host. But she didn’t stop.

With her dimming strength, she held the artifact high and poured the last of her Spirit into it. The lantern responded. It pulsed once—twice—and then burst into a glow of bright, violet light.

A wave of silence fell as the purple light spread outward in a perfect circle.

No wind. No sound. No warning.

And then it hit.

The soul-based attack was invisible, but its effects were instant. The light touched Aksai’s puppets—those puppet cultivators dressed in robes and armor. One after another, they stopped moving. Their heads tilted slightly as if listening to something far away. Then their bodies stiffened.

Their glowing eyes dimmed. Some fell to their knees. Some just stood, motionless like statues.

It was as if their strings had been cut.

The attack had gone straight for their core—bypassing every Spirit defense and every artifact they wore. The hidden soul fragments buried deep in their puppet bodies were being torn apart.

It worked exactly as the elder had said.

Even Aksai couldn’t move at first.

When the purple light brushed past him, his expression changed. His confident face twisted in shock. His green eyes widened. For just a second, the green-eyed druid looked afraid—genuinely afraid.

And then… he stopped.

Frozen.

The battlefield went quiet.

The woodland demon bears, injured and trembling in the distance, backed away in fear. Not one of them dared to make a sound.

The fourth sect elder looked around slowly. Her breath was ragged. Her body leaned forward from the weight of her years. But her eyes scanned every inch of the battlefield.

And then she saw it.

Aksai wasn’t moving. His puppets were broken.

She had done it. A smile crept across her wrinkled lips.

Then a chuckle.

And then, she laughed—a broken, worn-out, but victorious laugh.

“You thought you were untouchable…” she whispered.

Her laugh grew louder, echoing across the silent dome.

“You thought no one could ever lay a hand on you because of your heretic puppet creation technique… Look at you now!”

Her eyes locked with Aksai’s frozen form, and a cruel grin spread across her face.

She didn’t care if she died now. She had left her mark on her killer.

The battlefield was silent except for the sound of crackling fires and distant groans of the wounded demon bears.

The lady sect elder, her body now thin and frail, turned slowly to look at her fellow elders. Her breaths were shallow, and her hands trembled as she held the lantern-shaped artifact that had just taken most of her life.

Her voice was dry and weak, but it carried through the still air.

“We… we killed this madman,” she said, a smile tugging at her cracked lips.

Her eyes were dim, but full of peace. She swayed on her feet, the weight of exhaustion too much for her old bones. Still, she did not fall. She clutched the artifact with what little strength she had left, the edges of her vision already starting to blur.

The elder beside her let out a shaky breath and looked toward Aksai’s still form. Behind them, the other two sect elders—those who had fought the Verdant Elder—finally reached them, battered and barely standing.

All four elders now stood together.

And all of them slowly came to the same realization.

“It’s over,” the second elder said, falling to his knees. His robes were soaked in blood and torn from countless strikes, but his eyes welled with tears. “The nightmare is finally over.”

He laughed, even as his tears fell freely.

“This madman…” the third elder murmured, shaking his head. He stared at Aksai’s frozen body with disbelief and a trace of fear still lingering in his voice.

“He really was more dangerous than any of us imagined. If we had let him live… he would’ve brought ruin to the Iron Mountain Sect.”

The first elder, the quietest of them all, said nothing at first. He simply closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he looked up.

Then, something changed in his expression.

His smile faded.

He narrowed his eyes, staring at the wood-element barrier around them.

“Wait a minute…” he whispered, mostly to himself.

He took a step forward, his brow furrowing deeper as he stared at the barrier. The vines were moving—slowly growing thicker, spreading deeper roots. The thorns were larger now, sharper, twisting outward like a wall of spears.

“If we really attacked that puppeteer’s soul…” he muttered, “why are his puppets still standing? And why is the barrier growing even stronger?”

His voice was low, confused, but loud enough to carry to the others.

The lady sect elder’s heart skipped a beat. She turned toward him quickly, though her body screamed in pain.

“Do… do you mean—” she began, her voice cracking from fear and exhaustion.

But she never finished her sentence.

A loud, wet sound snapped through the silence.

The first elder’s body jerked forward, his eyes going wide. A gasp left his lips, but no words followed.

Behind him stood Aksai.

Alive. Unfazed. Calm.

His smile had returned.

His arm was thrust straight through the elder’s back. Blood poured out freely. His fingers, wrapped tightly around the elder’s beating heart, twitched once before he yanked the heart out with a sickening pull.

The elder collapsed, his body hitting the ground like a sack of broken bones.

Aksai stood still, holding the bloody heart in his hand, letting the blood drip onto the ground.

He tilted his head slightly.

The green in his eyes glowed again.

He smiled at the remaining three sect elders, his voice soft but filled with venom.

“You are not the only ones who can assassinate people, you know. I can also do the same. And I must say, I’m better at this game than you.

By the way– how were my acting skills? Do you think I can become a successful actor in another world?”

The battlefield was silent again—but now, it wasn’t relief that filled the air.

It was fear. Cold, creeping fear.

The human heart beats over 100,000 times a day.

That’s around 35 million beats a year.

Source: .com, updated by novlove.com

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!