Caw! Caw!

Harsh and mournful crow cries echoed through the ancient forest. They came from the Duskvine Crows, one of the strangest devil sprites in existence. Unlike ordinary beings, this crow possessed a single body but two souls. One soul originated from a Ghost Vine, a peculiar wood sprite born wherever death energy gathered in abundance, while the other belonged to a devil beast known as the Dusk Crow. 

The two had evolved alongside one another for countless years, and their relationship was neither purely parasitic nor entirely symbiotic. The Ghost Vine was rooted to the earth for most of its life, but when it grew weary of that place, it could transfer its soul into a Dusk Crow and travel elsewhere. The resulting creature was what people knew as a Duskvine Crow.

Such sprites were exceptionally dangerous. Their illusion ability, Dusk Veil, was known among cultivators. Those caught within it would find themselves trapped beneath an endless sunset, watching the sun sink toward the horizon again and again without ever disappearing. While they remained lost within the illusion, Ghost Vines would silently coil around their necks and strangle them to death. 

Had he been on his own, Luo Chen would have never ventured inside a place as dangerous as the Hundred-Crow Ghost Forest. If he had a choice, he would have instead traveled through the Sunken Sea vortex to enter the Wood Heaven Plains directly and bypass the forest altogether. Fortunately, he was not alone, and he didn't need to worry about the dangers of the forest. With the Flesh Ganoderma, once one of the three great overlords of the forest, leading the way, those dangers posed little threat to them. 

As they ventured further into the woods, Luo Chen shifted away from the crows overhead and toward the ancient trees surrounding him. Every tree in the forest was a rare spirit wood seldom seen in the outside...