A Farmer's Journey To Immortality-Chapter 491: Passing the Dejection Demon Trial Due to Foreign Interference

The Verdant Elder was confused at this point.

There was a part of him that screamed constantly that he was a demon beast. However, his current "reality" was completely different.

He stood under the hot sun, wearing tattered robes, digging the soil with the bare hands of a small human child. Rows of spiritual herbs grew under his care. He smelled fertilizer. He heard the buzzing of insects. He felt hunger. Weakness. Hope.

He carried water buckets. Argued with a greedy landlord that had the eyes of a mongoose.

Counted pitiful Spirit stones carefully by candlelight as a way to make sense of his relentless hard work.

Spoke softly to his plants like they were friends because there was hardly anyone of his own age to talk to.

The Verdant Elder felt everything.

The pain of poverty. The fight for survival. The strange joy of seeing a seed sprout. He wanted to scream, but couldn't. The memories weren't his, but they wrapped around his soul like vines—tight and familiar.

"No! This… this is a trap. I have to get out!" freeωebnovēl.c૦m

The Verdant Elder roared from deep within, his voice echoing across the false field.

He tore through the fake world, struggling to breathe. The hands of the abyss clamped down again, angrier now, stronger. But he had changed. Something inside him stirred.

Getting branded by an enemy's Soul Mark was bad for the Verdant Elder. However, there was something good hidden deep within a truck ton of bad. Thanks to Aksai's intervention, the Verdant Elder managed to find discrepancies hidden within the trial before finally freeing himself from its control.

He was no longer surrounded by delusions. Even though he still experienced various memories, he realized that they were nothing but memories.

As such, the Verdant Elder decided to become even more aggressive instead of waiting for the memories to settle down on their own.

He bit into one of the hands—shadowy, cold, and choking. He devoured it, not with his body, but with his soul. Then another. And another.

The weight began to lift. The mark on his soul pulsed once more, and the abyss cracked.

The Verdant Elder roared with everything he had left. The darkness broke apart like glass. The screaming stopped.

He opened his eyes.

The world returned slowly. He was lying on the forest floor. The broken roots of the dome above him swayed gently. His breath was shallow. His heart was racing. But he was alive.

He had passed the second trial as well.

But victory didn't taste sweet.

The Verdant Elder sat up slowly. His body felt stronger, yes—but wrong. It was as if there was something twisted hidden deep within himself in some small way he couldn't explain. He looked inward, trying to inspect himself the only way he knew how.

That's when he felt it.

The foreign Qi.

It wasn't just inside him—it had become part of him. His body had accepted it, treating it like its own. After the Pain Penance trial, some deep change had taken place in his physique. It had allowed Aksai's Qi to take root.

And worse… his soul.

He couldn't see the Soul Mark. He wasn't an Aether cultivator who could access their Soul Space freely. But he felt it. It pulsed inside him, deep and hidden, like a splinter under skin. Unseen and dangerous.

It was a time bomb. Rather, there were two time bombs hidden within him.

The Verdant Elder's claws dug into the soil.

He didn't know what kind of trap Aksai had planted inside him. He didn't know when or how it would be used. But he knew one thing for certain—it had to be removed. It had to.

But how? As a demon beast who only knew how to harness the Spirit essence, the Verdant Elder didn't know what to do when it came to the matters related to the Qi and Aether essence.

No… wait. Why try to find a solution? Can't I just kill that pest. As long as he is dead, these petty tricks would die with him.

The Verdant Elder felt like he somehow had managed to see through the fog. Indeed, he was right.

As long as Aksai died, the invaded Qi and Aether essence would turn dormant before dissipating on their own after some time.

The Verdant Elder's rage burned like wildfire. The only way to stop this danger from growing was to kill the root of the problem.

Scraaaaah!

The Verdant Elder raised his head and let out a thunderous roar. The sound echoed across the forest, shaking trees and scattering birds into the air. His fury crackled through the air like sparks on dry wood.

The glowing green dome around him—the one that had protected him during the first two trials—shuddered at his will. Its vines recoiled, shriveling like frightened snakes. In the next breath, the dome fully pulled back into the ground, disappearing into the roots it had come from.

Now exposed to the world again, the Verdant Elder's eyes blazed with rage. He spread out his Spirit Sense in every direction, sweeping across the land like a wave. He searched every corner, every shadow, every trace of life in the area.

But there was nothing.

No trace of Aksai.

The Verdant Elder's claws curled. His breath grew heavy.

Then he turned toward the cave—the one the bear family had crawled out of before his trials began.

He narrowed his eyes. "He's hiding," he muttered to himself.

In the next second, his body shrunk down. The vines wrapped around his legs withdrew into his skin. He became leaner, smaller, more mobile. In this new form, he stepped into the dark cave.

His sharp eyes scanned the rocky walls. His nose sniffed the air.

No Aksai.

Just silence and emptiness.

He sniffed again. The faint scent of the bear cubs still lingered. He followed it, deeper into the cave, hoping to unleash his wrath on them instead. His heart was boiling. He needed something—anything—to vent his fury on.

But the cubs were gone.

He reached the end of the tunnel. Nothing but stone and silence.

His claws scraped against the wall as he growled.

"How…?" he whispered. "How can he disappear like that… and what did he do with those little bears?"