Chapter 154 : Chapter 154

Ryan lowered his head and kept walking.

After a while, something occurred to him.

“Oh, right,” he said inwardly. “Earlier, you said this couldn’t be an elven ruin. Why?”

“Because elves are the children of nature.”

Ryan listened.

“We—” Syl paused for a moment. “The Elf Race has always believed itself to be the children of nature. We worship the Goddess of Nature and believe that we were born between heaven and earth. That is why we speak with the elements of the world, borrow their power, and cherish every river and every forest.”

His voice was soft, but every word was clear.

It sounded like an elder telling a story—gentle, mature, and tinged with a faint trace of nostalgia.

“Nature is our mother.”

Ryan stopped walking.

Standing beside a giant tree, he looked around.

Those silver-gray trunks stood one after another, thick, towering, draped in vines and moss.

Overhead, layers upon layers of canopy sealed off the sky completely.

Beneath his feet, the moss was damp and soft, water seeping out whenever he stepped on it. The air was wet and cloying, laced with that sticky sweetness of blood, making it hard to breathe.

“Look around you.”

Syl’s voice sounded in his heart.

Ryan studied his surroundings and waited for him to continue.

“Feel it,” Syl said. “The energy in the air. Can you sense it?”

Ryan closed his eyes and released his senses.

The elements—fire, water, wind, earth—were always there. Usually they felt faint, like they were simply part of the air itself.

But now...

Something was wrong.

The elements were still present, but something else was mixed into them.

Like mud stirred into a clear pool.

Like oil smeared across clean cloth.

It was thick, sluggish, and carried an indescribably disgusting sensation.

Ryan opened his eyes.

“This is...” He frowned.

“Corrupted energy,” Syl said, his voice turning cold. “Filthy. Contaminated. Defiled.”

He paused, then continued.

“Do you know fish?”

“Yes.”

“Fish live in clean water. Put them in filthy water, and they die,” Syl said. “Elves are the same. We are the children of nature. We live within pure energy. This place—”

He did not finish, but Ryan understood.

To the elves, this place was like a stagnant pond filled with refuse and filth.

“So there wouldn’t be any elves here,” Ryan said. “And even less an elven ruin.”

“Exactly.”

There was anger in Syl’s voice.

Not directed at Ryan, but at this environment, at whatever had turned it into this.

That anger ran deep, like something long suppressed had finally found a way out.

Ryan fell silent for a while.

Then he resumed walking, thinking as he went.

“Is it possible,” he said, “that this place used to be fine? And only became like this after something happened?”

Syl did not answer.

“Ever since I came in, I haven’t seen a single trace of the elves,” Ryan went on. “No buildings. No writing. No statues. Just trees. Trees, and more trees. Calling this an elven ruin makes less sense than calling it a primordial jungle.”

“And there aren’t many living things, either. Even magical beasts are rare. As for that thing just now—”

“That wasn’t a magical beast,” Syl cut in.

“Then what was it?”

“I don’t know,” Syl said. “But it did not carry the aura of a magical beast. It felt more like... something made.”

Ryan frowned.

Something made?

He was about to ask, but Syl spoke first.

“What you said is possible.” Syl’s voice sank lower. “If this place used to be fine, and then something happened...”

He went quiet.

A long while passed before he spoke again, and this time there was a trace of heaviness in his tone.

“If that is true, then whatever happened here must have been horrifying.”

Ryan stopped again.

Standing beside one of the giant trees, he lifted his head and looked up at the overlapping branches overhead. Light filtered through the gaps and flickered across his face.

Something horrifying.

Something capable of turning a pure forest into this.

He drew in a slow breath and kept walking.

The moss beneath his feet was still soft. The sticky sweetness in the air was still heavy. Those silver-gray trunks slid past one after another like silent sentinels—or mute gravestones.

After walking for about the time it took to burn an incense stick, the trees around him suddenly thinned.

Ahead lay a massive open stretch of ground, strewn with broken trees in every direction. Some trunks were thick, some thin. Some had snapped clean in two. Some had been torn out by the roots. Some had been flung a great distance away. Wood splinters, branches, and soil were scattered everywhere.

It was the path of destruction left behind by that creature.

Ryan stood at the edge of the clearing and looked up.

It stretched forward for well over a hundred meters before the dense forest began again beyond it. This patch alone was open enough that he could make out the sky overhead—still obscured by branches, but at least there was a broad wash of gray-white light.

He needed his bearings.

Ryan walked to one of the giant trees still standing, drew the short blade at his waist, and drove it hard into the trunk. The blade sank in nearly half a foot. He tested it. It held.

Then he started climbing.

He drove the blade into the bark one thrust at a time, anchoring himself and hauling upward. After climbing a little over ten meters, the trunk began to fork, giving him places to brace his feet. He stood on one thick branch, caught his breath, then kept climbing.

Twenty meters.

Twenty-five.

Thirty.

The foliage thickened, but the gaps between branches widened. He could feel the light above growing brighter, the wind stronger, and that crushing sense of oppression fading.

When he reached a branch thick enough to bear him safely, he stopped.

He inhaled deeply. Wind element gathered beneath his feet.

A blue-green glow lit up at his soles. It wound, coiled, and then burst forth in a sudden explosion, hurling his entire body upward—through the tangle of leaves, through the enclosing canopy, and into—

Light.

True sunlight.

Ryan twisted once in midair and, as he dropped, caught hold of an even higher branch with both hands, hanging there above the treetops.

Below him stretched an endless sea of canopy, rolling away like a green ocean.

He lifted his head and looked into the distance.

To the south, the direction he had come from, the treetops stretched all the way to the horizon, gray-green and unbroken.

To the west, there was still only forest.

To the east, forest again.

But to the north—

Ryan narrowed his eyes.

The treetops in that direction were different. Darker. Taller. Denser.

Those trees rose nearly twice as high as the ones beneath him now, their crowns packed together like a dark green wall, blotting out half the sky. Beyond that wall, he could faintly make out the shadow of higher mountains, washed in a dim gray haze.

Yet in front of that dark green wall, there was a patch of different color.

Gray. Silver-white. And a glimmer like reflected water.

An open plain, perhaps. Or a swamp. Or wetlands.

Whatever it was, it was the only thing he could see that was not forest.

Ryan stared in that direction for a long time, fixing its position in his memory.

Then he released his grip, gathered the wind element again, and let it carry him back down.