Chapter 435 – The Death Servant Camp

This time, Sylph didn’t refuse.

She took the card and walked over to the mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree, first materializing a finger and placing it in the planting pot.

The moment the finger was set down, the black half of the branches couldn’t wait to drag it into the soil beneath itself.

Then it gave an excited shudder and shot up by one centimeter.

Now the black branches were just slightly taller than the green ones overall.

“So that’s why no matter how I’ve been cultivating it lately, it hasn’t been growing! It needs corpses!” Sylph said with sudden realization.

Seeing that the green branches were still stubbornly reaching toward Zhizhi’s fuel lamp, Sylph materialized a small amount of soul essence and placed it in the planting pot.

This time it was the green branches’ turn to be happy.

Unlike the black branches, they didn’t bury the soul essence into the soil. Instead, a green root extended from the earth and plunged directly into the essence cluster.

Like slurping a drink through a straw, it drained the essence cluster dry in an instant.

The green branches quickly grew a bit taller.

Sylph also finally “heard” the mutant blackdeath tree express a clear meaning for the first time.

“More!”

“More!”

……

It was as if eating the soul essence cluster had made it smarter.

Suddenly, communication was possible.

Sylph began feeding it alternately—a piece of corpse, then a cluster of soul essence.

The mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree began growing rapidly. Its trunk thickened, grew taller and longer, sprouted new branches, and its root system gradually expanded.

But no matter how much it grew, the tree still showed no intention of growing leaves—completely bare.

Half green, half black, growing together yet distinctly separate.

It wasn’t until it had grown so large that the small planting pot could barely contain it that the Animated Blackdeath Tree finally looked stuffed.

The black branches hung corpses on the tree, while the green branches strung soul essence clusters together for storage.

Ever since the green branches had grown, the mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree had become much easier to communicate with.

When Sylph asked, she learned it had reached its current upper limit and wanted to consume her Hybrid Mana again.

The mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree was no longer suitable for carrying around on the flying carpet.

After asking it about the growing space it would need to reach full maturity, Sylph swapped the mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree into a much larger planting pot in one go.

After cultivating it a bit with Hybrid Magic and inquiring about its abilities, Sylph raised her head with a strange expression.

“How is it? What’s so special about this mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree?” Mo Lan asked curiously.

“They say that when they’ve grown up, they’ll bear two kinds of very useful dolls,” Sylph said.

“Dolls?” Vasida was puzzled. “What kind of dolls?”

Sylph shook her head. “About the size of our palms, little dolls that look somewhat like humans. As for what exactly they’re useful for, they can’t explain clearly yet.”

Even though it was a bit smarter than before, it was still a young tree that had only recently sprouted. It had encountered too few things, and its ability to express itself was still quite limited.

“But once they’ve grown up, we should know,” Sylph said. “As long as we supply enough humanoid corpses and soul essence, and cultivate it more with Hybrid Magic, it should be able to grow up and bear fruit fairly quickly.”

Though Mo Lan and the others were curious, they had no better options and could only wait.

After the group finished breakfast, this would normally be the time they’d pack up the tent and prepare to set off.

But today, none of them moved.

Vasida was preoccupied with the death servant head she hadn’t finished sculpting, Lilith was thinking about the death servant corpse she’d just cut open and hadn’t finished coating with preservative oil, and Sylph was thinking about her mutant Animated Blackdeath Tree that had just found a clear cultivation direction.

Even Mo Lan was concerned about the soul fire she hadn’t finished nurturing.

The group exchanged glances, each reading the others’ intentions.

“How about we camp here for a while longer, until our death servants are finished and Sylph’s Animated Blackdeath Tree has fully grown?” Mo Lan suggested.

“I’m in!” ×3

“We’ll probably need to stay for quite a long time. Staying on the flying carpet the whole time would put too much strain on you and Lilith. Let’s go deeper into the Black Forest and set up a proper camp!”

Vasida suggested, “We can use the commands my mother gave us to have her death servants guard our camp, so we won’t have to worry about other undead creatures disturbing us.”

This was indeed more convenient than staying on the flying carpet. The group immediately agreed.

Vasida pulled out a map. “Most of my mother’s death servants are gathered at this location!”

“Got it,” Mo Lan said. “Let’s go!”

Today it was her turn to control the flying carpet and carry everyone.

After packing up their things and stowing the tent, Mo Lan piloted the flying carpet at full speed toward the marked location on the map.

Without stopping along the way, they arrived by evening at Lady Ginia’s largest death servant cemetery.

This was the death servants’ resting place. Free-roaming death servants assembled here before heading out to search for corpse materials, fight other undead creatures, and then bring their spoils back.

Lady Ginia apparently preferred zombies.

There were only three skeleton squads here—one for logging, one for making coffins, and one for planting trees.

The rest were all zombies.

Every death servant had a strip of red cloth tied to its body, dyed with Big-Face Flower petals to never fade.

Mo Lan deactivated the flying carpet’s invisibility function, and the carpet revealed itself above the cemetery.

To attract the zombies’ attention, she deliberately lowered the carpet a bit, and they also canceled their feign-death spells.

The scent of the living instantly made every zombie lying in the cemetery open its eyes and push open their coffins to swarm toward them.

Once most of them had gathered, Mo Lan and the others exchanged glances and called out Lady Ginia’s name in unison in the Witch language.

The zombies, which had been baring their teeth and claws, immediately fell quiet upon hearing that name, tilting their heads in confusion as they looked up at the group on the flying carpet.

“Go about your business! Don’t let any outsiders approach the cemetery!” Vasida commanded in the Witch language.

The zombies immediately shambled away. Some returned to the cemetery, while others went off to patrol around its perimeter.

“All clear! Let’s set up camp near the carpentry workshop and the corpse Materials Warehouse! Mother said the defenses there are the most secure,” Vasida said.

The flying carpet flew over.

This time, not a single zombie bothered them.

Since the Burrowing Mushrooms couldn’t adapt to the Black Forest’s soil, they simply found an open area near the carpentry workshop and set up their tents, arranging them into a camp.

Then Sylph and Vasida carved formation stones, buried them Underground around the camp’s perimeter, and set up a defensive magic formation.

With the zombie death servants as the first line of defense, the defensive magic formation as the second, and Lilith’s Vampire Vines standing guard on top of that, they were fully protected.

The only downside was that the Death Force was so concentrated here that even the interiors of the tents were affected, making it unsuitable for placing planting pots of plants from other elemental systems.