At the beginning, I cleaned the Sutra Library and completed the incomplete skills.

The Great Elder's heart sank to the bottom.

She understood that this must be the work of that old sandalwood tree.

The other party used the growth rings to cast some kind of illusion technique, trapping her here.

With her mid-Foundation Establishment cultivation, her reactions were already extremely fast, but she still couldn't avoid this technique.

Presumably, Jian Chen and the other should also have fallen victim to it.

After calming down, the Great Elder wasn't too flustered.

She had several magical artifacts on her body for protection, which would automatically activate to save her life in special moments.

Now that none of these artifacts had been triggered,

this was enough to prove that she was still safe.

It seemed that this illusion technique was just the last desperate struggle of this spiritual plant.

Although the Great Elder didn't delve deeply into the illusion arts,

she still had some understanding of them.

Most illusion techniques often required continuous output of mana to maintain.

Once the mana was interrupted,

the cultivator trapped in the illusion would awaken.

The higher the cultivation realm of the person controlled by the illusion, the more mana it would take to maintain the illusion.

This tree's mana was already running low due to their repeated consumption,

and it was also in a spirit-locking formation,

so it was naturally impossible for it to trap her here forever.

Having figured this out, the Great Elder was even less worried.

She calmed down and began to focus on studying methods to break the illusion.

After examining the surrounding environment,

the more the Great Elder looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

Then, she suddenly recalled that

this seemed to be an ancient ruin that she had once explored.

And it was in this ruin that she obtained that four-hundred-year-old sandalwood spirit tree.

In other words,

she was now trapped in the memories of this old tree?

Time confirmed the Great Elder's guess.

After twenty breaths,

her vision had risen a lot,

and looking down, she could already see her own body.

Under the effect of the growth ring illusion,

the Great Elder had turned into a small sapling,

and was beginning to experience everything that the sandalwood spirit tree had experienced from the beginning.

The flow of time in the illusion was different from that in the real world.

The spirit bean soldier buried next to the spirit stone mine ruins blinked its eyes twice.

At this moment,

Li Lan still didn't know what was happening.

After the Great Elder exclaimed,

the surroundings became extremely quiet, completely falling into silence.

Li Lan didn't dare to act rashly, carefully listening to the movements nearby.

After a moment, cracking sounds continued to ring out.

At first, he was wondering where the sound was coming from.

But soon,

Li Lan knew.

The old sandalwood tree seemed to have been reborn again, moving once more.

Its long and dense black vines gathered in one place,

dragging something out from the very bottom of the old tree.

Looking closely,

that thing looked like a section of wood, about a foot long, with a purplish color,

and a circle of deeply engraved growth rings on it.

Li Lan didn't know what it was,

but he guessed that this might be the tree core of the spirit plant that the Great Elder had mentioned not long ago.

At this moment,

the black vines intertwined together like waves and rivers,

holding up the sandalwood tree core, slowly flowing towards the distance.

Anyone with eyes could see what it was trying to do,

this old sandalwood tree was trying to shed its skin and escape!

But such a blatant escape, these three Foundation Establishment cultivators weren't blind, how could they let it get its way?

Li Lan waited quietly.

But after a while, there was still no movement at all.

He couldn't help but feel a trace of doubt in his heart. The spirit bean soldier buried in the cave had heard and seen the movement of the sandalwood tree core,

how could the three Foundation Establishment experts not have noticed anything?

Li Lan thought for a moment,

and finally gritted his teeth and made a bold decision.

He manipulated the spirit bean soldier to climb out of the ruins.

As soon as he reached the ground, he hurriedly looked up towards the location of the Great Elder and the others.

This one glance made Li Lan's heart tremble.

On the crown of the old sandalwood tree,

the Great Elder, Jian Chen, and the Fire Spirit Peak Elder all had their eyes tightly closed, quietly suspended in mid-air.

Even with the sandalwood tree core leaving openly in front of them, they turned a deaf ear to it.

Looking closely, it was not difficult to find that the eyebrows of the three cultivators were connected to a translucent, light purple plant root.

The other end of this root extended all the way into the sandalwood spirit tree.

They were all controlled by this tree.

Coming to this conclusion, Li Lan's eyes flickered,

and a bold idea couldn't help but emerge in his heart.

He had personally seen how many good things were in the storage bags of Foundation Establishment cultivators.

These three hadn't been forced into a desperate situation yet,

so the treasures in their storage bags must be more than Zhang Jingyuan's.

Although there was risk in this matter,

after thinking about it carefully, it was indeed feasible.

Thinking of this,

Li Lan no longer hesitated.

He immediately commanded the spirit bean soldier to climb up the crown of the sandalwood tree with its hands and feet.

When passing by the constantly rotating growth rings,

Li Lan also glanced at it subconsciously.

However,

he didn't know if it was because the spirit bean soldier didn't have its own consciousness,

but it didn't fall into the illusion like the Great Elder.

Thinking of what the Great Elder had said earlier,

Li Lan still told the spirit bean soldier to turn its head away and stop looking at the growth rings.

Arriving close,

Li Lan discovered that the degree to which the Great Elder and the others were controlled didn't seem too deep.

Their eyelids and eyebrows were twitching violently,

as if they would completely open in the next second, awakening from their slumber.

The light purple root at the center of their eyebrows was also swaying like a candle in the wind.

Li Lan's heart skipped a beat,

he had to speed up.

If he was caught by them awakening before he succeeded, it would be terrible.

He was about to control the spirit bean soldier to reach out and untie the storage bag around their waists.

But approaching, he cautiously stopped himself.

After pondering for a moment,

Li Lan pulled over a bare sandalwood branch,

and used it to poke at the storage bag from a distance.

It was said that high-level cultivators usually set some restrictions on their storage bags,

in order to prevent the storage bag from being snatched away by the opponent before the battle was decided.

Li Lan hadn't encountered many high-level cultivators, and he didn't know if it was true or false.

But at this time, being cautious was never a bad thing.

Just as the sandalwood branch was about to touch the storage bag, an unforeseen event occurred.

Li Lan didn't know if there were any restrictions in this storage bag,

he only saw an ancient copper coin suddenly fly out of the Great Elder's bag,

instantly cutting the black branch into several pieces.

The speed was so fast

that Li Lan was shocked.

The other party clearly had a magical artifact on them that automatically protected its owner.

He knew how tough these black vines were.

At least with the spirit bean soldier's strength,

it couldn't even leave a mark even if it used all its strength to chop down with a knife.

But this copper coin could cut it off effortlessly.

The strength and weakness between the two were immediately apparent.

After weighing it in his heart,

Li Lan decisively gave up on the storage bag of this mid-Foundation Establishment expert.

Instead, he reached for the other two.

But what made him feel a headache was that

these demonic cultivators who disguised themselves as righteous people were all extremely cunning.

Jian Chen and the Fire Spirit Peak Elder also had protective artifacts to defend themselves,

and after a while of busy work, let alone the storage bags,

the spirit bean soldier couldn't even touch the corners of their clothes,

Helplessly,

Li Lan could only give up this good opportunity to pick up scraps.

He manipulated the spirit bean soldier to quickly escape towards the Immortal Trace Valley.

It was fine if he couldn't get any benefits,

but if he exposed the traces of his visit, it would be troublesome.

But halfway there,

the spirit bean soldier stopped again.

It changed direction,

and soon followed the vines and caught up with the sandalwood tree core that was taken away by the black vines.