American Comics: BOSS Invasion

As darkness fell, the forest became unusually lively.

Deep within the dense woods, a hidden town appeared, bustling with activity, the sounds of gongs and drums creating a joyous uproar.

A group of bandits, hearing the noise, stumbled in without any sense of direction. Before they could even understand the situation, they were entangled and killed by a mass of tree roots.

These tree roots possessed immense power. When wrapped around a person, they would contract inward, forcefully tearing the body into pieces.

Fresh blood and broken flesh fell to the ground, seemingly absorbed by something, disappearing at a visible rate.

On the plaza, a group of small demons were frolicking, swaying their bodies to the rhythm of the ancient bronze gong. The onlookers were all young female ghosts with beautiful faces, though their complexions were currently quite grim.

And these were only a fraction. At every moment, large numbers of female ghosts emerged from the forest, each carrying one or two people, throwing them directly into the plaza like keepers feeding a giant beast.

Screams rose and fell, and the pungent smell of blood spread and thickened, forming a thin mist of blood in the air.

"Not enough, still not enough! I want more people, more people!"

The Tree Demon Matriarch had gone mad. Qi Shan had thwarted her twice in a row, destroying not only her clones but also damaging her main body. Fortunately, she was a millennium-old tree demon who had achieved enlightenment, possessing immense vitality and extensive root systems.

As long as one tree in her vast dark forest remained alive, she could be reborn and restored, but the time cost would be astronomical.

Caught off guard, she had almost been destroyed by an unknown nobody, and the rage in the Tree Demon Matriarch's heart was almost beyond words.

This brush with death made her abandon all pretense of principles and promises.

In the past, she had been wary of the Heavenly Dao's rules when consuming humans, fearing the entanglement of karma, which would prevent her from ever being reborn if she fell into the Underworld.

Even when she couldn't resist the urge to eat people, she would specially select the hearts and livers of wicked individuals for a taste. But now, she couldn't care less.

As long as it was a human, whether body or soul, she wanted to devour every inch.

The surrounding female ghosts trembled with fear. They didn't show any outward signs, but different thoughts were already forming in their minds.

This forest stretched for a hundred miles, and over the millennia, countless people had been buried within it.

In addition, in the last hundred years or so, the Tree Demon Matriarch had specially selected and controlled a number of female ghosts, and the number of ghosts she could manipulate had long exceeded ten thousand.

The ones Gao Ning rescued were only a drop in the bucket. However, with the destruction of her main body, her control over their urns had completely lost its effect. The Tree Demon Matriarch was already powerless to control such a large area. To continue surviving, all her roots were gathering towards the center, and she would not give up the territories she controlled on the periphery.

After being a ghost for too long, one's mind inevitably becomes dull, but as the number of ghosts around them decreased, some of the ghosts gradually noticed something was wrong.

Subsequently, more and more ghosts went out to capture people, but fewer and fewer returned.

The Tree Demon Matriarch, of course, knew that her subordinates were up to no good, but at this time, she had no time to take care of anything else.

"You stinking scholar, you damaged my main body and destroyed my origin! I will never coexist with you!"

The Tree Demon Matriarch roared, almost unable to maintain her human form. The gathering of a large number of roots caused her body shape to distort.

She completely transformed into an ugly mountain spirit tree monster.

On the high platform in the plaza, three beautiful female ghosts were bound to a crude scaffold built from tree roots. These were the Tree Demon Matriarch's last reserves!

The three female ghosts were tormented by the scalding roots, begging for mercy: "Matriarch, please spare us! It has nothing to do with us! We are innocent!"

"Of course, I know you are innocent, but you are all close to Xiao Die. She betrayed me and escaped to heaven, so you can only suffer for her.

I care about her the most, but is this how she treats me? If I had known this, I should have married her off to the Black Mountain Demon as a concubine!"

"Matriarch, have mercy! Don't marry us off to the Black Mountain Demon! We will never be reborn! Please let us down! We will help you capture people! We will help you raid Guo Bei Town and capture people! As long as we eat all the people in the town, you will not only be able to restore your magic power, but you will also be able to rise to a higher level!"

"I don't need you to worry about that!" The Tree Demon Matriarch's voice was hoarse, her anger erupting: "That damned scholar ruined my foundation, causing my origin to be damaged! I have now become a leaky gourd! No matter how much magic power I put in, it will leak out completely! What do you think I'm eating people for now? It's just to slow down the speed of my soul's collapse and summon the Black Mountain Demon!"

The Tree Demon Matriarch had no choice. She and the Black Mountain Demon were originally in a cooperative relationship.

One was in the yang world, and the other was in the yin world. Although the Tree Demon Matriarch's magic power was far inferior to that of the Black Mountain Demon,

the evil ghosts and wronged souls that the Black Mountain Demon needed could only be obtained from the Tree Demon Matriarch. Therefore, the two hit it off. The Black Mountain Demon provided the Tree Demon Matriarch with a backer and connections in the underworld, allowing the Tree Demon Matriarch to continue to roam freely in the yang world.

In return, the Tree Demon Matriarch had to provide the Black Mountain Demon with a batch of high-quality souls every once in a while. This was why the Matriarch was always collecting beautiful female ghosts and constantly marrying them off to the Black Mountain Demon as concubines.

If such a cooperative relationship could be maintained for hundreds of years, relying on her innate Yi wood body, the Tree Demon Matriarch might be able to break free from the shackles of the dark forces, cleanse her sins, transform into a body of light, and thus escape the influence of the underworld.

From then on, the cooperative relationship became one of subordination. Naturally, the Matriarch was unwilling to accept this change.

However, this was the only option she had.

When the moon reached its zenith, the noisy gongs and drums suddenly stopped.

Several small tree demons playfully carried out a stone tablet, chanting in unison: "Black Mountain Demon! Black Mountain Demon!"

The Tree Demon Matriarch suddenly exerted force, mixing the power of flesh and blood gathered in her body into a vine, turning the rough vine directly into a blood-red color.

The Tree Demon Matriarch glared and shouted sternly: "Black Mountain Demon, if you don't come now, when will you come!"

The blood-red vine suddenly exploded, and the blood mist instantly enveloped the entire plaza.

At the same time, the ground began to shake violently, and a roar like that of a giant beast came from the depths of the earth, shaking all the ghosts so that they could not stand and fell to the ground in disarray.