Chapter 106: The First Trap
The Life Light was shining quite bright overhead and the temperature was much warmer. The humidity in the air was annoying, but I expected as much. We had reached the outer edge of the Great Jungle after hundreds of years of traveling.
“Senior, our ship can go no further,” Junior Wei said. She was quite old but had clung to life so far.
“There is no canal to the next body of water?” I asked.
“No. Only the Great Jungle lies ahead and beyond that, the Great Desert,” she replied. I rarely exited my room to observe our travels. The last time I had gotten involved, I had been poisoned by the temporal wood sap. I did not want such a situation to occur a second time. Better to focus on my cultivation as much as possible while removing the remaining remnants of the poison from my body.
“Do people live in the Great Jungle?” I asked and Junior Wei shook her head.
“There are scattered tribes, hidden sects, and fugitives, but there is no civilization,” she said and I frowned at this.
“Why? I would have thought people would have settled this area by now after millennia?” I asked.
“Several reasons. The first reason is that there are powerful creatures inside the jungle. The Man Eater Snake. The Blood Sap Tree. The Black Ooze. The Fire Bats. Cultivators can handle such threats if they are careful enough. The second are the large amounts of bugs and diseases. Progress has been made pushing back the Great Jungle, but it is a struggle.” I nodded at this.
“Finally, criminals from the surrounding areas have fled into the Great Jungle and there are several sects that practice demonic cultivation,” Junior Wei explained.