Chapter 249: The Phantom Peach Grove

Having accepted the quest to rescue Alana, Marcus knew there was no time to waste. He immediately plunged into the small valley where she had been living and surveyed the devastation.

Alana’s quiet cottage and the herb garden that once grew in neat rows before it had been completely erased by the Seven-Tailed Vixen Spirit’s Peach Blossom Falling Slash. The wooden structure had been split apart as if by an invisible blade, while the surrounding ground looked as though a storm of razor petals had swept across it. Not a single useful item remained. Even the herbs that once filled the garden had been shredded down to lifeless fragments.

Marcus let out a slow breath as he took in the scene. The sheer destructive power of Peach Blossom Falling Slash was frightening.

With a quiet sigh, he mounted his Violet Thunderwing Steed. “Giddy up,” he murmured, and the steed leapt into the air with a crackle of violet lightning, wings beating as it carried him out of the ruined valley. From there he began tracking the Vixen Spirits who had abducted Alana.

The Seven-Tailed Vixen Spirits moved with terrifying speed. Even riding a flying mount as swift as the Violet Thunderwing Steed, Marcus could only just make out their retreating figures in the distance, faint silhouettes slipping through the sky. Several times he nearly lost their trail entirely.

Of course, he also knew better than to chase them too closely. Creatures like that would notice immediately if someone tailed them.

Fortunately, Marcus had Silas the Wanderer’s map, and the map clearly marked the location of the Vixen Clan’s territory, the Phantom Peach Grove. As long as he followed the same general direction they had taken, he would eventually reach it.

This rescue mission clearly would not be quick. Returning to the city anytime soon was out of the question, so Marcus sent a short message to his friends, letting them know he had successfully obtained the Black-Wraith Feather from the Wraith-Bird and that everything was proceeding as planned.

With that handled, he continued the pursuit.

For more than three hours he followed the barely visible trail left by the Seven-Tailed Vixen Spirits as they moved northwest across the wilderness. Then, without warning, the landscape ahead changed.

A vast region lay before him, blanketed in a soft pink mist.

The sky above it was hazy, the mountains and forests inside barely visible, and even the lakes reflected only vague shapes through the drifting veil. The entire region looked dreamlike, as if reality itself had grown indistinct.

Marcus had reached the territory of the Phantom Peach Grove.

Within the Phantom Peach Grove, towering peach trees grew everywhere, their blossoms blooming eternally. The air was filled with a gentle pink haze created by the accumulated fragrance of countless flowers. The mist clung to everything, turning the entire region into a floating sea of pale petals and drifting scent.

But the beauty came with danger.

The moment Marcus entered the mist-shrouded grove, he felt the situation change.

Through the drifting pink fog, flying monsters darted constantly through the air. There were Level 60 Lesser Flying Foxes and Level 70 Twin-Winged Blue Foxes gliding through the treetops. Worse still were the Level 50 Peach Blossom Butterflies and the Level 50 Illusory Moths. Individually their levels were not overwhelming, but they moved in erratic swarms and possessed strange illusion abilities that made fighting them in midair extremely dangerous.

For Marcus, whose strength still lagged far behind creatures of this level, confronting them directly was out of the question.

In an instant, his aerial advantage vanished. Fortunately, he had already prepared for this.

“I am a cloud,” Marcus muttered under his breath.

He reached into his inventory and pulled out the Pure Mist Cloud Cluster he had acquired from the Mist Veil Palace. After softly reciting the activation incantation, his body and the Violet Thunderwing Steed beneath him began to dissolve into pale vapor.

Within seconds, both rider and mount had transformed into a faint white cloud drifting gently through the air.

The Pure Mist Cloud Cluster allowed him to assume the form of a cloud that ordinary monsters could not detect. Any creature below Mythic-tier would simply treat him as part of the sky. The effect lasted four hours.

Inside the Phantom Peach Grove, the disguise became even more effective.

The white cloud blended perfectly with the surrounding pink mist, until Marcus seemed to vanish into the haze itself. Anyone looking his way would see nothing but drifting fog.

Marcus was confident that, within the natural concealment of the grove’s pink mist, even Mythic Beasts would struggle to notice him unless they deliberately used detection skills or carefully searched their surroundings.

In this environment, he was practically invisible.

A quiet chuckle escaped him.

With his disguise in place, Marcus drifted calmly through the air, brushing past the flying monsters without attracting the slightest attention as he continued following the path taken by the Vixen Spirits carrying Alana.

Still, he could not help feeling a little regret.

“If only I had a Thievery skill…” he thought.

The deeper he drifted into the Phantom Peach Grove, the more powerful the creatures around him became. Several times he passed extremely rare monsters at close range.

There were Dark Sky Moths, their wings completely black like fragments of night. A group of Four-Tailed Golden-Eyed Foxes glided through the branches below, their eyes shining like molten gold. At one point he even floated past a Seven-Colored Butterfly King whose fourteen iridescent wings shimmered like stained glass in the mist.

Each of those monsters was practically a walking treasure chest.

And he could do nothing but watch them pass.

If he had possessed High-level thievery skills, he might have quietly taken a few valuable items along the way without anyone noticing.

Unfortunately, wishing for it now was pointless.

Eventually Marcus reached the very heart of the Phantom Peach Grove, the gathering place of the Vixen Clan, known as Peach Blossom Spring.

Deep within an immense forest of red peach blossoms stood rows of wooden houses built carefully among the ancient trees. The buildings blended naturally into the grove itself, as if the forest had grown around them. The entire settlement covered more than thirty acres.

Everywhere he looked, powerful Vixen Clan monsters moved about the village.

Most of them were at least Level 70 Three-Tailed Vixen Spirits or stronger.

Silas the Wanderer’s map had briefly mentioned this settlement, and Marcus recognized it immediately.

Half-Beasts like the Vixen Clan were intelligent creatures. They could walk upright like humans and possessed surprisingly advanced knowledge of tools and construction. Among Half-Beasts, the Vixens were considered one of the most cunning and cultured races.

Building houses like these was hardly a challenge for them.

Looking down from above, Marcus could not help but marvel.

The wooden houses and the peach trees seemed to belong together perfectly. Homes nestled among blossoming branches, while pink petals drifted gently across rooftops and pathways. The entire valley stretched for miles, and the ever-present pink mist gave the place a soft, dreamlike beauty.

It looked less like a monster settlement and more like a hidden paradise.

The scenery was so striking that Marcus quietly pulled out his camera and captured several images. Places like this were rare in the game world.

Of course, beauty did not mean safety.

This paradise was filled with monsters above Level 70, and Marcus estimated that more than thirty Mythic-tier creatures lived somewhere within the grove. For a player of his current strength, it was an extremely dangerous place.

Which raised the most important question; how was he supposed to rescue Alana from the middle of it?

For the moment he had no answer. All he could do was keep following the Seven-Tailed Vixen Spirits and see what opportunity might appear.

At the center of Peach Blossom Spring stood a wide plaza. In the middle of it rose an enormous statue of a Nine-Tailed Fox, its posture elegant and alluring, its many tails spreading behind it like a fan.

Directly in front of the statue stood a large and imposing wooden house.

The Seven-Tailed Vixen Spirit who had captured Alana arrived there with eight Three-Tailed Vixen Spirits and came to a halt.

The moment she stopped, a dense swirl of pink mist erupted from her slender body. Her seven long tails swayed behind her as the mist thickened around them.

Then, before Marcus’s stunned eyes, another tail slowly emerged from the cloud of mist.

’Eight tails.’

She was actually an Eight-Tailed Vixen Spirit. The realization sent a chill through him.

Now it made sense how she had been able to kill two near-Mythic-tier monsters instantly with a single strike of Peach Blossom Falling Slash. She had deliberately concealed one of her tails earlier, hiding her true strength in order to mislead her enemies.

’A cunning creature indeed.’

Knowing that the spirit was actually Eight-Tailed made Marcus even more cautious.

After revealing her true form, the Eight-Tailed Vixen Spirit led the eight Three-Tailed Vixen Spirits inside the grand house, carrying the still-unconscious Alana with them.

Marcus was still considering how he might slip inside unnoticed when the doors opened again.

The Eight-Tailed Vixen Spirit stepped out once more, but this time she was not alone.

Behind her came the eight Three-Tailed Vixen Spirits, the unconscious Alana… and three additional Eight-Tailed Vixen Spirits.

Four of them in total.

Led by the group of powerful spirits, the procession followed a narrow path lined with blooming peach trees and began moving toward a valley located behind the settlement.

The mist there was different.

It was thicker, deeper in color, and carried a strangely intoxicating fragrance that seemed to drift like liquid through the air.

They were heading toward the Vixen Clan’s forbidden land.

The Peach Blossom Immortal Realm.

Marcus stared in disbelief, nearly losing control of his cloud form from the shock.

Silas the Wanderer’s map had clearly marked that valley as the sacred domain of the Vixen Clan. The Peach Blossom Immortal Realm was surrounded by an incredibly dense Peach Blossom Miasma, a poisonous and mystical fog so powerful that even Mythic-tier creatures could not force their way through it.

According to the map’s notes, even Silas himself had never managed to enter. And now Alana was being taken straight inside.

Marcus felt a wave of helpless frustration wash over him.

He had finally tracked her down… only to discover that she was being brought somewhere he had no way to reach.

For the first time since accepting the quest, he found himself completely out of ideas.

He was truly at his wit’s end.

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