"How are you feeling now?" the narrator asked.
Song Qianji replied lazily, "Like this. Not bad."
"Without the Fountain of Immortality, without your peak cultivation, without even a physical body—and you still feel 'not bad'?"
"You wouldn't understand."
Song Qianji thought to himself: In this lifetime, I've fought my battles, protected my land, accomplished what I failed to do in my previous life, and through twists and turns made this world a better place. If there's any regret, there's only one.
"You just said my soul is nourished within the Sky-Supporting Tree? Why are you here too?" he asked.
"I am the narrator, formless and bodiless, drifting randomly anywhere in the world. Now, with the tacit approval of the world's origin will, I've come to wake you." The narrator eagerly offered two plates of sunflower seeds and peanuts. "Try them—they're what you liked before."
As Song Qianji cracked sunflower seeds, he fell into thought: "The River of Time—you also had tacit approval to show it to me, right? Last time, you deceived me!"
"Ahem, let's not bring up the past. We still have to live on..."
Song Qianji flicked his sleeve: "Who wants to live with you!" He asked, "What if I had failed this time?"
The narrator said dejectedly, "You were the last chance. If you failed, everyone would perish together, including me."
Song Qianji thought: The world's origin will has the desire to save itself but cannot directly interfere with the world's evolution. It could only send him back to the past to try again, giving this world another chance.
If he had failed, the entire world, even the narrator, would cease to exist. So after his success, it opened a backdoor for him? And even let the narrator in to keep him company?
Song Qianji wasn't really angry. Being nourished in a tree was still better than being in someone else's Domain.
Just ask the laboring souls who once worked in his wheat fields—they knew how unpleasant it felt to live under someone else's roof.
"Is there anything else you need?" the narrator asked obsequiously. "I'll do my best."
Song Qianji: "I want to go back to farming. Is that possible?"
"You are the Sky-Supporting Tree! Right now, the heavens and earth rely on you for support. You're practically a world-creator—no, a world-sustaining deity! As long as you bear fruit diligently, when the fruit falls, you'll gain a new physical body." The narrator exaggerated, "Then, with a divine body yet living as a mortal, you can naturally return to farming. Congratulations!"
A divine body, living as a mortal? Reverse cultivation?
Song Qianji didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Likewise, likewise. There must be people outside worried about me. I also want to tell them my soul hasn't vanished."
The narrator hesitated: "A tree can only bloom, shed leaves, and bear fruit. How can it speak to people?"
"Let me try." Song Qianji decided to make an effort.
...
The golden Sky-Supporting Tree was magnificent and majestic, emitting a soft golden light like gentle, warm sunlight.
The thick layers of mist were dispelled by its radiance, and the continent's end was no longer a dead land severed from yin and yang.
When people gazed upon the new Sky-Supporting Tree, they felt a solid, vast, yet gentle power.
Other smaller trees grew around it, thriving vibrantly, showing no trace of the apocalyptic scene from seven days prior when the earth was on the verge of collapse and the sky was about to fall.
For seven days and nights, mortals across the land prayed toward the western sky, while cultivators braved wind and snow, working together to cross the fractured ice plains and rush toward the continent's end.
Everyone channeled Spirit Qi into the Sky-Supporting Tree, ultimately giving birth to this lush, vibrant forest.
When the earth ceased trembling and the Sky-Supporting Tree stopped swaying, the continent's end was submerged by shouts of joy.This was the birth of a miracle, an indescribable awe.
Regardless of past grievances, old grudges between sects, or differences in origins, at this moment, millions shared the same sorrow and joy.
They wept and laughed, overwhelmed by ecstasy and grief, bewildered not knowing what to do or say, not even knowing why they remained here—only aware that Song Qianji was no longer in this world.
"This Domain has been saved."
"We've survived this trial."
"But the Song King cannot return."
The Sky-Supporting Tree rustled its leaves, the sound growing louder like a gentle, melodious tune.
Listening to this song, the cultivators felt as if patted on the back by an invisible hand, their emotions gradually calming.
Chen Hongzhu was the first to stand: "The Song King merged with the Dao for the survival of all living beings and the peace of the world, not for us to weep here. Disciples of the Huawel Sect, where are you?"
The Huawel disciples responded in unison and followed Chen Hongzhu back.
Ziye Wenshu plucked something from the ground, then stood up and led the reluctant Green Cliff scholars away.
Ji Chen watched Ziye Wenshu and murmured, "Does he have nothing to say to Brother Song?"
Back then, following Song Qianji's arrangement, he had handed the other a box filled with fertile soil from Thousand Canals. Even then, he felt Ziye Wenshu was too cold, his emotions restrained to the point of seeming inhuman. After receiving the box, despite regret, anger, and pain, he had spoken only two words.
Dealing with such a person must be exhausting.
Ziye Wenshu passed by Meng Heze.
Out of the corner of his eye, Meng Heze noticed what he held in his hand. Suddenly wiping away his tears, he stood up: "This season, it's time to prepare for the wheat harvest."
Ji Chen: "What did you say?"
"I said I'm returning to Thousand Canals to harvest wheat!"
Ji Chen grabbed his sleeve: "I don't believe you. You must be going to the Western Sea to become a demon lord. Brother Song would be displeased."
Ji Chen thought, if you dare go, I'll draw an Entrapment Formation, and we'll both be trapped here under the Sky-Supporting Tree, waiting for Brother Song.
A year, ten years, a hundred years, millennia... but while the Sky-Supporting Tree lives as long as the heavens, they would not survive that long.
If ascending to immortality meant going to a world without Song Qianji, then they might as well turn to dust beneath the Sky-Supporting Tree.
But then Meng Heze said, "He will definitely return."
"How do you know?" Ji Chen asked, stunned and incredulous. "What did you see?"
Meng Heze raised his head proudly, never having felt so superior before Ji Chen and the other Song Courtyard disciples.
He carefully plucked something from the ground and proudly displayed it to the crowd: "Can your Sky-Supporting Tree bloom potato flowers?""
A pale purple bud bloomed at his fingertips, still carrying a glistening dewdrop, identical to those in the Song Courtyard garden.
"This is the flower of 'Earth Three.' On the eve of the Grand Assembly of Distinguished Appraisals, my senior brother gave me this flower to encourage me. That was long ago, when we were still working in the Huawel Sect's Outer Sect..."
The Song Courtyard disciples gathered around him, their eyes shining as they listened to his story.
Actually, that night, Song Qianji had given out two potato flowers. As the saying goes, when two flowers bloom, each tells its own tale. But Meng Heze never mentioned the other one.
The Thousand Canals disciples exclaimed in surprise from time to time, while only Wei Zhenyu stood outside the crowd, closing his eyes to carefully listen to the tree's sound.
The golden leaves rustled and swayed like an undulating sea, as if in harmony with a rhythmically patterned melody.
The surrounding voices gradually faded, leaving only the melody echoing in his ears.Born into a noble family with some musical knowledge, he now bitterly regretted not having devoted himself to the study of musical cultivation.
Otherwise, he would surely have discerned more from the melody.
"If I cannot decipher it, someone else must!" He abruptly opened his eyes and began rushing through the crowd, pushing people aside in his frantic search.
Onlookers, unaware of his purpose, assumed he had been driven mad by some overwhelming shock. Li Ciquan and Zhu Sheng called out "Wei Wang!" in attempts to stop him.
It was then that Wei Zhenyu encountered a veiled woman dressed in humble attire, carrying a zither in her arms.
Approaching her, he asked with suppressed hope:
"Did you hear it too? What is this melody trying to convey?"
He did not address her by name, never imagining he would one day speak to her so calmly.
Yet in the vast Cultivation World, who could possibly surpass her mastery of musical cultivation?
He feared she might refuse to answer, but even more, he dreaded her saying there was nothing—that it was all his delusion.
"On the night of the full moon, the soul returns," the zither-holding woman passed by without breaking stride or glancing his way. "If you wish to welcome him back, you should forge a Magical Artifact suitable for a soul to inhabit. Come try your luck on the fifteenth of August."
"The soul returns, the soul returns!" Overwhelmed by sudden, immense joy, Wei Zhenyu felt dizzy and momentarily distracted, allowing the woman to slip away. He shouted after her, "Which year?"
Her figure had already vanished, but her voice, accompanied by the faint strains of zither music, drifted back as if from the edge of the world: "Every year."
Gazing at her slender, receding figure, Wei Zhenyu called out loudly, "Thank you!"
OpenNovel