He stood in the center of the devastation he had wrought, the air thick with the smell of ozone and shattered wood. The silence of the clearing was no longer a sign of peace, but of submission. The tree, the ancient, silent god of this forest, was defeated. Its primary defenses—its physical might and its psychic poison—had been broken against the unyielding anvil of his will.
Now, his prize waited. It was time to return to his work.
This was not an act of destruction. It was an act of ownership. The tree was his treasure, a spoil of war to be claimed, a prize won not with reverence but with absolute conquest. The thought brought a grim, joyless smile to his face. It was the smile of a wolf standing over its kill.
He walked towards the magnificent, moon-white trunk. He laid a hand on its warm, smooth bark. This time, there was no resistance, no threatening hum. He felt only a deep, ancient, and profound exhaustion radiating from it. The god was tired.
"Time to pluck you," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rasp, unused to speaking words of jest.
He crouched, sinking low, his powerful legs coiling like springs. He wrapped his arms around the colossal base of the trunk, his fingers digging into the gaps between the roots for purchase. This was the moment he had trained for, the singular purpose behind the years of torment. Every shredded muscle, every fractured bone, had been a payment towards this final act.
He took a deep breath, and then, he pulled.
He pulled with the strength of the mountains he had carried, with the force of the cliffs he had shattered. He channeled the chaotic serpent of Qi from his Dantian, not as a wild flood, but as a focused, controlled torrent, pouring every ounce of his monstrous power into his arms, his back, his legs.
KRRRAAAAKKK!
The sound was not of splintering wood, but of the very earth groaning in protest. The remaining roots, deep underground, snapped with reports like cannon fire. The ground trembled and shook. With an inhuman roar that tore from his throat, Lian straightened his legs, his muscles screaming as he fought against the weight of a god and the gravity of an entire world.
Slowly, agonizingly, he rose.
He had done it.
The great tree, its massive root ball trailing dirt and stone, was lifted from the earth. It rested on his broad shoulders, a crown of impossible weight and power. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. He stood beneath it, no longer a man, but a figure from mythology, an Atlas holding not the sky, but its pillar.
The tree was now completely subject to his will. He had conquered it physically, he had broken it mentally. Now, one final step remained. To understand it.
With the tree still balanced on his shoulders, he placed one hand flat against its trunk. He closed his eyes. This time, he sent not his rage or his Killing Intent, but a simple, clear command into its consciousness. It was not a request, but the interrogation of a new possession by its conqueror.
"The war is over. You are mine. Tell me what you are."
And for the first time, the tree did not resist. It obeyed.
His mind was flooded, not with words or images, but with pure, raw information. A torrent of knowledge, the wisdom of millennia, poured into his soul.
Its Name: It identified itself as a Heartwood. A regulator of life energy for the entire region, a spiritual nexus for hundreds of miles.
The Fruits: They were called Fruits of Chaos. They were cores of pure, raw, unfiltered Qi. When consumed by a being without a refined body or a guiding technique, they induced madness or horrific mutations—the Yaoguai transformation. But for a Body Cultivator, used correctly, they were the most potent catalysts for tempering the flesh into steel.
Itself: The trunk was one of the purest Qi conductors in existence. The roots were veins for drawing energy from the earth. The leaves were natural alchemy workshops, converting sunlight into spiritual energy.
It did not give him a technique, a Gongfa. But it gave him something far more valuable: a fundamental understanding of how the world worked. What Qi was, what Body Cultivation meant, how resources could be used. He was no longer just a feral boy moving on instinct. He now held, quite literally, a power source in his hands and a basic manual on how to use it.
He stood there for a long time, the impossible weight on his shoulders feeling lighter with every new piece of knowledge that settled in his mind. He was no longer just carrying a tree.
He was carrying a destiny. And with this new knowledge, and this unbelievable source of power, his first step would be to truly begin his ascent.