The weight on his shoulders was immense, a burden that would have crushed any other being into dust. Yet, as the torrent of raw knowledge from the Heartwood flooded his mind, the physical weight seemed to lessen. For years, he had carried the crushing weight of ignorance, a burden far heavier than any tree. Now, that weight was gone, replaced by the dizzying, terrifying, and exhilarating burden of understanding.
Qi. The breath of the world. The energy that flowed through rock, river, and beast.Cultivation. The act of gathering that breath, refining it, and forging the self into a weapon or a fortress.Resources. The world was not just a collection of things to be eaten or places to hide. It was a treasure trove of energy, waiting to be claimed.
He stood there for what felt like an eternity, the newly named concepts swirling in his mind, slowly coalescing from abstract ideas into tangible truths. He looked at his own hands, calloused and scarred. They were not just flesh and bone; they were a vessel, a container for Qi. A flawed, cracked, and woefully inefficient container, but a container nonetheless.
He looked at the sack of Fruits of Chaos at his feet. They were not just food; they were batteries of raw, unfiltered power. Dangerous, yes, but also potent beyond measure.
And the tree on his back... the Heartwood... it was not just a tree. It was a living alchemy lab, a spiritual nexus, a power source that dwarfed anything he had ever imagined. Carrying it was like carrying a mountain, but leaving it behind was unthinkable. He needed its power, but he couldn't remain an Atlas forever.
The tree's knowledge had not provided a Gongfa, a cultivation technique. It had given him the ingredients and the principles, but the recipe... the recipe he would have to write himself. And his ink would be instinct and pain.
His gaze fell upon the silvery leaves of the Heartwood, dangling just within his reach. Natural alchemy workshops, converting sunlight into spiritual energy. This was his starting point.
With immense care, he lowered the tree, resting its massive root ball on the edge of the trench he had dug. The ground groaned, but held. He plucked one of the luminous, silver-blue leaves. It was cool to the touch, and it hummed with a faint, clean energy. He brought it close to his eyes, not just looking, but feeling it with the Primal Sense he had once found so overwhelming.
Now, with the framework of knowledge from the Heartwood, the chaotic noise began to resolve into a discernible pattern. He could "see" the intricate network of microscopic channels within the leaf—its meridians. He could feel the process: the leaf absorbed the faint sunlight filtering through the canopy, and within those channels, the light was broken down, transformed, and refined into a single, pure droplet of spiritual energy. It was a natural, effortless, and perfect process.
The tree is an organism, a thought formed, clear and sharp. I am an organism. Its leaves are its skin. My skin... is my leaf.
It was a primal, brutally simple leap of logic, one that no refined cultivator from a great sect would ever make. They were taught to draw Qi through specific acupoints, to follow established pathways. Lian knew nothing of this. He only knew mimicry. The mimicry of the predator.
He tore the ragged remains of his tunic from his body, leaving his scarred, hardened torso bare to the cool forest air. He sat cross-legged before the Heartwood, a student before his silent, captive master. He closed his eyes and imagined his skin, not as a barrier, but as a porous membrane, like the surface of a leaf. He willed it to open, to breathe, to absorb the light and the very air around him.
He focused his will, that newly sharpened Killing Intent, and used it as a tool. He drove it into the chaotic serpent of Qi in his Dantian, not to provoke it, but to command it. He forced a sliver of that wild, green energy to flow from his core, not outwards to strike, but upwards, spreading just beneath the surface of his skin.
The process was agony. It felt like forcing a river to flow backwards, like pushing fire through veins of ice. His skin burned, his meridians—the crude, self-formed pathways in his body—screamed in protest. But he did not relent. His entire existence had been a testament to his tolerance for pain. Pain was a tool, a teacher.
And slowly, something happened. He felt it. A faint trickle of external energy, thin and weak, seeping through his skin. It wasn't the pure, refined energy of the leaf, but a raw, chaotic mix of sunlight, the life force of the surrounding plants, and the very Qi of the earth beneath him. It was a muddy, messy process, inefficient and painful. But it was working.
He was no longer just a container. He was a conduit.
Hours passed. He sat like a statue, sweat beading on his brow, his body trembling with the strain. He was inventing his own cultivation technique, a Gongfa born not from wisdom, but from savage imitation and brute force. He would call it, if he had the words, the "Devouring Skin" or the "Path of the Hungry Ghost." It was a technique of consumption, of taking, of assimilating the world's energy by force.
As night fell, a new awareness dawned alongside his newfound ability. As he drew in the energy of the world around him, his senses expanded in a way they never had before. When he looked up at the night sky, he no longer saw just glittering points of light in a black void.
The knowledge from the Heartwood provided context. Those weren't just stars. They were suns. They were distant realms, each a potential source of unimaginable power. He saw the universe not as a roof over his head, but as an infinite, boundless ocean of energy.
And this world, his forest, the very ground he sat on... it was just a single drop of water in that endless ocean. And in that ocean, there were places, beings, and powers so vast that even he, in all his newfound strength, would be as insignificant as a grain of sand.
A profound, soul-shaking realization struck him. His goal had been to conquer the tree, to ascend. But "ascending" was not about climbing the tallest tree in this forest.
It was about leaving this forest entirely. Leaving this world.
Not yet, a voice whispered in his soul, a voice that was entirely his own. But soon.
He would master this world, this single drop of water. He would devour its power, understand its secrets, and then, he would use it as a stepping stone to leap into the ocean.
A new ambition was born, one so vast and arrogant it dwarfed his previous goal of simply surviving. The conquest of the tree was not the end of his journey. It was merely the forging of the key.
Now, he had to find the lock.