CHAPTER 1305: CHARRED UNDERGROUND (2)

Orchid City Forest,

"S...uch... A... DEnse... liFE... aurA..." rasped an almost out of breath voice that sounded like it was at the brink of death with every syllable uttered.

The owner of the voice was a blackened twig, about thirty centimeters in length, its body riddled with cracks and so thoroughly charred it looked more like coal than wood. In fact, given its severe state, even a lump of charcoal might have taken offense at being compared to it.

Part of the twig’s body was buried in the earth, though it leaned at an angle, with some of its roots hanging above the soil, which shared the same look of ruin as its main body.

It lay twenty thousand meters below where Yang Qing and the others had camped, tucked within a cramped alcove in the ground, no larger than a rabbit’s burrow.

"Mmmh..." the twig rasped again, with the sound this time sounding like a last labored gasp before it met its other deceased charcoal brethren that turned to ash.

However, the end that had seemed imminent did not arrive. Instead, the twig began to vibrate faintly as a thin, stringlike stream of radiant-colored wind sifted downward into its charred frame. With each passing moment, the twig’s deathlike gasps continued, until at last they ceased—right as the vibration at its tip intensified, causing the charred surface to flake away. From that spot, a small, pea-sized leafling emerged.

The leafling looked just as battered as its parent twig, though it was in comparatively better shape. Where the twig seemed one gentle breeze away from crumbling into ash, the leafling appeared more solid. Though it shared the same charred look, even burnt, it held a firmness to it, and faint traces of color. Its entire body was blackened, but along the midrib ran motes of gold that gave it a rustic look. Upon those motes, if one looked closely, tiny scripts and ancient glyphs could be seen—thousands of them inscribed within a single speck.

That twig, as withered as it looked, was capable of triggering a continent-wide war if discovered. The reason being that twig, or rather, that plant, was the Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo Tree, whose leaves contained pathways into different Daos, much like the illustrious Ten Thousand Jade Leaf Tree, though it functioned differently from the latter.

Unlike the Ten Thousand Jade Leaf Tree, which contained ten thousand Daos, the Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo held far fewer. Its leaves also formed Dao in a different manner. Where the Ten Thousand Jade Leaf Tree produced them naturally, without outside influence, the Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo formed the Dao in its leaves by witnessing and recording the Daos invoked during a cultivator’s breakthrough.

For instance, if a sword cultivator broke through nearby—nearby

being relative, since the tree was rumored to capture breakthroughs even within a hundred-thousand-kilometer radius—one of its leaves would develop a Dao pathway related to that sword Dao, with additional variations tied to that pathway.

The same applied if a saber cultivator advanced near it, or a cultivator with elemental affinities, or even occupational ones like formation arrays. As long as the Grand Dao was invoked during the breakthrough, the Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo Tree would capture it.

The number of Dao it could contain depended entirely on the number of leaves it bore. If it had ten leaves, it could hold ten Dao pathways. With twenty leaves, twenty pathways. With fifty leaves, fifty pathways, and so on.

As for the quality of the Dao captured, that was tied to the cultivator whose Dao it recorded. However, the quality wasn’t static. The Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo Tree could enhance it by recording and absorbing related Daos from other cultivators, refining what was already present, and improving it in the process.

This was where its true strength lay. All Daos originated from the same source, and the ginkgo operated under that principle, enabling it to merge similar Daos from different roots into a single pathway. For example, it could record the Sword Dao of cultivators practicing different sword arts across various sects, then seamlessly blend the Sword Daos it gathered into one unified pathway.

This was what made the tree so coveted. It might not contain ten thousand Daos like the Ten Thousand Jade Leaf Tree, but it was just as precious—especially to a well-established sect with powerful experts and a rich heritage. That was where the Recording Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo Tree revealed its true abilities, as it was only as valuable as the environment it was under.

"Sho...uld bE... enough," rasped the Sage Leaf Script Ginkgo. This time, its voice carried a faint semblance of life. Where before it had sounded as though it would die in the next breath, now it seemed as though it could endure for a dozen more.

As more wisps of the colorful stream of light washed over it, threads of gold began to show within its leaves. After thirty minutes, the leaf no longer looked rusted. It had become fully renewed, revitalized, glowing with a golden-green hue that added to its suppleness. The twig’s charred exterior, as if in response to the leafling, shed its blackened remains, revealing a green-gray sapling that was soft, supple, and glistening with fresh life where only moments ago it had been nothing more than a husk on the cusp of death.

"The heavens haven’t abandoned me. I didn’t desperately cling to life for nothing. Who would have thought I’d end up receiving what I so desperately needed... the Supreme Dao of Life," said the former twig, now a sapling. Its voice was gentle, young, and serene, perfectly mirroring its tender shoot.

"Four years should be enough to recover my former strength. Universal Resonant Sect... mmh, that shameless sect has found a worthy successor. I wonder if the others are so lucky," sighed the Ginkgo Tree.

"The life-saving debt I now owe him aside, I will make sure to watch over him should the situation demand it, if only to honor your sacrifice back then. There was no one more shameless than you, yet when the continent called, you didn’t shirk from answering," murmured the Ginkgo Tree. "Right to the very end... You and the others held firm...

How many remain from back then, I wonder?"