Chapter 303 - Dao Path and the Tree

On the Qi Plane, the silver-haired Yaan and Elia were stood silently within the ruins of their hometown. The pair were surrounded by the graves of the villagers who, they had grown up with, including those of their families and friends. Elia had made this graveyard as soon as the chaos from the beast tide settled down, and she had been protecting this place ever since then.

This village, although in ruins, had been the only thing that Elia had to remind her of the past for a long time. As she grew older and her cultivation grew stronger, everyone she knew died one by one, either due to the chaotic situation in the North which remained for some years after the beast tide, or simply due to old age.

Elia and Yaan were now the oldest surviving members of the Heavenly Path Sect; everyone they had known back then, every elder and disciple, was now dead. This was simply the nature of cultivation – not everyone could reach the Origin Soul Realm. Even those ‘talented’ disciples whom Elia had once looked up to, failed to reach the Origin Soul Realm in the end, leaving her alone, with only her sect and ruined hometown to remind her of the past.

Of course, everything had changed, now that Yaan had returned to her. This village which had once filled her heart with pain every time she returned to reinforce the formations, now made her smile nostalgically as she watched Yaan slowly walk up to the tree which had grown in the centre of the central square.

This tree was quite eye-catching in this place, because it was the only form of life that could be seen in this land of the dead. Originally, when she first saw a small plant growing in the graveyard that she had built back then, Elia considered removing it, until she realised that there was something strange about this tree. To this day, she wasn’t sure what it was about this tree…but somehow, she knew that she needed to allow it to remain living in this place.

After Yaan reached the Nirvana Life Realm, he decided to leave seclusion. He did this not only because he really had no reason to remain in secluded cultivation at this point, but also because he wanted to distract himself from his uncertainties and doubts regarding his main body’s plan.

He wasn’t going to deal with the Ghu Clan just yet, there was no need to rush with this matter. For now, he intended to remain within the Heavenly Path Sect, or at least, within the Greenwood Mountain Range. There were a few matters that he needed to attend to here, the first and most curious of which being this unusual tree.

When he first returned to Lightstone Village and saw this tree, Yaan felt that it was somehow very familiar, despite him clearly seeing it for the first time. After walking around the tree and examining it using his various methods, including his Reveal Truth Dao Spell, he finally realised two things that caused him to show a strange expression.

Firstly, this tree possessed a soul. Not just an ordinary plant soul either, this tree’s soul was like a fusion between that of a plant soul and a human soul.

Secondly, this tree, specifically it’s position within the village…

It was in the exact spot that his baby sister had lost her life on that day.

When he realised these two facts, Yaan couldn’t help but recall something that the Spirit Plane Lord mentioned before. She said that she had searched for all of his deceased loved ones, but for some reason, she couldn’t find a single trace of his baby sister’s passage through the cycle of reincarnation.

“June…” Yaan muttered his baby sister’s name dazedly as he stared at the tree for a long time, hardly daring to believe that something like this was actually possible. However, the more he stared at this tree with his eyes which shone with an indiscernible colour, the more certain he became of his deduction.

Somehow, by some strange twist of fate, his baby sister had turned into a tree…

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No, that was too much of a simplification. Yaan could see that this tree’s soul was unique, a fusion between a plant soul and a human soul. Based on this, he could only assume that upon her death, June’s infant mortal soul had somehow fused with a plant’s own soul. He guessed that this tree was probably originally just a weed growing through the cobblestone ground, but after absorbing his sister’s soul which should have entered the cycle of reincarnation, it developed into this unique tree.

Yaan was only able to see through this thanks to his comprehension over samsara, the rebirth fragment of the dao of life and death.

Back on the Spirit Plane, the Spirit Plane Lord had shown Yaan the reincarnation of his mother, but at that time, Yaan did not want to reunite with her. He had felt bitter, because he felt like an imposter, like he wasn’t really her son, that he didn’t really have any family…that he wasn’t really human.

But that was Yaan’s complete self, not the Dao Clone of Qi. The silver-haired Yaan was born from the side of Yaan that still cared for his past loved ones, the side of him that had once been human, the part of him that had once been a child named Yaan, before fusing with the Primordial Devil’s heart demon. Even though he still didn’t possess more than two days of memory of his family…his little sister hadn’t even lived for two days before her life was tragically taken away.

If there was one member of his family that Yaan truly felt was his own, then it was his little sister, whose life had been no less pitiful than his.

Yaan reached out dazedly and stroked the surface of the tree for the first time. His strange mood was noticed by Elia, but she remained silent and simply watched from a few feet away. She was curious about what Yaan had apparently discovered, and why he muttered his deceased baby sister’s name when he looked at this odd tree, but she didn’t want to interrupt him right now.

The moment Yaan’s hand made contact with the tree’s surface, he felt like thousands of bolts of electricity had suddenly shot through his body and mind. The vague feeling of familiarity that he had felt previously, suddenly amplified by countless fold, and for a moment, Yaan felt like he could see the shadow of his baby sister within this tree…

BANG!

Suddenly, a flash of white light erupted from the tree, blinding both Yaan and Elia and causing their ears to ring, sending them both into a state of confusion for a few seconds. The white light covered the entire Lightstone Village, but the formation prevented the light from travelling any further outwards. Even so, the guards outside of the formation were far too shocked when they saw their sect’s forbidden land turn into a region of blinding bright light, before the light subsided and everything returned to normal.

Although shocking, the explosive white light didn’t seem to damage anything. As soon as the light vanished and his senses returned to him, Yaan narrowed his eyes and stared at the tree intently…only to find that the tree was no longer there.

In its place, stood a young woman. She looked to be around 18 years of age, just like the silver-haired Yaan. This wasn’t where their similarities ended however. The resemblance between them was quite clear…

However, compared to the silver-haired Yaan, the woman’s appearance actually shared more similarities with Yaan’s original body. Her hair was long and black, her eyes brown and filled with curiosity. She wore a white dress decorated with flowery embroidery, and she stared at Yaan for a long time, before blinking and tilting her head.

Elia felt completely dumbfounded, and even Yaan was somewhat stunned.

Yaan had experienced many things in his life, but witnessing a tree suddenly transform into a form that could only be called an adult version of his younger sister, was definitely up there with the strangest things that he had seen in his life.

“June…?”

“Eh?” Elia looked at Yaan, before turning back to the young woman in shock. When Yaan muttered his younger sister’s name once again, Elia’s mind finally caught up with what was going on…though naturally, she found it difficult to believe.

“June…?” The young woman copied Yaan and spoke back to him. When Yaan continued to stare at her with wide eyes, her lips slowly curled up into a smile, then without warning, she ran forwards until she was standing directly in front of Yaan, with her face an inch in front of his own.

“June! June!” She exclaimed with a delighted laugh.

“Ah, no, I’m Yaan, you’re June…”

“Yaan…Yaan! Yaan!”

Elia turned back towards Yaan with a forced smile.

“Yaan, do you understand what’s happening here? You…don’t seem surprised enough that this tree suddenly transformed into a grown version of your younger sister…”

“No, I’m plenty surprised. This…is unexpected. Hmm…for now, I think we should go back your temple to analyse her properly.” Yaan spoke to Elia, but he continued staring at the young woman before him without so much as blinking. His voice was calm and it was impossible to tell just by looking at his face, but his heart was trembling furiously with a mixture of shock, confusion, and joy.

“Do you understand, June?” Yaan spoke slowly to the young woman, who clearly didn’t understand the spoken language very well at all, but seemed to be a fast learner. “Come with me, ok? We’re going up the mountain, to somewhere more comfortable. Do you understand?”

He wasn’t sure if she would understand, but the young woman smiled brightly and nodded.

“Understand, understand! June with Yaan, mountain, go!”

Before Yaan could say anything, the young woman’s body glowed with a brilliant white light, and then, once again, Elia’s jaw dropped to the floor, when her glowing body dissolved into a beam of light, shooting into Yaan’s hand, and transforming into a wooden sword.

Elia kept looking back and forth between Yaan and the wooden sword with an incredulous gaze, but Yaan simply stared at the sword thoughtfully.

Whilst he was also quite surprised by this turn of events, he wasn’t so stunned as Elia. He had analysed the tree using Reveal Truth earlier on, so he had some idea about what was happening.

“I think I understand…” Yaan murmured to himself as a look of enlightenment flashed across his face. “The dao path is able to influence the manifestation of karmic fate…the karmic fate of myself, and all of those connected to me via karma…this is the true nature of my dao path…”