Unseen Immortal of Three Hundred Years

Chapter 53

Wu Xingxue once stood under the divine tree like this, and it had been far too long since the last time.

That year, the divine tree was at its most magnificent, deeply and intricately entwined with the realm of mortals.

There had always been people who attempted to use the power of the divine tree to "resurrect the dead" or "return to the past to start anew." These rumors had been circulating sparsely, becoming a half-true, half-false legend.

Legends are like fire covered by paper: initially vague and blurred. Then, one day, the fire suddenly catches onto the paper, instantly igniting in a blaze.

Thus, in that year, this rumor spread far and wide overnight.

Many came, using other matters as a front or fabricating noble excuses, employing various grandiose methods to leverage the divine tree's power to fulfill their wishes, aiming to achieve certain goals.

And yet, people's desires can sometimes be completely contradictory.

Within the same capital, some wished for its prosperity, while others hoped for its downfall. Regarding the same person, some despised him unto death, while others wished him alive. In the same matter, the thoughts and feelings of those involved often clashed.

When these collided, chaos ensued, and the cunning attempts backfired, leaving no one better off.

Consequently, many among them began to regret and sought every means to return to the past, attempting to sever troublesome ties or to alter their fate.

This only made things worse.

From one cause sprouted more, and beyond the realm of mortals lay another realm of mortals.

It was like a straight, clean branch suddenly sprouting numerous twigs, which, if left to grow well, would be fine. Instead, they crisscrossed and entangled with each other.

The tale of the "Ghost Children" once circulated in the area of the Ji Mi wilderness.

It was said that a pair of brothers, orphaned and destitute, depended on each other for survival. Later, they wandered into a small kingdom's capital in the south, struggling to survive while picking up discarded pages to learn to read. By chance, they were taken in by someone. As adults, they both entered the service of the royal court, and after a lifetime of turmoil, they finally settled down, never again subjected to hardships until their deaths.

This should have been a mundane yet stable story, not worth spreading.

But then, an unforeseen disaster struck.

A monk, led astray and unwilling to die in vain, gambled everything to set up an array, using the power of the divine tree to return to decades earlier and start over.

This act, like a stone cast into a calm lake, disturbed the waters, causing several lines of chaos to emerge in the otherwise orderly world.

As a result, innocent people suffered calamities, and their destinies were completely altered, including the brothers.

They never made it alive to the gates of that city, dying less than a mile away.

They died young, emaciated from hunger, dressed in thin clothes, shoeless, behind a broken wall, perhaps too exhausted to go any further, seeking to sleep sheltered from the wind by the crumbling wall overnight. The elder brother even protected his younger sibling on the inside.

But once they lay down, they never woke up again.

Thus, the small kingdom lost two young foreign visitors, and the story of their joining the royal court would never be told again.