Chapter 64: Black Blooded

Ashlock had always been an observer, which felt normal as a tree, so he hadn't questioned it much throughout the years. Nevertheless, he was a mind trapped within a body of wood, unable to speak or interact with the people or the world that passed him by except with the assistance of system-granted skills.

However, at the back of his mind, he knew something was missing. He had seen faint whispers of Qi through his spirit sight—he could watch the ebb and flow of the mystical force constantly flowing around him... just out of his reach.

His trunk acted as an impassable wall between him and the ability to command the Qi and shout at it to do his bidding. His {Demonic Eye} had given the world color. He could see the Qi was not just an untamable force like an ocean but rather a collection of gentle streams that could be nudged and altered by the beings, such as the cultivators, living in this vibrant world—except him.

He was an observer. A bystander.

Untamed Qi could enter his body through the tips of his roots and the pours of his leaves. The Qi could traverse through his thousand meters of roots, swirl within his trunk, become morphed to his spatial affinity, and then be directed to wherever he needed it to be. But the second that Qi was dismissed through his leaves or roots, it was gone—out of his reach and control.

But that had all changed by merging with the divine fragment and becoming one with heaven's will. As a Demi-Divine being, he was no longer an observer but now a participant.

When he had meditated with his cultivation technique in the past, all that occurred was the feeling of Qi going through his body and nourishing his soul.

But now that he was linked with Heaven's will through the divine fragment, his cultivation technique felt like making a connection with the world.

Just like before, how he could control the Qi that was within him, he could now do the same to the Qi he breathed out. He was breathing in heaven's intent and breathing out his morphed will.

To put it more simply—the trunk he found his mind and soul contained within had acted like a prison, and the divine fragment had carved a hole through the prison cell—allowing him to communicate with the outside world and the Heavens.

Because without this vital connection between soul and heaven, the possibility of bending the Heaven's will to his ideals was impossible. He had been able to vaguely force this connection through root puppets by abusing the corpses lingering attachment to heaven. But once the latent Qi within their bodies was exhausted, the connection was cut, and the corpses would explode from his Qi as it had nowhere else to go.

{Transpiration of Heaven and Earth}, his system granted cultivation technique brought Qi in through his roots, funneled it through his Star Core where he gave the Qi spatial affinity, and then his mind gave the turbulent spatial Qi intent.

When the Qi was expelled through his leaves via transpiration, it instantly got to work carrying out his intent. Finally, Ashlock no longer lost connection with the Qi once it had left his body. He maintained control and could manipulate it beyond his body.

As the spatial Qi floated there between two of his branches, he willed it to become a portal. He gave the Qi his intent and knowledge, and the Heavens received his vague goal and endeavored to realize it.

A rift formed. It was clearly unstable and tiny, but the Heavens had listened to him for the very first time. Not his puppets, but him. He had done this with his own body and mind.

"What in the nine realms?" Stella shouted and dashed toward him, "Tree can use techniques now?!"

The rift he had created between his branches unsurprisingly collapsed, rustling his leaves and startling Diana, who had been cultivating. Weirdly, she gave him a side glance but quickly sat back down and returned to cultivating with a troubled expression.

Ashlock paid her no heed and focused on the girl excitedly hopping up and down below his trunk, "Tree! Tree! Do it again!"

Her excitement was warranted but was affecting his concentration. "Can you stop jumping around and shouting, please?" He spoke aloud, but as expected, Stella still couldn't hear him, even with his new realm. "This is a big moment for me, and I need to concentrate."

"Tree!" Stella shouted again as if he couldn't hear her the first time. "Try to pour some more Qi into it! You were soooo close!"

Ashlock followed her vague instructions, but pouring more Qi into the rift made it bigger and even more unstable. It opened and collapsed within the blink of an eye—sending a shockwave that made his branches groan and shake.

Clearly, her advice sucked.

What he needed was to concentrate and convey his intent to heaven in a way it understood—

"Whooo! Tree, try again!" Stella clapped from the side with sparkles in her eyes.

Her cheerleading was slowing down his progress, and she really should be focusing on her own cultivation—it could be any moment now that the cultivators rushed up the mountain.

"Tree, have you tried—"

"Stop." Ashlock shouted in his mind. His Star Core flared to life, and Stella stumbled as a pressure descended upon her.

Ashlock instantly calmed down, seeing Stella struggling and reined in his Star Core's gravity. "Whoops, I forgot Star Core realm cultivators had their own gravitational field. This should work really well with my other skills..."

Stella hung her head low, and her blonde hair obscured her face. But with his spirit sight, Ashlock could naturally see she was holding back tears. He was baffled for a moment. What had led to such a reaction? Had his Star Core's gravity really been so strong that it hurt her?

"Sorry." Stella sniffled and stepped back, "I got overly excited. I... I was just trying to help but know you don't need it."

Well, now he just felt bad. Stella had been annoying him, and her attitude didn't match the grave situation, but maybe pressuring her with his realm gave off the wrong impression.

Stella walked back to where Diana was cultivating, plopped onto the cold stone like a rejected teenager, and closed her eyes. He could tell by the flow of the ambient Qi that she wasn't cultivating, and her breathing was too sporadic for a cultivation technique that relied heavily on controlled breathing.

The central courtyard returned to an eerie silence. Only the sound of Larry slowly wrapping himself in silk and Stella's erratic breathing could be heard. Even the usual chirp of birds was absent, likely due to the prior storm scaring them all off.

Ashlock's mood had soured, but now wasn't a good time. War didn't care for emotions, and he needed to grasp his new connection with the Heavens before they attacked; otherwise, Stella won't even be alive by sunrise for him to apologize.

It took a while to clear his chaotic mind and dull his emotions.

But eventually, his mind was clear, and he could focus on cultivation. Which had a whole new feel now that he could communicate with the Heavens. He could sense heaven's curiosity and somewhat converse with it.

It was a supernatural force, an entity with a sort of mind and will of its own. Only through a mutual understanding with this supernatural entity could Ashlock hope to manipulate Qi.

And this relationship needed to be fostered.

Hours of practice passed by.

Ashlock suspected this is what the cultivators meant when they spoke of enlightenment.

The first step was to meditate and converse with the Heavens. Then through repetition and practice, Ashlock could correct heaven with each iteration, so it could better understand his intent.

Kinda like working with an artist and trying to convey the idea you have in your head, and it's only through the artist showing various sketches made from interpreting your words you can guide them on what to change to meet your idea.

That enlightenment moment was when a cultivator's intent perfectly aligned with heaven's understanding. When that perfect unison is achieved, the cultivator feels enlightened as heaven and themselves understand each other on a deeper level.

The next time they use that technique will be a breeze, and so will future techniques as they can build upon each other's understanding.

This was the realization Ashlock came to over the past few hours as he rigorously practiced the portal technique. As it turned out, his scientific way of thinking was fine.

It was getting heaven to comprehend his line of thinking that took time. It wasn't stupid. But it was as if he was shouting orders at it in French, and it only understood Spanish, so much of the nuance was lost in translation.

Repetition is the mother of learning.

With each rift he created, his control got a little better, and by sundown, he believed he had cracked it. Finally, he could conjure up a portal between two branches, leading to another one opened between two other branches on the opposite side of his body. And considering how massive he had become, it wasn't an insignificant distance.

The portals weren't stable, and he wouldn't trust sending either of the girls through one. But from prior experience, he knew a collapsing portal was just as deadly as an open one.

Now he just had to figure out how to attack the people loitering around at the mountain's base. He had regularly checked on them, but they still hadn't moved. Some seemed more agitated than others, but the group of cultivators was only growing, and more pooled in from the city.

It was a staggering amount. Two entire families had gathered with the intent to storm the Red Vine peak, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Throughout the evening, he abused his new Star Core to expand his roots in every direction and made some of them into tunnels that Stella and Diana could use to escape if needed.

With his new realm and Star Core, his growth rate had increased tenfold, and although still a tree and slow at everything, he could grow his roots at a walking pace now.

The cultivators were mostly oblivious, but he was tunneling beneath them. He was just a few meters below those resting on a hill at the base of the mountain in front of the forest surrounding a dirt path.

It was within that forest that some of his children had grown, and he intensely disliked the idea of the cultivators being so close to them. "If I could scare them away somehow..."

Ashlock had only tried to use techniques around his own body so far. However, he knew he could forcefully push and control Qi through his roots. It's how he had killed the rats in the mineshaft, and now that he could control Qi that left his body, why couldn't he use techniques wherever his roots are?

His {Devour} technique utilized vines that grew out of his trunk, so he couldn't use that to kill these cultivators so far away. "What if I open a portal and drag them through it?"

It opened him up to a counter-attack as a portal was a two-way street. He could attack them, but they could strike back. "I need to stun them somehow." Naturally, his {Demonic Eye} came to mind, allowing him to hypnotize and overcome that Evergreen Star Core cultivator.

Ashlock used his {Eye of the Tree God} to find the person closest to the mountain that was emitting the most Qi. If he was going to expose one of his attacks, he wanted to grab one of their strongest first with the element of surprise.

From his search, he identified a green-haired woman and a man. Both were clearly from the Evergreen family. The lady was at the peak of the Soul Fire realm as her Qi was dense, but she lacked that gravity a Star Core had as the grass near her shoe wasn't bowing to her presence.

The man seemed a bit weaker but still in the upper end of the Soul Fire realm. These two were also semi-isolated, so targeting them seemed perfect.

Making his root poke out of the ground, he used that as the anchor point for the portal and then pushed as much Qi as the root could handle into the portal's creation.

Sure enough, much of the Qi was lost to the mountain rock and soil due to the long distance, but luckily, his Star Core was overpowered enough to forcefully push Qi over thousands of meters.

Then for the final touch, he opened his {Demomic Eye} and created the portal's other end right in front of his trunk. The sudden appearance of the eye naturally drew Stella's attention, but again weirdly, Diana didn't react.

He looked a little closer at Diana and noticed in the darkness of the late evening that Diana's veins had turned pitch black as if her blood had become liquid tar.

"What the hell?" Ashlock wondered, but he had to focus back on his newly created portal so it wouldn't collapse.

Space tore apart, and through his demonic eye, it looked like he had made a distorted tunnel from the top of the mountain to the base, but it instantly covered the distance.

Deciding to grab as many people as possible while he had the element of surprise, Ashlock cast {Devour}, and black vines shot out from his body and went through the tear in space. Weirdly the only thing he noticed was that the air surrounding the vines at the top of the mountain was much colder than the air at the mountain's base, thousands of meters below.

The view through the portal was distorted, so it was hard to target the correct person, but he managed to grab the man as the lady had stepped backward in time.

Stella stood beside his eye with her back turned to it. She had her purple flames ready to block an attack and protect him. It was a nice gesture and convinced him she had forgiven him for the earlier incident.

As Ashlock pulled the man through the portal, the idiot seemed to decide it was an excellent idea to attack the rift while he was halfway through. "That's like setting an elevator on fire while still inside," Ashlock grumbled, losing control over the rift as the man's nature Qi, disrupted the spatial Qi intent operating the portal.

An explosion filled the courtyard, and the man, still covered in green flames, went flying and stopped after smacking into Ashlock's trunk.

Stella looked down at the torso of the man severed in half just below the lungs and shook her head. "He always was half a man."

Did Stella just tell a joke? She seemed to think it was rather funny as she turned to Diana while chuckling and pointing to the man.

But Diana was too busy spewing black blood from her mouth to see what Stella was laughing at.

"Diana?" Stella called and rushed over, "Hey?! Are you alright?"

Diana never replied. She quivered before collapsing onto her back with her eyes wide open, looking at the night sky.