For others, it had only been a few hundred years, but for the tree, it felt like an eternity.The tree still remembered the cry of a young man from that time.
The sight of him was very dreadful.
He vomited blood and gouged his own eyes, causing them to bleed.
[ How… How can this be… ]
The young boy, his golden hair stained with blood, continued to sob in frustration.
[ What did we do to deserve this… just what! ]
He cradled the bodies of his fallen friends, watching the blood seep from his family’s lifeless bodies.
However,
[ Ruler… ]
Despite the despair and resentment in his voice, the tree couldn’t offer a single answer. [ What are we supposed to do from now on…? ]
The world was consumed by flames, and the once-blue ocean had turned red with blood.
Life on land perished, one after another.
This was the Blood Disaster.
A catastrophe brought on by one person, leading the world to ruin.
[ Our ruler… ]
Where did it all go wrong?
Was it because no action was taken in the hopes of its children being happy?
The tree didn’t know.
All the tree could do was extend its branches, gently wiping away the tears of the child before it.
[ Child. ]
The young man with golden hair lifted his head, but his eyes were hollow, devoid of emotion.
The world had been destroyed, and so had the child standing before the tree.
[ …Tell us. What did we do to deserve this? ]
[ You did nothing wrong. ]
[ Then, how could the world end up like this…! ]
It was the Blood Demon.
The monster began seizing territories the moment it emerged from the crack in the sky.
The tree was able to know.
Every life on this land was its child, and the tree was aware of each and every one.
However, the tree wasn’t aware of the Blood Demon’s existence.
This meant that the Blood Demon wasn’t from this world, and the tree had a fleeting understanding of why it appeared.
It was because of what happened around twenty to thirty years ago.
It could even be before that.
A change had come to the world, despite the tree believing it would remain unchanged.
A crack had torn open in the sky, and creatures from other worlds began to spill through.
The tree believed that was what caused it.
The connection to other worlds violated the principles, and because it happened under the tree’s watch, it bore the responsibility.
The ruler had caused the change, and it was a grave sin for the world to be linked to other realms.
It didn’t matter who caused it or what problems arose from it.
This land committed a sin, so the tree had to be punished for it.
However,
[ …Everyone… died. ]
There was one thing that the tree couldn’t endure.
[ The children’s limbs were decapitated. ]
[ Their parents met their deaths by having their necks cut off. ]
To the tree, every being on this land was its child.
Death was part of the flow of time, and though the tree had lived for ages, it felt as if all life on the land had perished in an instant.
Whether through old age or battle, that was the natural flow of the world.
The tree had endured the pain, blessing the world with new life, never believing it could interfere with the flow.
However, a new ruler was needed to replace it due to the crack in the world, and even the tree could understand that much.
[ …How pitiful. ]
The tree, however, felt a strange emotion as it watched the child cry in sorrow.
Soon, the Blood Demon would arrive at this very spot.
The tree wasn’t sure if its children had named the Blood Demon or if the creature had chosen the name itself, but it knew the monster was approaching from afar.
Craaack.
The tree’s roots extended, gently wrapping around the young man’s body.
It wasn’t for protection.
It was more for consolation, but the tree didn’t know if it was able to reach the young man’s heart.
Even now, the tree could feel the endless deaths of its children.
[ How could it be this violent… ]
It was very violent.
All these lives had to be erased for a new beginning, and the tree was powerless to stop it.
To watch its own children, die slowly in this land.
Is this what the principles of the world demanded?
Wasn’t that too violent? Too brutal?
The saddest part, to the tree, was its helplessness.
From afar, the tree saw the red sky drawing nearer.
It was coming.
It was coming to erase the tree and restore the world to its original state.
The tree thought to itself while watching the ominous darkness approach.
Were these principles really just?
It probably was.
The world’s principles were absolute, and so was the role the tree had been given.
A ruler existed because of the world existing, and lives were able to be born in it because of the ruler’s existence.
The tree only existed thanks to this world.
With that thought, the tree spoke into the distance.
[ I admit it. ]
The world had faced a problem with its roots, and because of that, change had come.
The tree admitted that it was all its own fault.
[ But the children did nothing wrong. ]
Who was the tree speaking to?
The tree knew that no response would come, and that it was only talking to itself.
If anyone was at fault, it was surely the old tree, once the ruler of this world.
[ …Child. ]
The tree whispered softly.
A presence stirred between the tree branches wrapped around the young man.
[ Child. ]
[ …Yes… ]
The child’s hopeless, broken expression was clear to see.
The tree spoke, gazing at his face.
[ I will give you a choice. ]
[ Choice… you say. ]
The tree’s roots began to tremble, and its branches writhed.
[ It is up to you if you want to perish away like this, or seek another chance after hearing a story. ]
The young man’s eyes trembled as he listened to the tree.
It seemed like the word ‘chance’ reached his heart.
From his reaction, the tree knew no verbal answer was needed.
The tree’s branches extended gently, brushing the young man’s hair.
This wasn’t necessarily the right decision to make.
It was a defiance of the world’s principles, an act of ignoring its own role and place.
The young man decided that he would take the chance.
He would do anything for the chance to escape this calamity, no matter what.
[ …Child, it seems like this is the only thing I could do for you all. ]
Something wiggly started to ride down the tree’s body, then it started to wrap around the young man’s body.
It had the appearance of a snake.
As leaves drifted slowly from its branches, the tree itself began to change.
Its once-vibrant roots began to wither, and the tree itself started to decay.
The world became aware of what the tree was about to do.
The tree spoke during this.
[ I will bear the responsibility for this as well… ]
he act of changing a person’s fate brought an extreme amount of burden as well.
Even altering the fate of a mere human was a grave sin, and the tree feared the punishment it would face.
[ …Child. ]
[ Ruler… this is. ]
[ I hope you find even the smallest bit of blessings, in your journey that will be full of hardships… ]
The young man looked up, puzzled by the tree’s words, as white leaves scattered on the ground began to swirl around him.
It formed a white whirlpool.
Crackle… crunch.
As the young man stood in the center of the whirlpool, the tree endured the transformation overtaking it.
The tree was punished for breaking the rules, and it was no mere death.
As the transformation unfolded, the tree’s breath gradually faded.
At that moment,
Swooosh!
The whirlpool shot up in the sky, and soon after, the man found himself in the body of a boy in Sichuan.
The boy looked around, confused, but the giant tree that had stood before him was nowhere to be seen.
The world, too, seemed oblivious to the tree’s existence, as if it had never existed at all, as though its very being had been erased.
******************I gasped at the story I had just heard.
It was quite shocking.
“So you used to be the ruler of my world?”
The World Tree in front of me was supposed to be the ruler of the world I lived in.
[ Yes, I was the ruler of that world. ]
“Why do you speak in past tense?”
[ …I lost my qualification after all. ]
The tree lost its qualification.
It said it was punished for altering someone’s fate, right?
I immediately thought of Yeon Il-Cheon.
Other heroes I had met said the same, and even Yeon Il-Cheon’s memory had mentioned his experience with regression.
Could it be that the tree was the one responsible for changing Yeon Il-Cheon’s fate, and that it was now here as punishment?
I called this a false world.
I said that nothing in this world was real.
The Demons that poured from everywhere seemed like illusions, but the pain they inflicted was real, and those killed by them did not simply vanish.
But I called this the false world because of what I already mentioned before.
The World Tree had also referred to it as a false world, and when I returned to the real world, everything and everyone seemed to be exactly as they were before, as if nothing had happened.
That’s why I believed this world was an illusion.
Otherwise, how could such a thing be possible?
But perhaps,
Maybe this is more of an incarcerated space?
Is this the space that was created for the tree’s punishment?
I knew there were various kinds of Abysses in the world.
The Murim Alliance’s records already listed four types of Abysses, and they even managed a gate that led to one.
However, this space wasn’t any of them.
I was aware of a few Abysses that remained unknown to the world.
“…Then, is it your presence that allows new life to be born into my world?”
I didn’t know if the tree’s story was true or not, but I found myself speaking more formally to it without realizing.
My mouth still ran even while knowing that the tree was a ruler, but I felt a strong emotion from the tree which bothered me.
There was something maternal about the tree’s aura, making it difficult for me to be rude.
It’s been so many years ever since I’ve felt that.
Am I now feeling maternal love?
It felt ironic, given my age.
Setting that aside, the World Tree spoke.
[ Not exactly. ]
I had asked if life in my world was being sustained because the tree still existed elsewhere, but the World Tree denied it.
[ I lost my qualification, and my worth as a ruler along with it. ]
[ Then… I don’t understand. ]
How was my world still being maintained?
Was the Gate of Demons really the issue?
And the Blood Demon… was it sent as a delegate to erase all life?
Then what about the marble I saw at the Frontlines?
In a territory of the Gu Clan, there had been a marble the beast inside me referred to as a seed.
A tree and a seed.
I hated how the two seemed connected.
Hey.
I tried calling the beast after being reminded of it, but it had been silent ever since Elder Shin woke up that day.
It was the same for Elder Shin.
I raised my hand and brushed my hair aside.
I had a headache.
I wanted to uncover the truth, but I hadn’t expected such a tangled and unpleasant story.
Finding the root of the problem was essential if I was ever to solve anything.
Only by doing so could I untangle this mess.
However,
So then, doesn’t that mean that my ancestors were the culprit to all problems in the end?
If the crack of the world was the problem, then it was the bastards who opened it that was at fault.
Long ago, the ancestors of the Gu Clan had opened the Gate of Demons.
That act had torn a crack in the world’s principles, and the Blood Demon was summoned to fix it.
At the time, the World Tree ruled the world, and for reasons unknown, it returned Yeon Il-Cheon to his younger self.
“…Why was it Yeon Il-Cheon of all people?”
The Iron Fist was the Zenith of his time.
He was also the Head of the greatest clan at the time, and I knew how powerful he was just by hearing from Elder Shin.
Despite that fact, I still couldn’t help but wonder why it was Yeon Il-Cheon.
There was one reason that puzzled me.
All of the heroes of the past I met, whether it was Yeon Il-Cheon, the Light of Might, and even Namgung Myung, they all looked for Elder Shin.
It seemed that, in the end, Elder Shin was their last hope.
I wasn’t sure why, but if Elder Shin was their hope, wouldn’t it have made more sense to return him to the past?
After hearing my question, the World Tree moved its branches and pointed.
It seemed like it was telling me to sit down again.
[ Apostle. I understand your curiosity, but sadly, I do not know much myself. ]
“I’m just curious as to why you returned Yeon Il-Cheon’s life into the past.”
[ Yeon Il-Cheon… ah, yes. That was his name. ]
The World Tree’s response confirmed it for me.
It was only thanks to this World Tree that Yeon Il-Cheon was able to regress.
But as a result, the tree was trapped here as punishment.
[ Reason… reason. ]
Was there a special reason for it?
[ It’s difficult. ]
“Difficult you say?”
[ Yes, how could it not be? To find a reason for it. ]
I tilted my head, confused by the World Tree’s words.
What did it mean by that?
It’s difficult to find a reason?