Chapter 561 Eternal life
Father Tree Descartes raised his face and looked at Robin seriously, "What we found that day was the secret of eternal life."
"..Secret of what?" Robin and Billy both stammered in stupefaction, they were both extremely dumbfounded.
Theoretically, someone at the top of the Sage Realm could live for more than 4,000 years, but in the entire history of Jura, no one was known to have reached this age, even Old Gu, who is considered one of the oldest pillars in the True Beginning Army, is an expert at the top of the Sage Realm and is almost places a foot in the Emperor realm, is barely over two thousand years old!
4 thousand years... This period of time is equivalent to 40~50 generations of any mortal family, equivalent to the rise and fall of kingdoms, the emergence and disappearance of races!
At some point most of the sages started falling apart and hating everything, some of them started drinking alcohol and not taking care of their bodies until they died of diseases, and some of them went crazy and started creating wars and horrors until they were put to death, some of them went hunting the ancient beasts hidden deep in the mountains for the thrill and all of them were eaten, and some of them decided to retire from life, like Old Gu, who gave his thrown to his son and contented himself with advice from the side. Some of them even took a shortcut and committed suicide directly!
Of course, there are certainly many Sages who died of old age somewhere trying to reach a secret that would prolong their lives a little more, but even these people no one heard anything about, as if they had had enough.
It's not like they don't like life, it's because standing on top for a long time is really boring.
Maybe living for such long periods is okay for the treants, after all, they still have their nature as plants, they can sleep for a few thousand years at a time without problems...
But what would a human do with power and authority without an explicit purpose? Bed more girls? Go to auctions and spend your money on good wines and some ancient beast hide? Worldly pleasures always have limits, and humans by nature hate repetition...
If those sages were told that if they cling to life, someone named Robin would come and take them to conquer other worlds, they would cling to life with their hands and teeth, as Old Gu is doing now. But without a goal, what is the point of life? Therefore, thinking about the subject of eternal life never occurred to the inhabitants of the planet Jura...
An interesting topic to waste time on, yes, but it was never their ultimate goal! Well, that's until Robin appeared and started the planetary wars, at least...
And then Billy continued, "Did you just say eternal life? Life and eternity in the same sentence? Is that what you said?!"
The Tree Father shook his head when he saw that reaction, but he did not look a little disappointed, as if he had expected it, but he continued anyway with a long sigh and a voice full of regret, "...Sigh~ Before the era of energy cultivation began, we Ancient Treants knew about the existence of the world-- I mean the Planet spirit, we could all feel it in the interior of the planet after completing the process of Returning to Earth. After humans discovered energy cultivation and the number of human and treant cultivators began to increase, changes began to occur around us, as we felt that the energy levels in the atmosphere were rising and the laws became clearer to anyone who wanted to discover it, things like that."
Robin nodded continuously. This kind of information about the beginning of the cultivation era had always been absent from him. As for the tree father's condition, he did not pay attention to it. It was clear that he did not want to reveal the secret that he had fought for all his life, but who cares about his feelings?!
Then the avatar of the Tree Father continued speaking while he was in the same state, "But one day, precisely on the day that the first human being broke through and was able to use the second stage of one of the laws -becoming what you call a Saint- we felt the spirit of the planet itself change radically, At the same moment, all of the ancient Treant tried to sense it, as we always did, to find out what was happening to it, but this time we found ourselves in a different domain, and we saw for the first time the spirit of the planet... At that moment, it was undergoing an evolution of sorts. It was in the process of acquiring a spirit form and consciousness!"
"We did not have any enmity with the planet spirit at that time. On the contrary, we felt that we belonged to it, so no one tried to harm it during its development. Rather, we all found this to be an opportunity to understand more about our world, so we stayed to watch what was happening, and during the formation of the spiritual form of the planet spirit, we all noticed at the same time, that the planet's spirit was not complete..."
"...When the planet's spirit had finally finished gaining form and consciousness, we felt its immense power more clearly, even if there was someone among us with twisted thoughts he had to shelve it and stay silent. Then we all came forward to congratulate the planet spirit and ask it if it had any advice or instructions. Of course, we had no hope of it saying anything important. If it possessed the memories of the planet from the beginning of creation, then to it, we are children who are not worthy of its time. And if it is still just a nascent spirit, then it has nothing to tell us. But we were surprised like we were hit by thunder when we heard these words, the planet's spirit after it took form literally said...: *I don't feel well, Who among you wants to be my owner?*"
"An... Owner? Did I hear correctly?" Robin furrowed his eyebrows upon hearing that word. The planet's spirit was asking to be owned by someone.
Tree Father Descartes' avatar nodded, "One of the ancient Treants didn't even give us a chance to be surprised and quickly asked, *What would I gain if I became your owner?* The planet spirit then seemed to be thinking of an appropriate response, and then it spoke, *I don't know if that's good to you, but my owner will remain alive as long as I am still alive*"
"Alive as long as I am still alive. Alive as long as I am still alive..." Robin was unable to contain himself, so he stood up and began to walk back and forth with his hands behind his back, muttering these words, "This *I* am returning to the consciousness of the world spirit, Or on the planet itself?"
"Does it matter? No one can destroy the vast world and no one can kill the all-powerful planet's spirit. If this is not eternal life, then what is?" Tree Father Descartes showed a meaningful smile, "In any case, we all asked to know the way to possess the planet's spirit and it gave the method to all of us, a way to refine the incomplete planet's spirit using our primal souls to make it complete, this will make the world spirit dependent on you all the time but wouldn't that be even better? We all began the refinement process at the same time!"
Then he added after the smile disappeared from his face, "At first it was just a simple race to try the method and see who could refine the planet's soul the fastest and use it for himself. We soon learned that the refinement process could be done by many people at the same time and that it would take a very long time, but this did not weaken anyone's resolve. The moment we began the refinement process we also began to feel our familiarity with the laws increasing, and most importantly... we felt our lives actually lengthening."
Here Robin stopped walking back and forth and looked at the tree father, "So that's how it is... You ancient Treants all sacrificed movement, communication, family, and everything in order to prolong their lives. If all those monsters clinging to life found a plaything that could grant eternal life then..."
Here the Tree Father interrupted Robin, "A war like no other will begin, that's right. When we knew the benefits and knew that the refinement process would take a very long time, perhaps tens of thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years, a few ancient Treants withdrew their souls from the planet's spirit immediately and thought of the obvious thing: It is to reduce the number of competitors. What is the benefit if we spend refining the soul of the planet for ten thousand years only to find in the end that each one of us obtained a level of refinement of 2%? Will we in the end politely ask others to back off and they will agree? Everyone knew that the war was inevitable, it was only a question of when, where, and how..."
Robin raised his eyebrows slightly, "Let me guess, you also decided to exterminate the rest of the Treant race so that the secret of eternal life would not be revealed and more rivals would emerge, but why humans, other intelligent creatures, and even beasts were subjected to you extermination war as well?"