Chapter 44: Consciousness

Beneath a Great Canopy, Inner Circle, Jin Household.

It's weird to be born yet be aware. Her name was Hyu Jin, and she was just… aware of it. Weirdly, she could think rational thoughts and had fragments of memories. She has been aware of her own self for 40 days now. She could feel that something was wrong with her, but in the 40 days she has been awake, she could feel whatever was wrong slowly but surely disappear. Her mother- "Ah, good morning my little girl." -was a very loving and great woman, taking care of her alone- "Wei!" -well, almost alone. This small humanoid made of vines and roots, with a little green bowl cut of grass on its head helped her mother. His name was Grassy, or that's what her mother called him… "Come now, my love, let's clean you." She lifted her off of her crib, the wooden crib she slept on was made out of this smooth dark wood that she could tell had Nature Qi within.

Talking about it, she could feel Qi everywhere. Literally! She could feel it in the air around her, but she didn't attempt to pull it towards her because it felt nasty. The very light she wanted to pull to her body felt wrong, so she didn't pull it- Instead, there was this weirdly purple and black Qi that was around, like, everywhere! It felt really close but she didn't really have an easy time pulling it towards her body, because while these small spheres of this purple and black Qi were everywhere, they were somehow really far! And they actively resisted, the closer they were to her, the greater their resistance. She was able to, however, pull some to her body through great effort and it felt like he was eating from her mother's breasts.

Warm and delicious.

As her mother held her and lowered her small body to the basin full of water, Hyu Jin had a momentary thought- Water was cold, and she didn't like taking cold baths, so she didn't want to take a bath! Her body felt light for a moment before she vanished from her mother's arms, appearing back at her crib. Immediately after, she felt exhausted beyond belief… 'Maybe… Sleep?' She closed her eyes, yeah, time to sleep.

Amidst Spirits, Inner Circle.

Year 11, Day 40

Root felt it starting. The very ground he was standing on seemed to sing as the Death Qi started to disperse while the Yin Qi from the sun dissipated, making the Death Qi turn back into a delepted Dark Qi. At the same time, the Earth Qi was enriched by the Light Qi from the sun and at night with the Yang Qi, and this mixture started to produce Life Qi, which in turn dimmers down and makes Nature Qi in an extremely large amount. Root took this opportunity and cultivated at the same time he spread his influence on the world around him! In two days he was able to use the Nature Qi that the earth was spewing out to spread out his influence. His roots connected to other trees, those trees had their roots connected to other roots and more roots soon joined them and even more and more roots. The further away from his main body, the lesser the influence he had on them and lesser the amount of nutrients and water he could share with them.

So, to rectify this and push his influence further away, he sent his Seedling children out, once they reached the limit of his influence, he told them to either integrate themselves to a tree or sink themselves down to grow into a tree, and once that was done, his roots would connect with theirs and his area of influence would increase a little more, so he rinsed and repeated the same thing over and over again until he had reached the end of the forest once more- His estimate was that while previously his forest was about 50,000 squared meters (5 hectares) (12 Acres) it was now about 500,000 squared meters or so (50 hectares) (123 Acres), which is fucking great! He felt so connected to all the trees around him, and some were Spirit Trees, like him. He expected that, because he couldn't be the only Spirit Tree in this world! He could communicate with them thanks to his [Mycorrhizal Network] technique, which was literally what the technique was based on- The network connection that fungi can make by connecting their roots.

With this sudden surge of Nature Qi, Root was able to exponentially increase his cultivation speed- sure, the Qi he gathered wasn't exactly pure, which made him have to put the Qi through a process of purification by cycling the gathered Nature Qi and pulling away the impurities before cycling it again and repeating the process until he had pure enough Qi to cultivate. When he did, he would then gather that Qi within himself, and from the 500,000 squared meters of forest he had, he was able to gather a lot of Nature Qi. Enough to make him cultivate at a normal pace, compared to before where he cultivated at a snail pace.

The larger something is, the greater the amount of Qi they need to advance, and the greater their power. An ant could cultivate faster than an elephant, but the elephant would have more Qi to use than the ant could gather in the same realm. It would take longer for the elephant to ascend, but when it does, the power it would have would be greater than the ant if they both ascended at the same time.

The same applies to Root. His tree body requires a lot of Qi, he now stands at 500 meters (1,640 feet), his canopy spread out from his trunk in a 50 meter (164 feet) radius around him, casting shadow under him in that area. His roots spread far and wide, but the further away from the slower the information reached him- Right now, he knew that there were a lot of Demonic Beasts in his forest, and as they were part of the ecosystem he did not mind them unless they were very destructive in their feeding or too damaging to the ecosystem as they lived, like the Spiders from Hell and the Red Swarms. Well, he could maintain a small amount of Red Swarms as under his daughter's control to help around, defending his forest and doing tasks around the growing village… Talking about mortals, they themselves grew, as in, their numbers started to really spread out! Roots was able to count about 10,000 mortals, which when compared to his many children, weren't that many to begin with. Within these mortals, Root had forseen that their children were to be shown to him so he could identify their Cultivation Root with his own- Wait, he doesn't have eyes… With his own soul? Yeah, that he technically uses his own soul to see, which is something he has grown used to doing.

His awareness was able to spread far and wide thanks to his Seedling children that grew into trees, but the further away from him, the blurrier things got until he could barely see clearly- Like a person with myopia when you take their glasses from them. It was weird, but all the Nature Qi allowed him to do a lot more than he normally could. He even saw the Seedling Trees and Spirit Trees cultivating! They were starting their journey in the cultivation world, which made him feel like an elder looking down at his sect members.

Talking about sect members-

Leaf was advancing into a new stage of power. His smaller body allowed him for a greater speed of cultivation, which all his siblings had except for Bones. Bones was a tree like him, so his body required more Qi to cultivate too, which slowed down his cultivation by a lot. "Greetings, Father." When Leaf felt Root's awareness over him, he looked up almost as if looking at his father's eyes, and smiled. Roots chuckled to himself, all his children were connected to him on a spiritual level, so of course they could feel his awareness of them whenever he moved around to look at his children. "Hello, Leaf." He looked into his child's status:

[Status]

Name: Leaf

Species: Greater Nature Spirit

Cultivation Root: Nature, Sun, Water [Legendary]

Age: 11 Years

Qi Realm: Core Formation (5th Stage)

Equipment:

Thousand Cuts Needle - 1st Sword

Thorn of Pain and Protection - 2nd Sword

Techniques -

F RANK: [Nature Spirit Cultivation]

F RANK: [Nature Spirit Floating]

E RANK: [Nature Spirit Authority]

D RANK: [Qi Connectivity]

C RANK: [Spirit Sight]

B RANK: [Qi Conversion]

A RANK: [Leaf in the Wind Technique]

A RANK: [Soft and Hard Blade Technique]

"I think I'm making a breakthrough in my sword technique." Leaf said as he held out his two swords in front of him, Sword Qi flowing through them. Root could see the Qi flowing within the sword smoothly, like a river flowing through its course: "I just need a push… I can bring the force of Nature upon others, but I don't know what I need to do to break through this bottleneck… Can you help me, father?" Root smiled, of course he would help his children whenever they asked for his help! He is their father. He connected deeper with Leaf, keeping his conversation with him private because he wanted it to be. "Let me show you something, my son-"

Leaf only truly had seen the most destructive side of nature, he had never been shown what nature can do to help life instead of taking it. Root showed him the life of animals and plants, how they grew, fought one another, died, and their corpse was then brought back to nature. From the earth, of the earth, to the earth. This cycle was repeated, for changes come in cycles, and nature has an unspoken order to it that you can only see if you analyze it- An ecosystem. But these rules also changed depending on the location, so Nature was very broad and able to change to adapt to anything, he showed him evolution and how animals adapted to things. And he showed him the smallest being he knew to be alive: A Water Bear. These little things could do cryptobiosis.

Leaf was shown a world which he had never seen- He opened his eyes to find himself in a meadow, morning dew sparkled along the grass as the wind blew against his body, pushing his long green hair alongside it. He could see Nature Qi, Water Qi, and Wind Qi in harmony.

Harmony.

"-that's it." Opening his eyes in the outside world, Leaf took both his swords and concentrated for a split second- Intent. His sword technique was all based on intent to change how his Sword Qi interacted with the world. He had the [Hard], [Rough], [Smooth], and [Soft] intents that when mixed and matched could be really useful- But they never truly achieved harmony, because they were opposing intents. "Harmony: Horizon Blade." With the [Hard, Rough] intent, Leaf pushed his blade horizontally in front of him, cutting the air- Now, normally a blade of wind would be thrown forward and disappear after it reached a good distance from him. However, to his surprise, there was this single thin line of Sword Qi in front of him- in an instant, the thin line disappeared, and everything in front of Leaf had a thin cut mark.

Everything.

As far as his spirit eyes could see.

"..."

"...Leaf."

"...yes, Father?"

"...did you just cut every single tree that I planted?"

"...I'm sorry, Father."

Well, it seems he has trees to help now, because he had cut a lot of them!

[author]

[To the person who guessed that the soul shard was the one that fell into Hyu Jin's soul, you were right :3

In the future, as she grows, you will see how powerful as a space, light, and chaos cultivator she becomes.]

thank you Dallas Meck, underdog121, DarksoulS, Kaleb, and Maxwell Joseph for your support.

If you wanna support me too, here's my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DaoOfGay

[/author]