Reborn as a Demonic Tree

As the warm sunlight cascaded over the horizon and shone onto Ashlock's scarlet leaves, his mind slowly kicked into gear. As always, his system appeared in his mind, reminding him that yet another day had passed in this new world he now called home.

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Day: 3515

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Upon seeing the day, Ashlock became excited as today was a special day. The timer for the Mystic Realm skill, his one and only S rank skill, was gone. Meaning an entire month had passed since he had last used it, and this time was different.

The last time it had been activated, his sect members had gone in unprepared and thankfully made it out alive. However, this time, they were going in fully prepared to make the most of the pocket realms.

On the mountain peak sat the strongest of the Ashfallen Sect. On one side were three masked women and a large man. Various Qi, including earth, water, and spatial, swirled around them like a dense fog.

Meanwhile, on the circle's opposite side were five Redclaws. Their Star Core Grand Elder sat proudly in the middle, crimson flame spiraling around him and being siphoned off by the others to further their cultivation.

Over the last day or so, Ashlock had watched their flames take on a lighter shade as their spirit roots improved due to the truffle. He also noticed the sheer intake of the surrounding fire Qi had drastically increased, another boon of pure spirit roots.

All was calm as the cultivators meditated in complete silence. However, that was broken by a sudden explosion of crimson flame. As if a rocket engine was facing upward, a pillar of roaring fire rose to the heavens as all the fire Qi for miles poured toward a single man.

Elder Mo gritted his teeth as he went through a stage advancement.

The Grand Elder's eyes snapped open, and a wide grin formed on his aged face. Raising his hands, pure fire Qi poured out from his Star Core toward Elder Mo, taking the pillar of fire to new heights.

An immense pressure briefly blanketed the mountain peak as the pillar of fire collapsed on top of Elder Mo and was absorbed into his Soul Core.

"Elder Mo," The Grand Elder smiled, "Congratulations on your advancement to the 9th stage."

Letting out a deep breath of flames like a burping dragon, Elder Mo grinned, "Thank you, Grand Elder. I feel like the clutch of death on my weary soul has been slapped away, and I may live for many more years."

"That's good news. The Redclaws would struggle without your exceptional guidance and strength, Elder Mo."

Elder Mo laughed heartily, his permanent scowl and foul mood long gone. "What's with the formal speech, old friend? Too comfortable up there in the Star Core Realm to see me as an equal?"

The Grand Elder rolled his eyes, "Hard to see you as a friend when you have been nothing but a grumpy old fart for the last century."

Elder Mo burst out laughing, "Alright, that is fair enough. I have been a bit of a grumpy bastard."

"Now be quiet. The others are still meditating." The Grand Elder said in a forced whisper as he gestured to the masked Ashfallen sect members.

Ashlock felt like informing them that the mystic realm was ready, so he wrote on his trunk and was surprised when the Grand Elder translated his words and relayed them to the group.

"The immortal has spoken. The mystic realm awaits us."

Everyone awoke from their meditation and got to their feet.

Stella seemed to glance at the Grand Elder, who had made the announcement for a while, but with her mask obscuring her face, it was impossible to tell her mood.

"Is she jealous someone else translated my words?" Ashlock mused as he saw her hand clench at her side. She then let out a long sigh through the mask and addressed the group.

"Assuming the mystic realm acts the same way as last time, a sudden white fog will appear. Shards will be within the fog, each showing a glimpse into a pocket realm. Reach out and touch the one you feel the strongest connection to. Any questions?"

Amber was the first to speak up, "How long will we be in the mystic realm?"

"Well, last time we were in there for a month, but only a week passed in real-time." Stella replied, "So prepare to survive there for a month."

Elder Mo then piped up, "Can we travel into the same pocket realm?"

Stella shrugged, "We have only used the Mystic Realm once, and two of the immortal's pets ended up in the same realm. So I would say it's possible. Maybe try holding hands or something when you enter the fog, as all of you would benefit from a fire Qi realm, so traveling together would be ideal."

The Grand Elder chuckled as he left a hand out to Elder Mo, "Consider this gesture a rekindling of our century-old friendship."

Elder Mo snorted and took the hand, "Yeah, right."

Soon enough, the Redclaw family stood side by side, holding hands and ready for the Mystic Realm.

Ashlock was very curious to see if Stella's theory of them holding hands was correct. If true, they could take turns meditating and guarding, making the whole experience safer and more beneficial.

"Maple, come sit on my head," Stella called to the lazy squirrel.

Maple didn't even open his eyes as his body vanished from Larry's back and reappeared through a hole in reality onto Stella's head, still asleep.

"Alright, Ash. We are ready." Stella called out.

Ashlock took a deep breath. After hearing the horrors they had endured last time, it felt like he was sending his family and friends into a warzone where the chance of death wasn't low.

"Come back safely, you hear me?" Ashlock whispered in his mind as he activated his only S rank skill, {Mystic Realm}. "Especially you, Stella."

From the very moment he activated the skill, everything changed. A dense white fog filled with bizarre celestial flakes swirled around the mountain peak swallowing his sect members, and before Ashlock knew it, everyone was gone once again—except for him, Larry, and Elaine, who stood beside his trunk.

A moment passed, and he sighed once he confirmed that nobody was stumbling back out. The sudden silence was unsettling, so he turned his attention to Elaine.

She had removed her black wooden mask and looked at the fog with a longing expression. Eventually, she shook her head and looked up at his canopy, "P-patriarch, is it alright if I sit here on the bench?"

Flashing his leaf to say yes, Elaine smiled and relaxed on the wooden bench. She then brought out the stack of parchments Stella had provided detailing how to translate the ancient runic language.

Her spatial ring flashed a second time as a fruit similar to a small apple appeared in her hand. She took a hearty bite of the fruit, and her eyes went wide as they began to glow with a blue hue.

Quickly picking up the parchments with the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas day, Elaine scanned Stella's notes, and a gasp escaped her lips, "This is incredible! I can feel the information burning into my brain."

That was a rather worrying description, but Ashlock assumed she meant the information was being permanently burned into her memory.

"Interesting... the language comprehension buff seems to give the user perfect memory retention for languages." Ashlock hummed to himself as he watched for a little longer. Her eyes seemed to take in the information incredibly quickly as she replaced the parchment she read every few seconds.

Ashlock was beginning to feel worse and worse for not having thought of his {Qi Fruit Production} skill earlier and giving one of these to the Redclaw Grand Elder.

"Oh well, I'm sure he will be appreciative once he leaves the Mystic Realm a stage or two stronger." Ashlock began to grow bored. What should he do for the next week?

***

Stella reached up and made sure to keep one hand stroking Maple's furry head. The little rascal was her ticket to successfully reaching the Star Core Realm, so she wanted to make sure he traveled with her to whatever pocket realm she ended up in.

Her eyes darted around the shard-filled white fog like a huntress searching for prey.

Brief glimpses of inhospitable worlds, filled with fire and ice, floated past her vision. Panic began to set in as she had been wandering for a while and hadn't encountered a pocket realm with spatial Qi.

Eventually, she closed her eyes and felt out with her spiritual sense. A smile appeared on her lips as she noticed a distant hint of spatial Qi. Moving in that direction, she soon hunted down the shard, and still keeping her eyes closed, she reached out and grasped it.

Her eyes snapped open as a violent and freezing wind smashed into her, causing her to almost lose her footing on the jagged black rock that lay underfoot. Glancing around, she found herself at the peak of a mountain surrounded by an ocean of liquid metal.

A ferocious storm system of glowing blue clouds swirled overhead, flashing brightly as thunder roared loudly in her ears. Maple shifted around on her head, seemingly glancing around in annoyance.

"Sorry, Maple, any pocket realm with spatial and lightning dao is going to be a nightmare to try and sleep in."

Maple snorted and rolled over, somehow falling back asleep.

With the squirrel asleep, Stella looked around for a place to conduct her ascension. "There's spatial Qi all around this place, so maybe a cave or something?"

A frown appeared. Other than sharp black rocks pointing out the metal ocean-like abyssal spikes reaching for the heavens, there was nowhere else to stay.

Her heart almost lunged out of her chest when the world suddenly lit up, and as if she was a lightning rod, the glowing clouds overhead deemed her a target.

Lightning lashed out at her. Stella enshrouded her fist in lightning dao and managed to punch one of the bolts away, but the other was a little off the mark and hit the rock below her feet, exploding the thin shard of rock she had been balancing on and sending her tumbling down the sheer rock face toward the liquid metal ocean below.

Snapping her fingers, a wobbling rift manifested below her, and she fell through. Reappearing back on the mountain peak.

Alright, this is going to be more challenging than I thought. The abundant spatial Qi here makes traveling around by rift easy, but how can I ascend to the Star Core Realm when lightning keeps trying to blast me?

Stella cast her mind back to when Tree had ascended to the Star Core Realm. His soul had left his body and taken on the golden lightning to rapidly grow to a truly monstrous size.

I don't think human souls can leave their bodies like that. I may have lightning Dao, but that doesn't mean I will survive being struck by lightning repeatedly while trying to form my Star Core...

Stella still found Dao comprehension a weird concept. It wasn't affinity, as she couldn't cultivate lightning Qi, but due to her deep understanding of the natural laws behind lightning, she could utilize lightning to empower her body and also knew how to punch it away.

But unlike spatial Qi, her body couldn't deal with being overwhelmed with lightning Qi, so it was still lethal to her in large amounts.

Didn't Tree give me one of his fruit that could help with this?

Stella went through the mental list of fruit in her mind and remembered the Lightning Qi Barrier fruit. Looking down, she decided this bit of rock seemed flat enough, so she sat cross-legged, trying to ignore the harshness of the jagged rock on her butt, and bit into the fruit.

Almost immediately, she felt a foreign but comforting power envelop her. A weird purple energy enshrouded her body like an extra set of clothes and stuck to her arm as she waved it around.

"How weird," Stella muttered.

The sky overhead flashed again, a lightning bolt heading straight for her. Holding out her palm, Stella was surprised to see the purple energy surge outward and meet the lightning bolt, effortlessly absorbing its power.

After the initial awe, a sense of urgency followed as Stella remembered Tree telling her it was a temporary effect, which made sense since she didn't feel any of her own Qi being used to fend off the lightning, so this purple energy must have come from the fruit.

"Alright, time to form my Star Core." Stella grinned as she summoned multiple fruit and truffles. "I hope my body can handle all these resources Tree gave me."

For some reason, Stella felt warm and happy, feeling the weight and texture of the fruit and truffles in her hand, knowing that Tree had been the one to carefully grow them for her. It almost felt like a graduation present or a parent's love. Other scions received their first swords for getting into an academy or maybe a bunch of pills to help them reach the next realm.

But those were gifts bought with coin rather than meticulously grown and nurtured with love like these fruits and truffles. Stella looked up at the ferocious storm system of glowing clouds swirling overhead with great determination.

Tree, as your daughter, I will follow in your path and cultivate the purest and largest Star Core the world has ever seen. I want to make you proud.

Without another thought, Stella bit into each fruit she held. First, the Neural Root fruit, which suddenly made her hyperaware of every nook and cranny of her body, and she could control everything at will without a problem.

"Being able to control each lung individually is freaky," Stella mumbled with her mouth full of fruit. Next up was the mind-altering fruit such as Deep Meditation which, upon eating, made the outside world vanish with ease, and she found herself in the darkness of her mind.

However, with the help of the Neural Root, she was still able to control her body while in this state of meditation. Stella manipulated her body to eat the Enlightenment fruit next, which flooded her mind with whispy streams of spatial Qi, with a few other streams of Qi sprinkled in.

The benefit of being in a spatial Qi-rich pocket realm. Not many other Qi types here to distract me.

Stella then switched it up and gobbled down the truffle she had told everyone to save for the pocket realms, the language of heaven truffle. The one that had allowed her to understand heaven's whispers a while ago.

As she felt the truffle travel down her throat, the confusing whispers from the streams of spatial Qi within the darkness of her mind almost all at once became a chorus of crystal-clear shouts.

The problem was there were too many competing for her attention, and she hadn't come here for enlightenment but rather to form her Star Core, so she needed them to be quiet in order to have a clear state of mind.

That's where the Mind Fortress fruit came in that apparently made cultivators immune to mind-altering effects. After biting into it, Stella felt her mind grow numb, and the insistent shouts that plagued her mind became distant whispers unless she wanted to focus on them.

Stella let out a deep breath of relief. All was going well so far. With her mind tranquil and her body a fortress of purple energy from the outside world. It was finally time to form her Star Core and make Tree a proud father as his daughter was finally growing up and reaching the next stage in her life.