The fruit beneath the inverse tree seemed to have existed for thousands of years, and the young girl within had been sleeping for a thousand years. She was the pillar of Norzin, the one that guarded the entire city of steel.
Barr, the de facto leader of the adjudication bureau, accepted the mission of guarding this tree when he was very young, but in fact, he realized that the tree didn’t need any care.
After waiting for more than a thousand years, Barr recognized that perhaps his role was just that of a key. A key to awaken the girl within the fruit—the Witch of Trees, Fraxinus.
Although Barr had control, he had never used this key. And now, the Witch of Trees had broken out of her sh.e.l.l?
While Barr couldn’t be considered a good person, he, too, had quite some sentiments, having guarded the Witch of Trees for over a thousand years, among which the most important was fear. The witch who could shake the whole Norzin with a slight movement of her body was about to awaken. A heavy sense of trepidation filled his heart.
He pointed at everyone and cursed, "You disrespectful bunch! All of you will pay the price for disturbing Fraxinus."
Everyone looked at each other in confusion. Barr’s face was filled with fright as if he were afraid of the witch’s punishment. He immediately ran to the front of the witch's fruit, facing away from it, like he was condemning everyone.
Melissa watched the fruit in amazement. She recalled the smile of the girl within the fruit, and it didn’t seem like she was a bad person.
A green arm stretched out from the broken fruit surface, smooth and pale like jade as everyone stared at the girl’s movements intently.
The fruit was forcefully broken, and the girl within slowly sat up. Her skin was pale green, and her hair was like leaves floating in the breeze. Her flawless body seemed to be filled with the vitality of this inverse tree.
"G.o.ddess..." Barr looked at Fraxinus in astonishment, then abruptly kneeling, knocking his knees on the ground in a particularly painful way. A strange smile appeared on Barr's aged face. "You've awakened, G.o.ddess."
Everyone saw Barr's actions and immediately knelt down, calling out, "G.o.ddess."
Fraxinus heard their voices and slowly opened her eyes, revealing a pair of white eyes like pure snow.
Barr felt that those white eyes were strangely familiar. He recalled tales saying that the witch Fraxinus had green eyes, but he couldn't remember where he heard it from. He bowed his head respectfully again and dared not look directly into the witch's eyes.
"Pfft... Haha…!" Fraxinus guffawed all of her sudden, her pleasant voice resonating all around.
Barr trembled over and, in the next moment, he heard Fraxinus continue, "So, you humans really kneel and worship a tree, haa..."
Bar instinctively looked up—bloodstains had started bursting out of the great Witch of Trees Fraxinus' pale skin. It was as if countless blood vessels within her body had suddenly enlarged and thickened, turning into worm-like existences.
"You!!" Barr yelled, but before he could finish, the witch smiled, and branches, filled with the earthen fragrance of nature, turned into tentacles made of blood that shot into Barr's mouth and filled it up the moment he opened it to speak.
Those tentacles clung to his skin and drilled into his facial orifices. Inch by inch, they made it beneath his skin, into his innards and finally his brain.
Although Barr hadn't yet comprehended the Law of his own domain, he was already a Supreme-rank transcendent being, yet in an instant, he was turned into a bloated bag of flesh that was completely devoured by those tentacles. The moment he was released, Barr fell to the ground as only an empty human skin.
The members of the adjudication bureau screamed. This wasn't the great and compa.s.sionate witch Fraxinus!
The blood vessels beneath the beautiful witch's skin continued to enlarge, finally bursting out as if breaking out of a sh.e.l.l. That flawless body seemed as if it was torn apart by some monster as blood gushed out from over a dozen gashes.
The witch's eyes lost focus and turned green again, while her hands pulled out a pipe embedded in her abdomen which was as thick as a branch, revealing a large hole from which her viscera spilled out.
A new pair of hands emerged from within, tearing apart the large hole further and ripping the Witch of Trees in half.
The inverse tree, which extended as far as the eye could see, transformed into a fleshly, b.l.o.o.d.y monster.
After the hands had ripped apart Fraxinus' physical body, no new body emerged. Instead, the entire inverse tree became its body.
Within the adjudication bureau, members who weren't yet Supreme-rank died on the spot, while the remaining ones felt a sense of absolute despair.
Valace, an ancient being that had lived for over a thousand years and had been cursed by Lin Jie, was trembling nonstop. His face and lips were pale, and his weak legs were on the verge of buckling at any moment. In a nearly tearful voice, he cried out, "Lady... Silver."
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23rd Avenue.
As an embodiment of elemental light, Michael could be considered light itself. In other words, he wasn't that different from the Witch of Life, Witch of Night, and other ent.i.ties that were the embodiment of Laws, perhaps even of an equivalent status.
Michael, a supreme being that controlled the light element, had completely given up on his dreams. But before that, he didn't want to let Lin Jie have any pleasure, even if it meant destroying Norzin.
Michael expanded his body, returning to his original form as he absorbed light from the sun. He would often call himself the sun, but he wasn't the actual one. However, today, he wanted to give it a try.
He wanted to thoroughly absorb all of the sun's light and utterly destroy Norzin.
His swelled up body became an extremely bright presence, causing Lin Jie to frown slightly. His dragon body needed to adapt, so he gave Young Mike some time to absorb the sun.
But that's about enough... Lin Jie scoffed and gently raised a limb, instantly blocking out all of the sun's light. The absorption came to an abrupt halt as the whole of Norzin was plunged into darkness.
Michael shuddered. Lin Jie seemed to be able to block out the sun and shield Norzin with just a casual raise of his hand.
"Is this what you wanted to do?" Lin Jie smiled indifferently. "To let Norzin be in eternal darkness? Unfortunately, I can do it too. And I can even create another sun."
Having said that, Lin Jie raised his dragon hand once more and the sun slowly reappeared. At the same time, a second sun appeared beside it.
Michael: "..."
"I've said it before. You can probably die now." A cold glint suddenly appeared in Lin Jie's eyes.
Michael had reverted back to his physical form out of fear and landed on his b.u.t.t. He no longer had the prideful aura of a manifestation of elemental light and a great angel.
Lin Jie blinked as he watched Michael, the latter seemingly having lost his reason for living. For a moment, Lin Jie felt a tad reluctant to kill him, because it felt like he was bullying a young kid.
Then he saw Michael take out a book from his pocket that had the t.i.tle Bible. He soon realized that this was a bible left behind by some member on his father's expedition team that had gotten lost in the underground palace.
It could be said that this Bible ruined Michael's life. Michael looked up and asked woodenly, "Are you G.o.d?"
Lin Jie didn't want to answer but still said, "No, the things in that book don't exist. At least, not in Azir."
Having said that, he was about to raise a hand to kill Michael, who was still in a daze, when he suddenly sensed a huge fluctuation of energy in the Central District. Lin Jie turned his head in that direction instinctively, and information immediately flowed into his mind.
"Silver?"
As those images and information entered Lin Jie's mind, he saw an incomparably beautiful lady standing within a snowy field composed of irises.
Her beauty was as divine as ever, and her silver hair spread out like silk on the flowers. Her perfect body rose and fell like snow, and even her slender, b.u.t.terfly-wing-like eyelashes were pure white. In her hair was a white thorn crown.
And on her ear, she still wore the iris flower that Lin Jie had given.
Silver was the most beautiful within the pure white snow. She seemed to sense Lin Jie's gaze and turned around, bending her knees slightly and doing the polite human gesture of a curtsy that Lin Jie had grown to like. Those white eyes that Lin Jie were familiar with sparkled like white gemstones as a beautiful smile appeared on her lips.
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