Mind and Spirit as One

She Li only needed a moment to sense it. Once he understood, he spread out his Dao Fruit, forming an invisible, transparent barrier around Chen Cheng's consciousness space.

It was like fitting a barbed security screen over Chen Cheng's mind. The Godly Thought beneath the Abyss could forget about using Chen Cheng's own will to control him.

But as She Li's Dao Fruit spread, the Eyes-Closed Deity seated in the void suddenly moved.

The deity reached out and seized the spreading Dao Fruit. Chen Cheng immediately tried to make it let go.

Yet the moment his mind joined with the deity's, he understood. It was not resisting She Li's Dao Fruit. This was simply the instinctive reaction of a half-baked deity like him upon sensing a Proto Dao Fruit.

The Dao Fruit was forcibly drawn back together. Then the vast Divine Power within the deity surged into it like a flood finding an outlet.

Just as the Great Wall Army had used a Military Formation to hasten the growth of Chen Cheng's divine domain, his Divine Power was rapidly maturing She Li's Proto Dao Fruit.

Phantoms appeared within the Dao Fruit, each showing She Li practicing the Way of the Blade day after day. Infused with Divine Power, those scenes grew solid, until they became a Law Tree shaped like a Butcher Knife.

At the sight of the Law Tree, Chen Cheng could not help thinking of the World Tree's source, which he had seen before: a tree brimming with life force at its most intense.

Perhaps a Dao Fruit becoming a tree was the mark of attaining godhood.

Of course, She Li's Law Tree had only been hastened along by Chen Cheng's half-baked Divine Power. Its size made it look like a shrunken version of the real thing.

Chen