There had been no ritual, nor any prior preparation.
It had all begun so suddenly.
But Li Wen had no time to think it through. She could only follow some instinct—or rather, be swept along by the torrent surging from the depths of her soul—and passively welcome this sudden transformation.
Her consciousness was pulled from her crumbling shell, rising upward, upward without end. It pierced through the seawater Sky Dome above the ruins of Sunken City, crossed fragmented clouds, passed through endless void, and finally reached an unimaginable height. There, she saw everything.
It was a colossal tree beyond description.
Its roots were buried deep in chaos, running through the foundations of countless worlds. Its branches held up the Sky Dome, and every leaf seemed to be a complete, brilliant galaxy. It was eternity itself—the embodiment of cosmic order and life, the first radiance of the Golden Age.
Yet what Li Wen witnessed was not its prime, but its withering.
It was a slow, solemn, yet irreversible process. She saw a leaf at the very crown of the colossal tree, an emerald-green leaf that had once reflected the radiance of a newborn sun, its edge quietly taking on an almost imperceptible hint of yellow.
That yellow was the beginning of the end.
Like the gentlest poison, it spread without a sound. A leaf, a branch, an entire section of trunk... Li Wen's perspective seemed to merge with the withering itself. She could feel the colossal tree's vitality, vast as the world itself, slowly draining away at a pace so steady it was despairing.
She "heard" the tree's mournful cry. It was not a sound, but a sorrow originating from the level of laws, spreading throughout the entire universe. Stars dimmed because of that lament, and sluggish ripples rose across the