After a brief daze, Shen Lang was overjoyed.
As expected of the future Empress Nuwa, she had survived even such severe injuries!
But as he watched the flickering azure light, Shen Lang still held his breath and prayed silently. Please, don't go out.
"Empress Nuwa, hold on! This is only the first day of the first thousand years!"
Myriad Worlds Simulator, Great Desolation World, Vast Mountain Range.
Nuwa had only one feeling right now: pain. Endless pain that reached deep into her soul!
It was an experience she had never had before!
From gaining consciousness within the Innate Spirit Array to transforming and cultivating all the way to the Late Stage Great Principle Golden Immortal realm, she had never felt pain!
But now, the destruction of her body and the torment of her soul had made her experience pain to the extreme.
There was also the despair of being on the verge of death and the longing to survive. These were experiences an Innate Divine Being like her had never known.
At this moment, Nuwa had survived, but she was like a flickering candle in the wind. She might vanish the next second.
Still, Nuwa persisted, even though only a faint wisp of consciousness remained.
In any case, she could not die. Absolutely not!
She had come to this simulator and had not seen or discovered anything yet. How could she die so miserably?
A dignified Late Stage Great Principle Golden Immortal and Innate Divine Being had been struck to death by lightning. What kind of joke was that?
Nuwa had also comprehended the Bolt from the Blue talent. She had gained a truly firsthand understanding of it!
The same went for the High Start, Low Finish talent!
Nuwa could sense that her current True Body—the lush Willow Tree from earlier—must originally have belonged to a powerful being.
It had merely suffered an injury, causing it to become weaker and weaker until it nearly died.
Wasn't this the very definition of a High Start, Low Finish?
Moreover, the Gold-Blue Dual Lightning that had attacked her was no accident either.
Nuwa guessed that two mysterious existences had wanted to kill her—or rather, kill the original Willow Tree!
"Don't let me find out who you are. Otherwise, I'll turn you all to ashes!"
Nuwa had been struck by lightning for no apparent reason. How could she not hold a grudge? She had already silently drawn two circles in her little notebook.
As time passed and night fell, the flames in the crater finally went out. The tree roots that needed to burn had all turned to ash.
Only a wisp of azure light still flickered in the night atop the charred roots, growing more and more stable.
For a long time afterward, Nuwa ignored everything else and focused on maintaining this final wisp of Spiritual Light.
As long as she preserved her Spiritual Light, she would have hope of being reborn.
The simulator's Light Screen had already entered Nuwa's consciousness, recording her changes each day.
[Simulation Day 1: You reincarnated as a Willow Tree. Before you could adapt to your new identity, you suffered a devastating blow. However, you persevered through sheer willpower, made it through the first day, and preserved your Spiritual Light. Constitution -4, Situation -1!] [Simulation Day 2: Your Spiritual Light stabilized. Situation +1!] [Simulation Day 3: You attempted to strengthen your Spiritual Light and were pleasantly surprised to discover that residual Spiritual Resonance Energy remained in this section of root. Although there was little of it, it could not be absorbed in a short time. You began concentrating on absorbing the Spiritual Resonance Energy. Situation +1!] [Simulation Year 10: You finally finished absorbing the Spiritual Resonance Energy in the roots. Constitution +3, State of Mind +1!] [Simulation Year 15: Your Spiritual Light had become relatively strong and complete, so you wanted to begin cultivating. However, you discovered that you could not absorb spiritual energy from the air. The method of breathing and absorbing energy from your main world was completely unsuitable for the Great Desolation World. You racked your brains, seeking a solution!] [Simulation Year 52: You suddenly discovered that your Spiritual Light was dissipating. Your emotions became somewhat agitated. Constitution -1, State of Mind -1!] [Simulation Year 55: You thought of a feasible solution. You used your Spiritual Light to nourish the surviving roots, hoping they would grow a new root system and draw nutrients and energy from the earth in the way trees normally did!] [Simulation Year 88: Your idea succeeded. A few new roots finally grew from your surviving roots and took hold in the soil. You could feel your Spiritual Light slowly growing, all thanks to those tiny roots. Constitution +1, Fortune +1!] [Simulation Year 121: Your surviving roots seemed to be developing into a tree trunk. They slowly grew taller, but were still covered in scorch marks.] [Simulation Year 186: A flash flood suddenly struck, and a mudslide filled the crater from that year. Only your ten-meter-tall body remained aboveground, but this had little effect on you. You suffered no substantial harm!] [Simulation Year 235: Your root system had grown enormous and could draw in more nutrients and energy. On this day, you discovered that several tender buds had finally appeared on your charred trunk...]
Chapter Six: A Neighbor Suddenly Arrives, and Stone Village Is Established! [Please Bookmark]
Primordial World, Buzhou Mountain.
Shen Lang looked at the scene on the Light Screen, his heart filled with emotion.
Nuwa had really held on. Relying on a section of nearly burned-through root, she had stubbornly persisted for more than two hundred years.
She had even turned that root into her new tree trunk. At this moment, tender buds had grown along the edges of the charred trunk.
Once those buds unfurled into green leaves and tender branches, Nuwa would become an entirely new Willow Tree!
"Nuwa is Nuwa. She can even turn this situation around!"
Shen Lang glanced at the Simulation Diary beside the scene, and anticipation rose in his heart.
It was now the 235th year since Nuwa had entered the Great Desolation World. One-fifth of the minimum thousand-year challenge period had already passed!
After another seven hundred years or so, she would be able to claim the basic reward!
From the current situation, there shouldn't be any major problems.
After all, once Nuwa grew new branches, she would simply be a Willow Tree.
What kind of life-or-death crisis could a tree encounter?
The Great Desolation World clearly looked like a primitive world. There probably weren't any lumberjacks, so who would have nothing better to do than cut down a tree?
Unless she got struck by lightning again... Uh, that probably wouldn't happen, right?
--
Myriad Worlds Simulator, Great Desolation World, Vast Mountain Range.
Nuwa naturally had no idea that everything she had experienced had been witnessed by someone else who was also a plant.
At this moment, her Spiritual Light (Divine Soul) had changed significantly compared with two hundred years ago.
If it had once been a faint glow, it had now become a blazing flame, burning fiercely.
In any case, she had finally survived.
With her roots and wood revived, it was only a matter of time before she grew into a lush green Willow Tree once more.
But would Nuwa be content to remain a Willow Tree and huddle here for a thousand years until she passed the survival challenge?
Clearly not!
Because during those two hundred years, she had sensed extremely powerful auras streaking through the sky.
She had also seen powerful Strange Beasts, like spirit beasts from the Primordial World, pass by her.
Furthermore, Nuwa had never forgotten the life-form that had used lightning to destroy her Willow Tree body.
The strength of those life-forms was nothing before her True Body.
But after more than two hundred years, she had to admit that this Great Desolation World had successfully aroused her curiosity.
Why had the mysterious existence behind the simulator sent her to the Great Desolation World to simulate rebirth? What was its purpose?
Was it merely a survival challenge?
That would be far too childish!
Her intuition told Nuwa that things were not that simple.
Perhaps this Great Desolation World was not an illusory simulated world at all, but a real world!
In other words, the mysterious existence controlling the simulator had extracted her consciousness from her Primordial World body and injected it into this Willow Tree in the Great Desolation World!
"Is this Great Desolation World a world in the Chaos, similar to the Primordial World?"
Nuwa was only a Late Stage Great Principle Golden Immortal, but she could set foot in the Chaos. However, she could only venture around its edges and did not dare go deep inside.
After all, one could encounter all kinds of dangers anywhere in the Chaos. The Chaos Tide, for example, would strip even a Grand Unity Golden Immortal of a layer of skin if they encountered it, assuming they survived.
Besides the Primordial World, were there other worlds in the Chaos?
Nuwa had never considered this question before, but now she had no choice but to think about it.
The main reason was that the Great Desolation World felt too real, nothing like a fake.
From the life-and-death experience at the beginning to becoming accustomed to being a Willow Tree, everything since she arrived in the Great Desolation World felt like the beginning of a genuinely new life journey from nothing.
Pangu had been able to create the heavens and earth in the Chaos, giving rise to the Primordial World.
Then it was not impossible that another life-form had opened the heavens and forged the Great Desolation World in some Unknown Land of the Chaos.
Nuwa found the entire simulation process difficult to fully understand, but she felt that this had to be her opportunity!
An opportunity that belonged to her alone!
Therefore, what she wanted now was no longer some reward, but to figure out exactly what kind of existence the Great Desolation World was.
But she was currently only a Willow Tree that had just sprouted. Strictly speaking, she was merely a section of an old tree root!
Before you continue