At this moment, the tree spirit had taken possession of Zhang Baichuan's body and should, by all rights, have broken free of its cage.
Even without Great Chun's true body, it could have continued onward.
But the tree spirit was not merely Great Chun.
It also contained that Mahayana Stage existence.
And now that it had returned beneath Great Chun, it was clearly seeking to continue that being's Dao path.
Simply put, the tree spirit's objective was actually the same as Fang Xiao's.
Both sought the item it now held in its hands.
The Innate Treasure—the Nine-Orifice Exquisite Heart.
Fang Xiao, however, had merely come for the name of an Innate Treasure and knew nothing whatsoever about it.
The tree spirit, on the other hand, knew this treasure exceedingly well.
Not only was it the key to extracting Great Chun's tree heart alive, it was also an indispensable link in its future Dao path.
Of course, the fact that this treasure was incomplete was also undeniable.
The crystal-clear heart artifact pulsed faintly, as though it truly were the heart of some living being.
Yet upon closer inspection, one would discover that though it was called the Nine-Orifice Exquisite Heart, it did not possess nine orifices.
It possessed only five.
Still, the heart artifact as a whole was extremely intact, without the slightest damage.
Clearly, this was not damage sustained after its birth, but the result of an inherent insufficiency from the start.
Ordinary Innate Treasures were born alongside the opening of a realm.
But the opening of a realm did not necessarily mean an Innate Treasure would be born with it.
One could well imagine just how rare such treasures were.
And since Innate Treasures were born with realms, their growth was naturally tied to those realms.
Essentially, each time