As a forbidden area, the guards only patrolled the island's perimeter. They never ventured inside.
After dragging the guard into a dream to get past the surveillance, Fu Qian soon felt his body changing.
The closer he got to the island in the swamp, the more intense the feeling of distortion and mutation became.
Even the itching sensation on his skin returned. Fu Qian had no choice but to stay on high alert, carefully suppressing the restless buds of flesh beneath his skin.
It took quite some time before Fu Qian finally set foot on the island.
The island was small. Fu Qian soon reached the White Tree and examined the being known as the Sacred Tree.
From this distance, the White Tree looked even more luminous and dazzling.
Its bark lacked the texture of an ordinary tree. Instead, it was smooth and delicate, like human skin.
What was hard to notice from afar was that the tree was actually made of two trunks entwined around each other.
There was almost no gap between them, though, so it wasn't obvious.
The next moment, Fu Qian suddenly felt dazed.
Two images appeared in his mind at once.
One was, theoretically, what his own eyes could see: the tree.
At the same time, there was another image of himself looking at the tree, as if observing himself from a different perspective.
The instant he realized this, Fu Qian sensed something was wrong—his mind seemed to be splitting into two.
He immediately thought of those dolls that had crawled out of people's bodies.
Fu Qian took two steps back at once and looked away, no longer gazing directly at the White Tree.
At last, the feeling of division eased a little.
Still, Fu Qian had a vague sense that if he stayed here,