Revival

A week had passed since the Sea Monster's attack.

Fear still hung over the Tribe.

The unknown giant creature lurking beneath the sea had left everyone more shocked than ever before.

If a Giant Crab that enormous managed to come ashore, what kind of disaster would it bring upon the Tribe?

And what was even harder for people to accept was that the ship they had worked so hard to build had been smashed to pieces by the monster before they even had a chance to truly use it.

Shattered along with it were people's boundless dreams of the sea.

Those hit hardest were the artisans who had taken part in building the ship.

Years of painstaking effort had gone to waste, and their sense of defeat was far greater than anyone else's.

Yet even amid their fear and despair, people still felt immensely fortunate.

Because they had a god.

It was only through the god's protection that the chief's child, the Tribe's hope, had survived.

Those who had been on the shore at the time excitedly struggled to describe the scene to every member of the Tribe.

"It was as if the world had split in two. One half kept moving, while the other fell still."

"If I could witness such a great Divine Miracle with my own eyes one more time, I'd be willing to die right after seeing it."

The storyteller spoke to everyone with deep longing.

The grandeur of the Divine Miracle was so overwhelming that even hearing about it or seeing a drawing of it left people shaken, the scene lingering in their minds for a long time.

The devout artisans who had witnessed the Divine Miracle all tried to carve that sacred moment into stone with their chisels.

People also turned the Divine Miracle into a song and sang it during the sacrificial ceremony.

And so, a new myth was born.

However, just as the events in the ocean had shaken the Tribe,

a major event soon took place in the forest as well.

Someone discovered a strangely shaped Stone Flower in the forest.

The bizarre plant had grown in front of an ancient tree.

Its outer petals were black and as hard as rock. Several cracks ran across their clearly hard surface, with something blue, like pollen, visible inside them.

In the gloomy forest, it glimmered faintly, like a firefly.

No one dared to approach and touch the strange plant.

Ever since the land-clearing days, everyone had learned from the clanspeople who had died in the mountains and forests—

the brighter and stranger a plant looked, the more poisonous it tended to be.

If they approached carelessly, even a tiny bit of pollen could be enough to poison them to death.

As everyone discussed what to do with the Stone Flower,

Richie arrived with the guards, leaning on his cane.

The two children followed behind him.

Ever since the previous disaster, Richie had kept the children by his side.

Perhaps old Richie feared that, just as he had lost his wife, his children might meet with another misfortune.

Only by keeping them close could he find even a little peace of mind.

"That's a plant created by God."

The people in the forest fell silent and turned to look.

The child who had spoken was Richie's eldest son, Ned.

Ned wasn't as lively as Boer.

He rarely spoke to people of his own accord and was much more reserved.

He liked amusing himself with insects, and sometimes he would stop and gaze at the forest scenery, lost in thought as if he were alone.

Leaning on his cane, Richie beckoned his child over and bent down.

"Why do you say that?"

Ned hesitated for a while, then fell silent.

He didn't know how to describe in words the strange feeling the flower gave him.

Richie simply looked at his often quiet, taciturn child, a complex emotion showing in his eyes.

Like his mother, Ned had white hair.

He knew Ned was a lot like his mother.

He had that strange affinity with nature.

The child often kept company with the birds, beasts, and insects in the forest, and was more perceptive than the adults when it came to recognizing every plant and tree.

It was as if he naturally understood everything in nature and could hear its language.

"Have the guards protect this flower."

Richie didn't dismiss his child's words as a joke.

He had the clanspeople cordon off the area.

Only the guards remained, carefully watching over and observing the strangely shaped Stone Flower.

This time, having learned from their earlier experience cultivating the Return Fruit Tree, the guards were much wiser.

They didn't go out of their way to water the Stone Flower with large amounts of fresh water.

Instead, they stood guard with their bows and arrows, driving away the forest animals to keep them from accidentally damaging it.

Time soon passed once more.

The Stone Flower gradually grew larger.

It had grown into a gigantic plant.

At the center of its enormous petals, they could make out the faint outline of a translucent, jade-like ovule, gleaming with light.

From the bottom of the receptacle, countless strange, pale blue-green filaments spread out, like long, thin fungal threads.

They were so fine that they were difficult to see unless you looked closely—finer than a strand of hair.

What's more, they seemed to twitch slightly, like tiny earthworms.

Soon, the entire forest seemed to be tinted blue.

The trees, grass, and even the rocks all seemed to take on that strange hue.

The sight was so extraordinary that people became certain the plant was a flower bestowed by God.

As the Stone Flower grew,

Ned was always curious, watching nearby as the wondrous plant bestowed its strange colors upon everything in the forest.

It was as if he were deeply captivated by it.

The guards didn't stop him.

As the chief's child, Ned had the privilege of approaching the place.

Ned often slept on the grass near the Stone Flower.

For some reason, it always made him feel incredibly safe.

One day,

after Ned woke up, he noticed something lying beside him.

It was a fluffy brown Brown Rat.

How had this crop-raiding Brown Rat ended up here?

Ned wondered.

Brown Rats were animals that liked to damage the Tree Cassava planted on the island.

Over the past few years, their numbers had fallen noticeably for a time.

But recently, they seemed to be increasing again.

Those creatures liked to hide in burrows and were difficult to hunt.

Otherwise, the islanders would have turned every last one of them into roast meat long ago.

However, the hind legs of the Brown Rat lying there were already rotting.

It was clearly dead.

Ned stood up, preparing to pick up its corpse.

Just then,

something strange happened.

The already decayed Brown Rat suddenly lurched upright in a fit of spasms.

It somehow propped itself up on its rotting limbs in an extremely bizarre posture.

As Ned stared in astonishment, it limped into the bushes.

Ned told his father what had happened.

Richie soon rushed over with the elders.

More and more people also began to witness the strange events in the forest.

Some small, decaying animals came into contact with the blue fungal threads drifting through the air or lying on the ground, then began to stir again. In strange, stiff postures, they slowly wandered around the Stone Flower.

The bodies of these dead creatures were all covered in faint blue fungal threads, wriggling like strands of hair, barely visible to the naked eye.

These fungal threads seemed to be the medium that made the decaying creatures move again.

The astonished people finally understood.

This God-Given Flower could actually make these dead creatures "live" again.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say they were being parasitized.

Under the parasitism of the fungal threads spreading from the flower,

the dead things would start moving.

It was as if they had come back to life.

That day,

countless clanspeople crowded outside the woods, kneeling devoutly before the Stone Flower.

Even though they knew the decaying creatures might not have truly come back to life,

they still prayed devoutly for something.

As if this way,

God might grant them true revival.