"Was I too late?"
Li Ling murmured to himself. For some reason, he felt an inexplicable desolation and sense of loss.
It was not simply because he had failed to taste a true Sacred Fruit, but because he had suddenly understood the reason behind it.
The world changed, the stars shifted in their courses, and even the Divine Tree that had borne abundant fruit hundreds of thousands of years ago had finally buckled beneath its burden. It could no longer produce superior spirit materials imbued with the power of origin.
The Sacred Fruits, once natural vessels in which origin gathered, treasures fashioned by heaven and earth, scarcely had any opportunity to grow anymore.
The Great Dao of this entire world was deteriorating, and this world's spirit resonance was slowly changing, rotting away.
If even the Divine Tree's Sacred Fruits suffered this fate, how would other things imbued with spirit resonance, or those with an innate Dao body, survive this silently approaching epoch-end tribulation?
"One falling leaf heralds autumn throughout the world."
Li Ling sighed softly. In the past, he had heard One-Mind Daoist speak of the renewal of eras. After advancing to Nascent Soul and joining the Heavenly Court's forces, he had formally learned this secret.
Even so, he had never felt the urgency of fire singeing his eyebrows, for his cultivation age was low. He was still a very young cultivator.
Compared with veteran Nascent Soul Great Cultivators who had lived three to five thousand years, or even seven to eight thousand, he had experienced a mere three to five hundred years. He could not truly appreciate the seas turning to mulberry fields over thousands upon thousands of years.
But at this moment, standing before a Divine Tree that had seemingly lived for over a hundred thousand years, and