"Drip!"
"Drip!"
"Drip!"
After listening to the account from Venerable Jiaye's strand of divine sense, Xu Taiping had begun to sink into a deep sleep. He had no idea how long he had slept before the sounds of water dripping onto the ground startled him awake.
"Where... is this?"
Xu Taiping struggled to push himself up, then discovered that what lay beneath him seemed to be a lake, yet he could stand on its surface with ease.
"Am I still dreaming?"
Xu Taiping scanned the lake's surface and found darkness all around him, with only a little light on a patch of water ahead.
Looking closely, he saw a tree giving off a pale blue-green glow. Every leaf on it was exceptionally verdant, and droplets seeped out from time to time, sliding down the leaves into the lake.
Barring any surprises, the dripping that had awakened Xu Taiping should have come from this tree.
And the tree's overall outline looked like a hand.
Its thick trunk resembled an arm, and its main branches resembled fingers.
"Why would I dream of a tree?"
Xu Taiping grew increasingly puzzled.
He rarely dreamed, much less dreamed of such a bizarre scene.
"Whoosh!..."
Just as he tried to approach the tree to investigate, a cold wind suddenly swept across the previously still lake.
Xu Taiping tried to draw closer, but the cold wind blew him back.
Immediately afterward, he saw a black lotus leaf shimmering with a seven-colored halo grow beneath the tree at a speed visible to the naked eye.
By the time Xu Taiping recovered his senses, a flower bud had grown from beneath the lotus leaf, then swiftly bloomed, shed its petals, bore fruit, and withered.
Finally, lotus seeds fell one after another from the withered lotus pod, dropping into the