At the outskirts of the Silent Forest, wind and water erosion had left the trees somewhat stunted. Few dead branches and fallen leaves lay scattered around them. And now that the season of growth and reproduction had arrived, the trees were eager to join in. As the old saying went, even withered wood found new life in spring, making trees suitable for firewood scarcer still.
At the far end of the woodland's edge, Zheng Qing finally picked up his first piece of suitable firewood.
It was a dead branch fallen from a soul-returning poplar, with several gaudily patterned "caterpillars" wriggling on it. Holding the branch by its base, Zheng Qing shook the crawling "caterpillars" onto the ground. They rolled over as they landed and vanished into the gaps between the dead branches and fallen leaves in the blink of an eye.
These caterpillars were actually the seeds of the soul-returning poplar.
The soul-returning poplar was a wondrous magic plant.
Its male and female plants were separate. The female plants looked no different from ordinary large trees, with lofty crowns, white branches, leaves like slender daggers, and aerial roots that plunged deep into the soil. Moss and black lumps of all sizes covered their bark, with an occasional dark hollow that looked as though a woodpecker had just paid a visit. From a distance, they hardly differed from ordinary trees lush with greenery.
The male soul-returning poplars, meanwhile, lived on the shallow seabed not far from here. Unlike the female plants in shape and form, the female soul-returning poplar was an animated plant that more closely resembled a sea anemone.
Every year in early spring, when the female plants that had lain dormant all winter put out their first tender shoots, the male plants sprawled across the shallow seabed received this