Crack!
The Giant snapped the charred-black branch off by brute force. The entire Xuanhuang Wood shuddered violently, its enormous canopy rustling with a deafening clamor. The sound traveled from the very top of the canopy down the trunk, then into the deepest roots, echoing over and over through the "void cavities" beneath the rocky bark before spreading in every direction along the network connecting the roots to the earth veins.
It was as though a sleeping behemoth had had a bone broken and grunted in its dreams.
The Giant opened his eyes wide. What they reflected was not a tree, but a vast, magnificent concept woven from countless multicolored threads. Now, one black thread had snapped in two, and all the others trembled in response, sending out ripple after ripple. Radiant light in myriad colors poured down from them, like an enormous overturned glass lamp.
The magic power faded from the Giant's eyes.
The Xuanhuang Wood reappeared in his sight.
Up in the canopy, the green leaves shone with five-colored radiance, colliding with one another in a dense chorus of crisp chimes, like millions of jade coins rubbing together.
"Sorry."
The Giant rumbled his apology in a deep, muffled voice, its echoes setting the air and leaves trembling.
Then he lowered his head and leaned in to examine the place where he had snapped off the branch.
There was not a single splinter at the break. It was perfectly even, as though cut with a knife or cleaved with an axe.
The wood at the cross section was a strange grayish white, its texture somewhere between dead wood and jade. Extremely fine patterns could just be seen flowing across its surface, like miniature rivers threading through the wood fibers.
And even as he watched.
A tiny branch poked out again.