At that moment, a thought flashed through Cao Xianming's mind: could Yang Yong's furnace be a trading platform?
As long as enough bargaining chips were offered, all sorts of inexplicable things could be obtained from somewhere unknown.
Otherwise, there was no explaining how even a World Tree Seed could be forged...
Didn't the furnace only forge inanimate objects?
Why could it even produce something with living properties, like a seed?
While everyone's thoughts raced, the Man in the Suit spoke again. "Open it."
He seemed to want to verify something.
His tone held less of its earlier casual mockery.
And a faint trace more anticipation.
As though he were waiting for a result he had already guessed but still needed to confirm with his own eyes.
Yang Yong did not understand, but he dared not disobey the Man in the Suit.
He lifted the furnace lid and took out the seed.
Sure enough, the instant the seed emerged, countless rays of auspicious light shone forth.
A pillar of light burst from the seed's surface and shot into the sky, illuminating more than half of it as brightly as day.
The light was warm and ancient, carrying a vitality that instinctively drew people toward it.
It was as though all the world's springtimes had been compressed into this tiny seed.
But it lasted only an instant.
The seed had barely put out a new sprout.
Its tender green tip was only the size of a grain of rice, so delicate it seemed it would shatter at a touch.
Yet that tiny sprout contained a startling vitality.
As though it could sprout branches and unfurl leaves in the next second, growing into a towering tree.
But that next second never came.
The tiny sprout had barely emerged before it began wilting at