Under the Banyan Tree

The following afternoon, Su Ming invited Zijin to visit the Immortal Spirit Peninsula together.

The two strolled hand in hand through the rainforest.

Sunlight, shattered by layers of broad leaves, falls onto the damp soil and vines. The air is filled with the fresh scent of plants, mixed with the fragrance of flowers and the aroma of humus.

Between the tree canopy, translucent insect wings vibrated with a buzzing sound, and fairies peeked out curiously.

Several flower fairies flew to Su Ming's side and poked him.

Tap and run.

"Why don't they poke you?" Su Ming asked, both amused and exasperated.

"You seem easier to bully." Zijin's lips curled up slightly.

"Thank you, I'll take that as a compliment."

Zijin kissed him. "That's a compliment."

The two strolled along.

"How long has it been since we strolled around like this?" Su Ming asked. "I need to correct you on one point," Zijin replied, "We've only strolled around like this a handful of times."

The last time I had the idea of going on a date was before I left for the North Pole.

Unfortunately, they encountered the Miasma Throat there, and both were severely injured.

If we go even further back, we'd have to trace it back to our journey to the Northern Lands.

At that time, this whole operation hadn't been fully established yet. The two of them were just traveling, exploring the snow-covered plains.

Unlike now.

****

Su Ming and Zijin were generally heading towards that conspicuous giant banyan tree.

It was a bit far, but the two of them didn't mind exploring a bit more.

Su Ming hired a forest fairy as a guide.

"That's Grandpa Rongjing," the guide introduced. "Grandpa Tree Merging."

Su Ming recognized the name Rongjing; she was a Saint Rank expert from the Fairy Spirit Tribe. "Tree Merging?"

He didn't understand that word.

This fairy had clearly encountered this question before.

"It can be understood as 'moving towards final stillness'," he answered familiarly. "When we forest fairies grow old, we become less and less detached from our host. Over time, we become one with our host."

"Has Master Rongjing now 'merged' with that banyan tree?"

Taiye nodded. "That happened three years ago. Grandpa Rongjing hasn't appeared since."

During their conversation, the two had already entered the area of the giant banyan tree.

The tree canopy suddenly became denser, with layers of branches and leaves resembling a green cloud hanging overhead, filtering out only a few rays of sunlight.

The banyan tree's branches and trunks are almost exaggeratedly thick, and its grayish-brown bark is covered with lines etched by time. Aerial roots become new supports, the supports regenerate branches and leaves, and the branches and leaves in turn droop with new aerial roots.

In this way, it expanded in concentric circles to an area of tens of thousands of square meters.

A single tree has grown to resemble the size of an entire forest.

**** As you get closer to the center, the tangled tree roots gradually emerge from the ground, with moss and small flowers growing in the crevices.

Su Ming reached out and made a grasping motion in the air, feeling a kind of dampness. It wasn't just simple water vapor, but a heavy, vibrant texture.

He looked puzzled. "Zijin, does this count as death?"

The Zijin was also observing its surroundings.

She could clearly feel that this grove of banyan trees, each a single tree forming a forest, was filled with a dense and vibrant life force. Magic Power converged and flowed lively within the trees.

Zijin became confused.

"This isn't a question of life or death."

She looked up at the towering tree canopy, then down at the gleaming roots beneath her feet.

"This Rongjing is healthier than both of us combined!"

"I thought it was just my imagination."

Su Ming said that he felt the same way.

"This phenomenon occurs after the Tree Merging," the guide explained. "The fairy's consciousness gradually dissipates, but the host body, nourished by Magicules, experiences a period of flourishing." "A final burst of energy before death?"

"More or less," the guide replied. "Especially since Grandpa Rongjing is a Saint Rank expert, the phenomena brought about by his Tree Merging are more intense, which is normal."

A large number of fairies had gathered around.

Some sat on the roots weaving flower wreaths, while others used the broad leaves as slides, sliding down from the top to the ground. There were also a few older forest sprites, quietly leaning against the branches.

Compared to other parts of the forest, this area under the banyan tree was clearly much more lively.

"Everyone enjoys being here," the guide explained.

"This tree will wither soon."

"We, the Fairy Spirit Tribe, consider this our final farewell."

****

Qiluo is playing here too.

Pale green light outlined a grid on the ground, crisscrossing like a semi-transparent chessboard.

Different colored magic orbs floated above the grid, some burning with tiny flames, others enveloped in a shimmering light. Whenever one of the orbs moved, a ripple would light up the surrounding grid lines, spreading various effects.

The area was surrounded by a large number of fairies, their wings buzzing. They watched intently, occasionally letting out a gasp of surprise.

"Left! Left!"

"Don't go left, or you'll get eaten!"

"That unicorn is amazing!"

The scene was even more lively than the game of chess itself.

"This is Spirit Chess," the guide told Su Ming, "It's part of our daily entertainment."

Su Ming walked over and discovered that Qiluo's opponent was the earth sprite that had crawled to his feet yesterday.

The opponent flew in the air, playing chess with Qiluo with a serious expression.

Somewhat amusingly, he still had a small pebble balanced on his head, maintaining his balance perfectly.

"His name is Limao," the guide fairy introduced. "He's the most skilled Spirit Chess master here."

"What a simple and unpretentious name," Su Ming thought to himself. The guide fairy carefully examined the battle situation and a look of surprise appeared on her face.

"This unicorn is actually fighting a stalemate with the Limao."

Qiluo was deep in thought.

When she saw Su Ming coming, her expression changed. She ran over quickly, her four hooves stomping across the chessboard, scattering the floating elemental spheres in all directions.

The once neat chessboard of elements suddenly collapsed.

"Hey! Hey!" Limao was furious. "You ruined the game!"

But when he saw Su Ming, he darted back into the ground.

The small stone on his head lost its support and fell to the ground with a thud.

"Oh dear!" Qiluo said matter-of-factly, "I'm just so happy to see my friend—let's call it a draw!"

The surrounding fairies immediately erupted in an uproar.

"How cunning!"

"But her running posture is so agile." Su Ming looked at Qiluo, seriously doubting the chess player's character.

****

Qiluo ran up to Su Ming and used her head to push him forward.

"Hurry up!"

"Jielusi is having class here! Let's go see her make a fool of herself!"

Urged on by the unicorn, Su Ming walked all the way to the main trunk of the banyan tree.

It's much quieter here than outside.

Thick roots rise from the ground, forming natural steps and platforms. Many stone sculptures stand around, resembling ordinary fairies, but with an extra pair of wings and larger bodies.

The stone edges of the statue have been smoothed by wind and rain, and the patterns have become blurred, but the surface is clean, indicating that someone has been cleaning it regularly.

"This is what our ancestral spirits looked like!" the guide dutifully explained.

Su Ming looked around and sure enough, he saw Jielusi sitting on a raised tree root.

Hanging from the upright aerial roots beside her was a Xiaohei woven from flower vines, and a colorful fairy was suspending in front of the blackboard to give her a lesson. In Jielusi hand was a stack of neatly laid-out leaves, which looked like her exercise book. The leaves were covered with fine symbols, and a few were covered with crooked lines.

Su Ming took out three moon dew petals and settled the fee with the guide.

"The one giving the lesson is a very rare Star Fairy named Jinxiu." The guide finished his last shift.

Then he waved and flew away.

Welcome to visit us again!

Over here, Jielusi answered the question incorrectly. Jinxiu flew over aggressively and tapped her on the head with a small twig in her hand.

Snap!

Various colors splashed across the Jielusi strands, like a small cluster of dazzling fireworks.

Zijin covered her mouth and laughed.

"Hey!" Jielusi was annoyed.

Focus on your studies!

The aggressive young teacher tapped Jielusi again. She wasn't going to let the person who was interrupting her lesson get away with it either. She flapped her wings and flew over, hands on her hips, standing in front of Su Ming and Zijin.

"Don't disrupt the teaching order!"

"I'm sorry!" Su Ming said.

He glanced at Jielusi and added:

"We were just tourists, so shouldn't we blame the students for not paying attention?"

Upon hearing Jielusi glared at Su Ming.

Zijin laughed even louder, as did Qiluo.

Jinxiu thought it made sense, so she flew back to Jielusi's side, scolded her, and then left a pile of leaves for her to study.

Qiluo stopped laughing and curiously followed them. When Jinxiu wasn't looking, she tasted the leaves.

Then he spat it out with a "pui" sound.

****

Jinxiu returned to Su Ming's side, looking at him with some confusion. "Your soul is very strange."

Su Ming's ears perked up. "What's so strange about it?"

Jinxiu circled around Su Ming once.

A faint, colorful light emanated from her wings, like a soft silk thread, gently brushing against Su Ming's body.

Su Ming felt these spiritual energies drifting back and forth along the cracks, subtly seeping in without him even realizing it.

Compared to other living beings, the power of the Star Fairy is quite gentle.

"Your soul has been completely torn apart," Jinxiu concluded.

She looked at it more closely, her tone filled with amazement:

"You're still alive after all that!"

Su Ming was speechless upon hearing this.

"Isn't it a bit abrupt to make such a judgment about a living, breathing person?"

"I'm just stating a fact." Jinxiu stretched out her small hand and plucked out a tiny speck of light.

Su Ming felt a slight tug on his sea of consciousness.

The feeling was subtle; it didn't hurt, but it was awkward.

"Hmm, the recovery is going quite well," Jinxiu said. "The remaining marks are very faint."

She raised her hand and stuffed the small ball of light back into Su Ming's hand.

Su Ming felt like he'd been bitten by a mosquito again.

"Am I really badly injured?" Su Ming frowned.

"It was in the past," Jinxiu corrected.

She puffed out her small chest.

"When it comes to matters of the soul, besides my teacher, I'm the most professional in this world!"

Qiluo, standing nearby, snorted in dissatisfaction, "They only benefit from the racial advantages of being Star Fairy."

Jinxiu immediately turned to look at her. "Racial talent is also part of strength!"

"Then your teacher—" Su Ming asked.

Since he's going to see a doctor, he'll definitely want to find the most professional one.

Jinxiu pointed to the banyan tree overhead, which blocked out the sky.

"Don't think about it." She shrugged. "This Master Rongjing from Tree Merging is my teacher."

****

Su Ming began to think carefully.

If one's soul has ever suffered severe trauma, the most suspicious point in time would be after the battle with the Miasma Throat in the North Pole.

In his mind, Miao Xin's Vengeful Spirit Mark was forcibly pulled away, and his mental world was torn apart.

"Was my condition bad during that time in the North Pole?" Su Ming asked Zijin.

"It's alright." Zijin shook her head, puzzled. "Zhimeng said it was only a moderate injury, and it will be almost fully recovered after a few Emerald Dream."

Su Ming scratched his head. "Right, it's Brown Gold Island!" he suddenly remembered, "The time I encountered the Archlich!"

Su Ming raised his hand and touched his wrist.

The "Dawn and Dusk Bracelet" is no less powerful than Zijin's Divine Favor Scepter. And the process by which he acquired this concept was anything but gentle.

At that time, Su Ming deployed a spatial mapping array group that far exceeded his capacity to withstand it.

Looking back now, I realize I was completely ignorant and reckless, absolutely courting death!

Moreover, his awakening process was like returning from nothingness, and even his memory was briefly blank.

"Was my condition very serious at that time?" Su Ming asked Zijin.

"That's quite possible!"

Zijin frowned slightly as she recalled the situation.

"But it was Qiluo who found you first."

"When I arrived, she was treating you, and your condition had stabilized."

"At least, the souls are connected." "So you should ask your doctor about this."

The two of them turned to the unicorn standing to the side.

The latter was looking up at the sky when he suddenly pulled his tongue back from his mouth.

Qiluo was poised and elegant, as if she were merely a pure unicorn passing through.

The flower vines on the Xiaohei blackboard next to it were half gone.

Su Ming walked over and skillfully reached out to grab the ponytail.

So what happened back then?

"... I forgot!" Qiluo said matter-of-factly.

"You said you went through a lot to save me and asked me for 200 kilograms of beef," Su Ming prompted.

At the mention of beef, Qiluo's eyes immediately lit up.

"Yes, yes, we ate roasted potatoes back then!"

"The tripe and intestines were frozen in the refrigerator. Hansite added them and braised them. They smelled amazing!" Magic Power began to emerge from Su Ming's hands.

Qiluo's ears twitched.

"Okay, I remember now!"

She had no choice but to confess.

"When I found you, your soul was torn into pieces, scattered and fragmented."

Qiluo spoke, she gestured with her hoof on the ground.

"Like a shattered mirror, the kind that's been patched up with a hammer."

"I absolutely believe that you actually fought the Archlich!"

"... If that's the case, how did I survive?" Su Ming didn't understand.

Qiluo raised her hoof and said, "Yes, yes, our unicorn clan has a secret technique that outsiders don't know about."

"You know I can transform into a human woman."

"Then all I have to do with you—" Su Ming slapped Qiluo on the head, exposing her lie:

"On the plane, I saw you flipping through that book, 'To Cure My Master's Poison, I Sacrificed Myself,' so don't bring up the plot of the picture book!"

Qiluo sighed:

"Okay, actually it has nothing to do with me."

"At that time, I was preparing to carry your body to Zijin and tell her to accept my condolences."

"As a result, the fragments of your soul pieced themselves back together!"

Su Ming's gaze was suspicious.

"Did you use your so-called 'Long River' to fish me out of the water?"

Qiluo looked aggrieved.

"The Long River of Karma is meant to allow the dead to be reborn, which is why it can't do this kind of thing!"

"Cause and effect?" Zijin's eyes narrowed. "You can actually use this kind of power!"

"It was by chance, a fringe spell that I mastered by chance." Qiluo coughed lightly.

She huffed angrily again.

"I went through so much trouble to mend your tattered soul; I was exhausted."

"It's perfectly reasonable for me to ask you for compensation for the nutritional value of 200 kilograms of beef!"

"Surely you don't have to keep pestering me like this!"

****

"It's definitely not Qiluo," said Jinxiu Star Fairy standing to the side.

"No healing power can piece a shattered soul back together."

"Of course, without Qiluo's timely treatment, you would still have died."

Su Ming could no longer harbor any doubts.

Qiluo snorted, looking aggrieved.

"I'll give you another two hundred kilograms of beef when we get back." Su Ming rubbed the unicorn's head. "Thank you." The unicorn immediately stopped crying and started smiling.

Jinxiu circled Su Ming a few times, its colorful wings scattering tiny specks of light.

The way she looked at Su Ming was as if she were scrutinizing an unreasonable sample. This reminded Su Ming of the feeling he had when he first met Zijin and was being watched by her.

"You have indeed suffered that level of harm, there's no doubt about that," Jinxiu said.

"So how did I recover?" Su Ming was completely confused.

"There is a way to do it."

Jinxiu suddenly raised her finger and pointed at Jielusi.

"It's the ' Mirror Soul Technique ' that this young lady failed to master."

"Mirror Soul Technique?"

Jinxiu led everyone to the teaching location and began her mini-class.

Su Ming and Zijin were now sitting on the wooden stump next to Jielusi.

The rattan blackboard was now half gone, Jinxiu glared angrily at Qiluo. She then discovered that the latter had already run off to play happily around the perimeter of the banyan tree.

"The ' Mirror Soul Technique ' was invented by our fairy race."

Jinxiu picked up a thin twig and drew a pair of shapes on the Xiaohei blackboard.

Simply put, it means dividing soul power into two symmetrical parts.

"The original and its mirror image are interchangeable and complementary."

"When one part is damaged or bewitched by an illusion, it can be reset through another part."

She then drew a vertical line between the two figures.

"Splitting the soul is extremely difficult, making this system incredibly challenging to master and highly dependent on talent."

"But if successful, it will grant the user strong mental resistance and high resistance to soul-based damage."

Jielusi began to speak:

"In order to suppress Lai'aoniya within me, I chose the path of ' Mirror Soul Technique '."

She sighed as she spoke. "Unexpectedly, Headmaster Javier gave me the wrong secret manual."

A hint of sarcasm appeared on Jinxiu's face.

"What you're practicing is actually Split Personality Technique."

"This is the first time I've ever seen a normal person actively develop a second personality!"

Jielusi lowered her voice.

"I trusted the headmaster too much."

"Although the more I practiced, the more I felt something was wrong, I dared not doubt it at all..."

Su Ming suddenly realized.

No wonder Jielusi seems like a completely different person every time she switches to her Shadow Form.

"It's alright." Jinxiu changed the subject, "The Mirror Soul Technique can't suppress the Thought-Dwelling Tribe, but your second personality, together with the seal, actually binds her."

"So I should let 'her' out to play more often?" Jielusi asked.

"There's no difference, you're all one person anyway," Jinxiu said. "Whatever you like." "But I haven't practiced the ' Mirror Soul Technique,'" Su Ming continued to question. "And even with the ' Mirror Soul Technique,' if the entire soul is shattered, there's nothing that can be done, right?"

Jinxiu spread her two little hands out.

"I really don't know."

"If you're willing, allow me to tear off several large chunks of your soul to study; perhaps I can find the reason."

"... Goodbye then." Su Ming refused decisively.

Jinxiu raised her small hand and gently touched Su Ming's brow.

Su Ming felt as if something had swept over his sea of consciousness, subtle and cool.

There are still some small, lingering cracks in your soul.

Jinxiu put forward conditions.

"Give me ten Moon Dew Flowers just now, and I'll help you heal and repair!"

"Deal!" Su Ming immediately agreed.