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CHAPTER 51: The Divine Bodhi Tree (Part III)
Within the Divine Bodhi Tree lay three thousand small worlds. To scale its heights was to board a solitary leaf of a boat, navigating the turbulent torrents of time itself.
It was for this reason that Granny Shui had repeated one command above all others: "Remember who you are."
Within the deluge of time and space, a century might pass with your identity intact. By five hundred years, the edges of memory begin to fray, and you grow accustomed to wearing another’s skin. By a millennium, the self is utterly extinguished, leaving you lost forever within the Divine Bodhi Tree.
The System remained silent. Chao Jinsui’s only companion was the Kunlun Sword.
After emerging from the sweet dream shared with A-Pu, she stepped into another world. In this realm, she was not the Young Sect Master, but a lowly cultivator of the Kunlun Sword Sect, an ordinary outer disciple named Xiao Jiu.
Day and night, voices called out to her: "Xiao Jiu."
Every evening before sleep, she forced herself to recite a mantra: My name is Chao Jinsui. She refused to let the weight of years erode her essence. The only weapon she found effective against the tides of time was the blade.
The Kunlun Sword never left her side.
She practiced through biting winters and sweltering summers, from the dancing snows to the swaying willows. As a sword cultivator, she rebuilt her foundation, starting the Kunlun Sword Manual from the very beginning. She loved the sword; in the rhythm of the strike, the passage of decades felt like mere moments.
Xiao Jiu lacked natural talent. She possessed no innate sword-bone, serving only as a mediocre practitioner. She began at the first rank. Three hundred years later, she finally halted at the fifth rank, the Frozen Frost Realm.
This time, she had the luxury of years to master the "Ice-Cold Blade." It was a technique notoriously difficult to control, offering but a single window of opportunity. Chao Jinsui often felt that the sect’s guardian array and the Ice-Cold Blade shared a common soul. After all, both were legacies left by the Founder.
No one knew how long the Founder of the Kunlun Sword Sect had lived. His manual condensed a lifetime of mastery; the higher the rank, the more profound the mystery. To think she could have grasped his life’s work in a mere century outside the tree was the naive boast of a child. The Divine Bodhi Tree had granted her a supreme opportunity.
She spent a full century focused solely on the guardian array.
Everyone called her strange, a freakish sword cultivator. When that century closed and she emerged from meditation, the frost and snow had encased her like a statue. She had finally achieved a perfect realization of the Ice-Cold Blade’s intent.
They began to call her "Sword Saint Xiao Jiu."
Carrying her blade, she departed the Kunlun Sword Sect to wander the world. Over five hundred years, the name "Chao Jinsui" grew faint. She spent her existence chasing a breakthrough past the fifth rank, a fanatic with nothing in her heart but the steel.
Then came the day the Sword Saint encountered a young beggar.
The boy, sporting two small demonic horns, clutched the bun she had given him. He looked at her with curious eyes and asked, "Are you looking for a disciple? What do you think of me?"
She stared at him for a long time. Suddenly, she laughed.
"Yanyan," she said.
Sword Saint Xiao Jiu finally remembered who she was.
In the next world, she became a member of the Demon Race.
It took even longer here to reach the fifth rank of the Kunlun Sword Manual. Yet, unlike the Sword Saint, the life of a demon provided endless opportunities to whet her Ice-Cold Blade. She spent two hundred years in the Myriad Demon Abyss, practicing a single act: decapitation.
She rose to become the new Demon Lord, a woman of terrifying repute, a cruel slaughterer who loved to take heads. She possessed only one move, the Ice-Cold Blade, but that single strike was enough to crown her.
Here, she felt the first faint tremors of a breakthrough into the sixth rank. However, the madness and loss of control inherent in the demon bloodline were difficult to resist. Gradually, she forgot everything except her title.
Until one day, a young brat of a demon blocked the path of the infamous Demon Lord. Reckless and bold, he sought to challenge her. He expected a monster, only to find a maiden in white, her long hair fluttering like silk.
Meeting her clear, cold eyes, the little demon stammered, "You... I want..."
She tilted her head. "Want what?"
"I want... to treat you to a meal."
She smiled. "Yanyan, very well."
Chao Jinsui had always believed herself to be a person of muted passions, repressed, distant, and thin. She thought her emotions were as transient as a breeze or a drop of water.
Until she realized that in this vast, unending river of time, "Yanyan" was her anchor. Like a small boat caught in a violent storm, there was always a hook holding her, tethering her to reality. No matter who she became, no matter where she was lost, finding "Yanyan" meant finding herself. He was the reason she could walk forward without being swallowed by the Bodhi Tree’s illusions.
She wasn't gifted in every world. Sometimes she was a commoner, sometimes sickly or weak. But she never abandoned the Kunlun Sword Manual. She feared that if she didn't keep her mind sharp through the sword, she would vanish before Yanyan could appear.
Thousands of years passed. Perhaps longer.
Finally, she entered a world at the dawn of the Great Desolation, shortly after Nüwa had created humanity. Chao Jinsui became a wisp of primordial qi. She witnessed the turning of the world, floating through the ages until she saw a tiny Bodhi sapling.
She stayed by its side. She watched as a single Bodhi seed fell upon an abandoned Heaven-Mending Stone. Feeding on the stone's essence, it slowly grew into the largest, purest divine tree in existence.
She remained until she took human form. Born of primordial qi, her talent was terrifying. She reached the fifth rank in record time and finally touched the threshold of the sixth: Heaven and Earth Tremor.
Since the Founder created the manual, only he had ever reached this height. Even in her past life as a Spirit Severing cultivator, Chao Jinsui had never glimpsed this realm. But now, she saw the landscape of the sixth rank.
Under the Bodhi Tree, she broke through.
A sensation of shackles shattering washed over her. When she unleashed the technique for the first time, a bolt of lightning tore through the darkness, followed by a thunderclap that shook the foundations of the world.
She realized then what "Heaven and Earth Tremor" truly was. It was the summoning of celestial lightning. When the heavens thunder, the world trembles.
The lightning shredded the night sky. The small world within the tree began to crumble. The ten-thousand-year drift through three thousand worlds ended in that singular moment.
Chao Jinsui reached the end of the Divine Bodhi Tree.
Her aura exploded. Her cultivation surged violently, from the mid-Nascent Soul stage to the Great Perfection, then leaping into Spirit Severing. The power accumulated over ten thousand years of drifting burst forth all at once.
Who am I?
Sword Saint Xiao Jiu? The Demon Lord? A commoner... or a wisp of primordial qi?
A thousand voices clamored in her mind. Outside the tree, the sky darkened, gales howled, and thunder roared. Chao Zhaoyue and the Little Eyes looked up in terror.
Granny Shui stood abruptly. "Disaster!"
"The worlds within the Bodhi Tree are real!" she cried. "Once she breaks free, her cultivation will skyrocket. If she cannot remember who she is, she will explode and die!"
In those worlds, she had been a primordial force, a demon, a saint. Her mortal body could not withstand the accumulated weight of those lives. Above them, tribulation clouds, the kind seen only during Great Ascensions, began to gather.
Deep within her, the seed of a heart-demon left by Yan Xueyi stirred. He had once tried to lure her into the demonic path, and now, amidst her instability, the demon shrieked.
"CHAO JINSUI!"
The voice was like a strike of lightning through the mist.
It’s Yanyan. That’s Yanyan’s voice.
She was not a Sword Saint. She was not a Demon Lord. She was Chao Jinsui.
The tidal wave of power receded as quickly as it had come, settling at the Nascent Soul Great Perfection. The purple tribulation clouds dispersed. Her eyes cleared. She remembered her name, her purpose, and why she had come.
She opened her eyes to find herself atop the massive canopy of the Divine Bodhi Tree. Clouds brushed against her palms like mist. Below lay the entire Water-Cloud Realm.
"How long has it been?" she asked the System.
The System, finally reconnected, let out a sob of relief. "Host, it has been three days and three nights."
Ten thousand years inside; three days outside.
Chao Jinsui didn't stop to examine her expanded dantian. She immediately looked for Yan Xueyi, but he was nowhere to be seen. She waited for half a day, meditating to stabilize her breath. In the tree, cultivation had become as natural as breathing. Her foundation was now rock-solid.
When she rose, he still hadn't appeared. She gripped her sword, intending to go down and find him, but stopped. The tree contained thousands of worlds. Even if she dove back in, could she find him?
As Granny Shui said, one can only rely on oneself within the Bodhi Tree.
She turned toward the center of the canopy, deciding to wake A-Pu first. She flew toward a massive hollow in the center of the branches. There, she found a withered, dying Bodhi Heart. It was charred, looking like a piece of dead coal.
She touched it. "Mother."
There was no response. She pressed her cheek against the cold surface. "It’s Suisui. Mother, I’ve grown up."
The heart gave a single, faint thump. Chao Jinsui smiled through her tears. She sat by the heart and told A-Pu about Chao Zhaoyue, about their days on Mingyue Mountain, and about a certain demon she had met years ago.
The heart began to beat slowly. The tree was waking.
Green energy flooded into Chao Jinsui’s body, nourishing her. The whip scars on her back, left by Chao Taichu, vanished. The small callouses on her hands smoothed away until her skin was like flawless jade.
"Mother!" she cried in delight.
But in the next breath, the withered heart blackened and crumbled into ash.
"Mother!"
A realization struck her. The tree grew from a Heaven-Mending Stone. She hurriedly pulled out the pendant she had taken from Taixuan Wuji and placed it on the remains.
As her hand touched the ash, a flood of memories, A-Pu’s final moments, poured into her mind.
A century ago, Chao Taichu had learned of a prophecy: When the comet falls, a new Heavenly Dao shall be born. Three days later, the comet fell, and A-Pu’s daughter was born. Chao Taichu had been ecstatic.
But A-Pu, even without her cultivation, possessed the senses of a divine tree. She overheard a second prophecy: The new Heavenly Dao shall slay its father to prove its path.
Chao Taichu’s joy turned to terror. He tried to kill the infant Suisui. This was the true tribulation of the Divine Bodhi Tree. A-Pu chose to flee with the child, sacrificing her own ascension. She was cornered at a cliff. Unable to take Suisui with her, she used the last of the tree’s power to bless her children before leaping into the abyss of Water-Cloud Realm.
The tree fell into a century-long slumber. Chao Taichu found he could not kill the children because of the blessing, so he hid the Water-Cloud Realm from the world to bury his crimes.
The memory ended. The Bodhi Heart was nothing but ruins.
Chao Jinsui stared at the ash. She finally understood the look of loathing in Chao Taichu’s eyes. He had sent her into danger time and again, hoping she would die. He had tried to kill her in her past life not because she was a traitor, but because she had saved the world.
By saving millions, she had gained the merit required for the Heavenly Dao to return to its throne. Had she lived, she would have ascended and discovered the truth. He killed her because he was afraid.
"Saving millions of lives..." she whispered with a cold laugh. "So the Heavenly Dao can claim its place?"
Outside, the world was collapsing. The major sects had surrounded the Divine Tree Plains, led by the likes of Yuan Tianjue and Ling Yun. They were there to capture the "traitor," but the sky was shattering.
"Chao Taichu, you old bastard!" the cultivators screamed as they realized the world was closing in on them. Chao Taichu was closing the gates, intending to bury everyone, especially his daughter, inside the collapsing Water-Cloud Realm.
Chao Jinsui stood atop the tree, her white robes whipping in the wind. She looked down at the screaming masses.
Saving millions?
Yes, she would save them. Not out of pity, but out of necessity. She would save them every single time. Because if she did not save them, how could she become the Heavenly Dao?
She didn't care for a place in the mortal world. She didn't care if the people she saved were ungrateful. She only cared about one thing: she would be the master of her own fate. No one would play with her life again.
The Bodhi Tree births the Heavenly Dao. And that Dao belonged to her.
She leapt from the tree.
The cultivators below looked up to see a figure framed by the light of ten thousand sunsets. To them, she looked like a goddess descending.
The Kunlun Sword hummed. With the power accumulated in ten thousand years, she swung. A massive blade of frost tore through the clouds, shattering the purple array and ripping a hole through the closing sky.
In the midst of their despair, the "traitor" they had come to kill had carved them a path to life.
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