"Marked for death?" Ren scoffed. "Why not just kill me now?"
"That can be arranged," the void creature flexed its bloodied claws menacingly. "However, the Covenant prefers to give their victims the hope of survival and take pleasure in crushing those hopes."
Just like that spider wanting to weave a web to trap victims for sport, Ren thought. Either the All-Seeing Eye was really that powerful to be this confident, or everyone under his com...
2026-01-26 13:00:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Ren was suddenly on the back foot again with the deployment of a Monarch's domain, yet he had a smile on his face.
Magnus had taken him by surprise, but now that the fire Monarch had summoned his domain, Ren all but confirmed that Magnus was a weakling.
Ren slowly withdrew a sword and coated it in dark red poison.
"I never liked that Floridawn bastard," Ren mused as he easily pushed back against the Monarchs' encroaching flames, "but I hated the idea that he was sla...
2026-01-23 05:14:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
In the blink of an eye, his domain, the inescapable plague, bathed the hangar in a green miasma.
"Ah," Ren breathed in the toxins and let out a satisfied sigh. His body, tempered in poison since birth, had gone from merely resisting poison to embracing it upon becoming a Monarch. He practically lived and breathed poison, and it wasn't often that he got to unleash his domain and experience the true pinnacle of that feeling.
The spider began to burn. Layers of its ashen bod...
2026-01-21 03:46:25 +0000 UTC
View Post
Grand Elder Ren felt it first—the wrath of the heavens churning overhead.
He looked up at the darkening sky. "Come to interfere after seeing how unfair this Moros airship is?" Ren muttered, though he doubted that was truly the case. Over the past hour, nearly half his fleet had fallen to Moros's relentless attacks, with no apparent way to stop it. The airship's void shields operated at the Nascent Soul Realm, meaning he alone possessed the power to punch through it—and Moros had bee...
2026-01-19 13:00:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
Elder Zhen, captain of the Blazing Sunrise, was in disbelief.
"We have to break formation, Elder Zhen!" his formation commander shouted over the chaos. "The trees, they are fighting back with fire! Our shields are being devoured at an unbelievable rate! We will be bare within minutes!"
"Can we not increase the output?!" Elder Zhen yelled back. "If we break formation, we will destabilize the entire fleet and be cut off from the Flagship's assistance!"
The formation commander ...
2026-01-16 10:10:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
Imperial Flagship, the Radiant Dawn.
"Elder Hao's ship, the Titan's Judgement, has been successfully destroyed."
The announcement rang through the Radiant Dawn's control room and was met with grim, hardened expressions.
"Grand Elder Ren, your orders?"
Ren remained silent, eyes fixed on the distant streak of fire as his good friend's ship plummeted into the wilderness below. In all his centuries of command, he had never been forced to fire upon an airsh...
2026-01-14 13:00:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
The world around Elder Hao slowed to a crawl as lightning Qi from his soul flooded his spirit roots, electrifying his reaction time and accelerating his thoughts.
The demonic sword had somehow brute-forced its way through multiple layers of shields, and now he faced a wave of shattered glass that rushed toward him as the sword slammed into the command deck.
He leapt to the side, barely avoiding the stupidly fast blade from severing him in two. The sword roared past his ea...
2026-01-12 13:00:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
"The reports mentioned that the fleet was quite large, even by the Celestial Empire's standards, with a flagship present," Tiberius reported, his voice somewhat grave. "I'd suggest more than a warm welcome."
Ashlock was surprised. Was it that big of a deal?
"What's the reported location?" he asked.
"They only left the borders of the Celestial Empire a few hours ago, yet have crossed a vast section of wilderness in a short time, likely d...
2026-01-09 13:00:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
"Councilman Faelorian Lysanthos of the Flower Accord is dead."
The announcement rang through the hall like a funeral bell and was followed by a pin-drop silence, despite the thousands in attendance, many of whom were from the hundred noble families of Empyrea.
"He was slain in battle by a dark god going by the name of the All-Seeing Eye."
Having already sensed the Monarch's death and observing the subsequent fallout via clairvoyance, the Cha...
2026-01-07 08:51:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Stella was already in a bad mood. Ash was currently battling the Celestial Empire to free her mother and had even slaughtered one of the Empire's Monarchs without her! If that wasn't bad enough, she had been sent away to the Eternal Realm again and wasn't permitted to return until she reached the Monarch Realm, which sucked. She was currently at the 7th stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, so she was going to be here a while.
At this rate, I might as well see this place as my s...
2026-01-05 13:00:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
Tessellate Citadel, a spatial and aether pocket realm orbiting the 6th layer of creation.
Kael had not been idle in Princess Stella's absence from the Tessellate Citadel. She had left him in charge of her recently purchased estate, and he had done his best to live up to her expectations.
However, taking care of her manor, which was the size of a small city on the inside due to the spatial enlarging arrays, had been too much for him to manage alone, so he had emplo...
2026-01-02 18:01:47 +0000 UTC
View Post
Stella felt like there was something unmistakably different about Ashlock.
It wasn't his cultivation realm, as he was exerting the same oppressive spiritual pressure as usual—it was something else. Stella traced her fingers along his rough bark as she tried to pin down the reason for the shift.
He has this subtle aura around him now that makes him feel like a profoundly ancient being. She glanced around and blanketed the area with her spiritual pressure. So strange....
2025-12-31 13:00:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
Ashlock was trapped in another dream.
Like the last one, he took on an energy-like form—this time, the ancient force of nature. What felt like centuries slowly passed by as he experienced life not as a tree, but as nature itself.
During this indescribable amount of time, Ashlock surrendered to his situation and attempted to escape by carrying out nature's will. He wove vines around shattered swords, grew trees to reclaim fallen empires, and used moss to feed on forgotte...
2025-12-29 13:00:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
Ashlock had put his all into the attack.
Yet, as the desolation beam finally ceased after draining his personal Qi reserves dry, causing his Inner World to fracture from the strain and for the sky above Red Vine Peak to turn a dark gray, Faelorian still lived.
Even as the world around him had succumbed to ruin and what was once the most vibrant section of Floridawn now resembled a desolate hell, the Monarch remained. Just like how a dead tree could stand for years after death, Fae...
2025-12-26 09:06:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Unlike last year, when I returned to the UK to see my whole family for a week, this year I'm remaining in Tokyo. That means I'll only be taking today and tomorrow (24th/25th) off from writing, meaning the next Tree chapter will be on Friday the 26th.
Sorry for the wait, I know the recent chapters have been a bit... intense and cliffy, haha.
To make this post a little less boring, I've attached a few in-progress pictures of the W...
2025-12-24 02:41:41 +0000 UTC
View Post
The All-Seeing Eye was not only a wielder of desolation that brought about the ruin of creation but also seemingly a lord over the abyss.
Mistress Veilshade watched from above with bated breath as something deep below Councilman Faelorian's home awakened. Something truly terrifying.
The first signs that something was terribly wrong had been the abrupt dismissal of the green aura protecting the estate from the desolation, like a candle snuffed out and surrendering to the dark.
<...
2025-12-22 09:50:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
Umbraholme, the City of Darkness – Celestial Empire
The chamber was bathed in blackness, the only illumination a faint silver glow radiating from the carved runes of concealment etched into the stone walls—soft enough not to disturb the shadows that clung stubbornly to every corner.
A dozen cloaked figures sat around a long obsidian table, their faces hidden beneath layered hoods and veils of shadow. The silence was suffocating, pierced only by the low, gravel...
2025-12-19 09:19:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Author Note: Due to some circumstances, I'm writing Tree today and will write Shapeshifter tomorrow. So here is wednesday's chapter early! I also made some edits to the last chapter: Jasmine is now mentioned as staying behind at the Frozen Star Sect to train with Janus's discipe, and Stella now puts Crow's body back on the table as bait.
That's it, enjoy the chapter :)
++++++
Ashlock needed to decide what to spend his following eight thousand credits...
2025-12-16 09:55:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
"Crow is dead," Moose said the obvious as he stood beside the blood-drenched table with another Shadow of the Silent Thorn standing at his side. Raising Crow's head by his hair, Moose got a good look at Crow's final expression of pure terror, which he still wore in death. Whatever he had seen before his demise had shaken him to his core. "He's still warm, meaning the murder happened recently."
"How could this happen?" the Shadow at his side gruffly said. "Crow was one of our best, yet h...
2025-12-15 15:21:28 +0000 UTC
View Post
Stella was back in the Lion's Den gambling hall.
Not because she had a newfound addiction to gambling, but because a week had passed since she first set foot in these frigid halls, and it was finally her last night here in the Frozen Star Sect.
Tomorrow, she would return home to Red Vine Peak and Ashlock.
Sitting in the corner of the gambling den with her hood up and minding her own business, she idly fiddled with the small stack of chips she had before her. Nobody was with ...
2025-12-12 13:03:41 +0000 UTC
View Post
Ashlock's conversation with the mysterious shadow Monarch was forced to come to an abrupt end when another Monarch of the Celestial Empire made their presence known.
A Monarch he was all too familiar with.
Appearing middle-aged, like most Monarchs Ashlock had seen so far, the man's slicked-back white hair and purple robes embroidered with golden floral patterns were hard to forget.
"It seems my silence has been taken for weakness," Councilman Faelorian Lysanthos said, his vo...
2025-12-10 12:56:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Thane blinked in disbelief.
A cultist? For the All-Seeing Eye, no less?
The man seemed normal enough, yet something about his kind smile felt terribly out of place. The bottom floor of the restaurant was in an even worse state than the second floor, with a few dead bodies that had succumbed to the desolation haphazardly piled up in the corner. The very same desolation that this cultist's apparently kind-hearted god had unleashed on this land and its people.
Thane di...
2025-12-08 11:38:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
Thane hadn't slept in days.
Not that he needed to, as a Star Core Realm cultivator, but the constant stress of his current situation weighed heavily on him. Councilman Faelorian Lysanthos had dismissed him like a stranger after losing control of the All-Seeing Eye's mouthpiece without lifting his exile, meaning he was staying in Floridawn at risk of death, as he had no more information left to trade for his pardon.
But he was stuck between a rock and a ha...
2025-12-05 09:37:35 +0000 UTC
View Post
World Tree Canopy - the city of darkness, Umbraholme.
Mistress Veilshade frowned. It was never a good sign when a black tulip slowly rose from the shadows to the height of a human in her cultivation abode.
"You have my attention," Mistress Veilshade said coldly, annoyed that her research had been interrupted. Knowing that the beast tide was on the horizon and that internal tensions among the Council members were at an all-time high, she had opted to condu...
2025-12-03 13:34:32 +0000 UTC
View Post
Magnus had never expected to see a dragon in such dire straits.
Below him in the depths of a vast valley-sized crater of fractured ice was a struggling, mountain-sized black-scaled dragon, pinned down and slowly being crushed to death by the most fearsome ice creature that Magnus had ever laid eyes on.
He glanced between the two, confused.
Which one is the Patriarch's General? Is it the dragon or the ice monster?
"You are to work together with Astr...
2025-12-01 12:11:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Astralis had learned a shocking truth—that the beast tide was heading for the Celestial Empire. So, upon recovering from Ig'Zal's mind control by bathing under the calming moons in Ashlock's Inner World, he fled the lands of the Ashfallen Sect and returned to the depleting Spiritual Spring.
No matter how prideful he was, he knew that marching with the beasts toward the Celestial Empire was nothing but a death sentence. Most humans were weak, but the guardians of humanity that resided ...
2025-11-20 11:16:17 +0000 UTC
View Post
After invading Magnus's mind with Abyssal Whispers and welcoming him back, Ashlock felt the horrific coldness of the primordial ice that had seeped deeply into his entire being fade into the background while in the presence of the man—who had not only become a Monarch of flame—but had seemingly shed his mortal body and become fire itself.
Now towering at a height of two and a half meters, which would make Magnus dwarf most other cultivators, he appeared far different from t...
2025-11-17 15:34:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
After entertaining a few ideas, Ashlock ultimately decided that absorbing the primordial ice core was the best decision.
While a little primordial ice Qi remained inside after Bob's feast, it wasn't enough to do much with, but what it did still contain was the dao knowledge of primordial ice Qi. Something he was very curious about, as learning a dao didn't just make his desolation Qi more efficient and destructive against that affinity type, but he could also infuse his desolat...
2025-11-14 13:23:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Magnus Redclaw opened his eyes to a fiery hellscape. The sky was a churning cloud of thick black smoke, blanketing a land of magma and roaring flames. He did not know how long he had been cultivating here atop an obsidian pillar, but he did know his time in seclusion was drawing to a close, for he had achieved the 9th stage of the Nascent Soul Realm and the final piece of the puzzle—comprehension of Fire Qi Law.
All those decades of being unable to surpass his bottleneck in the Star C...
2025-11-12 10:41:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Bob was in his greatest battle yet. His foe? One of the many tiny invaders. Despite being far shorter than him, the little monster with giant glowing blue eyes was as relentless as the rest of its kind. They wanted in, but Bob would not let them.
This was Stella's sanctuary, and his big sister had entrusted him as its door. His great mission was to keep the invaders out, and with Stella gone, he was alone in this great fight.
"Open!" the monster shouted, dramatically wavi...
2025-11-10 10:36:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
