The copy's smile was the most unsettling thing I'd ever seen. It was my face, my exact features, but there was something fundamentally wrong about the expression. Like looking into a mirror that reflected everything except the soul.

The wrongness of it made my skin crawl, but that wasn't what made my blood turn to ice.

No, there was something else.

Something that made every survival instinct I'd developed over months of life-or-death battles start screaming warnings at maximum volume.

I could sense it. Deep within the copy's transformed body, where my own inner world should be, something was stirring that definitely shouldn't exist at our cultivation level.

The baby star.

My face went pale as I felt that familiar pulse of stellar energy beginning to build within the creature's chest. The same fragment of Stellar Realm power that I'd been carefully avoiding using because of how dangerous it was.

"Oh no," I breathed. "Oh no, no, no..."

The baby star wasn't just dangerous because it was powerful. It was dangerous because stellar realm energy at our current cultivation stage was like trying to contain a nuclear reactor in a paper cup. The energy levels involved were so far beyond what Qi Condensation realm bodies could handle that exposure would literally turn us all to dust.

It didn't matter how many trump cards any of us had. Wei Lin's tenth stage breakthrough, Wu Kangming's impossible sword techniques, whatever mysterious power that Luo Yichen was hiding – none of it would mean anything against uncontrolled stellar realm energy.

I didn't even know what I could do at this point.

But I wasn't one to give up.

Now that my trump cards had definitely been revealed to the whole sect anyway, I had to try something, anything. Maybe I could use my own baby star to destroy this creature before it got a chance to do the same to us.

Before I could make a move, something changed.

The smile on the copy's face faltered.

Its eyes, my eyes, widened in what looked like confusion. Then fear. Then something approaching panic as it looked down at its hands.

I watched in fascination and growing horror as the copy's fingers began to change. The pale skin that had perfectly mimicked my own was darkening, taking on a rough, bark-like texture. The fingernails elongated and hardened, becoming more like thorns than anything human.

"What the hell?" I muttered, instinctively trying to pull my hand free from where it was still embedded in the creature's chest.

But my palm seemed stuck, as if the copy's body was somehow holding it in place. I could feel something flowing between us, some kind of energy exchange that I didn't understand and definitely didn't like.

The transformation was accelerating. What had started as a subtle change in the copy's hands was now spreading up its arms like some kind of infection. The smooth skin of its forearms was splitting and cracking, revealing woody tissue underneath.

One half of its face, the left side, was beginning to sprout tiny green buds. The eye on that side had gone completely white, like a pearl embedded in the trunk of an ancient tree. The other half of its face was still recognizably mine, but even that was changing, the skin taking on that same bark-like quality.

This wasn't shapeshifting anymore. This was something else entirely.

The copy opened its mouth, probably trying to speak, but instead of words, what came out was a sound like wind through autumn leaves. Its jaw was elongating, becoming more like a wooden beak than anything human.

I could feel panic radiating from it through our connection. Whatever was happening, the copy hadn't intended this. It was losing control, transforming into something it definitely didn't want to become.

"Master," Azure's voice was tight with alarm, "you need to get away from that thing. Now."

I didn't need to be told twice.

With a burst of qi-enhanced strength, I yanked my hand free from the copy's chest and immediately activated Verduring Step, dissolving into green light that carried me to the furthest seed in my network, nearly a hundred yards away.

I rematerialized just in time to see the copy's transformation complete itself in the most spectacular and terrifying way possible.

The creature threw back its head and released a scream that wasn't quite human and wasn't quite the sound of splintering wood. It was something in between, a noise that made my teeth ache and set every nerve in my body on edge.

Then it exploded.

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Not in the way that normal explosions work, with fire and shrapnel. This was an explosion of pure energy, red sun and blue sun power erupting outward in a sphere of destruction that lit up the entire landscape like a miniature sunrise.

The shockwave hit me even from my distant position, a wall of superheated air that picked me up and hurled me backward. I managed to cushion my landing with another quick Verduring Step, appearing behind a cluster of bone-white trees that provided some protection from the blast.

The others weren't so lucky.

Wu Kangming had managed to get his sword up in time, the blade somehow deflecting the worst of the energy wave, but even he was thrown backward, skidding across the rocky ground with his usually pristine white robes now singed and torn.

Wei Lin took the blast full-on, his tenth-stage spiritual pressure flaring as he hastily erected an earth barrier to deflect the foreign energy. But there was too much power, too fast. I watched him get launched through the air like a rag doll, crashing into a boulder with enough force to crack the stone.

Luo Yichen, still weakened from the earlier lightning strike, didn't even try to resist. The explosion sent him tumbling end over end, his unconscious form coming to rest against the base of a tree nearly fifty yards from where he'd started. Follow current novels on Novᴇ(l)Fɪre .ɴᴇt

Lin Mei and Meng Haoran, who had been watching from what they'd thought was a safe distance, were knocked flat by the shockwave. I could see them struggling to sit up, their faces pale with shock.

The light from the explosion gradually faded, leaving dancing afterimages burned into my vision. As the dust and debris settled, I squinted through the haze to see what remained.

Where the copy had been standing, where our desperate battle had reached its climax, now stood something that made my breath catch in my throat.

A tree.

But not just any tree. This was massive, easily eighty feet tall with a trunk so wide it would take a dozen people holding hands to encircle it. The bark was dark and deeply grooved, almost black in places, and covered in strange spiral patterns.

The canopy spread out like an umbrella, blocking out the sickly green light of the realm's sky. The leaves rustled with a sound like whispered secrets, despite the fact that there was no wind.

"Well," I said weakly, staring up at the impossible sight. "That's new."

I gulped as I then realised what had just happened. All those months ago, when I'd first arrived at the Azure Sky Sect and been trying to choose a cultivation method, everyone had warned me away from the World Tree Sutra.

Elder Chang, the stern woman in charge of the sect archives, had frowned after I'd requested the manual, and explained how cultivators who attempt the World Tree Sutra typically never progress beyond the Qi Condensation Realm. In fact, most don't survive their first breakthrough attempt.

Wei Lin had even tried to offer to use his father's connections to find me an Earth Rank cultivation method instead, something safe and proven. "Why take the risk?" he'd asked. "There are plenty of other techniques that won't potentially kill you."

But I'd been stubborn. The World Tree Sutra had called to me in a way I couldn't explain, and I'd decided to give it a try despite everyone's warnings.

Fortunately for me, it had worked out.

The Genesis Seed had taken root in my inner world, my world walking adventures had let me cultivate celestial bodies way before any Qi Condensation cultivator had any right to do so, and I'd somehow managed to advance through the stages without turning into... well, without turning into whatever that tree was.

But seeing what could have been my fate, what probably was the fate of most cultivators who attempted the World Tree Sutra, was both scary and grounding.

I didn't know why I'd been able to succeed where others had failed. Maybe it was because I was originally from a different world, or maybe I'd just gotten incredibly lucky.

Whatever the reason, I was grateful. Deeply, profoundly grateful that I hadn't ended up as a sixty-foot monument to cultivation gone wrong.

The sound of groaning drew my attention back to the immediate situation. The others were starting to pick themselves up, brushing dust and debris from their clothes as they tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Wei Lin was the first to speak, his voice hoarse from the explosion. "Is everyone alive?"

A chorus of weak affirmatives came from around the clearing. Even Luo Yichen was stirring, though he still looked pretty rough.

"What happened to the copy?" Lin Mei asked, looking around in confusion. "Where did it go?"

Wei Lin's eyes found the massive tree, and his expression grew thoughtful. "I think," he said slowly, "that is the copy."

"That's impossible," Meng Haoran protested. "People don't just turn into trees."

"They do if they cultivate the World Tree Sutra incorrectly," Wei Lin replied, his voice carrying a note of grim knowledge. "When someone attempts to channel world tree energy without the proper foundation or guidance, their body can't handle the foreign power. They become what they're trying to cultivate."

Both Wei Lin and Lin Mei turned to look at me with expressions of barely concealed concern, as if I might randomly sprout branches at any moment.

"Ke Yin," Lin Mei said carefully, "you're not going to... you know... turn into a tree, are you?"

"I hope not," I replied, trying to inject some humor into the situation despite how shaken I felt. "I've gotten pretty attached to having a human body."

Wu Kangming had been silent throughout this exchange, but I could feel his pale eyes studying me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. He was thinking hard about something, probably trying to analyze the red and blue sun energies he'd witnessed during the copy's transformation.

Luo Yichen, on the other hand, looked genuinely afraid of me. The fear in his eyes was obvious, this shapeshifter that they'd all been unable to defeat even when working together had turned into a tree the moment it took my form. The implications were clear: I wasn't normal, and I definitely didn't cultivate a normal cultivation method.

I decided to take a closer look at the tree, both to satisfy my own curiosity and to put some distance between myself and Luo Yichen's fearful stare. I approached cautiously, extending my spiritual sense to make sure there wasn't any shapeshifting nonsense still going on, and the battle had in fact actually ended.

"Azure," I thought, "can you sense the copy anywhere? Any trace of that creature's spiritual signature?"

"No, Master," Azure replied. "Whatever that thing was, it's gone completely."

I got close enough to touch the bark, running my fingers over the strange spiral patterns. The tree felt ancient, like it had been growing here for centuries rather than having appeared just moments ago.

As I examined the tree more closely, something about its energy signature nagged at me. It felt familiar, not just because it was connected to the World Tree Sutra, but because I'd encountered something similar before.

The way the spiritual energy flowed through its roots, the pattern of qi circulation visible in its bark, the stable, anchoring presence it projected...

My eyes widened as recognition hit me.

"Azure," I whispered internally, "is this what I think it is?"

"I believe so, Master," Azure confirmed, his own voice tinged with amazement. "That's a Realm Stabilising Tree."