National Guardian's Gone and We're Done

They traced mournful, desperate arcs through the air,

as if performing a belated, sorrowful farewell.

As they fell, the branches were instantly and relentlessly devoured by the surging golden flames,

vanishing in the blink of an eye. All that remained were ghostly wisps of smoke curling upward,

before slowly dissipating into the deathly-still night sky.

The hanged figures,

their already illusory forms, faded within the sea of golden fire,

like old photographs relentlessly worn away by time.

Their colors and outlines bled away until they became nothing more than faint wisps of smoke, dissolving into thin air.

Their existence,

had perhaps been nothing more than a brief, dark interlude in the great tree’s long life.

Now, with the tree’s demise, they were scattered like dust, returning to the eternal void,

leaving behind only a chorus of shrill echoes.

The cries lingered in the night sky like the wails of vengeful spirits, chilling all who heard them to the bone.

Finally, all that remained was the trunk—once incomparably thick, a symbol of the great tree’s majesty and power.

It had been the tree’s pride and foundation.

Now, ravaged by the golden flames, it was like a soulless husk,

shrinking at an astonishing rate.

Every inch of its surface seemed to groan and wail in agony as the scorching golden flames licked at it.

Finally, the trunk was incinerated, turning to ash,

and settling slowly into the earth. Only a large, pitch-black crater remained, a testament to all that had occurred.

The entire process, which felt like an eternity of torment,

had in fact taken only a few seconds.

The eerie great tree, which the people of Xia Shui Village had regarded as a Mountain God,

proved as fragile as paper before Chu He’s immensely powerful golden flames. It was torn to shreds in an instant, utterly defenseless.

CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.

The sound of clapping suddenly echoed through the forest, crisp and clear,

reverberating in the silent night.

It was as if someone had been silently watching this meticulously choreographed, ghastly spectacle from the shadows,

unable to resist breaking into appreciative applause as the curtain fell.

’Man or ghost?’

Sun Canxing’s gaze instantly sharpened like a hawk’s.

He snapped his head toward the source of the sound.

From the dark depths of the forest, a hazy silhouette slowly emerged,

like a Demon awakening from a dark abyss.

Its gait was heavy and slow, each footfall seeming to make the very ground tremble.

It gradually emerged from behind a curtain of inky blackness, stepping into the clearing illuminated by the golden flames.

The figure was bloated, like a small, mobile hillock.

It was draped in a coarse, dull-colored robe.

Its hands clapped ceaselessly, producing a dull, rhythmic sound

that was jarringly conspicuous in the suffocating silence of the night.

As its form was fully revealed to the onlookers,

a chill as cold as a tomb swept through the clearing.

Even the villagers of Xia Shui Village, who were no strangers to the bizarre,

couldn’t help but gasp, their bodies trembling involuntarily.

The creature’s appearance was so grotesque, so utterly bizarre, that it defied all imagination.

Though its body was bloated,

the part below its neck was not so different from an ordinary person’s.

The musculature was ill-defined, yet it hinted at an inscrutable power.

The truly bizarre part was what lay above its neck.

Sprouting from where a head should be was an arm, thick and twisted, connected seamlessly to the neck. It coiled upon its shoulders like a malformed python.

The arm was capped with an enormous hand.

Each finger was abnormally thick, nearly the width of a normal person’s wrist.

Its skin was an unhealthy, ashen white—

the result of prolonged corruption by darkness and evil, a flesh that had never felt the warmth of the sun.

The five fingers were splayed open, swaying languidly with its every step,

like five terrifying, independently living creatures,

writhing in the air, exuding a chilling aura.

But the most horrifying detail of all was what lay in the palm: a pair of eyes and a mouth.

One dared not meet their gaze.

The corners of the mouth were upturned in a bloodcurdling smile.

This bizarre combination struck everyone present with an unprecedented sense of terror and shock.

It was as if their very souls were frozen by its malevolent aura, rendering them immobile.

They could only watch, their hearts filling with despair and helplessness, as the monster drew closer step by step.

"You are truly worthy of your title as Blue Star’s number one expert. Your strength is indeed extraordinary and admirable."

"But I wonder if you could have shown the tree some mercy? My companion’s fate is tied to it..."

The voice echoed through the silent night, tinged with a hint of pleading and resignation.

In the clearing, which was shrouded in an eerie atmosphere as thick as fog,

the grotesque arm atop the bloated figure’s shoulders slowly rose.

The movement pulsed with a dark Magic Power, as if drawn from the abyss itself.

The massive hand on the arm turned toward the sky in a strange, unnatural posture,

as if performing some mysterious and wicked summoning ritual.

And there, beneath the sky, a young man was suspended in midair.