"Slaughtering Heaven · Volume Four: The Seed of Rage"

The moment the peach blossom branch is raised, the thirty-six coiled dragon pillars of the Lingxiao Palace simultaneously seep with sap.

The liquid is thick as honey, with a sickly sweet smell of rust and peach nectar mixed together, winding down along the scales of the coiled dragons on the pillars. The duty-bound Heavenly Official initially thought it was rain leakage—until he saw velvet-like white fungal filaments emerging from the cracks in the jade bricks, with mushroom caps opening and closing in the dragon’s eye sockets, as if peering into the Heavenly Palace through the dragon’s gaze.

"An eruption of filth from the earth..." The Heavenly Official staggered back, his jade tablet in his sleeve shattering with a sharp sound, revealing a sprouting peach pit embedded within the broken surface.

He suddenly looked up.

Through the nine-layered glazed dome, he saw a strange phenomenon from the lower realm: that land, condemned by the Heavenly Laws as "eternally scorched and withered," was now extending its tendrils—rooted in peach wood—into the three realms. The roots pierced through the boundary walls between the Nine Netherworlds and the Immortal Domain, like sutures closing a wound, stitching the foundation of Heaven to the scorched earth below.

And the needle that sews it all together is that peach blossom branch, raised skyward.

------

On the scorched wasteland, the spear tip wielded by the Golden Armor Commander is already blooming with peach blossoms.

He tries to shatter the branch, but finds his spiritual power flowing backward into the meridians of the peach wood—this peach tree is drawing on the incense and vow power he has consumed over the past three thousand years through his spear. With each petal that opens, his golden armor dims a little, and the armor plates show grain-like rings, like the growth rings of wood.

"Demonic magic!" he roars, but his voice sounds as if it’s coming through a thick layer of soil.

The man’s peach blossom branch in his hand gently twitches.

"This is memory," he corrects, and the peach branch extending from the hollow of his eye socket grows another inch. The tender new leaves brush past his scarred face, "When the Heavenly Fire burned the original land, did you ever ask if this land remembers it was once a forest?"

As he speaks, the countless eyes of the peach forest blink simultaneously.

Within each "eye," a burning memory is reflected:

Seven years ago, this place was not called the scorched wasteland. It was called "Baosangze," a vast wetland peach forest stretching for thousands of miles. Every spring flood, the spiritual veins underground resonated with the peach roots, lifting the accumulated dreams of a year onto the treetops—those pink-white peach blossoms, each one a dream unfinished by the sleeping spirits beneath the earth.

Until the Heavenly Fire descended.

It was not punishment, nor conquest. The Heavenly Court only needed the "earth marrow" beneath this land—a spiritual vein essence that could accelerate the ripening of immortal pills. Extracting the earth marrow would turn a radius of ten thousand miles into a dead zone, and the records of the Heavenly Court added a note: "The demon trees of Baosangze grow wildly, the earth’s qi is polluted, and must be cleansed with pure fire."

Forty-nine days of pure fire burned.

The lament of the peach trees was recorded as "demonic shrieks," and the struggle of the roots was interpreted as "the earth’s filth fighting back." When the last peach leaf turned to ash, a muffled cracking sound came from deep within the land—the sound of the earth’s marrow being extracted, the bones of the spiritual veins shattered.

And all of this was remembered by the land.

The glazed surface of the land, the ash infiltrating the strata, and even the peach spirit souls floating outside the Heavenly Gate—these all remembered. They coalesced into a "seed," lying dormant for seven years amid stardust and poisonous rain, waiting for a vessel that could hear the memories of the soil.

This "vessel" is now tearing open its own eye sockets, allowing the peach branch to grow out from its skull.

"I am not seeking revenge," the man—or rather, the body inhabited by the peach seed—whispered, "I am only speaking for the land."

He paused, and suddenly the peach branch in his eye socket grew wildly, the fine branches piercing through his cheekbone skin, blooming the seventh peach blossom:

"In a language you can understand."

------

Deep within the Lingxiao Palace, the seven star officials guarding the "Earth Vein Central Hub" all vomited blood simultaneously.

Before them, the white jade "Earth Suppressing Seal," floating for three thousand years, was rapidly covered with peach wood patterns. The carved qilin dragon on the seal’s clasp came alive—not transforming into a true dragon, but twisting into the shape of a peach tree branch. The dragon’s claws dug into the jade seal, as if tearing this treasure that suppresses the luck of the lower realm from within.

"The lower realm’s spiritual veins... are fighting back!" The Star Lord of Greedy Wolf pressed his trembling chest, his fingertips touching the blood seeping from his collar, tinged with peach fragrance.

They finally understood what the man on the scorched wasteland was doing.

He was not casting a spell.

He was "grafting."

Using that peach blossom branch as a scion, and the scorched earth of the wasteland as the rootstock, he was "grafting" the drained spiritual veins of the lower realm onto the spiritual vein central hub that sustains the Heavenly Court. From now on, every breath of spiritual energy the Heavenly Court takes will also swallow the bitter pain of the seven years of scorched wasteland; every time an immortal official refines a golden pill, the alchemy furnace will emit astringent scents of peach ash.

This is the most primitive and cruel form of symbiosis.

Not destruction, but forcibly making the aggressor and the victim share the same bloodline.

"Stop him—" the Star Lord of Broken Army shouted, but suddenly the jade bricks beneath his feet collapsed.

It was not shattering, but "softening." The jade tiles of the Lingxiao Palace, harder than steel, now turned into waterlogged humus, with countless milky roots protruding from the cracks, their tips opening sesame-sized, moist "eyes."

Those eyes all look outward, toward the outside of the palace, toward the lower realm, toward the man holding the peach blossom branch on the scorched wasteland.

Then, they blink.

As if greeting him.

Or as if confirming—

Confirming whether this forcibly established "bloodline channel" is unobstructed.

------

At the end of the scorched wasteland, the man’s eye sockets are already filled with spreading peach branches reaching his neck.

The roots bulging beneath the skin, writhing as if countless tiny peach snakes are swimming through his blood vessels. He is transforming into a humanoid peach tree, with only his left eye still retaining a human pupil—reflected in that pupil is the terrified face of the tea house owner’s wife.

"Y-You..." The owner’s wife retreats, clutching a ceramic bowl, from which a tendril of green has already grown two tender leaves.

"Don’t be afraid." The man—or rather, the peach tree—begins to speak, blending with the rustling wind passing through the forest gaps, "A seed must find a place to take root. My body, burned blind by Heavenly Fire, is just a fertile scar."

He lowers his head, looking at his chest.

The open part of his collar reveals that his heart has turned into wood. The growth rings of the peach wood rotate slowly with his heartbeat, but at the center of the rings is not a heart chamber, but a curled, pink-white light—a remnant of the last thousand-year-old peach tree burned seven years ago.

"It sent me a dream," the man gently touches the growth rings on his chest, "asking me to remember its form. But the Heavenly Fire was too fierce, burning so hot that I forgot my own face, yet I remember the shape of every branch."

So, he turned himself into its tombstone.

And also into its seed.

And further into its root.

"Now," he finally raises his hand holding the peach blossom branch, which begins to turn into wood, the fingers extending into fine branches, the tips blooming the ninth peach blossom, "it’s the Heavenly Court’s turn to remember."

The peach blossom branch suddenly swells violently.

No longer a branch, but a beam of wooden light piercing through heaven and earth. Inside the beam, countless roots surge like a reversed Milky Way, flowing along the path split open by the Heavenly Fire seven years ago, stabbing upward into the clouds.

At the top of the pillar, at the moment it touches the shadow of the "Earth Suppressing Seal"—

A peach blossom blooms, covering half the sky.

Deep within the flower, it is not a stamen.

But a giant face made of countless faces pieced together. These faces are male and female, old and young, each frozen in the moment of being burned in the scorched wasteland seven years ago. They open their mouths, silent, but everyone who looks up at this flower hears the same words deep in their soul:

"Now, do you hear our pain?"