To the south of the villa, there was a towering giant tree.
The fifty-meter fog-free zone only allowed Ethan to see a portion of the tree's roots, along with some hanging leaves and branches. As for how big or how tall the tree actually was, Ethan had no way of judging.
Moreover, the width of the roots was enormous.
Ethan had always thought his villa had been built against a mountain. Who would have thought that this "mountain" was actually just the root of a towering giant tree.
As for how thick its trunk really was, a large part of it was still hidden within the fog, impossible for anyone to see clearly!
[Sky-Reaching Demon Tree: A mutated form of spruce. In order to obtain sunlight in the Mist World, it keeps growing desperately until it breaks through the fog layer. Inside the Demon Tree lies another world of its own, currently impossible to observe.]
[PS: If one day you can climb to the top of the tree, you might be able to glimpse the secrets of the Mist World.]
"Climbing a tree? What's so hard about that?"
Ethan snorted.
After all, with his current agility and strength, he wasn't confident about everything, but climbing a tree shouldn't be that difficult.
However, Mr. White standing beside him shook his head and said, "So the branch of the Demon Tree actually landed here with you. Looks like my eye for choosing locations wasn't bad after all, hahaha! But if Lord Ethan thinks it'll be easy to climb this Demon Tree, it's not that simple."
"A branch of the Demon Tree?", Ethan raised an eyebrow and asked curiously, "What do you mean?"
"In the era of the Rebirth Epoch, countless plants and animals mutated, and this Demon Tree was also something left behind from that time. Its height cannot be predicted, cannot be observed, and it's known as the Demon Tree above the clouds."
Mr. White explained, "These Demon Trees exist all over the Mist World. The capital of the Mist World was built around one of them, and that one is known as the main body of the Demon Tree. But whether it really is the main body, nobody actually knows."
"But all around the world, I've seen quite a few branches of the Demon Tree. For example, in the Barbaric Lands, and also in the center of Sky Lake, there are branches of the Demon Tree growing there too."
"Among those Demon Trees, I've visited all of them except the one in the center of Sky Lake. Every time I see one, it's incredibly shocking."
"Wait!"
The more Ethan listened, the more confused he became, so he simply interrupted Mr. White.
"Let me stop you for a second! Mr. White, could you first tell me why you say the Demon Tree is a branch of the Demon Tree?"
"That does sound a bit awkward, huh? The Demon Tree is a branch of the Demon Tree, hahaha!", Mr. White laughed for a while, but when he realized no one was responding, he awkwardly coughed twice to cover it up.
"The reason we say they're branches is because they're all actually the same tree. As long as you enter any one of the Demon Trees, you'll discover that the trials inside every single Demon Tree are exactly the same."
"Tri… trials?"
Ethan was stunned when he heard that, 'What the hell, why does this suddenly sound like a tower manhwa?'
'Isn't this supposed to be a new world?'
For a moment, Ethan felt completely confused.
Because Mr. White kept switching between the old world and the new world, then epochs, then Demon Tree branches, then trials. The more he listened, the more confusing it became.
'Damn it! These Demon Tree branches sound exactly like game ports. Even if the entry points are different, once you connect to the server, everyone will still end up together again.'
'And those so-called trials sound exactly like clearing levels in a game.'
Ethan couldn't help asking, "So is this Mist World actually a game?"
"What's a game?"
Mr. White looked at Ethan with a puzzled expression. But he clearly didn't dwell on the question for long and simply continued.
"Right, trials! On every branch of the Demon Tree, there's a light-pouch fruit."
"When you enter it, you can pass through the light-pouch fruit and enter a different dimension."
"And that dimension is connected. You can meet people there who came from other Demon Tree branches. That's why we believe all the Demon Trees are actually branches grown, or even split off, from a single giant Demon Tree."
"Wait! I've got another new question," Ethan continued asking, "Where exactly did this Demon Tree come from? It feels like it's already beyond something evolution could produce. It's more like some kind of intelligent life from another world or something like that, isn't it?"
"That's right. The Demon Tree was never something from this world in the first place," Mr. White smiled, "Back in the First Year of Disaster, along with the rain of spirit stones, magical seeds also fell from the sky. These seeds would parasitize certain large trees, causing them to mutate, and then they became what you see now."
"Magical seeds falling from the sky?"
The more Ethan heard, the more shocked he felt inside.
He realized that as one corner of the Mist World was lifted and revealed, it only raised even more questions for him.
Setting aside where these magical seeds came from or what they came to this world for, the most frightening part was that these seeds seemed to possess a kind of intelligence. They were some kind of thinking lifeform.
Or to put it another way, they were more like a computer or a game, something similar to artificial intelligence.
Otherwise, where would things like trials and networking come from?
These things… the natives of this world might not understand them.
But for Ethan, someone who had transmigrated from Earth's high-tech era, these concepts were all too familiar.
So-called trials were games.
And the so-called Demon Tree branches were nothing more than networking.
As for whether it was mental networking or direct physical networking, Ethan didn't know.
Even now… He still wasn't sure whether only his consciousness had crossed over, or whether his physical body had come along with him as well.
"Anyway, no one can clearly explain what this thing really is. The only thing we know is that as long as you can pass the trials of the Demon Tree, you'll receive quite a lot of rewards. Sometimes they're material rewards, and sometimes they directly affect your spirit or even your body."
Mr. White explained, "That's why every year countless magicians and warriors head to the branches of the Demon Tree, hoping to clear higher levels and obtain some benefits."
"Can you die inside the trials?", Ethan asked again.
"Of course you can," Mr. White laughed, "But people who are capable of traveling around to visit Demon Tree branches usually aren't too poor. So they prepare escape items in advance. Things like teleportation scrolls that ignore barriers, and various survival treasures or survival items. The casualties are fairly limited."
"I see!"
Ethan nodded.
But instead, it made him give up the idea of exploring the Demon Tree.
Before he figured out exactly what the Demon Tree was, he had no intention of recklessly going inside. Who knew if something might end up parasitizing him because of it.
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