Chapter 45 The Treeherder

Before the torrential downpour arrived, there was a magnificent, gentle breeze accompanied by a pattering drizzle. Each droplet, the size of a mung bean, was full and solid, stinging the skin upon impact and sending children scampering in a panicked scramble, clutching their heads.

Townspeople still lingering on the streets shouted as they sprinted wildly toward their homes, emptying the alleys and lanes in a moment so the wind could charge unimpeded and the rain could pour down in sheets.

The moment the last child squeezed through their front door, the fine drizzle transformed into a thick curtain of water connecting the heavens and the earth. The howling of the gale grew shrill, and the pearl-like strings of rain across the sky were slanted by the force, shattering near the ground into ten million droplets that bloomed into a low, silvery sea of flowers.

Doors were slammed and bolted; windows were closed and latched. Cyan-blue smoke drifted from the pointed rain caps of the residential chimneys, tearing apart in the wind and dissolving in the rain. Children waiting for lunch pressed against the tiny windowpanes, watching the film of water flowing across the slender glass, blurred like a thick, colorless fog.

Lin Bo put away his umbrella; carrying one in such weather was useless. When the wind blew in with the drizzle, he paused his steps and chanted the True Name.

"(True Word) Wind."

Under the mage's command, the air currents sensed by his tactile surroundings swirled along the contours of his body, enveloping him like a silkworm cocoon. Maintaining his manipulation of the airflow, he continued forward step by step.

The rain driving toward him was caught by the high-speed vortex spinning on his surface, taking a turn around his exterior before being flung horizontally away.

Sheltered within this intangible, colorless cocoon of air, Lin Bo managed to avoid being drenched to the bone.

The strong wind flowed against his skin, fluttering his trench coat and trousers. As the airflow slowed upon squeezing into the gaps of his mask, it allowed him to breathe evenly.

Then, the torrential gale spanning the heavens crashed down abruptly, slamming into the minuscule air mass on the mage's body. The moment the overwhelming wind pressure collided, hundreds of rain-drops pierced the cocoon and struck him.

"Hoo—" The mage was checked by the oncoming impact, planted his feet, and reached a hand through the air cocoon to feel the wild wind outside, pulling the turbulent currents of the hurricane into his bodily cocoon bit by bit.

Instead of fighting this natural disaster, he complied with the violent atmospheric force, moving with the flow to transform his surrounding air mass from a closed posture into an open one, shifting from a river boulder into a whirlpool.

The external wind force acted like a whip; the more ferocious it grew, the faster the bodily air cocoon spun like a top under the lash.

The rain was once again repelled to the outer perimeter of the high-speed air mass.

Lin Bo took a step forward, his feet supported by the wind as he glided three paces across the ground. Directing most of his attention toward maintaining his bodily air mass, he walked slowly toward the woodland.

In the magnificent world of the torrential rain, the street mud was as wet and soft as soup. Women in the outskirts of Stone Tower Town gazed toward the chicken coops through their windows, worrying about the livestock. Men with nothing to do lay back down after lunch. Children drew and scribbled on the frosted glass.

On the windowpane, two vertical lines and a curved arc were drawn—the classic ":)" smiley face. Through this smiling face, a town youth caught sight of a figure strolling in the distant outskirts.

Wiping the window, the distant figure became clearer, looking like a black bean rolling across a silver canvas.

Fearing that the person had nowhere to go and needed rescue, he cried out in terror for his mother. But by the time his mother hurried over at his call, that distant figure had already drifted away, vanishing deep into the vast, hazy curtain of rain. The child received a smack on the head from his angry mother and stood holding his head in grievance.

The violent wind was slowed down by the forest, and the dense leaf canopy rustled with a dense, whispering sound.

The Nightwatchman found a fir tree trembling in the wind at the edge of the woodland; the trees around it had already fallen, leaving it standing lonely and alone.

He sat cross-legged shoulder-to-shoulder with the fir tree, pressing one hand against its bark.

The air cocoon around his body dissipated, letting him endure the cold rain alongside the giant tree, opening his body and mind to listen to the myriad sounds of nature suppressed by the disaster.

The dripping water falling from the canopy brought the mournful, helpless sighs of the fir tree. Through the tactile sensation transmitted via his palm, the tree's xylem was pulled back and forth, structural fractures occurring with cracking noises, and the root system deeply buried underground had long been mostly snapped by the violent tension.

It only looked as though it were still standing; in reality, there was no longer any possibility of it surviving this disaster.

The tree was dying, yet the forest endured. Though the forest endured, the tree was dying. It whimpered in the hurricane, recounting the story of its life to the mage, its magical words nearly drowned out by the roaring wind and rain.

Crack, crunch—

From last night through the daytime today, having endured wave after wave of hurricane assaults, the physically and mentally exhausted fir tree was finally pulled down by the wild wind. Its trunk tilted drastically, and the mud softened by rain could no longer hold the remaining root system. Beneath the ground, roots drilled out one by one like shedding snakes.

Amidst dull creaking sounds, the heavy fir timber pressed down toward the Nightwatchman sitting cross-legged beneath the tree.

He still supported the trunk with one hand, yet it was difficult to halt the ever-expanding shadow looming overhead. As the roots continuously detached from the ground, the speed at which the tree crashed down grew faster and faster. Under such oppressive weight, even a rhinoceros or an elephant would perish miserably.

"(True Word) Thuja."

The fir tree, on the verge of toppling completely, was bound by a rigid spell, its skewed trunk firmly pinned suspended in mid-air.

The mage had already opened his eyes. He looked up at the falling trunk and slowly stood, the fir tree lifting along with the spell's force.

Through touch, Lin Bo could hear its weary whispers. Its fractured roots had left the soil and could no longer survive much longer; this hurricane was its end.

"(Magical Language) Do not give up," the Nightwatchman gently advised. "(Magical Language) Let me help you."

Lin Bo sensed the dense mass of roots. They were shallowly rooted, distributed mainly in the topsoil and extending horizontally. With the majority of the lateral roots snapped, it had lost its ability to anchor into the ground.

To survive this hurricane, it needed to root deeper and require the help of other trees to resist the wind together. A single tree is hard to sustain, but hidden within the forest, it would live.

Though the old saying went that people thrive when they move while trees die when they are transplanted, the time had come when change was unavoidable.

Lin Bo retrieved a homemade whale-oil spirit potion from his player inventory, pried open the corner of his mask, poured the liquid into his mouth, and swallowed it.

"(Magical Language) Let's go."

The fir tree's remaining roots drilled out of the soil, curling into a ball as its heavy body floated into the air, following the diminutive mage step by step toward the woodland.

Wading through the brush, Lin Bo found a small, vacant patch on the outer edge of the forest and set the fir tree down. The Art of Vital Dominion manipulated the roots to extend and elongate, drilling into the softened mud, avoiding rocks, and rooting deep into the depths.

Reaching a suitable depth, the root system expanded outward, ensuring structural strength while letting the rootlets elongate as much as possible to grip more soil.

Lin Bo released the Art of Flow Dominion bolstering the trunk, and it stood upright in place once more.

At this point, the xylem within the tree body still bore many cracks. The fibers fractured completely in half could not be re-fused even by the Art of Vital Dominion; Lin Bo could only manipulate the fibers to elongate and interlock, splicing them together like mortise and tenon joints to maintain structural strength.

If this fir tree were sawn open, overlapping mortise and tenon joints could be seen on its cross-section, resembling concentric whirlpools within a disk.

"Thank you," the fir tree sighed lingeringly. At this moment, standing within the forest alongside hundreds of other trees to resist the passing hurricane, the drizzle falling from its canopy felt like a joyous laugh.

The mage patted the bark as a farewell and turned away to check on other trees.

Hours later, the rain ceased and the wind died down. A large pit remained where the fir tree once stood, filled with pool water, and many fine, broken roots were exposed amidst the jagged mud.

As Lin Bo passed by, he gazed at these broken roots. Although they had once been part of the fir tree, once detached from the main body, the fir tree's True Name could no longer bind them, and they would need to be commanded by the True Name of tree roots instead.

He was soaked to the skin, his hands and limbs chilled by the rain. A proper soak in warm water would feel immensely comfortable.

However, there was no bathtub in the lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper usually bathed by sitting in a low wooden basin, wiping his body with a damp towel.

The mage decided to fashion a wooden bathtub himself. He picked out a fallen pine tree whose True Name he had already probed in the woodland earlier, chanted the True Word, and lifted the fallen tree.

This was an ordinary pine tree with a chest-height diameter less than what arms could embrace and a height of no more than three meters. Under the mage's command, its roots curled and clustered together, its branches gathered into a bundle like a thick, dark-green arrow, which Lin Bo supported with one hand as he strolled toward the lighthouse.

Passing the outskirts of Stone Tower Town, the trench-coated, masked Nightwatchman suddenly halted, turning his head to look at the town youth standing in the field not far away.

The boy had run out of his house alone, only seeking to find that figure who had strolled in the rain. Now that he saw him, he was too stunned to move, locking eyes with the three-eyed black skull face, his hands and limbs trembling incessantly.

A muffled electrical crackle drifted from beneath the skull mask, resembling the wind blowing through a distant valley.

The mage raised a finger to his lips, signaling the boy to keep a secret.

Then, carrying the levitating pine tree, he strolled away into the distance.

The town youth shouted for his mother, running back inside to declare he had seen a man herding trees, only to receive another smack on the head. Feeling aggrieved yet holding back his tears, he recalled the skull pressing a finger to its lips, belatedly realizing he had leaked a secret, and hurriedly covered his mouth as he hid beneath the covers.

"Feeling unwell? Why don't we let your dad take you to the lighthouse now that it's stopped raining?" His mother walked over to ask.

"No, Mom, can you just use a sewing needle to sew my mouth shut?"

"What kind of foolish talk is that?"

"Really, Mom, I have to keep a secret. It's very, very important..."

A secret about the man who herded trees.