Chapter 125: Oppression

A long, long time ago, Xiaoshu Village was still called Divine Tree Village. In Divine Tree Village, men held absolute power. When they first fled to the Tenfold Mountains, the first village chief sought the protection of the Divine Tree, saving the refugees who followed him.

Back then, the Divine Tree was not yet as lush and deep-rooted as it was today. It and Divine Tree Village complemented each other, growing together. The Divine Tree protected the villagers and warded off external dangers, while the villagers offered their faith to nourish the Divine Tree. In other words, it was a perfect cycle that required effort from both sides.

Many years passed, and Divine Tree Village grew several times over. The population swelled from the initial dozen or so to over five hundred and fifty. But as the numbers grew, it became harder to keep everyone of one mind.

Divine Tree Village lived in seclusion, naturally free from the jurisdiction of Langyuan City. They rarely left the village and strictly forbade intermarriage with the outside world, which was considered a betrayal and desecration of the Divine Tree.

From birth to death, the bodies and minds of the villagers of Divine Tree Village had to belong to the Divine Tree.

This was the rule established by the first village chief, and everyone in Divine Tree Village had to obey it. Once someone crossed the line, they had to be punished. However, when it came to the severity of the punishment, there was a vast difference between men and women.

In truth, the status of women in Divine Tree Village was… very low. It was fine at first, but as the village became increasingly isolated, those in power continuously exploited the weaker side to consolidate their own status and authority, until the women eventually had no status to speak of. Men ruled over everything, large and small. A girl born in Divine Tree Village was nothing more than an appendage to the men in her family from birth, and they were not even allowed to have any sense of self.

The Divine Tree was not human. It knew nothing of human emotions and desires. At first, it had only accepted a human’s plea out of sheer boredom. Later, finding that this helped it cultivate faster, it allowed this group of weak humans to live upon it.

But as time went on, it felt that something was wrong. Thus, it tried to intervene in the disparity between men and women in Divine Tree Village. It began granting women certain privileges, hoping to ease the conflict between the sexes and restore the village to its former state.

But the Divine Tree was clearly too naive. The men of Divine Tree Village only felt that the Divine Tree was starting to show favoritism, believing that the women must have seduced it, which was something they would absolutely never allow.

Consequently, the easing of tensions the Divine Tree wanted to see did not happen. Instead… things only grew worse.

“How could they do this!”

Bian Chunzhou could hardly believe his eyes. They had followed the sound over here, thinking the little girl tied up beneath the tree had committed some heinous crime. Who would have thought… that just because she stole a sacrificial fruit meant for the Divine Tree, these sanctimonious men were going to hang her upside down and drain her blood?!

How could the Divine Tree possibly be enraged over a single sacrificial fruit? These men, were they demons?

Xiang He was the only woman among them, and she was already so furious that she had drawn her sword. However, this was an illusion, a tragic scene from the giant tree’s memory that had happened long ago.

Starting with the sacrifice of the little girl, one atrocity after another committed in Divine Tree Village unfolded before the four of them. It was hard to imagine that without the influence of any cultivation methods, the human heart could be so terrifying.

But prolonged oppression was bound to trigger a backlash eventually.

Overnight, all the men in Divine Tree Village were slaughtered in a counterattack. The women took up scissors, hoes, sickles, and wooden clubs, like avengers rising from hell. They hacked and beat the men who had once enslaved them, not stopping even after the bodies were mangled beyond recognition.

And the ones who orchestrated this bloody event were the vengeful spirits of the women who had been drained of blood and dumped beneath the Divine Tree.

21. The giant tree itself probably didn’t even realize it had long been corroded by resentment. By the time it noticed, it was already trapped, caught in its own tribulation.

It suddenly realized that this might be the Heavenly Dao’s trial for its transformation from a tree into a Yao(Spirit)^[1]. Yet, it had never realized that once it was corrupted, it was already too late.

Divine Tree Village became a place of sin, and because the tree had accepted a mortal’s plea, it no longer had any chance of transforming into a Yao.

Humans can make a wrong turn in a single moment of weakness, and so can trees. Even ants cling to life, let alone a towering tree that was only a step away from transforming into a Yao.

It wanted to redeem itself.

So, it worked hard to reshape the women’s bodies, granting them power in an attempt to reform them. It also wrapped the bones of the men in its own body, trying to use its power to purify them.

Perhaps once the women were reformed and the bones purified, it would attain the Dao and transform into a Yao.

Before that, it could not let itself be found by cultivators. Thus, it began to wander through the Tenfold Mountains. But it soon discovered that a village with only women could not reproduce. So, it began helping the women find husbands. To prevent them from being mistreated by their husbands again, it bestowed seeds containing its power to protect the village women. If their husbands treated them poorly, it would enact punishment.

The giant tree thought that this time, it surely wouldn’t repeat the same mistake.

However, it did not expect that human greed was insatiable. It thought it was reforming them, but it was actually abetting their wickedness. By the time it realized the village was out of balance once more, it was already powerless to stop it.

It was bound too tightly to them. As long as they prayed, it had to respond. It drained the life force and fortune of men from outside the village to help the women regain their youth, even granting them power and beauty. They no longer had to bear children, and they enjoyed the status that only men used to have.

The giant tree realized it had failed once again.

It looked radiant with spiritual light on the outside, but it was already rotten to the core.

But secrets could not be kept forever, and the men outside the Tenfold Mountains were not easily fooled. There were too many women in the village, and with the “Marrying the Divine Tree” ceremony happening every year, it had grown tired.

So, this year, it told them that if they could lure cultivators here, they could retain their youth forever.

The women immediately threw themselves into hunting for ordinary cultivators. Off and on, they actually succeeded twice. However, those men were only Qi Refining cultivators, too weak to end this farce.

Perhaps it should never have interfered with the fate of mortals in the first place.

It was tired, and its consciousness fell into a deep slumber. Perhaps only when its power was entirely depleted would all of this finally end. But it had not expected a turning point to come so quickly.

“Did I do wrong?” the giant tree asked softly. Perhaps it had wanted to ask this long ago, but there had been no one to answer.

Bian Chunzhou, usually the most lively of the group, was now solemnly silent. It was too bloody, too twisted. Both tree and human had completely lost their original nature.

Could one say the tree had good intentions at the start? It certainly did. Was the villagers’ plea for help sincere? It must have been.

But people change, and the human heart is uncontrollable. The moment the tree tried to use its power to interfere with human nature, it was destined to fail.

“You feel resentful.”

Wen Xu’s voice sounded exceptionally calm. In fact, he was the most composed among the four of them.

“Am I not allowed to feel resentful?”

“You cannot even distinguish between good and evil. When you are merely reaping what you sowed, what right do you have to feel resentful?”

When the little girl was hung upside down and drained of blood, when the woman was executed just for glancing at another man, and when the other women in the illusion were being harmed, it should have acted then. It should not have waited for the evil to bear fruit before trying to clean up the mess.

It grew strong on the faith offered by the villagers, yet it watched coldly as its believers oppressed one another. Frankly, Wen Xu did not pity it. Humans had to pay for what they did, and so did trees.

This was just like the high-and-mighty nobles of the Mortal Realm. They thought that by tossing out a little charity, the commoners would become tools to do their bidding. The moment the commoners failed to act according to their wishes, they would curse them as unruly and uncivilized, never once thinking to look for the problem within themselves.

“But those men were clearly the detestable ones! It was clearly their fault!”

“Bah! Then you were just a tool abetting their evil deeds!” Bian Chunzhou spat twice. At first, he had felt quite sympathetic toward the giant tree. But on second thought, it held the title of protecting the village in name only while doing absolutely nothing. It was only after the women had been persecuted to such an extent that it stepped in to hypocritically mediate. “To put it bluntly, you just craved the faith of those scumbag men, didn’t you? You were afraid that if your methods were too harsh, it would shake their faith in you. And because those women were weak, you figured that as long as you threw them a little charity, they would be deeply grateful to you!”

“And you still think you did nothing wrong! You really aren’t picky, are you? You could even stomach the faith of those scumbag beasts; you must have been starving! It serves you right that you failed your tribulation. Heaven has eyes after all! You showed us those illusions hoping we would help you purge the resentment, didn’t you? In your dreams!”

With a loud rumble, the illusion shattered in an instant. The watery light overhead suddenly gave way, and a glow of firelight cast down.

The sect’s rescue had arrived!

As for the giant tree, it seemed Bian Chunzhou’s words had exposed its hidden thoughts, and the underwater depths suddenly began to shake violently.

“No…”

“I’m not wrong! It’s the humans who are wrong! It’s the humans who are wrong!”

“If only they were all dead! If they were all dead, everything would be fine! Just like those men, if only they were all dead!”

Uh-oh. He had enjoyed venting, but he seemed to have overdone it. The tree was starting to go berserk. Bian Chunzhou wondered if he should backtrack a little and insincerely soothe the tree’s fragile heart, but before he could even open his mouth, Wen Xuxu spoke up again.

“Haven’t they been dead for a long time? They died from your inaction, and they died from your greed. Aren’t the ones living now just empty shells you pieced together?”

Even if their bodies were still alive and their souls were stitched together, so what? Did you really expect people who grew up warped to have a proper sense of right and wrong?

“They are mortals, and you are a spiritual tree on the verge of transforming into a Yao. Ask yourself, were you really unable to resist them? Did you urge them to lure cultivators here truly to end all of this? Or was it because you were no longer satisfied with the fortune and power of mortals, and so you turned your gaze toward cultivators?”

“Did you not give them power just to use them as your puppets to hunt for you? Stop lying to yourself. Your tree heart was already corrupted back when you stood by and watched the men in the village oppress the women.”

Behind everything that followed, which seemed like acts of kindness, was just a form of damage control and manipulation. Wen Xu never hesitated to think the worst of others. He even suspected that the tree had ulterior motives from the very beginning when it saved these people.

A spiritual tree about to undergo a tribulation could not possibly be completely unable to sense it.