Chapter 1078: Life's Miracles

Zhou Ying revolved through the air, dodging a few beams of golden light as she struck with her daggers, tearing space apart and leaving a black trail behind.

A golden beam of light burst in an explosion, its force sending Zhou Ying flying into the distance. With her vitality, however, Zhou Ying easily healed up from the wounds she received.

The other golden beams of light, realizing that they couldn't catch up to Zhou Ying, all stopped moving. They spread their wings wide.

The remaining nine beams all revealed themselves to be superior golden birds.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Zhou Ying cried out, "This is ridiculous! These birds can be mass-produced?!"

Was it really meaningful to keep this fight going if the golden mulberry tree could summon such forces indefinitely?

Of course, this wasn't a question Zhou Ying expected an answer to. The nine golden birds flapped their wings and transformed into beams of golden light. They shot down toward Zhou Ying in a flood, forcing her to dodge and run.

The nine birds opened their mouths wide and sent golden flames pouring toward her.

With her dagger, Zhou Ying tore apart space and slashed the flames. The nine birds swooped down.

Zhou Ying dodged as she counter-attacked. If not for her burgeoning vitality, she would long since have perished.

Under the combined assault of nine superior golden birds, Zhou Ying's battle intent rose to an unprecedented level. Others only had one life; Zhou Ying's vitality gave her many. Her actions became swifter and more agile.

Large numbers of golden roots appeared from underground, intending to prevent her actions, but Zhou Ying leapt between those roots and whirled through the air, using them as springboards. Instead, those roots began to hinder the golden birds' movements.

In the blink of an eye, Zhou Ying had killed all nine birds.

The golden mulberry tree again gave off piercing light as it gathered the energy of the world of blazing sun. Golden light poured down from the skies.

Red flame appeared all over the land, then slowly made its way toward the tree. The tree absorbed all that energy, but there was far less of it this time around. Even for a superior world of antiquity, producing ten energy constructs each equivalent to a superior king in strength was a tall order, and much of the available energy had already been used up.

Producing another ten such constructs would require some time; they certainly couldn't be mass-produced. This was Zhou Ying's opportunity to strike.

She rushed toward the golden mulberry tree. The tree tried to prevent her approach with golden roots that speared through the ground. Zhou Ying dodged even as she sliced through the roots with her dagger.

The golden mulberry tree shook as golden leaves formed a leafstorm that headed straight for her. Zhou Ying whirled through the air, slashing into the void with her dagger and leaving dimensional scars behind.

The golden light exploded, swamping the surroundings. Zhou Ying cut space apart once again, then continued running forward, breaking through the leaves. Her dagger struck the bark of the golden mulberry tree, but to no avail. The tree's attacks were strong, but its defenses weren't weak, either. Only a faint mark was left on the tree's bark.

The golden mulberry tree seemed to grow enraged. Its leaves surrounded Zhou Ying like a hurricane, and its roots waved madly around her. Zhou Ying was forced to retreat amidst the intense attack, only to see the tree uprooting itself. Two thick branches spread out to either side of it, like giant wings.

Its roots retreated and curled around the tree. The bottom of the tree stump split into two. In shock, Zhou Ying watched on as the tree turned into a giant golden bird. Golden light flashed around it, turning its body into one of flesh and bones.

Despite the fact that this was a bird that had originally been a tree, the giant golden bird looked perfectly natural.

"Could this be the true ancestor of the golden birds, the primogenitor...?" Zhou Ying hazarded a guess.

What if all the golden birds of the world of blazing sun had been produced by this golden mulberry tree? If it had absorbed the energy of the world, then birthed the golden birds as a result...

It was protecting both itself and the world of blazing sun at large.

Zhou Ying's eyes widened. The golden mulberry tree was able to create life where there had been none before...

Zhou Ying thought back to her abilities. By combining the energies of nature and life, she could do something similar, but whereas she was only able to grow plants and trees from nothing, the golden mulberry tree had been able to create a more complex lifeform—these golden birds.

No wonder she resonated with the mulberry tree! Their abilities were similar enough that each of them would serve to be tremendously beneficial to the other. The golden mulberry tree possessed incredible vitality and lifeforce. By absorbing Zhou Ying, its status of life would be elevated, and there would no longer be a single mulberry tree in the world of blazing sun, but rather a whole forest of them.

On the other hand, if Zhou Ying were to absorb the golden mulberry tree, the wood dragons she created would possess incredible resistance to fire, and she would be able to absorb nutrients from the veins of lava that striated the world.

Surviving, and even thriving, in the world of blazing sun would be no difficult feat.

After fighting against each other, both Zhou Ying and the golden mulberry tree grew even more invested in devouring their opponent.

The massive golden bird flapped its wings, feathers shooting toward Zhou Ying like sharp arrows, a facsimile of the golden leafstorm that it had summoned twice before.

On her part, Zhou Ying again used [Avatar of the Fae: Dragon's Enclosure]. Giant wood dragons shot out from the earth, forming a pitch-black sea.

However, there could only be a finite number of such dragons, curtailed by the inhospitable environment of the world of blazing sun. The wood dragons were suppressed by the golden storm of feathers, but Zhou Ying shielded as many of them as she could, cutting down the feathers with her black dagger.

The golden bird flapped its wings and drew some distance between them. As it did so, it widened its mouth and spat out threads of golden flame, sticky and infused with tremendous heat.

The temperature of the world of blazing sun rose to an extreme...