I am the sacred tree, evergreen for eternity.

The survival of tribes is far more difficult than imagined.

Even though the savages built a village around Yu Su and gained a shady place to shelter from the wind and rain.

They remain weak, poor, and struggling at the bottom of society, and their numbers don't even exceed three hundred.

Yu Su didn't care.

They have fire, spears, hands, and feet; they will surely be able to survive in this desolate wilderness.

Whether they live well or not is their own business.

That time, when he used his roots to entangle the giant wolf and save those dying savages, it was ultimately just a moment of weakness on his part.

That memory of the human child has gradually faded with time, like a stone repeatedly washed by a stream, leaving only a faint outline.

So when those savages knelt before him, placing the fattest wolf meat on the rough stone platform, and devoutly kowtowing, praying, and offering sacrifices, Yu Su felt no emotion.

"Your beliefs are none of my business."

He remained that quiet tree, his branches and leaves unmoving, his roots still, revealing not a trace of spirit.

The offerings from the savages were nothing more than flesh, blood, bones, and skin, which would rot in the ground and become fertilizer, no different from the carcasses of other wild animals. He accepted them all, but that was all.

However, day after day, year after year, Yu Su gradually noticed something was amiss.

The power of will that gathered and sublimated from the kneeling crowd was initially as faint as a firefly, but as the number of sacrifices increased and the devotion grew, it gradually coalesced into an undeniable force.

Every time the savages placed their prey on the altar, when their foreheads struck the earth, when their prayers echoed in the night wind.

That devout thought flowed into his body like a gentle stream, flowing along the woody veins, and finally into his soul.

His spirit is growing stronger.

It was a wonderful, indescribable feeling, like a long-dried riverbed being rehydrated, like roots that had been pressed down by rocks finally finding a crack and extending outwards.

Nourished by the power of faith, his perception was elevated once again. He could not only sense distant streams, herds of beasts, and changing winds and clouds, but he could even vaguely detect subtle fluctuations in the spiritual energy between heaven and earth.

Yu Su finally began to take the savages who had built villages around him seriously.

These weak, mortal beings could only be killed by a giant wolf with great effort, and any ferocious beast could wipe out half of their tribe.

They have no sharp claws or teeth, no hard scales, no supernatural powers to breathe clouds and mist, and they can't even run as fast as the most common deer in the mountains and forests.

But they have one thing that most creatures on this wild land do not possess.

Devotion.

That unreserved, wholehearted, even somewhat blind devotion transformed their faint thoughts into an incredible power.

And this power was actually able to nourish his soul.

Yu Su began to pay attention to their rituals.

Every time they returned from a hunt, no matter how much they had caught, they would always place the most precious piece of prey on the altar.

Sometimes it's the fattest hind leg of a deer, sometimes the tenderest heart and liver of a wild boar, and sometimes it's just a bunch of bright red wild berries, held up by broad leaves and placed respectfully beside the roots of his tree.

They knelt before the simple stone platform, chanting incoherent prayers, the dirt and sweat on their foreheads mingling and gleaming with piety in the firelight.

Yu Su silently observed everything.

He began to want to respond to them, not because of the offerings they made—the flesh and blood were no different from humus to him—but because the pious intention was becoming a part of his soul in a way he could not ignore.

But he can't do it yet.

He can only convey fragmented information briefly at present and is not yet able to conduct effective communication.

Finally, on that night...

It was a grand sacrificial ceremony. The tribe had hunted a rare tusked wild boar, larger than a calf, and covered with hard, horny scales.

In the hunt for this beast, the tribe's three bravest hunters were all injured, one of whom had his arm pierced by fangs and nearly lost it.

But they still dragged the wild boar back, skinned it, and cut off its meat, placing the most intact and succulent piece on the altar.

The firelight illuminated the entire shade of the tree, and more than a hundred people of the clan, young and old, knelt down together, their foreheads touching the ground. Their devout thoughts surged towards Yu Su like a tide.

Yu Su's soul trembled violently under the impact of that tide.

He felt like a seed buried in the soil, with its hard outer shell being peeled away layer by layer by this force.

Finally, he heard a voice.

It wasn't an external sound, but the sound of some kind of barrier shattering deep within one's consciousness.

In that instant, his senses suddenly soared, rising from the valley to the surging sea of ​​clouds on the horizon.

Countless pieces of information flooded into his consciousness—the trajectory of the wind, the direction of the water, the path of the spiritual veins deep underground, the arrangement of the stars in the sky—everything became crystal clear at this moment.

What was clearest was that he was finally able to reach the minds of the savages kneeling before him.

Instead of passively receiving their devout emotions, we actively and clearly perceive every thought in their consciousness.

They were afraid, they were in awe, they prayed, they longed for his protection, like a drowning man longing for a branch on the shore.

Yu Su took a deep breath—if a tree could also "take a deep breath".

He focused his thoughts into a line and slowly reached out towards the figure kneeling at the front.

The tribal leader, Hong.

Hong was the strongest man in the tribe, in his thirties, with dark skin covered in scars from hunting.

He knelt before the altar, his forehead touching the earth, his lips moving as he recited prayers, his body trembling slightly with devotion.

Then, he heard a voice.

The voice had no source, no direction; it seemed to ring out directly in his mind.

It was powerful and deep, carrying an indescribable sense of vicissitude, as if it came from an extremely distant place, or as if it were whispering in his ear.

"Hong".

Hong suddenly raised his head, his eyes wide open, looking around in terror.

The people behind him were still kneeling in worship, seemingly oblivious to everything. Only he, and only he alone, heard that voice.

"Is...is that you?"

Hong's voice trembled violently as he looked at the towering tree that blocked out the sky, his eyes instantly turning red.

"Tree God... are you calling me?"

Yu Su was stunned for a moment.

A tree god? When did he become a god? He's just a tree.

However, he did not correct Hong's form of address. Instead, he focused his mind again and slowly conveyed the three words.

"Raise your head."

Hong was startled and suddenly looked up, just in time to see a bright green leaf falling from a high branch.

The leaf swayed gently in the night breeze, landing perfectly in his palm.

Hong looked down, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

There was a symbol engraved on that leaf.

It's not a pattern, not a crack; it's a character with clear strokes and a rigorous structure.

Each stroke of the characters seemed to be etched deep into the veins of a leaf by some invisible force, varying in depth and carrying an indescribable rhythm.

Hong doesn't recognize this character.

No one in this world knows a single word.

But the instant he stared at the symbol, a message surged into his mind from the leaf, completely imprinting the meaning of the symbol into his consciousness.

"summer."

Yu Su's voice rang in his mind again, this time clearer and more composed than before.

"This word is pronounced 'Xia'. From now on, you will be the Xia clan."