Immortal Paladin

375 A Forest Given Flesh

I blacked out the moment I forced the Divine Word through the entire forest. Resurrecting a dead immortal was basically suicide, but I gambled on her desperation to live. If the target wanted life badly enough, the Divine Word usually worked.

“Hey,” a soft voice whispered close to my ear, “wake up… Are you going to leave me too?”

My eyes opened slowly. A canopy of shimmering leaves framed the sky. I wasn’t lying on the ground. Instead, someone was holding me upright from behind. Smooth arms wrapped around my chest. Something soft and heavy pressed down on my head. When I lifted a hand to push it away, my palm sank into a warm curve.

A breast.

I froze, then tilted my head back.

A beautiful face looked down at me. She had long blonde hair, long ears, and clear emerald eyes. Her expression was bright and innocent, but her entire body was basically naked. A few leaves and thin roots clung to her like badly made stickers. It was obscene.

“Can you wear something?” I asked weakly.

“Call my name,” she insisted. Her tone was strangely melodic. “You gave me a name, right?”

“Fine… Can you wear something, Wu Chen?”

She blinked. “Wear? What do you mean, wear?”

Wonderful. She really had forgotten the basics. A dead immortal’s ego turned forest goddess had no sense of shame. From her memories, I should’ve expected at least this much damage.

“Let me borrow a little of your quintessence,” I said. “You might know it as Immortal Qi.”

“You mean this?” Wu Chen raised her hand. A faint, living glow shimmered between her fingers.

“Yeah, that. Hold still.”

I held her palm and guided the process. The forest’s quintessence responded instantly. Threads of green light spun around her, weaving cloth from pure immortal qi. In seconds, a robe of white and gentle jade green wrapped around her figure. It looked like a ceremonial outfit fit for an elf goddess, much better than her previous “outfit,” which was basically nature’s lingerie.

Wu Chen turned around in awe, touching the sleeves and pressing the fabric to her cheek. “It feels soft…”

“Of course it does,” I said proudly. “If someone helps you and it feels good, you should say thank you.”

She paused, then bowed slightly. “Thank you.”

“Good girl.” I cleared my throat. “Now, about the forest. Can you move it? Can you bring it with you?”

She stared into the distance. The entire forest pulsed faintly with her heartbeat. The connection between her and every tree was unmistakable.

“I think I can,” she said, placing a hand over her stomach where her dantian was. “I have… this really big space inside me.”

A big space?

That meant she still had access to a personal dimension, something only experts at the Eighth Realm and beyond could maintain. I swept my Divine Sense across her body. Her cultivation hovered around the Eleventh Realm, just brushing the border of Ascended Soul. Not at Da Ji’s level, but power was power. And with the forest? She was a walking fortress.

She fidgeted, then held my hands gently. Her emerald eyes fixed on mine with a strangely affectionate glow. “What is your name?”

“Oh boy…” I swallowed. “It’s Da Wei.”

Her expression softened, almost worshipful.

“But,” I added quickly, “don’t say it casually. I have a lot of enemies. Call me Brother Da when others are around.”

Wu Chen nodded with earnest seriousness, still holding my hands as if she never wanted to let go.

“Brother Da…” she whispered, and her voice sent a chill down my spine.

For some reason, the expectant shine in Wu Chen’s eyes filled me with dread. It wasn’t hostility. It wasn’t hatred. It was… something else. Something dangerous. Something clingy. Surely, that was just my imagination, right?

“Brother Da?” she repeated, tilting her head. “I don’t understand. Does that make us siblings?”

She used the tongue of her ancient civilization, a language that didn’t belong to the Hollowed World at all. It was the language of her worshippers from countless eras ago. The only reason I understood her at all was because of my Linguist subclass and the memories I’d relived through Divine Possession. So fine, she knew me as Da Wei. Better that than the alias I was using right now.

“Now that you’re free,” I asked, “what’s your plan?”

I wanted to nudge her to my side gently. It wasn’t manipulation, not exactly. I simply respected her as a person. If she wanted to flee and disappear this instant, I wouldn’t stop her. In fact, the Heavenly Temple deserved to be bitten where it hurt. Losing this forest alone would cripple the Celestial Wall.

But Wu Chen’s expression changed instantly. Her lips trembled. Tears welled in her eyes as she grabbed my sleeves with both hands.

“Are you… going to abandon me?” Her voice quivered like a child’s. “I will do anything… Just don’t leave me.”

Guilt hit me like a hammer. I felt like absolute trash. Wu Chen’s mind was shattered from everything she endured. I saw it clearly when I relived her memories from rituals carved into her roots, prayers forced into her soil, and live sacrifices screaming as they were dragged into the forest. She was a forest, yes… but she had also been a corpse, a remnant, and an object used cruelly for a long time.

The Heavenly Temple had violated her in every possible way to turn her into a living barrier for their Celestial Wall. And the worst part? Once I saw how the Empire harvested dragon veins, I realized neither side could claim moral purity. The Empire ripped entire dragon veins out of the earth, carved them into formation cores, and powered our flying ships with them. That was why, after my coronation, we’d pushed to change everything, to abolish slavery in Deepmoor, to find new energy sources, and to help dragons repopulate.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Compared to that, artificial dragon veins didn’t sound so bad… until I learned the Heavenly Temple made them by drilling into Wu Chen’s corpse and pumping her full of foreign quintessence. They used slaves as live sacrifices to force the process.

No wonder she was terrified of being abandoned again.

I placed a hand on her head gently. “Listen, Wu Chen. You’re not alone anymore. You’re my responsibility now.”

Her breath hitched. She looked at me as if afraid to believe it.

“As your benefactor,” I continued softly, “and as your guardian, I’ll do my best to meet your requests. I’m not abandoning you.”

Wu Chen lunged forward and hugged me tightly. Her newly formed robes fluttered, and her long ears trembled as she cried into my shoulder.

“Thank you… Brother Da…” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I won’t forget…”

I tried pushing her away, but Wu Chen’s strength far surpassed mine. Even weakened and freshly resurrected, she had the raw force of an Eleventh Realm walking around in a human-shaped body made of quintessence. So she clung to me, her arms wrapped around my waist, while I could only stare at the massive structure looming before us.

A colossal tree stood at the center of the forest, a titan of ancient bark and glowing roots. Its trunk was wide enough to rival a palace, and intricate formations were carved deep into its grain. Immortal seals, runic circles, and channels of quintessence webbed across it like glowing veins.

Through my Divine Sense, I felt threads extending outward that connected this tree to the Celestial Wall itself.

“This chain,” I muttered, raising a hand toward the nearest glowing formation line, “I should break it…”

My fingers brushed the surface. Power thrummed beneath my skin. The formation pulsed in response. For a moment, I fully expected alarms to ring across the entire Heavenly Temple, elders rushing toward the disturbance, and the sky splitting open with divine thunder.

But nothing happened.

Not even a flicker of resistance.

I froze, confused. “Huh…?”

Resurrecting someone of Wu Chen’s level must have rewritten her entire spiritual existence. She was no longer treated as part of the Celestial Wall. Or perhaps the Heavenly Temple had no idea the “forest” had become a person again.

“I guess I shouldn’t break it after all…” I lowered my hand. “Hey, Wu Chen… what is this tree to you?”

Wu Chen finally released me, drifting a step forward. Her bare feet touched the roots, and her long ears twitched thoughtfully.

“It’s my heart,” she whispered.

I frowned. “If you lose your heart… can you make another one?”

Wu Chen placed a hand on her chest and closed her eyes. After a long moment, she nodded. “I think… I can.”

It was strange how she knew that. Stranger still that she understood the concept of a heart at all. But then I remembered the echoes of her past and the final life before she died. Wu Chen had once walked at the edge of becoming a Ruler of Laws. Her instincts remembered truths that her mind forgot.

“Why?” she asked suddenly, turning toward me. “Do you want my heart? I can give it to you…”

She hugged my arm, her soft chest pressing against it, and a heartbeat thumped faintly under her new robes. The sensation made my hair stand on end, not because of her beauty… but because I suddenly remembered Alice. Her quiet smile. Her warmth. And the fear of getting smacked the way I am right now.

A shudder ran through me. “No. Your heart is your own. There’s no need.”

Wu Chen blinked. Then she nodded obediently.

“Instead,” I continued, “can you share more of your quintessence?”

“Sure,” she said immediately.

I placed my palm against the air, drawing the flow toward me. She lent it without resistance. Warm, living quintessence entered my body like a gentle tide. With it, I gathered my thoughts, then began the delicate process.

This wasn’t something I normally did. Creating Manasouls was usually for storing dormant power for Ultimate Skills, but the mechanism was the same. Reverse the process, and Manasouls could be made from quintessence. My hands moved in a familiar pattern, weaving qi and mana away from each other and transforming them into spheres of luminous potential.

Small blue motes of light danced around us.

“What is this?” Wu Chen asked as she reached out, catching one between her fingers. “It’s pretty…”

“They’re Manasouls,” I said, continuing the formation. “Dormant artificial souls. Think of them as tiny stars.”

One by one, I guided the motes into the giant tree, embedding them deep within the ancient bark. Divine Possession helped me merge them into the core structure, strengthening the dormant spiritual channels within it. The tree pulsed brighter with each mote absorbed, glowing like a living heart restored from long sleep.

When the last mote sank into the trunk, the entire forest exhaled.

I patted the tree. “Alright. That should do. I’m salivating at the thought of one day wrecking the Celestial Wall. The Heavenly Temple better not biss me off. Wu Chen, let’s go.”

She turned her bright emerald eyes to me. “Go… where?”

“I want you to meet my twin sister, my nephew, and my disciple,” I said with a smile. “They’re part of my family. And as of now… you’re under my protection. So you should meet them.”

Wu Chen’s expression warmed with quiet happiness, and she stepped closer, her voice soft.

“Then… I will follow you, Brother Da.”

Wu Chen insisted on holding my hand as we walked. It wasn’t the shy, fleeting kind of hold. It was firm, warm, and persistent, like someone afraid I’d disappear if she loosened her fingers for even a second. She walked in front, tugging me along with childlike energy, even though she was technically a resurrected ancient being a few steps away from immortal law comprehension.

“Brother Da,” she asked while glancing over her shoulder, “what is a twin? And what is a disciple?”

“A twin,” I explained, “is a sibling who looks almost exactly like you. Someone born at the same time.”

She stared at me blankly, processing the idea. I continued before she could get lost in thought.

“I have a twin sister named Da Ji. She used to be an adorable little thing who followed me around, but now she’s become harsher than ever. Always scolding me. Always complaining. Always hitting me.” I sighed. “Her cultivation changed her appearance too. She doesn’t look anything like me anymore.”

Wu Chen listened with wide eyes, nodding enthusiastically as if everything I said made perfect sense.

“And my nephew,” I added, “is Da Ji’s son. His name is Chen Wei. He has long ears like you.”

At that, her ears perked straight up, twitching with curiosity.

“I want to see,” she said softly.

“You will. And I also have disciples, five of them. Gu Jie, Lu Gao, Ren Jingyi, Hei Mao, and Yuen Fu.”

“Dis… ciple…” Wu Chen repeated slowly, tasting the word. “A special follower?”

“Something like that.”

“What about the girl with the strange name? Jing… Jingyi?”

“Ren Jingyi? She used to be a goldfish.”

Wu Chen froze. “What is a goldfish?”

I snorted. “Ask her yourself. She’ll explain.”

By the time we reached the forest’s boundary, the sky had shifted into shades of amber and red. The edge of the forest thinned, and the world beyond opened dramatically.

Celestial Step City unfolded before us.

The name made sense now. The city wasn’t built on simple land. It rested inside an enormous crater shaped like the impression of a colossal footprint, one step from a giant who once tried reaching the heavens. Providence poured into the crater like a river, dense and vibrant, thicker than anywhere else in the Hollowed World. My Divine Sense tingled. The flow of fate here was so rich it felt like a physical breeze brushing across my face.

“Wow…” Wu Chen whispered. Then she blinked. “The laws here are powerful… Huh? Weird. What’s a law again?”

So it wasn’t a slip. Her memory truly was broken in strange places.

“Master!!”

A blond blur shot through the air. Ren Jingyi leapt in a perfect arc, limbs spread like a projectile.

Wu Chen caught her mid-air with one arm as easily as picking a flower.

Ren Jingyi dangled there, blinking at her. “Who is this lady?”

Da Ji arrived next, using Zealot’s Stride to skid to a stop. Behind her, poor Chen Wei stumbled with haggard breaths, clearly dragged along by a mother who valued speed over the well-being of her son.

Da Ji stared directly at Wu Chen… more accurately, at our linked hands. Her eyes sharpened with wicked amusement.

“Oho? What is this that I see?” she sang. “I wonder what sister-in-law will think about this?”

“H-hey!” I sputtered. “What are you talking about? Since when did you have a sister-in-law!?”

Wu Chen still hadn’t let go of my hand. Her grip only tightened.

This shouldn’t be a problem. I was just a clone. Whatever nonsense followed this, it shouldn’t come back to bite me. By the time complications happened, the main body would be back. Probably. Hopefully. Please.

“Brother Da,” Wu Chen asked in her innocent voice, “what is a sister-in-law?”

Da Ji leaned close with a grin sharp enough to cut spirit iron. “It’s what you call a rival in love.”

“DA JI!! Don’t put weird ideas in her head!!”