VOL.1 Chapter 5: The Source of the Bronze Sacred Tree

The subterranean tremors lingered for seven full minutes before gradually fading away.

The moment the shaking subsided, an eerie, deathly hush blanketed the entire archaeological site. The wind died, all insect chirps vanished, and even the flow of air ground to a near standstill—as if heaven and earth held its breath, waiting for the next wave of darkness to strike. Every civilian monitoring device reverted to seemingly normal readings: smooth data curves, unbroken signal transmission, flawless operational stability. This fabricated illusion of complete safety concealed the catastrophic collapse unfolding deep underground.

The panic among the archaeological crew slowly died down. Staff exchanged uneasy glances, yet none could rationalize the bizarre shaking they had just endured. They ultimately dismissed the strange phenomenon as an unidentifiable geological anomaly and returned to excavation work, shoving their lingering doubts aside. The mortal world always operated this way: it forced all uncanny, inexplicable events into the framework of established scientific theories to maintain the pretense of unbroken normalcy.

But the five members of the Ruin Guardian Unit knew this was merely the aftermath of one of Kaelor’s probing assaults, not the end of the threat. He had only dialed back his overt energy surges to adopt a far deeper, more covert erosion tactic. Holding his aura concealed and his offensive dormant, he waited for the squad to lower their guard while stockpiling Void energy for a crippling, fatal strike.

“The apparent drop in Void activity is a ruse,” Banbandin said, his gaze fixed on the endless stream of real-time data scrolling across his terminal as he rapidly marked every rock fracture coordinate, his features etched with gravity. “The enemy has withdrawn all surface-level energy surges to focus their erosion solely on the underground cavern’s formation core. While exterior sensor data reads stable, internal structural degradation is accelerating nonstop.”

Jam leaned against the guardrail at the pit’s upper edge, his gaze sweeping the full expanse of the sacrificial pit before locking onto the temperature-controlled preservation shed housing fragments of the Bronze Sacred Tree.

To mainstream archaeological academia, the Bronze Sacred Tree stood as Sanxingdui’s crown treasure—the most iconic relic of the Ancient Shu Civilization. Its neatly tiered branches, adorned with intricate avian and floral carvings, boasted a craftsmanship far ahead of any other Bronze Age artifacts from the same era. For decades, scholars had debated its purpose, nearly unanimously concluding it was a sacred ritual implement built to bridge heaven and mortal realms, a totem for divine worship, and a physical embodiment of the ancient Shu people’s cosmic worldview.

Yet to Jam, this millennia-old bronze monument was never merely a ceremonial ornament.

It served as the primary energy conduit trunk for the entire Wood Ruin Seal formation.

“Shift all operational priorities,” Jam ordered in a low, resolute tone that cut through the pit’s heavy silence. “Suspend repeated shallow stratigraphy surveys and launch a comprehensive deep-dive analysis of the Sacred Tree fragments. Pinpoint its metallic composition, internal energy pathways, and formation anchor nodes to uncover the root source of the seal’s unceasing corrosion.”

The squad instantly grasped his logic. The subterranean cracks and intermittent ground tremors were nothing more than surface-level symptoms. The core reason the seal continued to deteriorate lay in the corrosion eating away at its primary energy delivery vessel—the Bronze Sacred Tree. No amount of patching superficial barrier layers could resolve the fundamental flaw once the trunk’s energy circulation system sustained irreversible damage.

The team split off to carry out their respective tasks with streamlined, seamless coordination, masking all classified energy analysis work as routine high-precision artifact testing to avoid drawing civilian staff’s suspicion.

Sage entered the preservation shed carrying a high-definition rune scanner and elemental composition analyzer, drawing close to the tree fragments to dissect their true essence layer by layer. Ordinary archaeologists only studied the relic’s outward shape and decorative motifs; she traced the invisible energy veins woven into its structure. She scanned every carved groove, deconstructed its layered casting structure, cross-referenced its alloy ratios, and reconstructed its closed energy circulation loops, dismantling decades of flawed mainstream academic hypotheses one after another.

“The alloy composition is completely anomalous,” Sage stated, staring at the analyzer’s output figures with unyielding certainty. “Its copper-tin-lead ratios are wildly unbalanced, laced with massive quantities of microscopic metallic particles that cannot be reproduced via any Xia or Shang Dynasty metallurgical techniques. These materials do not correspond to any known terrestrial ore deposits or ancient smelting systems recorded in history.”

This meant the tree’s forging technology and raw materials existed entirely outside the scope of recognized ancient human civilization.

“This is no sacrificial ritual vessel or decorative totem,” Sage continued, brushing a fingertip along the fine, uniform carved grooves winding across its branches. These shallow, continuous indentations were not ornamental carvings—precision-engineered channels designed exclusively to channel energy. “It is a functional living energy conductor forged by the ancient ancestors using fragments of the Void Core Anchor. Its sole purpose is to divert corrosive Void energy, harmonize underground spiritual energy veins, and stabilize the barriers sealing the Void Rift.”

Simultaneously, Banbandin imported every branch segment, bifurcation point, and decorative node of the tree into his modeling system to build a full three-dimensional energy transmission simulation. As the model rendered, an ultra-precise closed-loop energy network unfolded before their eyes, its layout perfectly aligned with the sealing formation carved into the walls of the underground cavern.

“The complete tree forms a single integrated formation system,” Banbandin explained, gesturing to the luminous energy pathways on the screen. “The main trunk functions as the primary energy pipeline, smaller branches act as secondary diversion channels, and the floral and avian carvings at each branch tip serve as energy stabilizer nodes. Rooted deep underground and connected directly to the Void Core Anchor shards, it channels primal anchor energy upward while suppressing Void leakage from below, running an automated balancing cycle nonstop for three thousand years to sustain the seal’s integrity.”

The full truth finally clicked for every member of the unit. The ancient ancestors had not shattered and buried the Sacred Tree as a ritual act of destruction. They had severed its external energy circuits and contracted the formation’s outer boundaries to lock away the Void Core Anchor’s core power source. Intentionally damaging its exposed surface was a cold, calculated survival tactic—one that hid the formation’s critical anchor point from Void forces seeking to seize it outright.

What the mortal world misinterpreted as the collapse of an entire civilization was, in truth, an act of unflinching ancestral sacrifice.

Daipithy stepped slowly into the preservation shed. The golden runes embedded in his palm began to thrash violently the moment he neared the tree, a wave of scorching heat flooding his limbs as his Ruin Guardian bloodline resonated powerfully with the artifact. Countless fragmented visions of the distant past surged into his mind—no longer vague fleeting glimpses, but clear, cohesive, visceral complete sequences.

Chaos erupted at the end of the Xia Dynasty, when the Void Rift split wide open across the Central Plains, swallowing cities and drowning the land in endless black mist, pushing the mortal realm to the brink of annihilation. The forebears of the Dai bloodline led the Ruin Guardian clans south into the untamed Bashu wilderness, carrying fragments of the Void Core Anchor in their wake. Above the massive subterranean Rift hidden beneath Bashu’s soil, they spent decades melting unidentifiable alien metals and replicating the natural energy currents of heaven and earth to forge the Bronze Sacred Tree, constructing a secondary stabilizing formation.

The moment the tree was completed, underground spiritual veins fell into equilibrium, the Void Rift contracted, and corrosive Void energy was contained, bringing peace to the wild frontier. Generations of Ancient Shu tribes settled here as permanent sentinels, wielding their entire civilization as a protective buffer and relying on the Sacred Tree as their core formation anchor to siphon endless Void corrosion away from the Central Plains’ primary seal.

The vision shifted abruptly. Void assaults intensified, overwhelming the Central Plains’ primary Void Core Anchor, throwing the dual ruin linkage system out of balance and pushing the Wood Ruin Seal to the verge of collapse. Left with no other choice, the ancestors made the painful decision to shatter the Sacred Tree, seal its energy circuits, and bury its core anchor deep underground. By voluntarily draining their own civilization’s power, they preserved the last vestiges of the Void Core Anchor to buy more time for the mortal world.

Three thousand years of cyclical change passed. Buried beneath layers of loess, the tree fragments lay dormant, continuously self-repairing and absorbing Void erosion without pause.

“The tree is suffering,” Daipithy whispered, his voice trembling with the resonance between his bloodline and the relic. “It has sustained itself through self-sacrifice and constant self-repair for three millennia. Now its foundational structure is corroded by Void energy, its internal energy circuits severed, and its stabilizing cycle fully broken.”

Shallow surface cracks, intermittent underground tremors, and malfunctioning civilian equipment were nothing but superficial symptoms. The fatal, irreversible damage lay in the Bronze Sacred Tree’s broken energy transmission network, rendering the Wood Ruin Seal’s core stabilization system completely non-functional.

Jam’s gaze turned icy sharp as he pieced together Kaelor’s full master plan. “Kaelor has understood the Sacred Tree’s core function from the very start. He deliberately avoids launching frontal assaults on the seal’s outer barriers, instead focusing on corroding the tree’s primary energy trunk to dismantle the entire formation from its foundation.”

“He is waiting for the tree to fully decay.”

Once the three-thousand-year-old stabilizing conduit ceased functioning entirely, the Wood Ruin Seal would crumble across its full perimeter in a matter of days, exposing the buried Void Core Anchor shards deep underground. At that point, Kaelor could seize the anchor fragments with minimal resistance and destabilize the dual linkage of the Central Plains and Bashu ruin seals, fulfilling his three-millennia-long vendetta.

Bangbangtu’s emergency patrol comms crackled to life, his tone urgent and alert. “All enemy scouts on the perimeter have retreated; all traceable Void energy signatures across the site have vanished entirely. The raiders have abandoned peripheral harassment and entered full stealth concealment.”

Unnatural, unbroken calm always precedes the deadliest storm.

Jam instantly raised the unit’s full combat alert status, every muscle tensed for conflict. “All hands stand at full readiness. The enemy has not retreated—they are merely stockpiling power for a concentrated strike targeting the Sacred Tree’s core.”

A frigid chill swept through the preservation shed in an instant. Faint, fine black veins began creeping across the surface of the tree fragments, cold and insidious, devouring the warm primal anchor energy embedded within the bronze texture. The Void infiltration operated silently, invisible to ordinary eyes, yet fully visible through Daipithy’s bloodline perception and Sage’s scanning equipment.

“Void parasitic infestation,” Sage’s voice dropped low, her speech quick and sharp. “He compressed Void energy into microscopic particles that seep through soil layers to embed themselves deep within the bronze’s metallic grain. They dismantle the energy circuits from the inside out, leaving zero visible damage on the relic’s exterior.”

The deadliest attacks never rely on brute frontal destruction—they gnaw away at their target unseen, from within.

The three-thousand-year barrier forged by the ancient ancestors was being slowly, silently hollowed out by Kaelor, their ancient arch-nemesis.

Deep within the western mountain woodland, Kaelor lifted his gaze toward the preservation shed, silver-grey eyes cold and impassive.

“Patch up your barriers all you like, Ruin Guardians,” he muttered in a hoarse, frigid whisper. “You may protect the soil and seal fissures, but you cannot defend the very root that sustains your formation.”

“From this day forward, the Dai bloodline’s guardianship means nothing.”

Wind howled through the mountain forest, unseen Void tides surging beneath the foliage.

The three-thousand-year protection woven by Sanxingdui’s ancestors now faced the deadliest crisis it had ever endured.