“Could it be that the ancient powerhouse who cut down this Enlightenment Tree was an ancestor of your Lin family?”
Qing Yan said in astonishment.
From what Huo Ruyan had said, this seemed the only possible explanation.
Lin Xiao was utterly bewildered.
His ancestor?
His mother came from the Xiao family in the northeast’s Min Province. Though not close, it was not impossibly far either.
But his mother’s family was not surnamed Lin, so it could only come from his father’s side.
His father, and the Lin family, were in the Lanlan Empire of the southeast domain. How could the Lin family’s ancestors have any connection to this place?
Still, Lin Xiao did not know much about his father’s background.
His father had only said that meeting his mother was due to coincidence, without specifying where.
Given his father’s strength, Lin Xiao guessed his mother must have travelled to the southeast domain.
Not the other way round, his father coming to Min Province or the Holy Province to meet her.
After all, with his father’s cultivation, crossing the Forbidden Sea Domain would have been impossible.
Yet this was only speculation, though highly likely.
Because if that were the case, if his father had never come to the Holy Province, how would he know his mother had been attacked by the eight great families and suppressed in the Tianji Demon Suppression Tower?
Had someone deliberately gone to inform him?
Another thing that puzzled Lin Xiao even more was that the Burial Sect’s Lin Zhetian looked extremely similar to his father.
Compared to himself, Lin Zhetian seemed more like his father’s biological son.
He had once even suspected his father might not truly be surnamed Lin.
Or perhaps it was a different Lin lineage that had fled to the southeast domain and blended into their Lin family.
But everyone in the Lin clan knew his father had grown up in the family since childhood. That could not be wrong.
The clan would never allow an outsider to become patriarch.
This left Lin Xiao increasingly confused.
“Could my father not be my biological father?”
The thought flashed through Lin Xiao’s mind, sending a shiver down his spine. He immediately dismissed it.
Though he did not look much like his father, far less than Lin Zhetian did.
Still, his bearing was very similar.
And that sense of familial blood connection could not be faked.
Just like the intimate feeling he got the moment he encountered this blood mark.
With his father, that feeling was even stronger.
Yet if that were true, he could not understand why his ancestor would appear here.
Could it be that long ago, an ancestor of their Lin family had left the southeast domain, become a supreme powerhouse, and come to this region?
Or perhaps the ancestors of the Lanlan Empire’s Lin family had migrated from this area?
These two possibilities seemed more likely.
Of course, this assumed the blood above truly belonged to his ancestor.
“Earlier I heard the word ‘child’. As I approached, I heard ‘suppress’. Just now, I heard ‘blood’. How do you explain that?”
Lin Xiao asked, puzzled.
“Was the tone like the one I used back in Cold Demon Ridge when I needed to refine a Martial Saint?”
Huo Ruyan asked first.
Lin Xiao nodded. “Yes, very weak, very yearning.”
“Then it is the imprint of that powerhouse’s blood craving your own.”
Huo Ruyan speculated. “If I am not mistaken, those vines earlier were sent by this tree stump. It needs to devour others’ cultivation to break free from the stone tablet’s suppression.”
“You are a Child of the Forest. Though we do not fully understand what that means, your blood can severely injure those vines. It is a natural counter.”
“This stone tablet requires the blood of your Child of the Forest lineage to achieve full suppression. The powerhouse’s blood inside, worn away by time, is probably fading. That is why it yearns so for blood.”
“As for why it calls out, it may be because the one who left the blood was too powerful, or because of a summons from deep within the bloodline itself.”
Huo Ruyan reasoned step by step.
As a woman, and one with the despised Blood Demon Physique who had clawed her way up through deceit and struggle, her deductive ability was exceptionally strong.
From all the clues, she had arrived at this conclusion.
And it was very likely correct.
“How can you be sure this blood belongs to Lin Xiao’s ancestor and not some trap set by the stump?”
Qing Yan asked suspiciously.
After spending time with these people, he had grown wary.
“A tree fears a Child of the Forest. It would not devise a plan that requires a Child of the Forest’s blood to suppress it.”
Huo Ruyan replied. “Moreover, I can absolutely confirm the blood trace shares the same origin as Lin Xiao’s. It is faint, yet immensely powerful.”
Other speculations might be uncertain, but on the shared blood origin she was completely confident.
“Boom!”
As soon as Huo Ruyan finished speaking, the entire ground suddenly shook.
The massive tree stump, thousands of zhang across, began to tremble violently, as if trying to tear free from the earth.
The surrounding ground cracked outward in all directions. The commotion was enormous. The whole area felt like a great earthquake. Even the void seemed to quake.
The sky instantly darkened.
Lin Xiao and the other three could sense an extremely terrifying power erupting from deep underground beneath the stump, surging upward as if a world-destroying force was rising inexorably.
Each of them suddenly felt as though doomsday was imminent.
“Blood…” At that moment, the stone tablet with the character “Lin” once again emitted an urgent, feeble sound.
“Pff!”
Without hesitation, following Huo Ruyan’s reasoning, Lin Xiao used yuan force to slice his skin. A stream of blood sprayed out, splashing onto the “Lin” stone tablet.
The moment the inscription touched Lin Xiao’s blood, it erupted with a terrifying pressure that felt as though the heavens themselves were collapsing.
Immediately after, the four felt the tablet become unimaginably heavy, as if bearing the weight of the entire world, sinking downward to suppress.
It was as though a force capable of suppressing doomsday exploded from where the tablet pierced the stump, crushing the terrifying, heaven-destroying fluctuations surging upward from below.
“Shrieeek~~~” A sky-piercing screech rose from beneath the stump, so shrill that Lin Xiao and the others felt their eardrums might burst.
Then, the massive earthquake ceased in that instant. The enormous stump, which had begun struggling upward and rising, sank back into the ground, returning to its original height of merely one zhang above the surface.
Rolling clouds of dust billowed up around it.
The stump’s tremors finally subsided.
