Chapter 32: The Oak Tree’s Influence

The discussion of the oak trees amongst people remained heated. According to a media report from an influential news outlet in West York, the number of Druid believers had increased from 10,000 to 250,000 within a single week.

In addition to the 250,000 or so official believers, there were tens of millions of people in the various countries of West York who were actively exploring history and reacquainting themselves with the ancient traditions surrounding oak trees.

As for the official media channels from all over the world, their attitude towards the oak tree that was termed as ‘God’s Descent’ remained vague.

Apart from the initial wave of denial to public opinion about the Tree of Mysteries that Vanni Campbell and many others advocated for, official media channels were now completely silent.

The official media neither denied nor affirmed the existence of the tree.

Furthermore, the Druid Church Group might have reached some sort of agreement with official media outlets since they stopped propagating their ideas as well.

However, the silence on both sides only seemed to further excite some people’s pursuit of mystery and the unknown.

As a result, the Druid Church Group would still receive many applications to join the church every day.

The Druid Church Group was not a religious organization that one could join as long as they wanted to.

In a culturally traditional sense, if one wished to join the organization, they would have to find a priest in the church and receive their recognition to get accepted to become their student.

Then, the newcomer would then be introduced to the church by his mentor, learn Druid teachings for a few years, and finally pass the Bard examinations in the church before they could officially enter this organization.

This was also the real reason why although oak tree and Druid traditions had always been deeply rooted in the West York mindset, that it had been shrinking in size over the years.

Compared to certain religious organizations that would recognize you as a believer as long as you believed in them, the Druid Church Group had strict requirements to be met.

In this impetuous modern society, one could imagine how bad the situation was for the Druid Church Group.

But now, everything has changed because of the sudden God’s descent into the oak tree.

People were once again actively reconnecting with history and learning relevant knowledge.

——————.

It was now the twenty-fifth day since Ji Yu had the oak tree manifestation.

These days, Ji Yu quietly watched news about oak trees on the Internet, while continuing his meditation in his oak tree manifestation.

For another week, the environment of the rainforest remained terrible for humans.

The heavy rain never stopped pouring.

The sea of trees had truly became trees in a sea.

In fact, more than half of Barna’s Federation was flooded in rain during this rainy season.

And it was precisely because of this terrible situation that no matter how pesky the outside world was these days, they were still unable to enter the place where Ji Yu’s manifestation was.

For the humans, this was a terrible situation. However, for Ji Yu, this was a rare period for peaceful meditation.

Although Ji Yu’s meditation during this period was not enhanced by photosynthesis, it still reaped its benefits.

Although an increase in vitality of around 0.15 points per day wasn’t very significant to Ji Yu’s manifestation, one couldn’t forget about the effects of Ji Yu’s [Domain Radiation] and [Guiding Resonance] characteristics.

In just two weeks, the rainforest around Ji Yu had undergone a tremendous change.

The 10 small oak trees which were originally only 20 meters tall had grown to be more than 40 meters under the influence of guiding resonance and domain radiation.

At the same time, due to Ji Yu’s domain radiation, the different surrounding trees in the rainforest had each grown about 5 to 10 meters.

In short, there were no trees shorter than 30 meters around Ji Yu. At the same time, due to the influence of the domain radiation which was stronger nearer to the center,

within three kilometers of Ji Yu, a rarely seen dome-shaped mountain range was formed by the connected tree crowns of different trees.

Green leaves formed the surface. From afar, apart from Ji Yu’s 300 meter tall oak tree, the entire natural landscape looked majestic.

Apart from the changes to the trees in the rainforest, the birds that gathered in the rainforest also underwent a tremendous change.

There were close to a thousand birds gathered in this sea of trees.

Originally, the number could have been multiplied by several times, but at some point, the birds that first gathered around the oak tree began to ally with one another to expel other foreign birds.

These birds that had joined together were extremely intelligent, and most of them had undergone tremendous changes.

The first difference was their body sizes.

Many of these birds have more than doubled in size in the past two weeks.

The birds that underwent this growth were the small birds.

These birds were originally only the size of a seven or eight-year-old child’s fist, and looked like sparrows.

However, they were now the size of pigeons. Furthermore, their beaks became as sharp as an eagle’s beaks and their claws as sharp as spears. All the feathers on their bodies had turned into a natural green color.

They only needed to hide in the leaves of the sea of trees to camouflage themselves and when they attacked, it would be deadly.

And because of this, even when some larger sized carnivorous birds flew over from outside, they would all be chased out.

Not to mention, other than these small birds that made up nearly 90% of the avian population, 10% was made up by large birds and four majestic eagles.

These majestic eagles had already regarded the sea of trees created by Ji Yu’s manifestation as their own kingdom.

They were perched high above as they led all other mutated birds.

The eagles did not prey on the lower echelon birds that had also been buffed by the oak tree. Instead, from time to time, they would lead them to patrol the perimeter of the sea of trees, and sometimes, dive down to the sea of trees to hunt the insects that had also begun to mutate.

And it was precisely because of these birds’ insect-hunting behavior that Ji Yu’s manifestation was spared the trouble of being attacked by swarms of insects.

However, the mutation of birds was only one of the biggest changes that had happened under the influence of Ji Yu’s oak tree manifestation.

Changes also happened to the animals living in the rainforest.

Most of these animals were snakes, but the population of snakes gradually decreased due to the hunting and threat of the four eagles.

As a result, the birds became one of the true owners of the area around the oak tree.

And one of the other owners of the sacred land, was without exception, Simon’s tribespeople.

Due to their devotion and Adam’s love for them, all of them had become physically strong.

In just two weeks, the strongest person among them could punch a hole through a tree trunk without harming himself.

With just this strength, as long as these people walked out of this place, they would definitely make the outside world tremble in admiration and fear.

From this, one could see how terrifyingly powerful Ji Yu’s second level of oak tree manifestation was.

Thus, while Ji Yu was stunned, it was followed with a trace of joy and worry.

Joy because if the power of the oak tree manifestation was utilized properly, Ji Yu would be able to do a lot of things, especially with regards to the problem of the Purple Moon’s contamination.

On the other hand, he was worried that too much change would trigger more radical behavior from countries towards the oak tree manifestation.

As a result, Ji Yu specifically ordered Adam to send down a divine revelation, ordering these tribesmen to not easily reveal their extraordinary strength.