At last, Yue Liuyi curled obediently into Dixue’s arms, and LittleSnow’s anger ebbed like steam fading off a hot kettle.

“Heh, heh. Little Moon worked hard today. Rest in big sis’s arms for a bit.”

“Mm…”

Warmth wrapped her like a quilt beside LittleSnow, yet Yue Liuyi’s chest stayed tight, a string drawn too hard in a winter wind.

“Huh? What’s on your mind, Little Moon?”

“Mm… that mechanical tree. I’ve never heard of something like that beneath Linluo City.”

No doubt about it—the massive mechanical tree wasn’t the World Tree, yet it brushed the same roots. Otherwise Yue Liuyi wouldn’t recoil on instinct, dizzy as the day she met Dawn Sky.

“A mechanical tree, huh…”

Dixue paused, thought like frost settling, then said, “As far as I know, the starfield around Dreamwood Star has no silicon-based life. So that tree must be man-made.”

“Huh? Silicon-based life…”

“Yeah. Most life in the cosmos is carbon-based. But a few worlds bloom as mechanical civilizations, silicon-born. On those worlds, the World Tree is mechanical.”

“Wow! That’s a thing? Do they have a World Tree Maiden too on their worlds?”

Faced with the unknown, Yue Liuyi’s curiosity lit up, fireflies rising at dusk.

“Mm… I don’t know the details. The elders said when a mechanical civilization came to talk with the Night Clan, their delegation was all self-aware robots.”

“Wow! Then the mechanical tree’s design might be tied to that civilization, right?”

“Maybe their core tech was borrowed from a silicon-based civilization. Oh—didn’t Little Moon get Sis Kiki’s card? It should hold the relevant data.”

“Ah! I almost forgot!”

Yue Liuyi fished quickly in her pocket and drew out the card Sis Kiki had given her, quick as a sparrow pecking grain.

The pale-blue card looked clean and crisp, like winter sky. Just like the intel Dongfang Chen once got from Gong Linxun, it was a magic card packed with layered information.

“LittleSnow, should I activate it now? It’s from Sis Kiki…”

“It’s fine. Sis Kiki’s treated Little Moon so well—she’s probably a good person.”

“Mm.”

She fed a thread of mana, a spring trickle, and the magic card trembled. Stored images unfurled like mist from a river.

Turns out—

Dreamwood Star’s ecology had long hovered on collapse, a cliff edge hidden by morning fog.

Decades back, the planet crossed an irreversible tipping point. Human pollution blew past what nature could cleanse, like a flood breaching a dyke.

Put simply, the environment would only worsen. Nature’s self-healing lay riddled with wounds, a forest full of scars. Even if all humans left, green wouldn’t return.

Some chose to give up, some to flee, and some—like stubborn pines in snow—chose to endure.

Thirty years ago, they gathered and founded the Dreamwood Alliance, launching a plan as long as a winter night.

They called it the Tree of Enlightenment. It would take decades, a slow river. Its core was simple: Dreamwood Star had no World Tree, and no World Tree Maiden—at this, Yue Liuyi’s heart lurched, like a swallow startled from eaves—so the Alliance vowed to build a mechanical tree with equal function through science.

On that artificial tree, they’d mount the newest environmental monitors, the newest air purifiers, the newest water filters, and magic devices to bend weather like reeds in wind.

What if the capitalists kept polluting?

Then they’d stop them by force, a thunderclap to break a rotten branch.

To keep vandals off the planet, the Alliance planned a guard for the mechanical tree—and those Mechanical Mantises were its first hatchlings.

The project blazed like a forge. With the Doom Cult destroyed, seized assets flowed like a river into the Tree of Enlightenment.

They chose the site with care. Not some far-off wasteland, but the great cavern under Linluo City, a hollow like a sleeping whale.

The cavern offered space for the tree to grow, and shelter to dodge acid rain and lightning’s harassment, a cave mouth turned from storm.

More crucial still, none could forget that girl—the one who gave herself for the planet in that cavern, the last World Tree Maiden.

“Huh—?!”

Shock punched through Yue Liuyi’s chest, her mana fraying like threads in a sudden gale.

The images on the ceiling thinned like dew in sun, and quietly faded away.