The tree, in its ancient, silent wisdom, had tried to poison him with the past. It sought to break his mind with the ghosts of a life he never knew, to drown his will in a sea of forgotten sorrow. It was a sound strategy. Any other man, any product of civilization, would have shattered. They would have been paralyzed by the questions, crippled by the sudden, soul-crushing grief of a lost family and a burning home.
But Lian was not any other man. He was a creature of the forest, forged in the crucible of absolute solitude. His soul had no room for the complexities of grief, nostalgia, or regret. For years, his mind had been a fortress with a single, towering citadel at its center: a pure, uncomplicated, and profound hatred for the world of men. It was the bedrock of his existence, the first and last law of his being.
And when the tree's psychic assault hammered against the gates of his mind, it did not find a fragile spirit to break. It found that citadel.
The images of the burning manor, the woman's terrified face, the sound of his own infantile screams—they were alien. They were foreign invaders trying to claim land that had long been scorched and salted. He couldn't connect with the sorrow; he could only feel the rage of a trespass. These "memories" were not his. They were weaknesses. They were the baggage of that soft, contemptible world he had abandoned.
The tree tried to make him feel loss. Instead, it made him feel fury.
"LIES!" The word was not spoken, but roared from the depths of his soul, a psychic shockwave of pure defiance. It was a guttural, animalistic sound, the cry of a beast whose territory had been violated.
He took the tree's gift of pain—the spectral images, the phantom screams—and threw it into the furnace of his hatred. He did not try to understand them or deny them. He simply used them as fuel. The sorrow of the dying woman became the kindling for his rage. The fear of the crying child became the air that fanned its flames.
In that moment, something inside him shifted. His rage, once a diffuse, burning ocean, began to cool, compress, and sharpen. It was no longer just a chaotic emotion. It focused into a singular, razor-sharp point. It was no longer just rage. It was Will. It was a pure, unblemished, and absolute Killing Intent. It was the predator's single-minded focus on the throat of its prey, stripped of all other feeling. In that instant, he swore a silent oath that his intent was purer than that of a dragon seeking to tear apart its foe, for his was not born of greed or malice, but from the most fundamental principle of his existence: annihilate the threat.
This icy, focused intent radiated from him in a tangible wave. The oppressive spiritual pressure of the tree's Formation wavered, the very air around him growing sharp and thin, as if the edges of reality had been honed. The roots lashing at his body hesitated for a fraction of a second, as if they suddenly understood they were not striking mere flesh, but the physical manifestation of an indomitable will.
That hesitation cost them dearly.
He was no longer defending. He was attacking.
His mind cleared of the phantom ghosts, his will sharpened into a psychic blade, he caught one of the lashing roots, a serpent of wood and earth as thick as his thigh. He did not try to bend or break it. With a roar that shook the clearing, he channeled the full, explosive power of his physical form—the years of lifting mountains and shattering cliffs—into a single, brutal motion. He tore it from the ground.
For the first time, the tree felt true pain. The hum in the clearing transformed from a threatening thrum into a high-pitched, psychic shriek, the sound of a thousand souls crying out in agony at once. The root went limp in his hands, a lifeless husk.
One. Two. Ten. Twenty. He lost count. He became a whirlwind of destruction, a force of nature unleashed. He caught every root that came at him, ripping, tearing, and shattering them, his movements no longer just strong, but imbued with a terrifying purpose. His body was a demolition machine, and his will was its relentless operator.
The tree understood its mistake. The "poison" it had sent into his mind had become his antidote. The weakness it thought it had found had been forged into his strongest weapon.
The mental assault ceased abruptly. The images vanished. The screams died. All that remained was his own cold, pure Killing Intent and the heavy silence of the clearing. The remaining roots, as if seared by acid, retreated rapidly back into the earth. The oppressive weight of the Formation vanished.
Silence.
At his feet lay a tangled mass of splintered, lifeless roots. And he stood in the center of it all, breathing heavily, unbroken. His body might be bruised, but his will had been tempered in a fire hotter than any forge and had come out harder, sharper, and more terrifying than ever before.
He had won this battle. He had proven that his mind and will were even tougher than the body he had so brutally forged.
Now, his prize waited, its primary defense broken. It was time to return to his work.