Chapter 1 Is It Really Just a Matter of Placing It?

Looking at the faintly glowing green sphere resting quietly on the crystal throne, Vivian couldn't help but ask after waiting for three seconds.

"...According to the manual, that's all there is to it," Hao Ren scratched his head. "It even said it's idiot-proof, one-key installation, specially upgraded with an automatic mode to cater to inexperienced new users. As long as you set the mission objective in advance, this thing can judge the environment, seize the opportunity, and then take root and sprout, or something like that..."

"The more I listen, the more it sounds like someone selling fake medicine..." Lily's ears twitched involuntarily. "Would a proper World Tree brag about itself like this?"

Nangong Wuyue casually summoned a water ball, tossing it up and down. "Landlord, how about I water it a little?"

Nangong Sanba stroked his chin. "Maybe we should dig a hole under the throne and bury it?"

While these few were talking, another ten seconds passed – that World Tree seed was still sitting quietly on the throne. Forget sprouting, at this rate, it might even grow mold...

Even Hao Ren was starting to feel a little uneasy at this point. With an embarrassed expression, he prepared to step forward. "Maybe it's not positioned correctly. Wait a minute… eh!?"

He had barely taken half a step forward when he saw the sphere suddenly tremble in place. And just when he thought he was mistaken, the sphere trembled again. This time it was definitely not an illusion, as it jumped up a few centimeters on the chair!

Immediately afterwards, he heard a "ding-dong" sound from inside the sphere – it’s hard to describe, but it was basically the sound of plugging a USB drive into a computer.

Everyone: "..."

"Did it just realize it's supposed to be doing something?" Izhaks muttered under his breath. "Ah, looks like something's popping out."

As the ding-dong sound faded, more and more green lines appeared on the surface of the green sphere. Countless mysterious and complex patterns appeared and disappeared between those lines, gradually spreading to the throne and extending outwards along the crystal clusters in the hall. Above the sphere, a holographic image suddenly appeared, with the version number and welcome message written in light green font, and a "Happy New Year Edition" mark below – but Hao Ren didn't have time to see the text clearly before it all disappeared, replaced by a progress bar that was slowly moving forward.

Vivian couldn't help muttering, "Why does this thing's startup look like this…"

"It's starting up!" Hao Ren grabbed her hand and started walking out, while calling out to the others, "Everyone, let's go outside for a bit. We'll come back when the system is fully ready – get back here! Curiosity killed the cat, you know?"

A large group of people rushed out of the hall again and returned to the great plain along the crystal slope. Just as they reached the safe zone, the growth rate of the World Tree reached its peak – an unbelievable giant tree was unfolding on the crystal peak!

This process could only be described as "unfolding": the crystal peak where the Throne of the Final resting place stood was entirely enveloped in a green light curtain. The light curtain hung down from the sky in layers, like curtains, and between the constantly moving light curtains, countless huge branches extended rapidly at a crazy speed of several kilometers per second, forming a canopy that could cover the entire sky in the blink of an eye. The enormous energy released when the World Tree took root even dispelled the perpetual charging clouds above the planet. The clouds, several kilometers thick, retreated and dissipated rapidly, forming a circle of clear sky around the canopy. For the first time, the brilliant stars clearly appeared in the night sky of this planet.

And Hao Ren could see much more than the others: he narrowed his eyes, expanding his perception to a wider dimension. The canopy of the World Tree disappeared from his sight, replaced by a light cluster that was constantly expanding and contracting, composed of countless thin lines. Countless trillions of fibrous threads extended from the edge of the light cluster, stretching from the planet's surface to the boundless starry sky, forming another canopy, a huge canopy that was spectacular even in the universe!

This canopy started from the Throne of the Final resting place on Nexus Star, with the thin lines on the canopy connecting the stars of the universe. Many other thin lines disappeared into the vast space. Hao Ren felt that the entire Dream Realm seemed to tremble the moment those thin lines appeared: this universe was connected to a heart, its breath merging with the World Tree at this moment, never to be separated again – unless the system was reinstalled.

Hao Ren blinked again, and the high-dimensional observation disappeared. The world in his eyes returned to its original state. The expansion process of the World Tree had ended. A… plant that could no longer be called a tree was covering the great plain.

Its trunk was the original crystal peak, with countless huge vines extending from under the canopy, wrapping around the crystal peak to form a structure resembling aerial roots. The original crystal material of the mountain peak was faintly visible in the gaps of the trunk; and its canopy reached the sky, so that even though they were located in a corner of the plain far from the crystal mountain, they could only see the sky covered by the canopy; and around the canopy was the only clear sky on this planet, with starlight dancing on the edges of the branches, as if adding a sparkling halo to the World Tree.

The great plain under the canopy did not fall into darkness; on the contrary, it became the brightest place in the night: the leaves of the World Tree were luminous, although only with a slight halo, but under such a huge volume, the entire plain was now shrouded in a layer of mysterious light.

"Woooow…" Lily's voice trailed off, but she didn't know what to specifically exclaim about: although she had seen a lot in the process of running around with Hao Ren, and had even seen behemoths on the planetary level like the First Born, the process of watching a World Tree grow in front of her eyes was completely incomparable to those things, so she could only "wooow" for a long time, and finally squeezed out a sentence: "It grows so fast!"

In that instant, all of the knowledge that the school bully dog studied for Peking University four times as well as her foundation for contributions to the reporting was reduced to ash.

The reactions of the others were actually not much better than Lily's, except for Salaman, who seemed much calmer: although the Creation Goddess abandoned her studies halfway, she had still been involved in many large projects. People like Salaman, who had followed the Creation Goddess, had more or less seen similar big scenes. A World Tree – although its technological content was very high – was not enough to surprise the old giant too much.

What really surprised him was only the resonance-like reaction of the World Tree to the entire universe after it unfolded: as a demigod, he could also sense some things on a higher dimensional level.

Hao Ren had already expected the reactions of his companions. He thought to himself, this is because you haven't seen the projection of this "tree" on the cosmic level. Wouldn't that kind of information structure, which is even larger than a cluster of galaxies, make everyone's jaws drop to the ground?

"This is… grown?" Vivian looked at Hao Ren. "What then?"

"Then we can return to the Throne of the Final resting place hall," Hao Ren smiled. "That place has been stabilized again. From now on, it will be the World Tree's main control room – of course, because this thing basically runs automatically, there's not much to operate in the control room."

Lily immediately became excited. "Let's go see it! Let's go see it!"

The crystal mountain peak was at the center of this great change, so it was inevitably greatly affected. Within the trunk of the World Tree, some new spaces were generated, and even some places that defied the laws of physics appeared within the original dense crystal mountain peak: some temple-like buildings, some gardens and forests located in the trunk, and even a piece of land and sky that appeared out of thin air. These were all "imaginary number zones" generated by the World Tree in the process of calculation. But the Throne of the Final resting place hall, which was the core of all this, did not change much.

The crystal cave was still as simple and spacious as ever. The four walls were still composed of rocks and crystal clusters, but the large crystal in the center was now completely wrapped in vines, becoming a giant vine connecting to the top of the cave, and the original crystal throne had been completely sealed in the center of the vine and was completely invisible.

Around the giant vine in the center, a large number of mysterious symbols and texts were floating. As Hao Ren approached, the symbols and texts quickly reorganized into a recognizable window screen. Hao Ren immediately saw a few lines of prompts in the corner:

"This startup took thirty-six minutes and fifteen seconds, defeating 66.6% of World Trees, but considering that the newly installed World Tree has an extremely fast startup speed due to the lack of any mods and plugins, it is recommended that you never take this startup speed seriously. When you can't resist the urge to install mods, come and discuss the startup speed with this system. This system comes with perfect crack and one-key restore, which can automatically read the most recent correct image when the universe is out of order without any startup settings. Please, please, please do not touch the registry yourself. If you are of the Goddess of Life lineage, then it is best not to even touch the control panel – Chief Technical Consultant of the Creation Temple, Iztis the Poison Wing."

Hao Ren carefully thought for a few seconds and decided to pretend he didn't see these things.

After the welcome screen disappeared, the World Tree only displayed an extremely simple initial interface: because all of its systems had been preset to automatic mode by Corvus 12345, there was not much that the administrator needed to do manually. Hao Ren stood in front of those light screens, focused his mind slightly, and the light screens immediately reacted. A prompt window popped up on the initial interface: "Detected preset user access - user identity verification, stored - welcome preset system administrator, your login has been authorized and will be recorded."

"Now, everyone who is ready to explore the dark realm with me in the first batch, stand here," Hao Ren took a breath and looked back at his companions. "Prepare to bind to the respawn point."

Everyone stood still in order, and then the World Tree system began to store a snapshot of each person's information under the control of the preset program. Rings of light descended from the sky, enveloping them, while Salaman, who did not need to bind information, stood outside the circle. Looking at the scene in front of him, the Giant Legion Commander suddenly felt a sigh:

Are these people determined to die in there?