Compared to how special Rya and Ifrit were, what Huoxuan cared about far more was the medicinal herbs Arthur had promised her.
"Alright, I've met your family," Huoxuan said, barely hiding her impatience. "Can I start now?"
Arthur saw the eagerness in her eyes and nodded. "Go ahead."
Once Huoxuan left, Arthur chatted for a while with Rya and Ifrit before throwing himself into the reconstruction of the Zen Garden.
He relocated the former blessed land's treasure forest to the area beside the herb fields, merging them into a single Spirit Plant Zone.
As for the ordinary trees—cypresses and the like—he integrated them into the forest region, where the magical creatures he'd brought back from the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts lived, alongside various mundane animals and plants.
It was a perfect opportunity to expand their living space.
The fusion of the blessed land into the Zen Garden brought another benefit as well—
Arthur could now finally resolve the issue of the Golden Crow egg.
He moved the Immortal Trees along with the entire formation to an open area, then carefully placed the Golden Crow egg back into the position where life force naturally converged.
After that, he casually accelerated the time flow around it, allowing the egg's depleted vitality to recover more quickly.
Arthur had already seen the Eastern phoenixes. Now, he found himself genuinely curious about what a Three-Legged Golden Crow would look like once it hatched.
After settling the matter of the Golden Crow egg and the Immortal Trees, Arthur turned his attention to the Fusang Tree.
This towering twin-trunked giant, standing over a thousand meters tall, was indeed a legendary tree—but in practice, its sole purpose was to serve as a perch for the Three-Legged Golden Crows.
As symbols of the sun in Eastern mythology, Golden Crows carried terrifying heat. Only the Fusang Tree could withstand them.
In other words, the Fusang Tree's defining trait was its extreme heat resistance.
Beyond that?
It bore no fruit, produced nothing of material value, and Arthur couldn't think of a single other use for it.
So he made a decision.
He would let the Erdtree absorb it.
Once absorbed, the Erdtree would inherit its traits and condense new droplets—something Arthur could actually make use of.
And as a bonus, the Erdtree itself would grow even taller.
With that thought, Arthur extracted the very essence of the Fusang Tree and poured it directly into the Erdtree.
The towering Fusang Tree collapsed into fine dust, scattering into the wind.
Meanwhile, the Erdtree responded instantly.
After absorbing the Fusang Tree's essence, it surged upward, branches spreading, leaves flourishing, its presence growing ever more majestic.
The growth didn't stop until the Erdtree reached a height of five hundred meters.
Naturally, the Erdtree existed on a higher level than the Fusang Tree—it couldn't convert the full height directly.
Even so, reaching this height far exceeded Arthur's expectations.
He couldn't help but suspect that the Fusang Tree had possessed properties he hadn't fully understood.
Closing his eyes, Arthur carefully sensed the Erdtree's changes.
The first thing he noticed was that it had become far sturdier.
Its resistance to flames had also skyrocketed.
If the Erdtree of the Lands Between could be burned by fire, then Arthur's Erdtree could sway gently within raging flames without losing so much as a single leaf.
More than that—
Arthur discovered that the Zen Garden's total area had expanded by nearly fifty percent.
And this was after absorbing the blessed land.
Strangely enough, however, the maximum time-acceleration limit hadn't increased at all, leaving Arthur puzzled.
After some thought, he arrived at a possibility.
The expansion of the Zen Garden wasn't directly caused by the Erdtree growing taller—but by the Erdtree inheriting the traits of the Fusang Tree.
In Eastern mythology, the Fusang Divine Tree wasn't merely the resting place of the Golden Crows—it also served as a bridge between the mortal world and the heavens.
If those myths held any truth, then a tree capable of linking realms would naturally possess spatial attributes.
That explained why this naturally formed blessed land was so much larger than the one owned by the Mount Shu sect.
The Fusang Tree had acted as a stabilizer—supporting and expanding space itself.
Testing this theory was simple.
Every time the Erdtree absorbed a special power, it condensed a corresponding droplet.
Arthur waved his hand, summoning the newly formed droplet, and had the system analyze it.
[Fusang Trait Droplet]
[Greatly increases resistance to flames and enhances the user's affinity with space]
Just as Arthur had suspected.
The Fusang Tree indeed carried spatial properties—and the boost to spatial affinity was the clearest proof.
Arthur took out a golden chalice, collected the droplet, and drank it in one gulp.
To his surprise, the effect worked even on him.
Afterward, he tested Apparition.
He immediately noticed that the casting speed had increased, and the magical consumption had dropped significantly.
This was the first time since becoming a godlike being that a droplet had still been effective on him.
As expected of the Fusang Divine Tree of Eastern mythology—it truly lived up to its name.
With the Fusang Tree dealt with, Arthur adjusted the overall terrain of the Zen Garden once more.
As for the Phoenix clan's territory, he deliberately left it untouched.
He had promised not to restrict the phoenixes—and simply having them reside within his Zen Garden was already more than enough for him.
At that moment, Huangxi returned.
"Did you manage to calm your people?" Arthur asked.
"Yes," she nodded. "They're settled now."
At first, the clan had been dissatisfied about the blessed land being absorbed.
But once Huangxi explained Arthur's attitude toward the Phoenix clan, they accepted it without further resistance.
Arthur noticed that Huangxi looked hesitant, as if she wanted to say something.
Curious, he asked, "Huangxi, is there something else?"
"Well… could I move my nest onto your tree—eh?! Why is it so tall now?!"
She stared in shock.
When she'd left earlier, the Erdtree had only been a few dozen meters tall. Now it towered hundreds of meters into the sky.
"This tree is special," Arthur explained. "It can grow by absorbing certain essences. I refined the Fusang Tree and fed it to the Erdtree—that's why it grew."
"What?! Then what about the Golden Crow egg?" Huangxi asked anxiously.
"It wasn't swallowed too, was it?!"
She had promised the Golden Crow clan's leader that she would safeguard his child.
"Relax. The egg's over there."
Arthur pointed toward the Golden Crow egg, now placed separately with the Immortal Trees.
"I moved the egg, the Immortal Trees, and the entire formation together."
Seeing that the egg was intact, Huangxi finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Arthur then returned to her earlier question.
"You can build a nest on the Erdtree if you want—but I wouldn't recommend living there permanently.
"The area around the Erdtree runs at the maximum time acceleration. Spend a few hundred days there, and only a handful of days will pass outside.
"Your phoenixes may not care about time, but there's no reason to waste it like that."
Hearing this, Huangxi abandoned the idea of relocating her main nest.
Instead, she decided to build a secondary nest on the Erdtree.
After phoenixes undergo nirvana, they experience a period of weakness. Using the time difference here to shorten that phase would be extremely beneficial.
After explaining her plan to Arthur, Huangxi hurried off to begin construction.
Over the next two days, Arthur carefully inspected every change within the Zen Garden.
He constantly fine-tuned terrain, climates, and local environments, striving to make the entire space look as natural and harmonious as possible.
Huangxi was busy building her secondary nest.
After seeing Arthur's modern villa inside the Zen Garden, she'd gained countless new design ideas.
Huoxuan buried herself in Arthur's herb gardens, several of his botanical manuals in hand. She compared unfamiliar foreign herbs against the texts, already contemplating what kinds of pills she could refine from them.
Hermione and Ranni didn't have anywhere specific they wanted to go, so the two studied Daoist knowledge together in the villa.
Hermione wanted to master the fundamentals as soon as possible so she could begin learning Mount Shu's mystical techniques.
Leaving such a vast pool of knowledge untouched was simply unacceptable to her.
As for Ranni, she refused to lose to Hermione—and was genuinely intrigued by a system so different from magic.
By this point, Arthur's journey to the East had come to a perfect end.
It was now August 24th.
With only one week left before the new school term, it was time to head home.
After finishing the final adjustments to the Zen Garden, Arthur bade farewell to Huoxuan.
Huangxi would remain within the Zen Garden, so the only real parting was with Huoxuan.
"Why don't I come to Britain with you?" Huoxuan said reluctantly.
These two months with Arthur had been more exciting than decades spent at Mount Shu.
She wasn't ready for the journey to end.
Arthur shrugged.
"I don't mind—as long as you're not afraid of Sect Master Dao Xuan chasing you all the way to Britain to drag you back."
Given how treasured Huoxuan was at Mount Shu, Arthur had no doubt the elders would mobilize the entire sect.
If it came to that, a clash between Mount Shu and the British Ministry of Magic would probably be the least serious outcome.
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