Volume One: The Scroll of New Rain Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Greatest Traveler

The half-tree giant’s body was covered in pale green blood, making him appear even more terrifying and grotesque. He strode with heavy steps across the fractured earth, charging left and right again and again, only to be forced back each time, like a desperate beast cornered by hunters.

The gods hunting him truly considered themselves hunters. They spread out, forming a loose circle, repeatedly herding the half-tree giant back whenever he tried to break through. They left more and more wounds on his body, waiting for the day when their prey’s blood would run dry, tightening the encirclement step by step.

Though the half-tree giant’s speed had slowed greatly from the beginning, it was still far beyond that of the assembled celestial soldiers and gods. His movements were so strange and unique that they chose this cautious strategy.

By now, it had been three quarters of an hour since this fragment of the world had fallen to the mortal realm. The small world was now connected to the human world, and a fissure leading to it had appeared, but under the laws of the mortal world, the rift was rapidly shrinking and vanishing.

Standing in the giant’s palm, Ye Mingke looked through the fissure and saw a vibrant blue expanse of water, so different from the death and darkness of this little world. It was just as described in the records of the Book of Nature—the sea, the sea he’d never had a chance to see, the sea he might never reach.

A thunderous boom.

The half-tree giant charged at the swiftly vanishing rift, but crashed into a net woven of celestial cauldrons, flying swords, and divine bells, rebounding and tumbling across the earth, carving a deep furrow in the soil. Yet he still protected Ye Mingke, cradled safely in his hand.

The giant, battered and bruised, barely paused before scrambling up again, dodging another volley of magical weapons and charging once more at the rift. Ye Mingke could see his body was already covered in a latticework of scars, so deep it seemed he might collapse and shatter at any moment. But he did not fall. Again and again, he threw himself forward, trying to break free.

Ye Mingke, without realizing it, was weeping. Too many had died today. The weight of his grief was almost unbearable. He could not endure the thought of anyone else dying for him.

“Stop!” he shouted from the giant’s palm, calling out loudly to this strange and ugly giant. “Leave me! Go yourself! They only want me. Don’t let us both die. Go!”

The half-tree giant, running at full speed, lowered his head to look at Ye Mingke. The crack on his face, like a smile, widened.

It twitched slightly, and a hoarse, muffled voice emerged. “It’s all right, Leaf.”

Ye Mingke froze. The voice was unfamiliar, yet the tone, the cadence, was one he knew so well. It was like an old friend from long ago.

“It’s all right, Leaf. Didn’t I tell you before?”

The running giant lifted his head, gazing at the rift about to vanish and at the many gods encircling them. From the raised crack on his face, Ye Mingke suddenly read pride and disdain.

Pride in himself. Contempt for his foes.

“I am the greatest in the world—”

The giant abruptly stopped, like a meteor changing course midflight, and rushed in the opposite direction from the rift.

Caught off guard, the celestial soldiers and gods hurried to readjust the encirclement, not wanting their quarry to escape after so much effort. But just as most of them had moved away from the rift for a brief moment, the giant, blazing with ghostly blue flames, doubled back against all expectation, still at full speed, racing for the rift that was almost closed.

All this happened in the time it took to say a sentence. As he turned back, Ye Mingke heard him laugh and shout three final words.

“Traveler!”

A thunderous roar exploded in Ye Mingke’s mind and across the shattered wilderness.

Just after leaving the rift, the gods in front and those coming from behind unleashed a barrage of dazzling spells at the giant.

For a brief instant, Ye Mingke saw nothing but the blinding brilliance of magic. The world was utterly silent, as if even sound itself had been shattered.

Amid the silent light, a distant voice from memory suddenly echoed in Ye Mingke’s ear.

“Who are you?”

It was a question he had once asked a strange, legless figure as a child.

The strange man laughed and hugged him, his long beard tickling Ye Mingke’s cheek.

“Me?” the man said, lifting his proud head. “I am the greatest traveler in the world!”

But how could the world’s greatest traveler have no legs? How could he spend his entire life in a hollow of a tree?

The blue flames on the half-tree giant’s body flared crimson. His face, split by a single crack, broke into raucous laughter as he charged into the storm of magic.

He moved faster and faster, becoming a streak of thunder, a flash of lightning—no, even faster than lightning or thunder!

He ran atop the beams of magic, so swift that none of the spells had time to detonate before he’d already passed. He ran atop flying swords as if they were nothing but wooden stakes.

He laughed as he sped past rows of astonished gods and celestial soldiers. None could match his speed.

They thought themselves hunters, never realizing that their prey had always possessed the means to escape, and had been luring them step by step into a trap.

With a hiss, the half-tree giant became a flash of light and slipped through the rift at the very last instant before it closed, trapping the gods and celestial soldiers in the crumbling little world.

He had endured every attack and injury only to give the boy in his palm a chance to reach the other world in peace, with nothing to fear.

As the blinding white faded from Ye Mingke’s eyes, he found himself gazing at endless blue sea beneath the giant’s feet.

The half-tree giant did not slow, but carried Ye Mingke forward, striding across the surface of the sea.

“Did we make it out?” Ye Mingke asked, unable to contain his astonished delight.

The giant looked down at him, the crack on his face still shaped in a smile, and nodded.

The blood-red flames on his body did not go out, but continued to burn. He was much slower now, but still as swift as wind and thunder.

“Are you Dabai?” Ye Mingke shouted in the giant’s palm.

When Auntie Dragon had told him a friend would come to fetch him, with Qiao Qiao and Tao Yao gone from the town, his first thought had been Dabai. Yet when he saw the half-tree giant, he couldn’t believe this charging giant could be the legless Dabai—until he heard that familiar phrase.

The giant gave no answer, only pressed forward.

Suddenly, fear overwhelmed Ye Mingke’s joy at escaping. He noticed the giant’s face rapidly blackening in the flames and cried out anxiously, “Stop! Please stop! Don’t run anymore!”

But the giant did not answer. His pace grew slower, the flames on him fiercer. His featureless face stared steadfastly into the fog-bound sea ahead, taking step after heavy step, sending water flying with each stride.

A thunderous crash.

The giant could go no further and collapsed with a roar, sending water spraying in all directions.

In the end, he had not managed to bring the boy out of the foggy sea.

He struggled to lift Ye Mingke in his hand, moving a little farther through the water, and gently set him down on a small island.

The giant lowered his faceless, burning head, as if gazing at the boy who was weeping for him.

He stretched out a massive finger and stroked Ye Mingke’s head, just as he had done on those many nights, long ago, when they slept together in a tree hollow.

A great blaze shot up to the sky, and the giant who had told him countless stories, the one who had carried him through danger, became still.

The giant gazed at him, and in the roaring flames, he disintegrated into countless drifting ashes.

Tears streaming down his face, Ye Mingke reached out, trying to hold on to something, but even the ashes melted away into nothingness under the daylight.

Many years ago, there once was a lonely boy with no friends, whose only companions were the stories he found in books. He loved those tales dearly, but with no one to share them with, he would recite the beautiful stories from his books each day to a great banyan tree.

It was a lonely story for the boy, but for the banyan tree, it was the end of his own loneliness.

The boy had never imagined that the banyan tree truly listened and remembered every story he told, and fell in love with the beauty of the world, vowing to become a great traveler.

But he was only a tree. He had no legs. How could he ever see the world’s beauty?

Day by day, his longing became heavier, especially after the boy left home and never came to tell him stories again.

One day, a woodcutter came with an axe to chop him down. The tree paid no attention to the axe, only looked with desperate longing at the woodcutter’s free legs.

He killed the woodcutter and took those legs, walking out of the mountains.

Later, he killed more and stronger people, seizing better legs each time.

He moved faster and faster, traveled to more and more places, saw more and more sights.

In time, he became the world’s greatest traveler, able to go anywhere and see anything with ease.

But he was not happy. He found the boy again and told him he had been deceived—there was no beauty in the world as described in the books.

The boy was no longer a boy but a gentle, jade-like man. The man smiled and told him there were many places he had yet to see—why insist the world held no beauty?

He told the man he was already the greatest traveler, that there was no place he hadn’t been.

But the man only shook his head, disagreed, and promised one day he would take him to see true beauty.

He believed the man and became one of his closest friends.

He followed the man for many years, walked countless roads, and found he truly did see many beautiful sights he had never known.

In the end, he learned that the road to scenery was not about running fast, but about traveling with heart.

Later, he returned to rest beneath a great banyan tree, becoming an old storyteller with no legs, his only company the books and the child of that boy who had once read to him. Yet each day, he still saw the world’s most beautiful sights.

He had truly become the greatest traveler in the world.

(The End of the New Rain Volume, Volume Two: The Human World)