SWISH!

A wafer-thin Blade of Lightning, a hundred meters long and forged from pure, highly compressed Power of Thunder and Lightning, flashed from its claw tip and vanished in an instant!

The Blade of Lightning looked so small, so insignificant.

Compared to Astra’s colossal, thousand-meter frame, it was barely noticeable.

It made no sound, nor did it kick up any wind.

It simply, silently, sliced through the emerald Energy Shield jointly sustained by over a dozen Domain Level tree spirits.

Pop.

A faint sound, like a bubble bursting, rang out.

That Energy Shield was supposedly indestructible—strong enough to withstand the full-force attacks of several Domain Level Peak experts. Yet before the seemingly insignificant Blade of Lightning, it was as fragile as a sheet of paper.

The blade passed through it with utter ease.

A smooth, straight gash was cut cleanly down the middle of the Shield.

After slicing through the Shield, the Blade of Lightning’s speed did not diminish in the slightest.

It continued downward, slicing through the thick trunk of the ten-thousand-year-old ancient tree—a trunk so massive it would take hundreds of people holding hands to encircle it.

For a moment, time seemed to freeze.

The ten-thousand-year-old ancient tree still stood there silently.

The emerald Shield still enveloped it.

It was as if nothing had happened at all.

The tree spirit leader and the other tree spirits all stared blankly at Astra in the sky, their eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.

However.

The next second.

CRACK...

A nearly inaudible, crisp cracking sound came from the trunk of the ten-thousand-year-old ancient tree.

Immediately after, a long, thin, almost invisible crack appeared down the center of the trunk.

That crack rapidly widened.

RUMBLE!

Before the horrified and despairing eyes of all the tree spirits, the massive, sky-blotting upper half of the thousand-meter-tall Holy Tree—the tree that had sustained their entire race for ten thousand years—began to slowly tilt.

Then, with devastating power, it crashed heavily to one side!

The cut was as smooth as a mirror!

One strike!

Just a single strike!

This ancient tree, which had stood for over ten thousand years and was as hard as metal, had been nonchalantly sliced in two by the terrifying blue Giant Dragon!

And in the very center of the severed cross-section of the trunk, a fist-sized, emerald-green crystal, shimmering with a treasured glow, was exposed to the air.

A vast and pure wave of life and Natural Energy burst forth from the crystal!

The Heart of the Ancient Tree!

Astra extended its massive dragon claw, ignoring the completely overwhelmed tree spirits below.

Its claw passed precisely through the gash in the Shield. With a gentle scoop, it plucked the shimmering Heart of the Ancient Tree into its grasp.

Then, it slowly retracted its claw.

The Treasure was secured.

At that very instant, the Catastrophe Level aura in the western sky, which had only been calmly revealing its presence, suddenly surged!

An overwhelming rage emanated from the aura!

Clearly, Astra’s act of forcefully felling the tree and seizing the Treasure right under its master’s nose had thoroughly enraged the master of the valley.

Astra could feel a vast, irresistible will locking onto it!

The entity was about to strike!