A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

Chapter 557: A Fatal Price to Pay: More Than Half of Druid Lifespan Gone Up in Smoke

The luminous threads did not give up.

They gathered and moved again, winding themselves around Aksai, patient and tireless. They caught him, tied him, and for a heartbeat it seemed they would hold.

But once more his phantom figure shifted, and the bonds broke apart, sending the threads scattering into the darkness.

Again and again, the same cycle played out—threads weaving, binding, breaking, starting over.

Aksai’s mind felt numb as he felt the strange pull of it all. The sensation was unlike Qi, unlike Spirit, unlike Aether. It was deeper, older, and harder to define.

“These…” His voice trembled as he muttered into the void. “These are Threads of Fate?”

The Astral Third Eye at his brow opened wider, its iris rotating slowly like a wheel of light. It seemed to focus, straining to see more clearly, to peer deeper into the endless web that flickered in the dark.

The threads around his phantom flared suddenly, glowing so brightly that the whole void seemed to ripple. For a fleeting instant, Aksai thought he saw countless more threads stretching away into infinity—crossing, tangling, breaking, and mending in an endless web.

He felt as if he had glimpsed the fates of countless lives, and in the next moment that feeling vanished as if it had never existed.

The vision blurred again. His phantom wavered, the bindings loosened, and the cycle resumed.

His lips pressed into a thin line as his heart thudded against his chest. The Threads of Fate were real. They touched him, bound him, and yet could not fully hold him.

Aksai didn’t know how long he had been watching the luminous threads. It was as if he was under some kind of spell that had placed him in a mysterious state. It felt like being stuck in a dream—knowing full well that it was a dream, yet unable to do anything but play the role the dream forced upon him.

But after some unknown span of time, he began to feel uncomfortable. It was as if someone were trying to suffocate him with a pillow over his face while he was still playing his part in the dream. That sharp discomfort was like a wake-up call.

“Haaaaaah!”

Aksai’s eyes flew open, and for a moment he couldn’t tell where he was. His chest heaved as though he had just broken the surface of a deep river. His throat burned, and he coughed hard, trying to draw in air that seemed too thin. His body shivered uncontrollably, drenched in cold sweat.

He leaned forward, one hand pressed against the floor to steady himself, the other clutching at his chest. Each breath came ragged, heavy, almost painful. It was as if he had been submerged under water for far too long and had only now broken through the surface.

Slowly, his breathing calmed, though his heart still pounded against his ribs. The hall returned around him—the stone floor, the dim glow of Essence Equation formations etched on the walls. But none of it felt the same. His body felt drained, weaker, as though something precious had been pulled from the very roots of his being.

“What… what just happened?” he muttered under his breath, voice rough.

He pressed his fingers against his temples, massaging them, trying to ease the sharp ache that throbbed behind his skull. His head felt heavy, weighed down by the fragments of the vision he had just witnessed—the luminous threads, the phantom, the endless void. They refused to fade even though he was no longer inside that strange state.

His hand moved almost instinctively to the spot between his eyebrows. The skin there was slick with sweat, but there was no longer any sign of the vertical eye that had burned open before. It had disappeared completely, leaving nothing behind but a faint soreness, as though it had never existed at all.

He swallowed, his throat dry, and summoned his Neural Link Fabric with a thought. The spectral grid unfolded before his eyes, its translucent glow hovering in the air. Familiar runes and numbers floated across the screen, displaying the details of his condition.

At first, his tired eyes skimmed over the familiar lines without much attention. But then, one number caught his gaze.

His body stiffened.

“Impossible…”

Where once the glowing line had proudly shown his lifespan—1212 years—it now displayed only 400. The digits pulsed faintly as the Neural Link Fabric highlighted the sudden change.

His breath hitched. His fingers curled into fists. His mind reeled with disbelief.

Something had stolen more than half of his remaining years.

He stared at the numbers, his chest tightening. Even the clone’s soul fragment felt strained, dimmer, as though it too had been wounded by the strange vision. The connection between body and soul had not spared either half of him.

His lips trembled as he whispered again, “What… What just happened to me?”

For the first time in a long while, Aksai felt truly mortal. He sat still, his breath ragged, his forehead damp with cold sweat.

Once again the realization hit him.

His lifespan—once a vast ocean of more than a thousand years—had been reduced to nothing but a shallow lake. Four hundred years. That was all that remained.

His lips tightened. “It was the Threads of Fate,” he whispered, his voice low and heavy. “Just looking at them… just daring to peer into them… it zapped more than half my lifespan away.”

He rubbed his temples, the weight of the truth sinking deeper into his heart.

“If… if I was a regular Foundation Establishment level Spirit cultivator, I would have died by now. Burned out without even realizing it.” His shoulders slumped, and a faint, bitter laugh escaped him.

“Hehe. It was only because I’m a druid, blessed with a long lifespan, that I managed to crawl back alive from that… state.”

The Neural Link Fabric pulsed faintly, feeding him information that only made his mood darker. He had not been lost for minutes, nor for hours. He had been drifting in that dreamlike void for more than a week.

What had felt like a handful of breaths in meditation had consumed days of his real time, draining him steadily and quietly.

Aksai’s gaze shifted to the manual of the Fortune Telling Arts, still floating in the air before him. The ancient pages glimmered faintly, as if mocking him for his choice. His voice trembled with frustration.

“Haa. No wonder this technique isn’t popular in the Dadangar Subcontinent. Who in their right mind would practice a cultivation method that steals lifespan from its user? Cultivation is supposed to prolong life, not cut it short.”

He let out a long sigh, his expression complicated. His eyes drifted toward his real body, seated across from him. The clone’s eyes softened as he stared at himself. His main body looked intact, but pale, drained.

The strong glow of vitality he usually carried as a druid was dimmer now, thinner, like a flame after rain. He could feel it in his bones—the life essence had dipped sharply, as though centuries had been carved away in mere days.

“It… it was a good thing I decided to test this art through the clone,” he murmured, shaking his head slowly. “If I had tried to bear this with my main body, the side effects would have been even worse. I might not have survived at all.”

Aksai clenched his fists, frustration simmering beneath his calm surface. Even with his long years ahead, he could not ignore the ache of loss.

To a druid, lifespan was more than just survival—it was the wellspring of their power, the foundation of their connection to nature and its endless cycles.

And now, more than half of it had been stolen away in an instant. Even if he could recover his abruptly lost lifespan using his druid powers, it would take a lot of time and resources.

“It…. it’s time for some damage control,” he whispered to himself.

He raised his hand and traced a set of strange symbols in the air. The air rippled as if the fabric of space itself had been tugged.

From beneath the ground, something stirred. With a sound like tearing fabric, a thick black-green vine pushed upward, coiling as if alive. Its surface was rough, covered with thorn-like ridges that pulsed faintly, almost like veins. This was the vine of the Demon Tree, the one Aksai had been raising in secret within the Enchanted Everwood Farm.

Using his control over the divine artifact that bound it, Aksai overlapped the spatial fabric once more, pulling the vine fully into his chamber. The twisting length swayed, as though sensing its master’s weakness. Then, as if preprogrammed, it stretched forward with precise aim and latched itself onto the spot just above his tailbone.

Aksai clenched his jaw as he felt the first sting of contact. A faint shiver ran through him as the vine burrowed in place, anchoring itself. Then the flow began. Warm, vibrant life essence surged into him, spreading through his body like spring water pouring into cracked soil.

His pale complexion flushed with a faint glow of health. The heaviness in his chest lightened, his heartbeat steadied, and his eyes regained some of their clarity.