Who doesn’t have secrets?

Their parents get along well, right? But his father and mother also keep secrets from each other. His dad pretends to hand over his entire salary, yet secretly stashes quite a bit of pocket money with his younger sister.

Fa Muzhi didn’t mind Su Huanliu hiding things from him. In fact, upon learning he had secrets, he felt somewhat relieved.

After all, he had secrets of his own.

That day, during lunch, he presented Su Huanliu with a long, handcrafted chicken feeder. He declined his dinner invitation and headed straight home after work.

Dressed in his old school uniform, he fetched an axe from the woodshed, sharpened it with practiced ease, and carried it to the small courtyard beneath that tree.

This tree was truly immense—

He’d thought so the first time he stood beneath it twelve years ago.

Its rugged, weathered trunk shot straight toward the sky, its dense canopy spreading like an umbrella that completely obscured the courtyard’s sky.

Like a sword—that’s what eleven-year-old Fa Muzhi had thought in that moment.

Carefully holding the rickety wooden ladder his parents used to climb up, he didn’t take his eyes off them even as their figures vanished among the branches and leaves. He just stared straight up at the treetop, watching it like that for a long time.

Little sister Zhizhi was still young. After pretending to hold the ladder for a moment, she lost her grip when she saw that her parents had already left it. She squatted beneath the tree, playing with the grass, insects, and even a clump of mud beneath its branches—anything could hold her focused attention for a long while.

His younger brother, Fa Mulin, slightly older, refused to let go as long as his brother held on. In fact, seeing his brother stare upward, he mimicked the gaze. But soon his neck grew stiff and sore, and he couldn’t tell what his brother was looking at.

“Brother, what are you looking at?” Little Fa Mulin finally couldn’t resist and whispered to his elder sibling.

“The little lights on the tree. There are so many of them—are they fireflies?” his older brother replied, eyes fixed upward. Fa Muzhi, the tree’s branch, spoke to him.

Yes, those scattered points of light. At first, he hadn’t seen them. But as he kept staring at the tree, gazing for a long time, perhaps his eyes adjusted to that peculiar darkness. Suddenly, he saw one light after another appear on the tree, layer upon layer gradually emerging. They flickered on and off, like fruits growing on the tree, like flowers blooming at night, like fireflies, or like a starry sky.

The jet-black canopy was the night sky, and the points of light above were stars.

Twelve-year-old Fa Muzhi was mesmerized.

After gazing for a long time, he finally lowered his head to meet his second brother’s bewildered expression. Only then did he realize: his brother hadn’t seen those stars at all.

But when he looked up again, the tree was clearly covered in “starlight” once more…

A “starry sky” only he could see—he quickly confirmed this fact.

Then, when he found that rust-stained stone axe in the wood shed, he confirmed something else:

Because of the “school district housing,” their family scattered soon after moving here. During the long stretches when he lived alone in this house, he’d explore it idly after returning home.

It didn’t take long for his footsteps to lead him to the woodshed. After sweeping the cobweb and dust-filled space for ages, he first spotted the axe in a corner. As if compelled by some unseen force, he picked it up. Just as inexplicably, he dug out a grinding stone, buried in dust until it was almost unrecognizable. Without any guidance, he spent ages sharpening it. Finally, as if driven by some unseen force, he carried the axe into the courtyard and began to chop—

When he suddenly snapped out of this trance-like state, he was drenched in sweat. His everyday clothes were caked in dust, sweat, and wood shavings. The small courtyard was littered with branches and leaves. The sky had grown pitch black, and distant stars truly blanketed the night. The axe in his hand had grown dull once more, its blade caught in a snagged branch, impossible to pull free.

The night wind rustled the leaves around him, and Fa Muzhi, newly awakened from his deep dream, felt a coolness wash over him.

Earlier and more precisely than his younger brother’s inquiries into their family name, he knew in that moment the origin of his family—or perhaps their “mission”?

They were not the Lu Clan, born to nurture the sacred tree. They were simply the tree-cutters.

Fa, (伐)—the ‘cut’ of slaughter, the ‘cut’ of felling. And their target was singular: the very tree now standing in the courtyard.

In that instant, Fa Muzhi suddenly grasped its innate purpose.

He knew neither where this tree came from nor where it was destined to grow. His sole responsibility was to trim away every stray branch that crossed his path as it passed before him!

Indeed, perhaps because no member of the Fa clan had chopped here for too long, the tree’s branches now grew wildly, clearly about to cross the boundary.

And those points of light were the “boundary.”

If those branches were allowed to continue growing, they would inevitably connect to another realm. Whenever a realm was about to be pierced, points of light would appear on the tree.

Those were the “glowing points” he saw.

Not a single one could be spared—he didn’t know why, but the moment he picked up the axe, this thought arose naturally in his mind.

What a deeply ingrained lumberjack’s instinct!

From that day on, without telling anyone, Fa Muzhi began his own “lumberjack” career.

First, he targeted the most critical branches—those on the verge of piercing through to the other side. After clearing those, he moved on to the ones still a distance from the other realm. Once those were gone, he turned his attention to the young shoots that hadn’t fully grown yet, just beginning to sprout wildly.

The once wildly sprawling tree now stood neatly trimmed, like a perfectly rounded little flat-top.

He chopped branches on his way to work each morning and continued chopping them after returning home. He cut so many branches, yet there was one branch he never touched.

Which one could it be? Naturally, it was the one leading to their family’s school district homes across the realms, the one leading to his parents’ chicken farm.

In no time at all, he chopped down all the new, chaotic branches growing on the tree. After another shower of branches and leaves fell beneath the tree, he looked at the lone “sprout” left behind and felt that branch growing more and more defiant.

But so what? He still wouldn’t cut it down.

Perhaps these branches represented the seven emotions and six desires of humanity? The tree knew what human desires were. It grew its branches outward, drawing people closer to their desires, thus tempting them to leave its limbs untouched.

In any case, it succeeded.

Glancing once more at the insolent little branch, Fa Muzhi descended the tree, axe in hand.

He gathered the severed branches beneath the tree, bound them together, and swept the fallen leaves aside with a large broom. Scooping water from the cistern, he washed away the wood shavings and sweat from his body. Finally, he went indoors to find a hair dryer to dry himself off. Then he went to his parents’ room and found the long robe his father had left behind—his old clothes from the magical world—put them on, and immediately ran toward the tree.

It was still that lone sapling, still that branch growing with such audacity, still the path he took to work every day. Only this time—

Running along the branch, he spotted another realm and leaped!

But when he landed, he didn’t appear outside the window of the three-square-meter home in Central City. Instead…

A frozen wasteland?

Fa Muzhi materialized atop an icy mountain peak.

Yet beyond the endless snow-capped mountains ahead, a patch of snow-free terrain could be seen in a valley. A faint red figure was visible there, and behind it—though hidden from view—lay a small village he knew existed.

After a long gaze in that direction, Fa Muzhi crouched down and began probing beneath the snow. Soon, he felt a small, round, black object.

Sure enough, this was why his parents had returned so late and stayed away so long last time—this thing had fallen. Not only had it fallen, but its battery was dead.

After a quick inspection, Fa Muzhi deftly replaced the batteries in the little gadget. He then placed it back on a branch of the nearby tree. This time, to prevent it from falling again, he pulled out a roll of tape and secured it more firmly.

Having done all this, he adjusted the machine settings. After a moment, he glanced at his wristwatch: 3—2—1—

Suddenly, the silhouette of a golden dragon burst forth from the mirrored surface of the machine beside him!

Initially minuscule, it resembled nothing more than a thumb-sized dragon. Yet as it ascended, it rapidly grew larger and larger, transforming into an immense, colossal dragon. Fa Muzhi glanced at his wristwatch and silently counted down again: 3, 2, 1—

This time, no golden dragon emerged from the small orb beside him. Instead, a tiny red dot suddenly soared into the air from the distant mountain hollow.

Complete!

Confirming the player was reset and ready to release the footage at the set time, Fa Muzhi deftly climbed down from the tree. He then returned home beneath the tree via the teleportation point beneath the snow.

Not long after, his parents returned, weary and dusty, carrying large baskets and wearing tattered clothes.

Seeing their exhausted expressions, Fa Muzhi thought: Right, just using the golden dragon to lure the red dragon away won’t work anymore. There’s still a little red dragon in the red dragon’s nest~

But adult dragons love golden dragons—what do the young ones love?

So, at the dinner table, while chatting with his parents, Fa Muzhi subtly probed their preferences.

He planned to buy another holographic player from his sister, setting it to regularly play things the dragon cubs would enjoy. That way, his parents could return home more safely and conveniently.

Hmm, he could freely travel between his mother and sister’s locations via the tree at home—and actually his brother’s too. That was Fa Muzhi’s secret.

The kind he’d never told anyone.

Shhh—