The living room had fallen dark again. “Uncle?” Le Le called nervously.

“Uncle’s here! Don’t be afraid, Le Le,” Jing Lin replied immediately.

After fumbling around for a while, he found the fallen candle. Even his hands trembled as he struck a match.

With the light restored, Jing Lin finally saw what had happened. 

The thing that had knocked him over was one of the walnut trees in the backyard.

The walnut trees that had once grown quietly along the wall had exploded with growth overnight. Their dense branches spread across almost the entire backyard canopy. Countless limbs intertwined and stretched in every direction. Some had smashed through the storage room windows. Others had burst through the kitchen windows. Still more extended toward the house itself. If the back door had not blocked them, the living room would likely have been filled with walnut branches.

The noise had awakened Jing Lin, and he had assumed it was a thief. Never had he imagined something like this. The weeds in the backyard had previously grown wildly because of the formation’s influence. Now the walnut trees were doing the same without any array at all. The only explanation he could think of was spiritual qi.

The problem was that he had already set up a Spirit-Locking Array around the house. The array not only prevented spiritual qi from leaking out but also blocked outside spiritual qi from entering. Somehow, something had caused the formation to fail.

Shielding the candle flame with his hand, he carefully squeezed through the tangled branches and inspected both the storage room and the kitchen. The kitchen had escaped relatively unharmed. Aside from the shattered window, nothing else was damaged.

The storage room was another matter entirely. The walnut branches had not only broken the windows but had also ripped up numerous roof tiles. Some tiles had fallen directly into the chicken coop, killing three chicks and injuring two others.

Ever since Jing Lin had brought the chicks home, they had been fed on weeds enhanced by the array. They had always been healthy and energetic. Now three were dead, and he did not even know whether the two injured ones would survive. He pulled up one of the few remaining clumps of enhanced weeds and fed it to the injured chicks while soothing the frightened flock. He set the dead chicks aside, thinking that once morning came, they could at least provide some meat for Le Le. 

The walnut trees in Jing Lin’s yard had never been grafted. After seven or eight years, they had never borne fruit, and their trunks had never been particularly thick. He had once assumed that if they ever grew too large for the small yard, he would simply transplant a few elsewhere.

Instead, they had become towering giants overnight.

Their trunks had grown so massive that he could not have wrapped his arms around them. The trees crowded against one another, competing for space, and many branches had snapped under the strain.

The sight gave Jing Lin a headache. Just cleaning up all these branches tomorrow would take a tremendous amount of time.