Tree Cultivator (Story idea)

Chapter 1

    It was dark at first. Not a scary dark, or a creepy dark. Just a peaceful absence of light. It was like being not-awake, yet still awake. Darkness was my whole world. I was small, I knew that. In fact, in this soft, empty bed of mine, it was just about all I knew. Looking back on it later, I didn’t realise at the time just how nice such an existence was. I had no troubles. The bed I was in was nourishing enough for me by far. I knew not hunger nor thirst. I’m not sure if I drifted in and out of not-awake, or if I just daydreamed. Time passed moment by moment. Slowly I came aware that something was happening within me. I was growing larger ever so gradually. The bed surrounding me was ensuring it.
    For many, many moments I grew. My round body started to crack at the edges from my growth. The pressure within increased constantly, yet it filled my not with fear, but with excitement. It was in one specific moment of time that the pressure finally grew too much.
    With a powerful cracking noise, absorbed by my bed around me, the tip of my body broke open, and a small yellowish nub poked its way out. Like a dam had been broken, that little nub just kept on growing. It burrowed further and further into the bed with a steady speed and patience to never stop. It began to branch out as it grew, dozens of little nubs growing off of the central one. As it did so I could feel more nourishment reach me, and so I encouraged the growth, cheered it on as it went, worried as it hit hard bits of bed, and then sighed in relief as it found a path around.
    While this was happening, as it pushed one way, so too was I pushed the other. As my main body was pushed, I realised that the constant invisible pressure that had been a constant companion was decreasing. The bed became softer, almost looser. Something was going to happen soon. Something big was going to change. I could feel it. I just had to grow for a little longer and my whole world would change.
    But just as I was about to pass that threshold, a problem arose. The water that I had been partaking in for my whole life had steadily been vanishing as I drank it in. Now though, it was entirely gone. The once cool and pleasant bed was no longer such. It felt dry. Hard. It was a prison, preventing me from breaking through to a new world. I pushed and struggled but I could do nothing to change my situation. Without water to help me, I was powerless. I had to make a sacrifice, some part of me realised instinctively, if I wanted to push through this last little bit. Mustering all my will and desperation, I started to do just that. I ever so slowly started to pull vital water from the offshoot nubs that had take so long to grow. They instantly started to shrivel up. I knew that they were gone, I would not be able to fix them by simply returning the water. I funnelled that liquid life to my main body, forcing it to grow, making it bigger faster than was comfortable or safe. It was working! I could feel it. The bed above me was giving way! The all encompassing darkness was vanishing. Nothing became something. Light fell upon my body for the first time, and it was glorious.
    A section of the bed crumbled off of my ‘head’. I could finally see. Air brushed my tiny shoot. I could now appreciate just how massive the bed I had been in was. It stretched on forever and ever. I also appeared to be sharing my bed with others. An endless number of similar shoots spread out all directions around me. Each of them were many times my size, yet different. Where my body was more cylindrical, these bedmates had flat bodies.
    All this was a distraction though. I still had a problem, a rather major one. My area of bed was devoid of water, and I had already sacrificed much to breach the surface. Unless I was extremely lucky, I was still in danger. I sat there, waiting desperately for something to save me. Time passed by in agonising slowness. At some point I figured out that my desperate growth had actually helped me slightly. I had traded away a fair bit of mass in order to grow that last little bit, and no longer needed quite so much water.
    Soon the light disappeared and I was once again in darkness, though it was still much brighter than I was used to. The temperature also dropped. It wasn’t a cosy coolness anymore, but rather a harsh one. The kind that made me curl up upon myself again for warmth, wasting precious energy to do so. I was starting to despair when a thud startled me. I turned my attention once more to the outside world, but nothing had changed. Then another thud happened. And another. I had no idea what was happening. What was causing all these vibrations. My bed was constantly vibrating now. It wasn’t long before I was hit by the thing that was shaking my world. It hurt. I didn’t like being hurt, I decided.
    It didn’t end there though. I soon discovered the part of me hit by the thing-that-hurts was actually even colder now. Why had such punishment struck me? Had my sacrifice incurred the wrath of the not-bed? The thudding continued. Occasionally it would strike me again. Each thing-that-hurt disappeared into the bed once it struck it. I was so miserable that it took me awhile to realise that the bed was once again full of water. In fact, there was even more now than when I first gained conscious. It didn’t take a genius to figure things out. The thing-that-hurts and the life giving water were one and the same! Water came from the not-bed!
    No longer was I angry at the not-bed (though I still wished it would stop hitting me), but rather exalted it! It was the provider of life. Content that I could once again grow, my focus turned inwards. My yellow nubs started guzzling down the water, and my growth started once again. Those nubs grew and grew. In a two light and dark cycles they had grown so much as to be unrecognisable. They were now slightly thicker, but much longer, and spread in many directions. Speaking of the cycle, I had a new way of tracking time. Over the course of a large amount of moments, the life-provider would turn from light to dark to light again. It made telling how much time had passed much easier, since it seemed to be around about the same number of moments each time.
    Light and dark passed slowly. I had a new goal. I wanted to grow bigger. I wanted to grow until I was larger than my bedmates and no longer had to fear for lack of water.

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- MC is a tree. Starts as a sapling, slowly grows up. Details about breaking through into the light, occasionally seeing people fly overhead, being fed spiritual medicine by a young girl. Eventually an evil cultivator comes and destroys the village. Young girl is left dying on the trunk, while the tree itself is splintered and dying. With the last of its energy, tree enfuses into the girl (disappearing at the same time). Tree now is young girl, with her damaged soul protected inside its embrace. Sets out to grow stronger and give the girl a body once again. Only once they are immortal can they enter the soul into the river of reincarnation (as only then has the soul shown it is ‘worthy’ of it. Doing so will use up the trees chance to rebirth though). As she started as a tree, she has a powerful wood affinity (not the strongest, but still strong) and a tiny bit of lightning affinity from the girl.

- Cultivation system:
> Works by literally building the foundations of your cultivation. The cultivator takes in elemental Qi, condenses it into bricks, and then 'paves' the way to their future. They use those bricks to construct a city/palace/mansion etc within their soul, which leads to different types of strength. For instance a palace might leave a cultivator with powerful single moves, while a city gives them numerous weak ones etc. A large foundation means lots of energy, a small one means little. Within the very core of the foundation is a single Dao, which acts as the cement for the bricks, tying the foundation together. The stronger your knowledge and will of the Dao, the sturdier the foundations of your cultivation.
- Tree will have a slightly different cultivation. Instead of bricks, she will grow trees and other plant life within her Qi center.