My Retirement as a Tree Spirit Has Gone Up in Smoke

I’m a thousand-year-old tree spirit, high in status, and all I want after retiring is to laze around in the mountains.

Who knew that the “windfall from the sky” I casually caught that day would turn out to be the new Demon King?

The Demon King clings to my trunk, tears in his eyes. “Ancestor, the demon clan is doomed! You have to come back and take charge!”

I silently shake off a shower of leaves and fling him into a mud pit. “No way. Whoever wants to be a wage slave can do it themselves.”

That is, until I see a string of fluffy little cubs following the new Demon King...

“What did you do to these cubs?!” I roar.

The Demon King hugs my roots and cries even louder. “It wasn’t us... It was the demons next door! They stole our spirit vein, and the little ones can barely survive!”

I look down at the fuzzy bundles rubbing against my roots, and my branches begin to sway though there’s no wind.

Fine, I can laze around, but the cubs have to be cared for.

The demon clan, huh? They stole our spirit vein, huh?... Looks like it’s time to remind the neighbors what it was like to live in fear of the “Ancestor of the Demon Realm.”