Wancheng Bears No Fruit

[No humans] [Ensemble cast of plants and animals] [Slow-paced, imaginative premise] The world is a tree called Wan. There is no second tree, and no one knows what lies beyond Wan. There is no sun in the sky, only three sunbirds: Fang, Gui, and Hun. They take turns patrolling the heavens, and their molting marks the seasons. Wan bears fruit once every three thousand years. Whenever a sufficiently powerful wish arises, it grows a new branch. When the time comes to bear fruit, all the branches accumulated over three thousand years are taken back at once and nourished into a fruit. The truth is that Wan is not a tree, but an immensely vast, slow-moving animal that has grown its body into the shape of a tree. Bearing fruit is not death, but laying an egg. And the “other tree” beneath the dark soil is what hatched from the previous egg. Now it is Wan's turn. And the eight little things inside its body are debating whether to let it give birth.