Only I am Venerable

Chapter 282: Chapter 280: Legends of the Primordial Era

Before Qin Li could even say a word, the old man composed of light and shadow lunged at him, fast as lightning. The glowing figure dove right into Qin Li’s body!

Qin Li felt a sudden chill and shivered involuntarily. It was rare for even Earth Level or Profound Level Martial Artists to have their bodies affected by the elements, let alone a Martial Artist like him who had long surpassed the Celestial Level. Yet at this moment, Qin Li felt as if he had lost all control over his body. His mind... was filled with horror. ’How did I take over this body in the first place?!’ He suddenly thought of a terrifying possibility.

’Could this old man be trying to fight me for control of this body and resurrect himself?’

Before Qin Li could finish his wild speculation, he felt countless foreign things suddenly flood his mind. Yet, these things seemed to merge seamlessly with his own memories, without any feeling of strangeness at all.

’How strange!’

Qin Li had no time to marvel at the sensation before the old man of light and shadow vanished without a trace.

As if he had never appeared in the first place.

As Qin Li carefully sifted through the new information in his mind, his usually placid face gradually began to show a rare expression of gravity.

’The Golden Palace... is actually a relic from the Primordial Era!’

This news was truly earth-shattering.

Whether the Primordial Era had ever existed was a debate that had raged on the Celestial Essence Continent for many years. Many insisted that the Primordial Era was pure fiction, their strongest evidence being the lack of any complete historical texts that could prove the existence of that period more than one hundred thousand years ago!

Although many had discovered some incredibly old fragments bearing a script similar to, yet completely different from, the writings of the Ancient Era—like the ancient map fragment in Qin Li’s possession, which was just one small piece of a whole.

But there was no proof that these items weren’t simply creations of people from the Ancient Era. Thus, this debate had actually been raging since the Ancient Era itself, and even now, neither side would yield.

This was, in fact, because the Primordial Era was simply too ancient! According to those who staunchly supported its existence, the Primordial Era spanned from one million years ago to one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. During this period of eight hundred and fifty thousand years, the primordial people had created an incomparably glorious and brilliant civilization!

They believed that the civilization that once existed was in no way inferior to the current era—in fact, it might have been many times stronger!

Naturally, this claim was scoffed at by those who denied the Primordial Era’s existence. They thought the believers had something wrong with their heads, that they didn’t even understand the basic principle that evolution trends toward greater glory. How could the past possibly be better than the present?

However, the theory of those who denied the Primordial Era also had a fatal flaw: the undisputed existence of the Ancient Era, which had once been a glorious and brilliant civilization!

It was an age of great intellectual ferment, where all kinds of skills and abilities flourished!

For instance, most of the Storage Rings that had been passed down to the present day came from the Ancient Era, the masterworks of those revered as Space Great Mages!

A small number were also created by Martial Artists who had reached a certain level of power and possessed an extremely profound understanding of spatial principles, but these were exceedingly rare.

As for how the Ancient Era had suddenly fallen into decline, Qin Li had never been able to find out from any texts or word of mouth. All he knew was that the once incomparably glorious Ancient Era seemed to have withered overnight.

In truth, everyone knew this was the most unlikely scenario. Without natural disasters or man-made calamities, how could the glorious Ancient Civilization possibly decline?

But not even the families that had existed since the Ancient Era, such as the Seven Great Superpowers of Profound Island, could explain it!

But now, from the so-called legacy of the old man formed from light and shadow, Qin Li had learned... all the secrets from the Primordial Times to the present day!

How could this not leave him utterly astonished?

The Primordial Era had truly existed. Now *that* was an era that could truly be called glorious and brilliant!

A hundred flowers bloomed and a hundred schools of thought contended. Fighting Qi, Martial Skill, Magic, alchemy, Alchemy... all sorts of professions, both familiar and unfamiliar to Qin Li, had all existed in the Primordial Era and had been developed to their absolute peak!

This Golden Palace, for example, was a product from the time when the art of Alchemy reached its zenith. Even in the Primordial Era, the Golden Palace would have had a considerable shocking effect if revealed! It was an undisputed, priceless treasure!

Previously, Qin Li hadn’t noticed that although the entire Golden Palace was made of pure gold, it was also a small city where people could live!

The city’s entire drainage system was exceptionally complete, though a bit extravagant—everything from the toilets to the sewer pipes was made of gold!

The Golden Palace represented the pinnacle of Alchemy in the Primordial Era!

That was why the old man of light and shadow had told Qin Li that countless people in the world coveted this treasure!

And that was because the number of people who knew the Primordial Era had existed was not small!

This old man’s surname was Huyan, and his given name was Bo. He was a legendary Alchemy Master from the Primordial Era! This Golden Palace was a world-shaking treasure that he had exhausted his life’s efforts to create!

Afterward, relying on the Golden Palace, this Alchemy Master achieved enlightenment through alchemy, passed the Thunder Tribulation, and became an Earth Immortal, gaining a lifespan of twelve thousand years!

Hu Yanbo was a figure who lived in the middle to late period of the Primordial Era. A lifespan of twelve thousand years seemed incredibly long, but compared to the great river of history, it was merely a drop in the ocean, a tiny ripple.

However, for a Great Power who had reached such a realm, even death was not so absolute. When his mortal lifespan was exhausted and he had failed to break through to become a True God, he merged his soul with the Golden Palace. As long as the Golden Palace was not destroyed, he... would gain eternal life... in another sense!

This was likely what it meant to be a god or an immortal!

However, by the end of the Primordial Era, many of the supreme Great Powers on the Celestial Essence Continent had already mastered the ability to traverse space. They began to leave this vast, boundless continent in droves to explore the infinite cosmos!

And it was precisely because of this that they attracted the even more powerful... Outer Celestial Demons!

Yes, Outer Celestial Demon was Hu Yanbo’s name for those supreme experts. Because these powerful beings were not native to the Celestial Essence Continent at all; they had found their way here by following those who had left the continent!

And so, a war of unprecedented scale and duration began!

Any one of those Outer Celestial Demons possessed the ability to cross the cosmos in their physical bodies; they were powerful to an unimaginable degree!

And these Mysterious Lands were formed precisely because of that heaven-shaking war!

All the experts on the Celestial Essence Continent united. While resisting the frenzied attacks from the experts of the Outer Domain, tens of thousands of Space Great Mages—who excelled in the Spatial Domain and whose power had long surpassed the Thunder Tribulation—joined forces to lay down an unimaginably world-shaking Grand Array across the Celestial Essence Continent!

When this Array was completed, more than half of the tens of thousands of Primordial Great Powers involved had been worked to death! After the Grand Array was activated, countless isolated, independent spaces appeared all over the Celestial Essence Continent!

To find and destroy these independent spaces one by one would not only consume immense energy but also result in massive casualties. The destruction of any single independent space would trigger a colossal, world-shaking explosion that not even a Great Power at the Earth Immortal realm who had passed the Thunder Tribulation could withstand!

Although the Outer Celestial Demons were individually formidable, they couldn’t withstand such destructive power either. Moreover, their numbers were not that large to begin with and they simply couldn’t afford such losses. To them, destroying those independent spaces one by one was a meaningless endeavor.

But by performing this unrepeatable, irreversible act, those Space Great Mages were trying to leave behind a flicker of hope for this wondrous continent!

Although being isolated was tantamount to being sealed off, like the Peach Blossom Spring that Qin Li knew of—completely cut off from the outside world and their path of development—these places were also perfectly preserved. Many civilizations were able to be passed down as a result!

However, the Mysterious Lands that appeared back then through this method were completely random and uncontrollable. Thus, many Mysterious Lands were uninhabited wastelands. In others, the sealed populations dwindled and eventually died out. In fact, most of the inhabited Mysterious Lands came to be during the Ancient Era, after people discovered their existence. Countless families frantically searched for them, and some, having found the legendary Ancient Map left behind from that bygone era, entered the Spiritual Qi-rich Mysterious Lands and moved their entire clans...

After that great war, the Primordial Civilization went from glory to decline, and finally, to ruin.

And the world-shaking feat of those tens of thousands of Space Great Mages was also buried in the dust of history. Only a tiny handful of people knew of this event, and even fewer were able to pass down the knowledge!

The great war of the Primordial Era lasted for tens of thousands of years. In the end, the Outer Celestial Demons were not completely wiped out, and likewise, very few of the supreme Great Powers of the Celestial Essence Continent remained. Many Outer Celestial Demons did not leave the continent; after tens of thousands of years of fighting, they chose to integrate into this world and began their own lineages!

This was because the appearance of the Outer Celestial Demons was virtually identical to that of ordinary humans! The only thing that could prove the identity of an Outer Celestial Demon’s descendant was that when they fought, their pupils would turn purple!

It was precisely because of their Purple Eyes that they came to be called Outer Celestial Demons!

In truth, that war of ages had no winner! Whether it was the Great Powers from the Outer Domain or the native experts of the Celestial Essence Continent, all suffered devastating losses.

After the complete decline of the Primordial Era, a gap of tens of thousands of years with no powerful experts appeared before the start of the Ancient Era.

Because the era was so remote, as time passed, countless people as early as the Ancient Era refused to believe that so many mythical experts had existed in the Primordial Era. In later times, they simply refused to acknowledge the existence of the Primordial Era at all.