Chapter 283: Chapter 229: The Legend of the Holy Sanctuary
Ling Su offered a gentle smile. "If it’s inconvenient to say, then just forget it. It’s only a vague legend, after all."
"Sister Su, you’ve misunderstood me." Song Mingyue’s expression softened, and she spoke with a touch of embarrassment. "It’s not that I’m trying to be mysterious, it’s just... sigh... This is supposed to be a secret of the major hidden families. But never mind. We’re all friends here."
As she spoke, her charming eyes swept over Ling Xiao before she continued, "Everyone knows that tens of thousands of years ago, during the Ancient Era, there weren’t just Martial Artists; there were also powerful Mages. Legend has it that in those days, gods could frequently descend upon the Canglan Continent and communicate with mortals at the peak of power. These people would receive divine edicts and carry out tasks for the gods! Of course, they also received handsome rewards! Later, to compete for the chance to grow closer to the gods, these peak experts often fought one another. At first, their battles weren’t a major issue. They mostly tried to spare ordinary people, seeking out desolate places like this one to do battle.
But as time went on, tempers flared among the experts, and they threw caution to the wind. The flames of war... gradually shifted from these peak experts and fell upon the common people. The great nations of the continent joined the fray one after another, and war spread to every corner of the Canglan Continent! Even the non-human races could not escape it.
Then, a fierce battle erupted among the gods of the various races! The destructive power of a war between gods was unimaginable! Space collapsed, planes fell into chaos, and the situation ultimately became irreversible. The entire Canglan Continent... crumbled!
The peak experts among humanity realized that if the fighting continued, not just all of humanity, but every living being on the Canglan Continent, would be driven to extinction!
The war of the gods had already brought the Canglan Continent to the brink of collapse, and after several hundred years of human warfare on top of that, almost all the Great Mages and peak Martial Artists were dead.
So, humanity decided on a ceasefire and proposed to re-divide the territories with the other races! Everyone agreed to this proposal, including Tiger and the Beast Race. But the gods, having unleashed their True Flame, were beyond compromise. They continued to incite the races that worshiped them to fight one another, each god wanting their followers to become the sole hegemon of the continent...
And so, the fighting began again, leading to another war that lasted for hundreds of years. By this point, human civilization was almost completely depleted. In the Ancient Era, the gods were humanity’s highest faith! In that age, no one dared to say no to a god!"
Song Mingyue gently recounted this ancient legend. Seeing Ling Su’s shocked expression and Ling Xiao’s contemplative one, she continued, "After the war had dragged on for more than a thousand years, almost all the races had lost their experts. The hatred between them, however, had grown so deep it was impossible to untangle! In the end, humanity, through its numbers and strength, secured its position as the dominant power of the Canglan Continent. The other races, including the Dragon Race, the Elf Race, and the Beast Race... and so on, all retreated to their own territories and no longer entered human lands.
At the same time, a stunningly brilliant figure appeared among humanity! He called himself Saint Domain. In just a few short decades, he cultivated the Martial Dao to its peak, and then, in thirty years, he unified the entire Canglan Continent! That is to say, our present-day Eastern Continent. He standardized the currency, writing system, weights and measures, and so on. To this day, even though the continent has fractured into many different countries, the currency and writing system remain universal—all to commemorate the Saint Domain Emperor!
The most incredible thing the Saint Domain Emperor ever did was blasphemy."
As Song Mingyue said that word, her voice trembled slightly. "Now... do you understand why I was being so cautious?"
Ling Su shrugged, a look of disbelief on her face. She sighed softly. "It sounds a lot like a myth. Still, in all the ancient texts I’ve read, I’ve never seen any mention of the term ’Saint Domain’."
"That’s right. After the Saint Domain Emperor unified the continent, he was furious that the land had been shattered to pieces—so much so that a single landmass was split into eastern and western continents, separated by a vast ocean! While ships can occasionally make the crossing, there’s very little contact between the two. All we know is that the people over there are a little different from us in appearance, skin color, and so on. Heh. The Saint Domain Emperor ordered all his people—the entire Eastern Continent at the time—to destroy the Divine Temples and forbade anyone from worshiping the gods! He said that without human belief, the gods would soon fade into oblivion. That was an incredibly blasphemous thing to say back then! But the Emperor’s personal prestige was at its peak. The common people were terrified by his decree, but they obeyed. A few hundred years later, not a single Divine Temple remained anywhere on the continent! I’ve heard the only one that wasn’t destroyed was a Divine Temple buried under the Vendia Great Snow Mountain during the great war of the gods!"
"So what’s the deal with the Holy Sanctuary, then?" As a principled archaeologist, Ling Su wasn’t inclined to accept Song Mingyue’s story as fact. Ling Xiao, however, was different. Hailing from another world, he knew for a fact that souls exist after death. ’Ordinary people are reincarnated through the Underworld, their next life as a human or an animal determined by their individual fate. And Cultivators, if they undergo a normal soul release, can even retain their original memories to be reborn and resume their Cultivation!’
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