Sorrow and Anger

A lost civilization, a forgotten god, and a young man who might be the descendant of the last king.

No matter how you look at it, this combination did not seem like the setup for a happy treasure-hunting story.

Chen Guan, who had eavesdropped on everything, stopped in his tracks at this moment.

"There seems to be something ahead."

His flat tone, however, made everyone immediately freeze and tighten their grips on their respective weapons.

The darkness ahead was slightly thinner than before. Wherever the faint blue light of Yin Chen's shield reached, the scenery of the passage changed.

The originally narrow stone path suddenly opened up here, forming a spacious circular hall.

The walls of the hall lost their rough rocky texture, presenting exceptionally smooth, polished black stone surfaces covered with massive relief murals.

Su Yuehe's breathing quickened in an instant. She walked briskly to the wall, practically pressing her entire body against the stone.

The others followed and were deeply shocked by the sight before them.

The style of these murals was primitive yet grandiose. Although the erosion of long years had blurred many details, the majestic momentum contained within them could still be felt.

The mural on the left depicted scenes of inheritance.

A crowned figure handed a scepter to the next person, who was also wearing a crown.

This continued for dozens of generations starting from the first king. The face of every king was clearly distinguishable, exuding an aura of majesty and holiness.

"This is the inheritance of the bloodline..."

An Changqing sighed softly while looking at the mural.

"This seems to be a temple. Every generation of kings looks exceptionally similar. Is this to emphasize the legitimacy of the bloodline?"

The mural on the right depicted the daily life and beliefs of this civilization.

Countless citizens, led by the king, knelt and offered sacrifices to an incomparably gigantic figure.

That figure sat upright high in the heavens, surrounded by clouds and mist that obscured its specific appearance. Even through the mural, one could viscerally feel the oppressive might of a being looking down upon all living things.

"That entity..."

Su Yuehe's fingers gently brushed over the supreme figure on the mural, her voice trembling slightly.

"This is the god they worshipped, the forgotten god."

Hong Yuan leaned in and stared at it for a long time before twitching her lips in a pout.

"After all that, we still can't see what it looks like. Weren't these ancient people a bit too abstract with their art?"

Even Baal, the demon god who was an enemy to human society, had a concrete image.

"There is a hidden mystery."

Yin Chen's tone changed as he raised his finger to point at the head of the god on the mural.

"Look closely."

Everyone looked in the direction he pointed, and their breathing grew heavy.

In every mural depicting the god, whether it was receiving worship or bringing down miracles, its face had been violently destroyed.

Deep, crisscrossing gouges covered the area where the god's face should have been. Endless hatred oozed from those frantic scratch marks.

It was as if someone, countless years ago, harboring monstrous rage, had personally and completely erased the god they worshipped from history.

It had nothing to do with the changing of eras; the people of that time genuinely wanted to destroy this god from the bottom of their hearts.

"This is..."

Long Ao looked at those gouges, his fingers unconsciously tightening around his weapon.

"The believers destroyed their own god with their own hands?"

"How is this possible?"

An Changqing could not understand the scene before him at all, because even demon gods had no shortage of followers.

"This has gone beyond simple forgetting; it is absolute destruction."

"What on earth happened to make a civilization do such a thing?"

Su Yuehe stared blankly at the ruined murals.

In the entire team, only Chen Guan's reaction was different.

When his gaze fell upon those damaged murals, a sharp pain shot through his head.

That sense of familiarity became incredibly clear at this moment. The vague tugging faded, transforming into something originating from the deepest depths of his soul...

Sorrow and anger.

"Chen Guan, what's wrong with you?"

An Changqing was the first to notice the anomaly and took a large stride forward. Just as he reached out his hand to support the other's shoulder, his fingertips were forcefully blocked in mid-air by an invisible barrier.

This resistance showed no trace of spiritual energy fluctuation. It was entirely built from a torrent of intertwined sorrow and anger, forming an invisible wall of air that stretched between the two of them.

Merely getting close, An Changqing felt his own emotions being influenced by that barrier. He quickly retracted his hand and cast aside the inexplicable feelings.

Chen Guan showed no reaction to the calls from the outside. He forcefully propped himself against the rough stone wall with one hand while tightly pressing his temple with the other.

His bangs, soaked in cold sweat, clung messily to his bloodless skin.

His entire back was trembling uncontrollably. Such a loss of control had never occurred to him, a person who always presented himself as calm and steady.

"Hey, don't scare us!"

Hong Yuan casually hoisted her giant axe onto her shoulder and strode over. She looked with a face full of anxiety at her teammate who was suddenly fraught with issues, then turned her head to look at the scratched stone wall beside them.

"How did he just lose his soul out of nowhere? Is there something weird about these broken paintings?"

"Don't move!"

Afraid that Hong Yuan would act recklessly, Su Yuehe and Yin Chen shouted to stop her at the exact same time.

Su Yuehe quickly circled to the other side of Chen Guan. While carefully observing her teammate's terrible condition, she turned to explain the reason to the people beside her.

"This is not an attack from the murals. Chen Guan's current state is more like he's resonating with the information carried by these stone carvings."

Yin Chen nodded in solemn agreement. Holding his short staff that emitted a soft blue light, he stayed outside a safe distance, completely lacking any intention to approach rashly.

"Student Su Yuehe is right. This thing is a kind of echo of history."

"The residual emotions on these murals are intense to the extreme. Chen Guan's bloodline just happens to be the key to receiving them. He is now passively experiencing what happened back then all over again."

"His personal perception of these myths must also be different from ordinary people. Under a combination of various coincidences, this situation occurred."

"Experiencing it all over again?"

Long Ao, who had remained silent on the periphery, furrowed his brows. His gaze flicked back and forth between the agonizingly struggling Chen Guan and the mottled murals.

"Could it be that he is experiencing the process of believers betraying their own god?"

This sentence caused an indescribable terror to bloom in the depths of everyone's hearts.

They could not imagine what kind of massive despair and hatred would be required to support such a betrayal.

[Holy crap, that's too much information. Sure enough, no one is simple.]

[How come when other people return to the ruins of their own families, they get so many fortuitous encounters their hands go soft, but our Brother Guan just gets tragedy after tragedy.]

[Is there a possibility that Chen Guan's so-called bloodline of the king is actually from the king who took the lead in destroying the god?]

[Terrifying when you think about it. If that's the case, then these stone statue guards are welcoming the descendant of a traitor. Who exactly built this place?]

[Wait, does no one else think that Chen Guan is the last believer of a betrayed god? I sentence you all to go back and watch Opening the Coffin to See the God.]

[Then wouldn't Chen Guan be a ten-thousand-year-old monster? That's way too absurd.]