Chen Guan completely ignored the comments rapidly scrolling across his retinas. At this moment, his mind was stuffed with countless fragmented images and noisy sounds, these messy pieces of information intertwining into a chaotic, clamorous land.
He felt as though he were standing beneath a sky engulfed in raging flames, watching helplessly as many kings with similar faces led thousands upon thousands of their subjects, kneeling in prayer with the utmost reverence toward the majestic figure above the clouds.
In the very next second, the grand scene before his eyes underwent an earth-shattering change.
Those whispering prayers completely transformed into shrill, furious roars, and the faces originally filled with devotion were all twisted by deep-seated hatred.
He clearly saw the last generation's king, his face full of absolute resolve, raise the golden scepter symbolizing royal authority and point it straight at the deity who had sheltered them for long ages.
The subsequent events did not show any specific scenes of slaughter. All that remained was a sense of humiliated deception originating from the depths of the soul, along with monstrous fury and endless sorrow born from being utterly abandoned.
"Betrayal."
Chen Guan squeezed these two words out of his throat with great difficulty.
"Betrayal?"
Su Yuehe sharply caught this sudden keyword. A light flashed in her eyes as if she had found a breakthrough, and she quickly leaned forward to ask loudly.
"Chen Guan, can you hear us? What exactly did you feel? Was it betrayal?"
"Who exactly betrayed whom?"
An Changqing immediately followed up with this core question. His fingers tightened around his sword hilt, constantly on guard against any threats that might dart out from the surrounding darkness.
Chen Guan slowly lifted his heavy head, his eyes churning with intense emotional fluctuations the others had never seen before.
He completely ignored the concerned gazes of his teammates beside him, merely letting his gaze rest for a long time on the deity's face on the stone wall, which was covered by countless scratches.
The area of the stone wall originally covered in destruction marks from sharp weapons faded its messy scratches in Chen Guan's eyes, reflecting a figure with distinct outlines yet a face that was hard to see clearly.
"Who betrayed whom?"
An Changqing repeated once more. His voice carried a slight tremble; he noticed that the sorrowful emotions surging in Chen Guan's eyes surpassed ordinary pain—it was a sorrow passed down across eons of time.
Chen Guan's gaze slowly moved away from the cold stone wall. He did not look at An Changqing or any of his companions. His line of sight pierced through everyone present, landing in the boundless darkness deep within the passage.
"They offered everything."
His lips parted slightly, the voice he produced carrying a long sigh squeezed from deep within his chest, revealing an indescribable exhaustion.
"And then they took it all back with their own hands."
These airy words immediately stirred up a storm in everyone's minds, plunging those present into shock over this contradictory statement.
"Offered everything and took it all back?"
"What does that mean?"
Hong Yuan furrowed her brows, carrying her axe on her shoulder. She completely failed to understand this contradictory phrasing, the confusion on her face growing heavier.
"Isn't that just a pointless effort?"
"Shut up."
Yin Chen rebuked Hong Yuan in a low voice. The expression on his face was more serious than ever before. He carefully savored Chen Guan's words, the inquisitive look in his eyes growing even thicker.
"This sentence itself contains two completely different stances."
"Offering is the posture of a believer, while taking back is the act of a betrayer."
"Which one did you exactly experience just now?"
The question Yin Chen threw out pointed straight to the core. Yin Chen's mind was still very sharp, and he quickly analyzed the situation.
Assuming Chen Guan was a descendant of that king, the emotion he resonated with ought to be the resolve and anger of the king leading his people in rebellion—that is, the stance of taking everything back.
But what Chen Guan exuded was an immense sorrow of being abandoned and forsaken, closer to the core subject who had offered everything only to be ruthlessly betrayed.
Su Yuehe also thought of this point.
"No, it feels completely wrong."
She muttered softly, turning to look at her companion beside her.
"An Changqing, do you remember?"
"In the mural, the king leading the people to destroy the deity—that was a proactive act."
"If Chen Guan's bloodline comes from the king, what he should be feeling right now is the gratification of revenge or the heavy burden of responsibility."
"But his current state completely deviates from these emotions."
She turned to look at Chen Guan. In his eyes, there was no longer any anger or hatred, only a silent ocean and endless sorrow left behind.
"The emotion you felt does not belong to a king."
Su Yuehe's trembling voice carried poorly concealed shock, and an assumption that even she found absurd was wildly sprouting in her mind.
Chen Guan finally spoke again. He slowly raised his hand past the wall's support point, reaching straight toward that defaced face of the deity.
His fingertips hovered in midair, only an inch away from the cold stone wall, yet between them lay an impassable, distant expanse of time and space.
"The king."
He softly uttered this title.
"He made a choice, for them."
This sentence immediately pierced through all of Su Yuehe's thoughts, allowing the messy, disorganized clues in her mind to instantly piece together the complete truth.
The king made a choice.
For the people under his rule.
The fragmented clues originally scattered in everyone's minds were forcibly pieced together and reorganized at this moment, ultimately pointing to a conclusion that terrified them yet was entirely logical.
"To protect his subjects?"
"So the king of the Black Wind civilization chose to lead everyone to betray the god they once believed in, all for the sake of his people?"
Su Yuehe quickly drew a conclusion from these few words.
This deduction completely overturned the cognitive boundaries of common sense, to the point that An Changqing stood in place for a long while without finding suitable words to respond.
His fingers gripping the sword hilt tightened forcefully before slowly loosening again.
"Betraying a god?"
Hong Yuan hoisted her heavy giant axe back onto her shoulder, her eyebrows knitted together, her face written with disbelief.
"How is that even possible?"
"That is a high and mighty deity, not some bandit leader claiming a mountain as king."
"How could mortals possibly oppose a deity, and even scrape the portrait on the stone wall beyond recognition? Aren't they afraid of divine retribution?"
The questions she threw out were quite direct, yet they perfectly hit the lingering confusion swirling in the minds of most people present.
In the cognitive systems of ancient civilizations, deities were supreme incarnations of rules that tolerated no desecration.
For a mortal to show even the slightest disrespect towards them was already an unforgivable felony, let alone plotting a war of destruction.
Even in modern times, it was the same. If a deity's statue was destroyed, aside from capricious existences like Baal, most other gods and demons would automatically send down divine punishment.
"Deities are not always omniscient and omnipotent."
Yin Chen's calm voice sounded at the right moment. He casually put away his rune-carved staff, but the ice-blue magical shield around him continued to emit a soft halo outward.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
