Exactly the same.
Apart from the words on it, there was no difference at all.
Chen Guan closed the system panel.
The Yin family, a wealthy conglomerate family in the Magic City, the family behind Yin Chen.
Why would they worship a nameless boundary stone in their ancestral hall that was exactly the same as the one in the ancient ruins?
Could it be that the god abandoned by the entire civilization had countless ties to a prominent family in the present world?
But that was all before the Lost Era. As the name suggested, that part of history had long been annihilated in the river of time.
Even Baal, who was recognized as the oldest, admitted that he was born at the end of the Lost Era.
"Yin Chen," Chen Guan spoke up. Guessing on his own was not as good as directly asking the person involved.
Yin Chen, who was exchanging sarcastic remarks with Hong Yuan, stopped talking and turned to look over.
"Does your family have an ancestral hall?" Chen Guan looked at him.
Hong Yuan blinked, not quite understanding how the topic suddenly shifted to this.
An Changqing also turned his head, his gaze slowly wandering between Chen Guan and Yin Chen.
A flash of confusion crossed Yin Chen's face. In his impression, Chen Guan wasn't a gossipy person. Besides, was there anything worth paying attention to about his family's ancestral hall?
It was nothing more than the relics of dead people. Only the descendants cared about it; if thrown on the street, no one would even pick it up.
In any case, it wasn't a secret. He organized his thoughts and answered readily.
"Yes. For a family with some history like ours, we always have to pay attention to some old-school rules. Every year on specific days, the old man leads us in to burn incense. Why do you ask? Are you interested in our family history?"
This was the only intention Yin Chen could think of.
"What is worshipped inside the ancestral hall?" Chen Guan ignored his teasing and continued to throw questions at him.
Yin Chen looked baffled: "Our ancestors, of course."
"Ancestors?" Chen Guan repeated the word, his gaze still resting on Yin Chen's face.
"Do all the ancestors have a wooden tablet with their name written on it?"
Yin Chen nodded as a matter of course. "Naturally. The tablets clearly state which generation, which branch, and what their achievements were. However, younger generations like us can't remember that many names."
"Then whose tablet is placed at the highest position right in the center of the altar?" Chen Guan's tone was casual, as if it were just ordinary chatter.
The confusion on Yin Chen's face deepened a bit, and he adjusted his sitting posture slightly.
"You really are interested in our family's history." Yin Chen chuckled softly, not intending to hide anything.
"There is no tablet at the highest point."
"No tablet?" Hong Yuan poked her head out from the front row, her fiery red short hair swaying with her movements.
"Then what is placed there? Do you rich people worship a mountain of gold up there?"
In her view, even the emperor used a golden hoe to farm.
"Vulgar," Yin Chen rolled his eyes at Hong Yuan. "It's a stone tablet."
Su Yuehe was originally organizing the newly agreed-upon statement report on her terminal. Hearing this, she raised her head, also intrigued.
"A stone tablet?" Su Yuehe asked softly. "What kind of stone tablet?"
Yin Chen recalled for a moment and gestured a rough shape with his hands.
"A dark gray stone tablet. Judging from the material, it's quite old. It's battered and has no engravings, just a surface covered with many traces of weathering and peeling, as well as some messy cracks."
As Yin Chen spoke, he seemed to find it a bit funny too.
"The old man takes us to worship a rock every year and doesn't allow us to ask too many questions. He says it's the origin of the Yin family and the foundation of the clan. When I was a kid, I curiously got close to take a look and almost had my legs broken by the old man."
As soon as Yin Chen finished speaking, Hong Yuan laughed out loud unceremoniously.
"No way, Young Master Yin. Your family is so rich, but you can't even afford to make a pure gold tablet? You go and worship a broken rock?"
Hong Yuan leaned carelessly against the back of the chair, her long legs crossed. Her words were full of incomprehension towards the confusing behavior of wealthy people.
"If you made me kowtow to a rock every day, I would definitely chop that rock into pieces."
Yin Chen shot her a glare, clearly feeling that discussing family heritage with such a crude person was like playing the lute to a cow.
"What do you know? That's called a family totem, a spiritual symbol."
Yin Chen proudly raised his head. "That stone tablet is recorded in our Yin family's genealogy. It's said to have been passed down even before our family rose to prominence in the Magic City."
"The old man often says that the rock hides the Yin family's luck. However, in my eyes, it's just an ordinary weathered stone. Apart from being a bit old, I really can't see anything special about it."
Chen Guan asked, "Since you can't see anything special, why does your family place it at the highest point of the altar?"
Yin Chen was stumped by this question.
He hesitated for a moment, his brows furrowing slightly.
"Who can explain these rules passed down from our ancestors?"
Yin Chen spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
"Maybe the very first ancestor thought this rock looked unique, or perhaps he picked it up in some desolate wilderness and thought it was guidance from heaven. Anyway, as the younger generation, we just need to follow the rules and burn incense. Who would study a broken rock for no reason?"
Chen Guan didn't reply but glanced at the system panel in front of him from the corner of his eye.
In the forum post on the panel, the high-definition restored picture was still hanging there.
The texture and color of the stone tablet, the incomplete outline of its edges—every detail overlapped in Chen Guan's mind with the boundary stone he had just seen at the entrance of the ruins.
"You just said there are messy cracks on the stone tablet?"
Su Yuehe, who had been listening quietly, spoke up. Her hands left the terminal screen, and her clear eyes revealed a bit of the unique seriousness of an academic researcher.
"Yin Chen, can you try to recall the specific distribution of those cracks? Were they cracks formed by natural weathering, or were they similar to some kind of artificially carved lines?"
Being stared at by Su Yuehe's thirsty-for-knowledge eyes, Yin Chen felt a little pressure.
"Classmate Su, you're making this too difficult for me." Yin Chen smiled bitterly and shook his head.
"I only sneaked a glance when I was a kid, around seven years old. After that, I always burned incense from a few meters away. How could I remember any crack distribution?"
Hong Yuan turned around, crossed her arms over her chest, and mercilessly activated her mocking mode.
"To put it bluntly, you're just ignorant and incompetent. You can't even clearly describe what your family's heirloom looks like, and you just play with your broken ice blocks all day long. If it were me, even at seven years old, I could definitely see something in it."
"What could you see in it?" Yin Chen retorted unceremoniously.
"It's just that you weren't born in our family. If you went to the Yin family's ancestral hall, the first thing you'd do would definitely be to raise your giant axe, chop the altar and that rock in half, and then squat on the ground to look for anything valuable hidden inside."
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lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
