Beidou in Its Infancy

A kind of emotion he had never experienced before welled up in his heart, bringing with it a faint, aching fullness.

Chen Guan finally scrolled to the bottom of the post.

The last highly upvoted comment lingered on the screen.

【President of the Chen Guan Fan Club (Cyber-Grievance Ghost Edition): If Guan is really gone, then I hope the writers have at least enough conscience to let everyone know that he wasn’t some strange monster—he died as a human being.】

Chen Guan stared at the sentence for a few seconds, then swiped the page upward and closed the thread.

Truth be told, he hadn’t expected his final moments to be witnessed by An Changqing and the others. He had assumed he’d simply be declared missing.

In his original plan, the trip to the Ice Sea was supposed to take only a day or two. He’d quickly hitch a ride back to the Demon Capital with Guan Jinyue.

Who would have thought that being caught in the act of dying would suddenly maximize everyone’s efficiency?

He reopened the search bar, paused his finger over it, and typed a few keywords.

【Ice Sea, Lord of Nothingness, child, mural】

It was time to wrap this up quickly and return to the Demon Capital.

The first batch of results popped up, mostly irrelevant.

【Is the Lord of Nothingness the biggest hidden storyline of the later phase?】

【Textual research on the faceless deity mural: the official art team has really lost their minds.】

【Unofficial history and random musings on the long-lived Beidou and the Lord of Nothingness】

Chen Guan’s fingertip lingered on the last title.

Beidou.

He was no stranger to that name.

The second-in-command of the Guiyuan Group.

A twelfth-tier being standing at the apex of the world, a life-attribute immortal who had lived for who knows how many years.

Chen Guan clicked into the thread. The first post opened with a screenshot.

The image in the screenshot was something Chen Guan had never seen before.

The frame was dim, an endless snowfield stretched out, and a child in a tattered cloak stood in the snow, clutching the hem of a robe.

The robed figure’s face wasn’t shown.

The child’s face was mostly obscured by the snowstorm.

But that cloak, that small hand gripping the fabric so tightly—it matched perfectly with the child in the mural.

Chen Guan lifted his head to glance at the snow plain mural on the wall. The screenshot and the mural overlapped in his mind.

Guan Jinyue noticed his movement and followed his gaze to the mural.

From Guan Jinyue’s perspective, Chen Guan, who had been lost in thought a moment ago, suddenly looked up as if something had clicked into place.

"Did you find something?"

Chen Guan continued scrolling down.

【Curious Insomniac’s Textual Research: To save everyone’s data, here’s the conclusion first—the child in the preview is most likely Beidou. Three reasons.】

【First: When the post-credits scene played, the background music used the variation of the Tree of Life from Beidou’s debut. Second: The seven hidden buttons on the child’s cloak correspond to Beidou’s code name. Third: The official setting compilation once mentioned that Beidou has lived from the old era to the present, and he has only ever followed one person—the original leader.】

Comments below were buzzing.

【No way? Beidou isn’t the immortal one? He was this miserable as a kid?】

【Who’s the faceless robed figure? Dressed like that, seems like the Lord of Nothingness who’s always tangled with Lao Guan.】

【If it’s the Lord of Nothingness, then wasn’t Beidou raised by him?】

【Nice, so the second-in-command is an orphan of a god. The energy fits.】

【The generational hierarchy is completely messed up. What does that make Brother Guan?】

Seeing this, Chen Guan formed some conjectures in his mind. Pieces began to connect into a line.

First, if the netizen called Curious Insomniac’s Textual Research was right, then the most likely builder of this ruin was Beidou.

The reason was simple: he was old enough.

Old enough that even Baal didn’t know his exact age. So it wouldn’t be strange for him to belong to the same era as the Lord of Nothingness.

As for Chen Beixuan outside, his identity was also worth examining closely.

A name had already flashed through Chen Guan’s mind: Kongchen!

As Beidou’s direct subordinate, Kongchen being the administrator of this place made perfect sense.

It would also explain why he, as a retired member of the Great Wall, turned a blind eye to a wanted fugitive like Guan Jinyue. He was effectively a part-time employee collecting multiple salaries.

So, he was one of their own again. He had been set up once more.

Chen Guan scrolled down.

The OP had posted more screenshots and analysis afterward.

There was also a line of dialogue.

【I remember the road home. It’s just that the door will never open for me again.】

Chen Guan stared at the line.

In the illusion just now, the child had mouthed something to him. Maybe it really was "home."

"Home…"

The silver-blue light in the circular pool flickered slightly in response to his words.

Guan Jinyue raised her sword hand. "It’s reacting again."

Chen Guan closed the forum interface and walked over to the last mural.

In the painting, the child knelt before a blank door, face buried in his hands.

The robed figure had vanished. Nothing lay behind the door.

Guan Jinyue followed him.

She looked at the painting, then back at Chen Guan.

"You know who he is now?"

Chen Guan stared at the mural. The dark blue stone lamps in the circular hall burned quietly, their flames emitting no heat, only casting a thin layer of shadow over the wall paintings.

In the final mural, the child knelt before the door, his silhouette pitifully small. Yet the seven hidden buttons were engraved with exceptional clarity.

It all matched. Everything matched.

Seven buttons.

Beidou.

Chen Guan raised his hand, his fingertip stopping half an inch from the mural, not quite touching it.

"Beidou."

The moment the two words left his lips, the silver-blue ancient script at the bottom of the circular pool lit up together.

This time, the light didn’t scatter randomly along the pool’s walls. Instead, it was as if they had heard a long-lost name. They lifted themselves from the engraved traces and, one by one, extended toward the final mural.

Guan Jinyue took half a step forward, the tip of her sword hanging at her side. The silver spatial rift threads were pressed beneath her sleeve, like a snake caged inside.

"What you just said… Is that Beidou from the Guiyuan Group?"

Chen Guan hummed in affirmation, not surprised that Guan Jinyue knew of these things.

His hand brushed over the mural. The forum users had said Beidou had only ever followed one person—the original leader.

And on the mural, that person was the Lord of Nothingness, with whom Chen Guan had already crossed paths more than once.

The silver-blue light at the bottom of the pool had already climbed to the base of the final mural. The black-and-white stone tiles before the mural softly shifted apart, revealing a narrow crack.

A faint whispering of wind came from the gap, as if inviting the two of them inside.

Baal’s voice squeezed back into his mind.

"Don’t go running around."

Chen Guan stopped in his tracks. "Didn’t you just say this was the remnants of a vow?"

"I said it’s remnants, not that it’s safe." Baal’s tone was sour. Ancient things generally weren’t very safe.

Because in an age of collapse, there were no rules. Modern forbidden techniques were about as dangerous as basic attacks in that era.

"Baal warned you too?"

Chen Guan hummed again.

"He said not to touch it."

Guan Jinyue raised her sword tip a little. "So, are you going to listen?"

Chen Guan glanced at her. "What do you think?"

Guan Jinyue didn’t ask again.

She already knew the answer.

In her eyes, Chen Guan was reckless to the point of being indifferent to death.

That kind of person was the most troublesome.

He didn’t seem insane, but the things he did were often harder to dissuade than a madman’s actions.

Still, she also wanted to go down and take a look, because this involved Beidou—someone almost at the level of a god—a long-lived being unknown to the world.

The tales of a legend always stir a sense of yearning in the hearts of those who hear them.

Chen Guan walked up to that crack in the ground, his intention clear without needing words.

Baal cursed under his breath.

"You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days, kid. Watch out—that weird resurrection ability of yours might get nerfed."