Wang Chong walked over and placed his hand on the sword, swiftly using the ability of the ‘Riddle of Destiny’ to read the words.
‘Tomb of the Landeshunger World!
‘To the light of the future:
‘This is a land of hope!’
Wang Chong pensively frowned in front of the sword.
It was not strange for a civilization to leave behind ruins, its own mark on the world. There was the country that had left its records beneath the Sassanid Dynasty, and also the ruins of the Kegang Empire. But these altars described themselves as ‘civilization’ or ’empire’. Rarely did they use the term ‘world’.
And there seemed to be a deeper meaning behind the words ‘land of hope’.
Wang Chong walked past the sword and continued forward.
“Master, bad news! There’s a powerful pressure here, an energy that is extremely suppressive to me!” the Nightmare Beast called out, its voice panicked and uneasy.
Wang Chong suddenly stopped and took a step back, carefully examining what was in front of him.
He immediately discovered that the floor had changed. Small and wriggling characters had been inscribed all across its surface.
There were rings and rings of these inscriptions, converging on a center. They created an immense circular formation.
“It’s a special seal that seems to be particularly effective on beings without physical bodies,” Wang Chong coldly analyzed. “Nightmare Beast, return to your core. I’ll take care of the rest!”
Wang Chong wrapped the Nightmare Beast’s core in Stellar Energy to isolate it.
He continued farther in. Whoosh! Curved secret compartments suddenly appeared in front of Wang Chong, with fiery red light coming from all of them.
Rather than tyrannical, this was an extremely soft energy, but there was something in this energy that Wang Chong found familiar.
The Ifrit!
The strange red lights did not pose any threat, but they appeared identical to the light of the Ifrit.
Wang Chong found this place even more bizarre.
What’s going on? This can’t be a coincidence!
Ifrits were ancient existences created from the natural world. It was very unlikely for their origin energies to appear, and Wang Chong did not believe that this was a coincidence.
As he went farther in, the red lights and the inscriptions began to mix together, getting closer and closer together.
Wang Chong could sense that these red lights were strewn about this mysterious space, and they also formed a large circle. The closer to the center of the circle, the more intense was the red light.
Wang Chong slowed down, and as he sent his mind outward, he was forced to concentrate his mental energy more and more.
The Nightmare Beast had been right. This region had a disruptive effect on Psychic Energy. The stronger one’s Psychic Energy was, the greater the disruption became. Even with Wang Chong’s strength, he could only maintain a sensory range of ten to twenty meters, which was simply absurd!
Where did this Landeshunger come from? They were able to create such a large-scale formation that can not only suppress beings like the Nightmare Beast, but even a Subtle realm expert like me!
Wang Chong’s mind was in turmoil.
Subtle realm experts stood at the peak of the martial arts world. Only a handful of people were ever able to reach this level, and almost every one of them was a legend.
It was clear that this civilization was much stronger than the Kegang Empire!
With the questions on his mind growing in number, Wang Chong pressed forward.
This underground realm was dark, and the only sources of illumination were the soft red lights on the floor.
Buzz!
After some time, Wang Chong sensed a strange sensation and immediately stopped.
“Ifrit!”
Wang Chong blinked. Ten-some meters in front of him, a fiery-red Ifrit statue loomed in this dark world.
This Ifrit was made of some unknown crystal and burned with a fiery light. If not for the fact that it had no life signs, he would have taken it for a real Ifrit.
In this gloomy world, the crystal Ifrit statue appeared mysterious and strange.
In a completely different civilization, the Ifrit had appeared once more. But unlike the savage depiction of the Ifrit in the Kegang Empire, the Ifrit here was soft and gentle, and there were subtle differences in their appearances.
Wang Chong suddenly sensed that this place might conceal the true secret of the Ifrits. Moreover, it might be completely different from the commonly understood truth.
The Ifrit statue contained only pure energy. After examining it for a while, he continued onward.
Wang Chong felt that there was even more waiting for him, and that he was about to reach the core of the formation.
Buzz!
And after just a few moments, Wang Chong reached the core, a giant raised metal platform several dozen meters tall.
The metal platform exuded a faint light, and in this light, one could see that countless small characters had been inscribed on the surface, all of them radiating a dark red glow.
The most striking feature of this platform was a giant hammer.
The head of the hammer was gold and translucent, radiating a bright light. As for the handle, it was twenty-some meters long, and crackled with lightning.
This hammer had to weigh more than ten thousand jin, yet it was floating upright in the air, as if it was ready to strike down.
Invisible ripples of energy spread out from the platform. Wang Chong could tell that limitless energy was contained within.
Wang Chong walked up the metal steps, and at the top of the platform, he saw a throne. The body on this throne had rotted away long ago, leaving only a white skeleton.
Tap! As Wang Chong stepped onto the platform, a light ripple of energy swept out. Crash! The skeleton immediately collapsed into a pile of bones.
Has too much time passed? Is there no information left? Wang Chong wondered, but he quickly noticed a metal sphere on the platform.
Just like the hammer suspended above the platform, the metal sphere was also floating. And to Wang Chong’s astonishment, this metal sphere was essentially the same as the Kegang Empire’s metal sphere, similarly rippling with Psychic Energy.
Chapter 1923 - The Tomb of the Landeshunger Civilization!
Chapter 1923: The Tomb of the Landeshunger Civilization!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
“Strange… Did the Kegang Empire not create the sphere it used to record its history?”
Wang Chong frowned as he muttered to himself.
Despite his questions, Wang Chong quickly pressed his palm on the metal sphere.
As he did, it exploded with a dazzling red light. At the same time, an immense wave of Psychic Energy surged into Wang Chong’s mind.
“One from the future, if you were able to come here, it is hoped that the things here can be of use to you!” A strange and solemn voice spoke into Wang Chong’s mind. In a red flash of light, Wang Chong’s mind was drawn into the metal sphere.
A new world slowly revealed itself before Wang Chong. It was a strange room, the floor covered in altars and formations. Many strange humans were busying themselves with what seemed to be experiments of some kind.
There were also people hammering and forging strange metal pieces. Ding! Dang! The hammering was loud and incessant.
Wang Chong saw red lights reminiscent of Ifrit energy flowing in an orderly manner through the entire underground region, all of it ultimately being guided by the formation into the hands of those strange humans.
“Our world is on the verge of collapse. We are currently attempting with all our strength to create something new to deal with this crisis that threatens to destroy the world.” The voice spoke once more into Wang Chong’s mind as if it was explaining everything.
It’s the skeleton on the throne.
/> Wang Chong suddenly understood who the master of this place was.
‘Crisis’!
What crisis?
The voice had mentioned a crisis, but not what it was.
Buzz!
As if Wang Chong’s question had been heard, the scene in front of him shifted again.
Splash!
Turbid waves of water crashed around Wang Chong, beating against the shore.
Not only were the waves turbid, they stank of horrifying rot and decay.
A few moments later, his view began to pull upward, and Wang Chong was able to see the entirety of this ocean. On this vast ocean was an endless field of floating corpses, bobbing up and down in the turbid waters.
Even though Wang Chong had mentally prepared himself, this sight left him stunned and shocked.
Several hundred thousand bodies would not be enough to cover the surface of the ocean. There had to be nearly one million bodies here.
Whoosh!
What sort of battle could have inflicted such a horrifying death toll? The scene in front of Wang Chong continued to change, shifting back to the original appearance of the Landeshunger civilization. Through the smoke, flames, countless fallen cities and shattered buildings, he could vaguely see that this civilization had once been extremely well-developed.
Bang!
The scenes continued to shift. A rotted horse hoof thumped against the ground, causing the earth to tremble. A moment later, Wang Chong saw the invader of this world.
Riding upon a deathsteed from another world, covered in tattered and rusted armor, a pair of empty eye sockets, a face from which rotting pieces of flesh hung, and an entire body that oozed with death—this was the emissary of death, the destroyer of all things!
The otherworldly invaders!
Wang Chong almost choked on his breath, his heart instantly convulsing. Even after being reborn, Wang Chong could still recognize them with a single glance.
Rumble!
The earth trembled and smoke roiled. Behind the otherworldly invader, Wang Chong saw that the entire world was in the midst of collapse and subsidence.
“…This being should possess the property of indestructibility so that it can take our place in destroying these invaders. We’ve finally found a way to completely destroy them. The Ifrits were born to destroy these invaders!” the solemn voice continued.
The hammering continued, and Wang Chong saw countless members of the Landeshunger civilization beating away with golden hammers. Dark red sparks burst out from their forging platforms, and the erupting flames seemed to have a life of their own, radiating an energy that Wang Chong was extremely familiar with.
The power of the Ifrit!
Bang!
In a flash of light, Wang Chong saw that the Landeshunger had created a massive golden hammer, one identical to the one floating above the platform now. But the energy contained in this hammer was many, many times greater than the one he saw in the present.
Countless bolts of lightning crackled on the handle, and the golden hammer head was almost blinding with dazzling flames.
And below the hammer, Wang Chong saw the metal platform.
Bang! The hammer slammed down, releasing countless high-temperature flames, and amidst them, a massive being roared. Wang Chong saw an incomplete Ifrit rise, its appearance shocking to behold.
“…Creating new life is extremely difficult. We have failed countless times and restarted each time. Finally, we are nearing success!”
The solemn voice continued to speak into Wang Chong’s mind.
Wang Chong saw their countless failures, saw one incomplete Ifrit after another emerge from a vast pool of energy. Due to various flaws, they would all collapse in the end.
“But in the end, we failed. We developed countless ways of creating Ifrits, promoting the development of this ultimate weapon, but what we did not expect was that we would lose control of our creation.
“We created this powerful weapon to save the world, but in the end, we only succeeded in creating an out-of-control monster that only knew destruction, brutal and insane. This was never our intention!”
Wang Chong was shaken to hear this. He had believed Ifrits to be natural creations that had their origins in time immemorial.
He had never imagined that they had actually been artificial creations of humans, ones that had gone out of control!
The Ifrits were made to deal with the otherworldly invaders, but their minds contained the instinct to destroy, so they went out of control and destroyed civilization after civilization. The Ifrit that Khatabah controlled clearly didn’t remember its initial mission, Wang Chong inwardly muttered to himself.
The truth had come far too suddenly. The savior created by humanity had become its destroyer.
The Nightmare Beast once said that it was the same kind of creature as the Ifrit. If the Ifrit was a creation of a long-lost civilization, could the Nightmare Beast also be a human creation?
Wang Chong suddenly had a thought. Given the background of the Ifrit, this was not an impossibility.
Information continued to flow into Wang Chong’s mind, through which Wang Chong began to understand many things about the lost Landeshunger civilization.
“In order to correct our mistake, we Landeshunger people devoted all of our strength into developing a method of creating the Ifrit King. This is a perfect being that is in complete line with our initial objectives while also able to correct our mistake, controlling those Ifrits that escaped.
…Alas, the origin of the world was exhausted, and our civilization’s remaining strength was not enough to create the Ifrit King. This is our greatest regret.”
The solemn voice gave a long sigh filled with boundless regret.
“One from the future, the essence of our civilization has been left here in the hopes that with our help, you may escape this world’s destiny of cyclic destruction!”
The voice faded away, and the scenes from the sphere stopped playing.
Buzz!
Wang Chong opened his eyes, and he once more saw the metal platform and the massive metal hammer above. But now, he looked at this place with completely different eyes.
“Haaah…”
Wang Chong could only deeply sigh over the fate of the Landeshunger people.
With its ability to create the Ifrit, the Landeshunger had probably surpassed the majority of other civilizations.
As he continued to explore the metal sphere, he found a few other things.
There were two more clumps of information in the metal sphere.
“This… is the Ifrit King?”
Through the metal sphere, Wang Chong came to sense that forty to fifty meters below the metal platform, a metal box the size of a palm had been buried, its upper half scorched black.
This metal box seemed to have an extremely powerful isolation effect, but through the metal sphere, Wang Chong could sense that the metal box contained an unbelievable power. An entire sea of energy was surging within the box.
Buzz!
Wang Chong attempted to have the metal sphere make the metal box move upward. Suddenly, deep beneath the metal box, the earth trembled, and then a howling surge of energy erupted like a volcano. Wang Chong sensed that this lava-like energy was more than ten times greater than the energy left by the Kegang Empire.
This energy had remained dormant for tens of thousands of years, but when Wang Chong tried to interact with the metal box, he had awakened it from its slumber.
In front of this energy, the energy Wang Chong had previously absorbed instantly became insignificant.
Buzz!
At almost the same time, the golden seed in Wang Chong’s body trembled in response.
So the golden seed had sensed this energy earlier!
Wang Chong turned pensive.
The golden seed seemed to have an extreme longing for the power of lost civilizations. Wang Chong had not even noticed this energy, but the golden seed had managed to pierce through the various
seals around it to perceive its existence.
If my guess is right, this should be the last of the energy the Landeshunger used to create Ifrits! Wang Chong said to himself.
Even after tens of thousands of years, this reserve of energy remained vast. One could only imagine just how much energy the Landeshunger had gathered beneath the ground at their peak!
After some thought, Wang Chong decided to examine the information left in the metal sphere by the Landeshunger rather than rushing to absorb that energy underground.
After a few moments, Wang Chong sent three streams of Stellar Energy into the metal sphere and then rapidly retreated.
Chapter 1924 - Foundation Dimension!
Chapter 1924: Foundation Dimension!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Boom!
The ground shuddered, and the entire underground area experienced a massive shift. The massive metal hammer that had been floating in the air suddenly began to slightly float upward, like an invisible hand had grasped it.
Hissss!
The energy within the hammer was seemingly stimulated, the handle crackling with electricity. Lighting manifested from the air and began to blast the handle, and the golden hammer head exploded with dazzling, sun-like energy.
In addition, all the altars and formations in this region were rapidly charged, and erupted with fiery red light. All their energy ultimately congregated on the massive metal platform.
Whoosh!
The air grew restless and began to howl as the metal platform began to radiate light. The power of the Landeshunger people, lost for countless generations, had once more appeared in the world.
Wang Chong retreated from the platform, squinting as he stared at the massive hammer.
Boom!
In the blink of an eye, the massive hammer vanished, instantly slamming down onto the top of the platform with thunderous speed. The ground shook, lightning burst outward, and endless light and heat swept over the vast cavern.
Even Wang Chong was forced to take a few steps back upon being struck by the energy wave.
On the metal platform, a most intense chemical reaction seemed to have taken place. Clack! A thin crack appeared through the metal platform, and the metal box underground was pulled on by an invisible energy. Riding that surge of majestic energy from the Landeshunger energy sea, it rushed toward the surface.
The Human Emperor c1-2382 Page 1167