The Blood Ancestor’s face laughed quite loudly, but Su Chen didn’t let any emotion show on his face. “It shouldn’t be surprising to you that I don’t know all of the details about what took place tens of thousands of years ago. However, I do know the important facts, like how they will destroy the Barrier in ten years time and return. That will be a calamity for both of us. Am I right?”
The Blood Ancestor’s expression froze. “Ten years? Where did you get that number?”
“The Lord of the Dreamrealm told me.”
“The Lord of the Dreamrealm?” The Blood Ancestor seemed confused, as if it had never heard of that title before.
Su Chen could only describe him further. “He is capable of creating a realm of dreams that connects the consciousnesses of various living creatures.”
“Oh, the Dream God. Hmph, I can’t believe that that old dog hasn’t died yet from the constant torment he must be suffering in the Deep Freeze Prison,” the Blood Ancestor said with a derisive snort.
Deep Freeze Prison?
What was that?
Su Chen was confused, but he could only go on to say, “Not only is he not dead, but he seems to be quite active and energetic. Right now, every being on the Primordial Continent with some degree of strength can enter the network that he has created and communicate with each other, even if only through words.”
Su Chen then broadly explained what the Lord of the Dreamrealm had been up to in the past years.
“Oh! So that’s why he’s still alive.” The Blood Ancestor immediately understood the situation. “That guy relies on consuming consciousness power to survive, and consciousness power is also the only thing that can pass through the Divine Power Prison. Thus, he is probably living the most comfortably out of all the gods right now. A Dreamrealm, huh? Hehe, I’m impressed that you were able to come up with a way to extract consciousness power.”
Divine Power Prison?
What was that?
Su Chen grew more and more confused as the Blood Ancestor tossed out another unfamiliar term. He could only ask, “Blood Ancestor, what are the Divine Power Prison and Deep Freeze Prison?”
“The prisons that are keeping them locked up, of course. What else could they be? Do you not understand what the word ‘prison’ means?” the Blood Ancestor countered disparagingly.
Su Chen froze for a moment before slowly asking, “Are you telling me that the gods are currently imprisoned?”
“Naturally.”
The Blood Ancestor’s matter-of-fact tone sent Su Chen reeling.
What the hell?
Hadn’t they been temporarily living somewhere else?
Since when had they been thrown in prison?
Su Chen stared at the Blood Ancestor with an expression of shock written on his face.
The Blood Ancestor then said, “Before I explain what I know to you, tell me what you know so far.”
Su Chen could only explain what he had learned up to this point.
Upon hearing the information that Su Chen possessed, the Blood Ancestor harrumphed scornfully. “So Jia Luo was the one who fed you most of that information. However, it seems that his amnesia has made him mostly incoherent. The Deep Freeze Prison must not be entirely ineffective. Those guys should be having quite the difficult time, quite the difficult time indeed. Hahahaha!”
The Blood Ancestor tilted its head back and laughed uproariously, seemingly quite delighted.
The Blood Turtles that Su Chen had sacrificed would let it stay awake for some time, so Su Chen was willing to wait patiently as the Blood Ancestor vented its emotions.
After some time, the Blood Ancestor finally calmed down and said, “Jia Luo is not entirely wrong, but we are not actually separated from the gods.”
“What? Not separated?”
“Yes. We, the Origin Beasts, like the gods, are also ancient creatures that came from this continent, and the two of us used to coinhabit this land,” the Blood Ancestor said confidently.
“But Jia Luo said that there was a world flourishing with Origin Energy at the center of the Origin Energy sea that was without life.”
The Blood Ancestor chuckled. “What world do you think they’re referring to? It’s the one beneath our very feet!”
“What?” Su Chen was stunned by this revelation.
“I’m saying that the Primordial Continent is smack-dab in the center of the Origin Energy Sea!” the Blood Ancestor clearly enunciated again.
The Primordial Continent had once been called the Origin Realm.
And its location in the center of the Origin Energy Sea meant that this realm was practically bursting with Origin Energy.
Raw Origin Energy was extremely unstable, and an overabundance of it led to extreme climate conditions, making it hard for any kind of life to develop.
But if it did, that lifeform would undoubtedly be an extraordinary one.
The gods.
The first god born in the Origin Realm named himself the Original One. Actually, all of the gods’ names had come from him.
The Original One was the Origin Realm’s true Ancestor as well as the ancestor of all gods.
He had been born from a storm and inherently possessed control over Method Power since his birth.
At first, he wandered the Original Realm by himself, alone. Wherever he went, Method Power followed, blessing and bringing order to the land around him.
And as the land became more and more ordered, life became easier and easier to sustain within the Origin Realm.
One by one, more and more gods appeared on the continent.
The wind and rain were at their beck and call. They could control the environment as if it were an extension of themselves, but no matter how strong they were, they could not defeat the Original One.
In time, the Original One became known as the Origin Ancestor.
Later generations were unaware of the distinction between the two different names, which was why he eventually came to be known solely as the Origin Ancestor. [1. In Chinese, the characters “元” and “源” have identical pronunciations and similar meanings. There is a subtle distinction, though, in that whereas “元” has connotations of “first, original, or primary”, “源” means something more like “root, source, or origin.” I tried to translate the two in a way that would capture the “lost in translation” effect that the author went for (even if it means that the Original One’s name sounds a bit stupid).]
In actuality, there was only a single Origin Ancestor — The Original One.
Of course, referring to all gods as Origin Ancestors was understandable for later generations.
This was the Origin Realm’s golden era. The gods wandered the realm, peacefully living their own lives.
Until one day, when the Original One died.
His death was completely due to natural causes. He was able to live for an extraordinarily long time, but he was not immortal.
On the day that the Original One died, all of the gods came to know fear.
Because they finally realized that death was a possibility for them too, and that even as gods, they could not escape it.
The Original One’s death was the first manifestation of death Method Power in the Origin Realm. From his death, Reaper Jia Luo was birthed, wielding the laws of life and death. In some sense, it was appropriate to say that Reaper Jia Luo had been birthed by the Original One.
The Original One’s death not only brought about the Reaper, but it also created life in the form of new creatures.
These genuine creatures did not rely on Method Power to be born. Instead, they appeared in the Origin Realm through an entirely different method.
The first lifeform in the Origin Realm was discovered by the Moon Goddess.
At that time, she was wandering through the Origin Energy Sea when she suddenly noticed a seed being born along by the waves.
The Origin Energy Sea was turbulent and violent, but the seed appeared to be completely unaffected by the raging waves. Instead, it floated calmly on the surface of the sea, allowing the waves to carry it into the Origin Realm.
This seed was not affected by Origin Energy whatsoever.
The Moon Goddess accepted that seed purely out of curiosity.
On the 1982nd day after she received the seed, a lifeform emerged from it.
The first creature had appeared in the Origin Realm.
This creature was a fish.
The Moon Goddess eventually named it Kun. [2. A legendary fish in Chinese mythology that has the potential to eventually transform into a Roc.]
Kun swam through the Origin Energy Sea as it pleased and lived off of Origin Energy.
When it was first born, Kun was only the size of a palm. Very quickly, however, it grew and grew until it reached a size of tens of thousands of kilometers.
But no matter how large it grew, it always viewed the Moon Goddess as its mother, and relied on her greatly.
The two of them wandered the Origin Realm together for a long time until one day, the Moon Goddess realized that she was also about to die.
As one of the oldest deities alive, she was a part of the first group of gods who would die after the Original One.
One the day that she died, the Moon Goddess stood on Kun’s back.
She dispersed all of her divine power into motes of light that infused themselves into Kun’s body.
Kun could sense its mother’s death. With a mournful, keening cry, it dove into the depths of the sea, where it lay motionless for a long time.
Three hundred days after the Moon Goddess’s death, Kun began to transform.
Wings sprouted from its back, formed from the Moon Goddess’s divine power. Its body also morphed into the shape of a Roc. The newly formed Roc then soared high into the sky and flew off into the distance, never to be seen again.
But after the Roc disappeared, a new patch of ground appeared near the Origin Realm.
This new land was over ten thousand square kilometers in size and was located just off to the side of the Origin Realm, near the Lakelight Cliff that the Moon Goddess had loved to frequent.
Some gods believed that this land had emerged from Kun’s corpse after it died.
So, the gods named that place the Kun territory.
After an unknown period of time, new creatures began appearing on the Kun territory.
The Origin Beasts.
All of the Origin Beasts originated from the Kun territory, because it was only there that they were protected from the violent storms that afflicted the Origin Energy Sea.
The Original One’s Method Power and Kun’s will ensured that the storms would not breach the boundaries of the Kun territory.
Additionally, Method Power’s influence in this continent was likewise weakened, and Origin Energy became much more stable, fulfilling the necessary conditions for life to be brought forth.
Even so, the only creatures that were able to survive in this new land were the extremely powerful Origin Beasts. After all, its “peacefulness” was only relative to the turmoil that the rest of the Origin Energy Sea experienced. Compared to today’s standards, the environment in the Kun territory back then was still extremely harsh.
At this point, the identity of the very first Origin Beast had long been forgotten, because they appeared in droves.
They were birthed by the environment and possessed boundless power, but lacked intelligence.
After the gods discovered them, they were quite amused. The perpetually solitary and lonesome gods had finally found a source of entertainment.
At first, the gods and the Beasts coexisted quite peacefully.
In human terms, it was quite similar to the relationship between a pet and its owner.
However, the gods were much more powerful than a mere owner.
But the gods did not really have any desire to do anything with this power of theirs, because they had everything they could ever want, apart from immortality.
Even so, it was around that time that a new discovery changed everything.
This new discovery came from the new Moon Goddess.
After the old Moon Goddess had died, the Origin Realm had given birth to a new Moon Goddess.
Like the old Moon Goddess, the new Moon Goddess enjoyed the company of the Origin Beasts, and was the happiest around them.
Of these, the Moon Goddess’s favorite pet was an ape.
The Divine Eye Ape.
Yes, the very same Divine Eye Ape that the Arcanists sourced their bloodline from.
In the eyes of the Moon Goddess, this mighty Divine Eye Ape was nothing more than a cute and mischievous monkey.
The Moon Goddess particularly cherished it, and as a result, spoiled it heavily.
The two of them constantly accompanied each other and quickly became good friends.
In fact, the Divine Eye Ape was often reluctant to leave the Moon Goddess’s side. It would do whatever the Moon Goddess requested it to do.
In order to win the Moon Goddess’s affection, it would even attack other Origin Beasts.
It was during one such occasion that the Moon Goddess discovered a strange power connecting them.
This power was impossible to describe with just words alone. It was extremely mysterious and profound.
More importantly, however, it could extend a god’s lifespan.
In other words, it could give them eternal life.
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