Chapter 248 – Increased Intelligence Points, Truth and Mysteries

Lu Yuan had his eyes closed, with his eyeballs slightly rolling beneath his eyelids.

The mist-like mental power quietly spread around him, growing denser and thicker with the rolling images in his mind…

In a spacious building resembling a church, “Lu Yuan” knelt on one knee before a person draped in a white robe.

“Felor, your devotion and bravery are known to all. The Holy Light will always protect Fenglu City!”

A broad, gentle voice echoed from above.

“Lu Yuan” looked up, attempting to see the person speaking and the solemn statue behind them.

But all he saw was a blurred scene…

“Raise your arm higher! …Lucio, is your feeble swordplay meant for chopping insects?”

“Lu Yuan” stood in a flower-filled garden with birds singing around, sternly reprimanding a young figure wielding a greatsword before him…

“The black meteorite brought a crow flock that has ravaged all of Brent. These beasts eat everything, destroying vast farmlands and even pecking and killing living people…”

“Lu Yuan” sat in a room with ancient European decor, his eyes on a deep red wooden table piled with parchment, while a person beside him hurriedly reported.

“Bronze Horn City is experiencing a food shortage and has requested our help…”

“Lu Yuan” closed his eyes wearily under the candlelight…

“Death tide! The death tide is coming!”

“It’s the sound of the death knell! I heard the death knell! Holy Light above, who will save us…”

“Lu Yuan” stood atop a towering city wall, seeing nothing but flapping wings and the scarlet eyes of crows.

Beyond the sky-covering crow flock was a dense black fog rolling in like a massive wave.

In his ears was a cacophony of despair, fear, and panic-stricken wails, mingled with various prayers, forming a chaotic noise.

Bewilderment, sorrow, helplessness… All kinds of emotions surged in “Lu Yuan’s” heart, suddenly turning into a rush of hot blood.

His eyes turned blood-red, and he roared loudly, raising the long sword in his hand with a fierce swing…

“Whoo”

Lu Yuan let out a breath of stale air, his surrounding mist-like mental power thickening to a new height.

His brow twitched slightly, but he didn’t open his eyes.

Instead, he continued to crush the second and third black bead…

“Father… Father…”

“Felor, I leave the protection of Fenglu City to you.”

“The Ancient Evil Deity from the Abyss has shattered the barrier, and the gates of the underworld have been opened.

Its wings are covering this land, attempting to sow seeds of death and suffering on every inch of ground…”

“But the Holy Light will not extinguish; five Saints have already gone to the Capital. They will join with the sovereign to combat the deity’s Servants.”

“The Holy Light will surely dispel the darkness, and victory will be ours!”

“Unfortunately… I won’t be able to see it…”

A succession of chaotic images flashed rapidly through his mind.

The invisible mist-like mental power kept expanding, expanding…

At a certain peak value…

“Boom!”

It suddenly exploded.

The dirt and rocks around Lu Yuan burst out, and a forceful wind arose out of nowhere, stirring the black fog around the square.

After a long while… it gradually calmed down.

Lu Yuan opened his eyes quietly.

His eyes were cloudy, filled with deep sorrow and an ancient weariness.

But soon, that look faded, and his eyes became clear again.

“Whoo”

Lu Yuan exhaled deeply, a barely noticeable fatigue crossing his brow, but his eyes were extremely bright, looking quite exhilarated.

Absorbing three extra-large black beads consecutively, the surge of memory images was overwhelming even for him, causing a slight sense of alienation and dizziness.

However, the benefits obtained were also tremendous.

“Intelligence points increased by 1, from 22 to 23.

[Death Messenger (extraordinary)] has finally leveled up from lv7 to lv8, with one skill point and one attribute point gained.

[Death Energy Entanglement] is about to reach lv10, and [Underworld Garment] has also advanced to lv3…

And there’s still more…”

Lu Yuan rubbed his temples and noticed that his [Ancient Language Expert] panel showed [Ancient Brent Language] had leveled up to lv3. On his [Master of Arms] professional panel, several new swordsmanship-related skills had also appeared.

The black beads dropped by the death energy monsters were far more potent compared to the red beads from the Divine Servants and Divine Messengers of the crow deity sect.

They weren’t just experience pills; they also inherited some of the memories and skills of their previous owners.

However, the side effects were substantial, so he couldn’t consume them recklessly, or it could lead to mental disorders and personality splits.

“I’ll worry about the side effects later…”

As he released his mental power, Lu Yuan pondered the clues he obtained from the three sets of memories.

These three black beads came from Fenglu City’s City Lord—Felor, his son—Lucio, and the bishop of Fenglu’s Holy Light sect.

Their memories thoroughly outlined the background of the entire story.

“An ancient kingdom called Brent, worshiping a goddess named Holy Light. One afternoon, black meteorites fell from the sky, marking the beginning of the ancient Brent Kingdom’s nightmare…”

“The black meteorites brought man-eating crow flocks and the all-consuming death energy black tide.

Wherever the death energy black tide and crow flocks passed, they took the lives of all living beings, turning fertile land into scorched earth, and thriving cities into ruins wailing with undeath…”

“The citizens of the ancient Brent Kingdom, led by their sovereign and five Saints of the Holy Light sect, resisted this catastrophe.

This wasn’t just a war of mortals against a natural disaster; it seemed more like an invasion and plundering involving faith…”

Lu Yuan looked up at the statue in the square beside him.

A sculpture of a goddess with a crow’s head.

If his guess was correct, this statue originally depicted the Holy Light Goddess worshipped by the ancient Brent people.

But after Fenglu City’s fall, Felor and other followers of the crow deity sect decapitated the Holy Light Goddess’s statue and replaced her head with that of a crow, symbolizing their new deity.

Moreover, Lu Yuan discovered another point.

In the places he traversed, most traces of the Holy Light sect and the original ancient Brent had been erased.

It was as if…

Lu Yuan casually picked up the black tome left behind by the black-robed man on the ground.

The book was made of slate pages, each smeared with countless scribbles, filled with hymns praising the Crow Deity and extolling death.

“Even the memories related to the goddess of the Holy Light sect have been erased…”

Lu Yuan had absorbed so many memories, heard the holy light mentioned countless times, but not a single image presented the original appearance of the Holy Light Goddess’s statue.

Whenever a memory involved directly looking at the Holy Light Goddess, the image would inevitably turn blurry.

A shiver ran down Lu Yuan’s spine.

This was far more brutal than killing someone outright.

“The faith was so thoroughly stripped away, to the extent of altering people’s memories and distorting their mental will…”

Imagine, one second you are fervent about your goddess, and the next, you are mercilessly chopping off her head.

The deity you have worshipped all your life, yet the traces of her in your mind get completely wiped out in the end…

Lu Yuan suddenly found it hard to face the woman in the black dress in the Crow Dreamscape.

If this woman truly was Lamashtu, the Death Goddess of the crow deity sect…

Then this woman… was terrifyingly ruthless.

The final memory of the bishop of Fenglu’s Holy Light sect was him receiving the news that five Saints would head to the Capital of the ancient Brent Kingdom to confront the crow deity sect invaders with the kingdom’s sovereign.

And the outcome of that battle…

It was clear without needing much thought that the former must have failed.

Otherwise, this place wouldn’t have fallen into the state of the Wailing Ruins.

“The location of the Capital should be the red restricted area marked on the map…”

“The people of Yellow Bear have gotten it all wrong; the Wailing Ruins is not a divine realm created by the Crow Deity for its followers. Instead, it’s a land of faith seized from another deity!”

Although Lu Yuan had uncovered the truth behind the origins of the Wailing Ruins,

More questions began to surge within his heart.

“Who were the five Saints and the sovereign of Ancient Brent ultimately up against?

It couldn’t have been just the death energy black tide and the overwhelming crow flock. There must have been a specific target or group of targets.

Just like the bishop of Fenglu said… servants of some ancient evil deity… from the Abyss…”

And there was another crucial point.

“If the crow deity sect’s invasion ended in their victory, why are the people of Yellow Bear able to enter and explore freely now, eradicating the followers that the crow deity sect worked so hard to gain…”

“Has this place been abandoned? Or did something happen on the crow deity’s side?”

“And… why does this world I’m in now have so many secret realms related to ancient evil deities?

Is it possible that, one day, the real world might face a catastrophic disaster similar to the crow deity sect’s invasion of the ancient Brent Kingdom?”

Lu Yuan’s thoughts were tangled and chaotic, impossible to sort out immediately.

He slowly stood up, accessed the database, and began to record everything he had figured out, uploading it to the database.

This information had all been unearthed from the memories of the original inhabitants of Ancient Brent.

Apart from him, it’s likely no one else could have achieved this.

If this truth about the origins of the Wailing Ruins were to be revealed, who knows what kind of impact it would have on Yellow Bear and the real world…

At this moment, his current exploration progress on the Secret Realm Map had reached 4.5%, and the fusion progress of his [Ancient Language Expert] and [Student] panels had hit 10%.

Investigating the truth behind the fall of the Ancient Brent Kingdom seemed to significantly boost his panel fusion.

Lu Yuan even suspected that the fusion of these two professional panels was due to his intense passion for uncovering the secrets of ancient civilizations and evil deities.

And the fusion catalyst might have been that small fragment of ancient memory related to an ancient evil deity, from a farmer in the Ancient Brent Kingdom…

“Let’s continue.”

Lu Yuan picked up the black tome that had dropped from the bishop of Fenglu, along with some items that could substantiate his findings, and quietly activated his [Underworld Garment], now upgraded to lv3.

After upgrading the [Underworld Garment] from lv2 to lv3, the death energy condensed into a thin, lightweight armor adorned with an intricate pattern.

Both the defense power and its aesthetic appeal had significantly improved.

Lu Yuan launched himself forward, leaping into the air.

A massive amount of death energy gathered, forming large black wings behind him.

With a flap of these wings, he rode the wind, gliding swiftly over the ruins of various buildings.

“Almost there…”

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered as he murmured to himself, “I’m close to being able to achieve full flight with the help of death energy.”

…

“Zzt—”

Two superalloy long swords, crackling with blue light, sliced through the air, leaving deep cuts in their wake.

They pierced through a towering figure more than two meters tall, its entire body entangled in death energy.

The superalloy long swords emerged from the figure’s back, their blue light slightly dimmed, but were swiftly and steadily caught by Xie Jun, who had appeared there.

Blue bursts of electricity surged across Xie Jun’s body and arms, channeling into the swords.

In an instant, the swords’ blue light flared brilliantly.

With twin swords in hand, Xie Jun performed a swift cross-slash.

“Slash—”

In a blink, he reappeared ten meters away.

Behind him, the massive figure cloaked in death energy began to split down the middle.

Roaring loudly, the figure tried to gather more death energy to repair its wounds.

However, several other figures emerged from the side.

They unleashed various colored energy attacks, pelting the figure mercilessly.

Before long, the massive death energy figure collapsed, like a crumbling sand sculpture, eventually disintegrating into a pile of black ash.

One person stepped forward, rummaging through the black sand, and picked up a black bead the size of a thumb, grinning as he said, “Got another one.”

Xie Jun flicked his wrists, and the two superalloy long swords in his hands, guided by a magnetic field, automatically flew back into the alloy sheath on his back, a stylish and impressive move.

His demeanor relaxed, and even the stern expression on his face gave way to a satisfied smile.