Chapter 309 – The Origin, The Noble Six Arms

White drawings adorned the black rock, carved with bold lines as if drawn with bone powder.

The content of the drawings was exceedingly simple-a group of little figures.

What puzzled Lu Yuan was that these little figures did not possess elephant-like heads; they appeared normal, just like ordinary people.

Lu Yuan’s eyes glittered as he extended his mental power. It wasn’t long before he found similar white drawings nearby.

The scenes depicted in these drawings seemed to illustrate the everyday lives of the little figures.

From the looks of it, the little figures struggled considerably; scenes of their deaths frequently appeared.

They died from diseases, floods, falling rocks, hunger, cold, and wild beast attacks…

Lu Yuan continued to search for more white rock paintings.

The content began to transform gradually.

He saw one painting depicting little figures kneeling and praying.

The little figures appeared to be tormented by various calamities, suffering to the brink of extinction.

In an effort to survive,

The little figures held a grand sacrificial ceremony.

They offered the remaining food of their tribe on an altar, and even sacrificed some of their tribe members.

In the next painting, the little figures’ sincere prayers were surprisingly answered by the heavens.

A colossal head with an elephant trunk and a single eye appeared in the sky.

To emphasize the enormity of the head, this painting specifically included numerous tiny little figures as a scale reference.

“Elephant Deity?!”

Lu Yuan muttered in mild surprise, immediately understanding.

“Is this describing the origin of the elephant man tribe?”

As he expected,

In the following paintings, the little figures who participated in the sacrifice underwent mutations.

Their bodies started to enlarge, growing several times bigger than before.

Their originally normal heads transformed into elephant-like heads.

Some even sprouted two heads and four arms.

The mutated little figures became exceptionally strong and mighty.

They no longer feared the cold nor flames.

Floodwaters couldn’t wash them away, and they could easily shatter falling boulders with a single punch.

The wild beasts that once hunted them now became their prey, effortlessly captured by them.

Then came the complete revelry for the group of little figures.

They shattered the caves and houses they once inhabited and built cairns one after another on the ground.

Together, they even constructed an unimaginably massive mountain.

They offered various prey as sacrifices to their deity.

The enormous elephant deity head in the sky grew bigger and bigger, until eventually, its shadow covered the entire sky and earth.

The creatures living on the ground, under the corrosion of the elephant deity power, became evil, ferocious, and began to mutate…

“The origin of the Elephant Deity Secret Realm…”

Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze from the last painting and looked out into the black foggy distance.

At that moment, he was already standing at the top of the cairn, with enormous bones scattered on the ground, unclear from which beasts they had been taken.

These bones had been specially polished, appearing like ancient and primitive weapons.

“Similar to the Wailing Ruins, it’s the process of a normal world falling into a realm ruled by the power of the Ancient Evil Deity…

It seems these Ancient Evil Deities have their ways of developing followers.

And these methods, without exception, all appear to be brutal and forceful…”

“But…”

Lu Yuan couldn’t help but frown slightly.

The same problem persisted.

How did this current evil deity realm end up in the state it is now?

“All the elephant men are dormant… Oh no, perhaps the term ‘dead’ would be more accurate…”

Lu Yuan recalled the elephant men he had killed; none of them had flesh and blood.

After being killed, their bodies shattered into pieces of stone.

There was almost no remaining consciousness.

They were merely walking corpses driven by the leftover elephant deity power in their hearts.

“Also, why did all these elephant men assume a kneeling position before they died? Were they praying for something?”

The Wailing Ruins had shown similar signs in the past.

Lu Yuan, although he had not visited the third evil deity secret realm, could estimate that the other evil deity secret realms were likely in similar conditions.

Otherwise, the current global situation wouldn’t involve organizations like Yellow Bear and other extraordinary groups exploring secret realms.

Instead, the world’s extraordinary organizations would be engaged in a prolonged war against the monsters pouring out from various evil deity secret realms.

Just like…

“The scenes depicted in the Hutian Secret Realm mural!”

Lu Yuan’s brow furrowed deeply, unable to comprehend why all the Ancient Evil Deities had “abandoned” their once devoted theological domains.

He was very curious about what kinds of upheavals the Ancient Evil Deities might have encountered from ancient times to the present.

“If it’s possible… perhaps I can ask that woman who loves taking baths in the Styx in my next dream,” Lu Yuan mused to himself.

He casually brought up his professional panel.

He noticed that through this exploration of ancient secrets, the fusion progress between [Student] and [Ancient Language Expert] had increased from 47% to 56%.

“This fusion progress is climbing rather quickly.”

Lu Yuan maintained a rather relaxed attitude regarding the fusion of these two purely supportive professions.

The skills already unlocked on both panels had become of little help to him at this point, so merging them into a stronger new profession would definitely be beneficial.

Speaking of which,

This was going to be his first proper profession fusion.

He then glanced at the changes in his [Martial Arts Grandmaster (Extraordinary)] panel.

After the recent round of battles, his level 3 Martial Arts Grandmaster experience points had surpassed a hundred.

It wouldn’t take long to accumulate the four hundred experience points needed to level up to level 4.

The panel showed three professional basic skills: [Grandmaster’s Domain], [Grandmaster’s Dharma Form], and [Grandmaster’s Qi].

Except for [Grandmaster’s Dharma Form], which he hadn’t used as a trump card, and thus had no increase in experience points,

[Grandmaster’s Domain] and [Grandmaster’s Qi] had both seen faster-than-expected progress due to the enlarged blood sphere within him and continuous battle usage.

Each had surpassed fifty experience points, nearing level 2.

Once both skills were leveled up to level 3, he should, as expected, qualify to unlock the first professional core skill for [Martial Arts Grandmaster (Extraordinary)].

Having maxed out a profession before, Lu Yuan was no longer a novice and was evidently more adept at understanding how to quickly and efficiently unlock the full potential of a profession.

“A better experience instance than the Wailing Ruins. Fighting while exploring, simultaneously leveling three professions… it’s exhilarating.”

Lu Yuan marveled as he leaped down from the cairn, his form blurring as he dashed swiftly across the plain toward the black fog in the distance.

Not long after, another similar black cairn appeared before Lu Yuan.

Around the cairn, a group of elephant men knelt on one knee.

Without hesitation, Lu Yuan’s bones and muscles roared, his Five Viscera shone, and his blood sphere whirled, charging forward with white Qi-like thunder…

…

“Boom!”

A burly figure, emanating a strong radiant glow, collided forcefully with a silver blade light like a war god, raising a fist and slamming it into the head of a towering ancient elephant deity creature.

The creature didn’t utter a sound before its massive mountain-like body exploded.

The blood and flesh fragments, before they could scatter, were all absorbed by the powerful radiance raised by someone’s hand.

“Savage Beast Xilin!”

Yin Muqing gazed coldly at the burly man who had suddenly appeared in front of her, speaking one word at a time, her expression looking somewhat grim.

“If I hadn’t stepped in, you might have been injured…”

The man with a buzz cut, deep-set eyes, and a knife scar across his eyebrow, exuding an air of arrogance and coolness, smiled and spoke to Yin Muqing in slightly stilted Xia Language, “You’re welcome.”

“You…”

Yin Muqing instinctively gripped her silver longblade tighter, her eyelids twitching slightly, yet she swallowed her anger.

A formidable opponent who ranked twenty spots ahead of her on the supernova ranking…

She wasn’t confident in striking at him with her blade.

The fact that he could so easily shatter her blade light suggested that both his mental light and the size and number of his star acupoints far surpassed hers.

Yin Muqing shot a cold glance in another direction, where a man also enveloped in radiant glow was helplessly spreading his hands as if to say, “That’s just how he is. He’s not one of us, so there’s nothing I can do either.”

Yin Muqing scoffed.

This time, Javier had specially sent two supernova members, both of whom were stronger than her.

One played the bad guy, the other played the good guy, leaving her filled with suppressed anger but unable to find a reasonable outlet.

Although she had been mentally prepared for the possibility of encountering such situations upon entering the secret realm, actually facing it in reality left Yin Muqing feeling extremely stifled.

“Let’s go!”

Yin Muqing took a deep breath, ultimately choosing to lead her team away with a sullen face.

The members of Yellow Bear’s Flying Bear Generals weren’t fools either; it was obvious at a glance that Javier’s people were intentionally sabotaging their operation and rhythm.

But if their strongest member, supernova Yin Muqing, was powerless against it, the rest of them could do nothing either.

The members of Yellow Bear’s exploration team held back their frustration, consoling themselves with thoughts like, “The secret realm is so big, we can’t explore it all anyway. At worst, we’ll just go around them.”

…

“[Elephant Deity: Ming King Stance (Extraordinary)]: 60%…”

At the foot of the cairn, standing amidst the debris, Lu Yuan reviewed the gains and improvements from his latest battle, lost in thought.

Perhaps because he had stalled a bit during the fight, the energy consumed by the revived elephant men was relatively high.

As a result, the energy he ultimately absorbed was somewhat less.

About twenty elephant hearts, including one from a four-armed elephant man, had resulted in only an 18% increase in experience progress.

“It seems I should aim for quick victories in the future, no more holding back to conserve strength…”

Lu Yuan sighed.

This time, he had tried to conserve his blood sphere’s reserves, thinking there were many more battles ahead, so he killed slower.

Now, it seems that this behavior was indeed penny-wise and pound-foolish.

“The main issue is that these elephant men aren’t made of flesh and blood. After killing them, there’s no essence to absorb. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have to worry about sustainability and should become more powerful as I fight…”

Lu Yuan pondered whether he should switch to [Elephant Deity: Ming King Stance] for future battles, as it required no energy.

With this in mind, Lu Yuan climbed the cairn in front of him, continuing to search for and examine the rock paintings.

These paintings were quite similar to those he had seen on the previous cairn, mostly recounting the origins of the elephant men.

However, some stories unique to this cairn tribe were mixed in.

For example, on a certain date, this tribe conducted a small sacrificial ceremony.

On another day, they hunted an exceptionally ferocious beast, and so on.

Frankly, these stories were quite dull because the elephant men’s ability to paint and tell stories left much to be desired.

If it weren’t for the continuously, albeit slowly, progressing fusion between the [Student] and [Ancient Language Expert] professions, Lu Yuan wouldn’t have had any interest in continuing to read.

Just as Lu Yuan was skimming through the monotony to advance his progress, suddenly…

His eyes sharpened when he noticed something intriguing amid the tedious rock paintings.

–

One day, a highly esteemed elephant man visited this tribe.

Its height and size were three times that of a normal elephant man, double that of the cairn tribe leader, the four-armed elephant man.

Additionally, it had three heads and six arms.

When it arrived, dozens of cairn tribe elephant men all knelt before it, welcoming its arrival with reverence…