Lu Yuan's eyes were closed, his eyeballs rolling slightly beneath his eyelids. A mist-like Spiritual Power quietly diffused around him. As images flickered through his mind, it steadily grew thicker and deeper...

In a spacious building resembling a cathedral, "Lu Yuan" knelt on one knee before a figure robed in white.

"Felul, your piety and valor are known to all. The Holy Light Association will forever watch over Maple Dew City!"

A resonant, gentle voice sounded from above.

"Lu Yuan" lifted his gaze, attempting to see the speaker before him, and the solemn, imposing statue behind them.

But all "he" could perceive was a hazy, indistinct scene...

"Raise your arm higher! Lucio, is that feeble swordplay of yours meant for swatting insects?"

"Lu Yuan" stood, hands clasped behind his back, in a garden alive with birdsong and fragrant blossoms.

He was loudly berating a young figure before him, who was practicing swings with a greatsword...

"Swarms of crows, brought by the black meteorites, have ravaged all of Brent. These beasts devour everything. Vast expanses of farmland lie ruined, and they've even pecked and hunted living humans..."

"Lu Yuan" sat in a room furnished in an old European style. The dark red, solid wood long table before him was heaped with parchments. A man stood beside him, delivering a report in a rapid, urgent tone.

"Copper Horn City is facing a food shortage and requests our aid..."

"Lu Yuan" wearily closed his eyes in the candlelight...

"The Death Tide! The Death Tide is upon us!"

"That's the death knell! I hear the death knell! Holy Light above, who will save us..."

"Lu Yuan" stood upon the towering city walls. As far as his eyes could see, the sky teemed with crows, their wings beating, their eyes crimson.

Behind the sky-obscuring murder of crows, a dense black fog rolled in like a tidal wave.

His ears were filled with a cacophony of desperate, terrified, panicked wails, intermingled with prayers of every kind, a chaotic din.

Bewilderment, sorrow, helplessness... A maelstrom of emotions churned in "Lu Yuan's" heart, suddenly coalescing into a surge of burning resolve.

His eyes bloodshot, he roared, violently raising the longsword in his hand...

HUFF—

Lu Yuan exhaled a ragged breath. The mist-like Spiritual Power enveloping him had now thickened to an unprecedented degree.

His brow twitched faintly, but he kept his eyes closed.

Instead, he proceeded to crush the second, then the third black bead...

"Father... Father..."

"Felul, I entrust the protection of Maple Dew City to you."

"The ancient Evil God from the abyss has shattered the barrier; the gates of the Netherworld are open.

Its wings are casting a shadow over this land, seeking to sow seeds of death and suffering in every inch of soil..."

"But the Holy Light will not be extinguished. The five Saints have departed for the royal capital. They will join the Monarch to combat the Evil God's Attendants."

"The Holy Light shall banish the darkness, and victory will be ours!"

"Regrettably... I will not live to see it..."

A torrent of disjointed images flashed rapidly through his mind.

The intangible, mist-like Spiritual Power continued to expand, and expand...

When it reached a certain zenith...

BOOM!

It erupted violently.

The ground around Lu Yuan cracked and buckled outwards. A fierce wind sprang up from nowhere, stirring the black fog in the square.

A long while passed... before it gradually subsided.

Lu Yuan silently opened his eyes.

His gaze was clouded, heavy with a profound sorrow and the weight of ages.

Then, just as quickly, it cleared, returning to its former limpidity.

HUFF—

Lu Yuan let out a long breath. A flicker of barely perceptible exhaustion crossed his brow, yet his eyes were exceptionally bright, and he appeared quite exhilarated.

Having absorbed three oversized Black Beads in succession, the deluge of memories had left even him feeling slightly disoriented and dizzy.

However, the benefits gained were also immense.

My Intelligence has directly increased by 1 point, from 22 to 23 points.

[Death Teller (Extraordinary)] has finally advanced from Lv 7 to Lv 8; I've gained 1 skill point and 1 attribute point.

[Circulation of Death Qi] is about to reach Lv 10, and [Netherworld Clothing] has also leveled up to Lv 3...

And...

Lu Yuan rubbed his brow. He saw that on his [Ancient Language Expert] panel, [Ancient Brent Language] had leveled up to Lv 3, and several new sword-related skills had appeared on his [Weapons Master] Profession Panel.

The Black Beads dropped by these Death Qi Monsters were far more potent than the Red Beads from the Crow God Sect's Divine Servants and Divine Envoys.

They weren't merely Experience Pills; they also allowed him to inherit a portion of the deceased's memories and skills.

However, the side effects were considerable. He couldn't consume them indiscriminately, or it might lead to mental derangement and dissociative identities.

I'll worry about the side effects later...

Lu Yuan released his Spiritual Power, contemplating the clues gleaned from the three sets of memories.

These three Black Beads had come from Felul, the Lord of Maple Dew City; his son, Lucio; and the Bishop of Maple Dew City's Holy Light Sect. The memories of these three individuals had effectively sketched out the background of the entire story.

An ancient kingdom named Brent, which worshipped a goddess known as the Holy Light.

Then, one afternoon, black meteorites fell from the sky.

And so, the nightmare of the Ancient Brent Kingdom officially began...

The black meteorites brought man-eating swarms of crows and an all-consuming Death Qi tide.

Wherever the Death Qi tide and the crows passed, all life was extinguished; fertile fields became scorched earth, and prosperous cities were reduced to ruins haunted by wailing spirits...

Under the leadership of their Monarch and the five Saints of the Holy Light Sect, the people of the Ancient Brent Kingdom resisted this cataclysm of death.

This was not merely a war of mortals against a natural disaster, but more like an invasion and plundering of faith...

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

It was a sculpture of a goddess with a crow's head.

If his guess was correct, this should have been the statue of the Holy Light Goddess worshipped by the people of Ancient Brent.

But after Maple Dew City fell, Felul and the others, who had become devotees of the Crow God, had decapitated the Holy Light Goddess statue and replaced her head with that of a crow, symbolizing the Crow God.

Moreover, Lu Yuan noticed something else: in the places he had passed, most traces related to the Holy Light Sect and the original Ancient Brent had been erased.

It was as if...

Lu Yuan casually picked up the large black book left on the ground by the black-robed man.

The book was made of stone slabs, with smudges everywhere. Each page was filled with hymns praising the Crow God and death.

Even memories of the Holy Light Goddess herself had been erased...

Lu Yuan had absorbed a multitude of memories and heard many references to the Holy Light, but not once had an image of the Holy Light Goddess's original appearance surfaced.

Whenever a memory involved directly looking at the Holy Light Goddess, the image was invariably blurred.

A chill ran down Lu Yuan's spine.

This was far more cruel than simply killing someone.

Their faith was thoroughly stripped away, memories manipulated, and mental wills distorted...

Imagine: one moment, she is your adored goddess; the next, you unhesitatingly take a sword and sever her head.

The God you prayed to your entire life, all traces of them ultimately erased from your mind...

Lu Yuan suddenly found it hard to face the woman in the black dress he had seen bathing in the Netherworld River within the Crow Dreamscape.

If that woman truly is Lamashtu, the Death Teller from the Crow God Sect...

Then that woman... is truly ruthless.

The final memory from the Bishop of the Holy Light Sect in Maple Dew City was of news that five Saints were heading to the capital of the Ancient Brent Kingdom to fight the Crow God Sect invaders alongside the Monarch.

The result of that battle... He didn't even need to think to know they must have failed.

Otherwise, this place wouldn't have become the Lament Ruins, open for Yellow Bear's people to explore.

The capital's location must be the red forbidden zone shown on the map...

Yellow Bear's people have it all wrong. The Lament Ruins aren't some divine kingdom created by the Crow God for its followers.

Rather, it's a land of faith the Crow God seized from another deity!

Although Lu Yuan had figured out the true origin of the Lament Ruins, even more questions now surfaced in his mind.

Who were the five Saints and the Monarch of Ancient Brent ultimately fighting? It couldn't have just been the Death Qi tide and the overwhelming crow swarms. There must have been a specific target, or group of targets. Just as the Bishop of Maple Dew City had said... '...from the abyss... Attendants of the Evil God...'

And the most crucial point:

The war ended with the Crow God Sect's successful invasion. So why are Yellow Bear's people now allowed to freely explore and continuously eliminate the followers the Crow God Sect worked so hard to convert?

Was this place... abandoned? Or did something happen to the Crow God of the Crow God Sect?

And... why are there so many Secret Realms in this world, places connected to Ancient Evil Gods? Could it be that one day, the real world will also face... a catastrophe like the Crow God Sect's invasion that the Ancient Brent Kingdom once suffered?

A tangled mess of thoughts swirled in Lu Yuan's mind, making it impossible to sort them out for the moment.

He slowly stood up, accessed the database, and began inputting everything he had pieced together.

All this information had been extracted from the memories of Ancient Brent's original inhabitants. It was likely no one else could have done this.

If this truth about the Lament Ruins' formation were revealed, it would undoubtedly shock many within Yellow Bear.

His exploration progress on the Secret Realm map had now reached 4.5%, and the fusion progress for his [Ancient Language Expert] and [Student] Profession Panels had hit 10%.

His quest to uncover the truth behind the Ancient Brent Kingdom's fall seemed to significantly advance the panels' fusion. Lu Yuan even suspected that these two Profession Panels began to fuse precisely because of his fervent desire to explore the secrets of ancient civilizations and Ancient Evil Gods.

The catalyst for their fusion seemed to be that brief memory fragment related to an Ancient Evil God.

Time to continue.

Lu Yuan took the large black book that had dropped from the Bishop of Maple Dew City and quietly activated his [Netherworld Clothing], now upgraded to Lv 3.

After [Netherworld Clothing] advanced from Lv 2 to Lv 3, the Death Qi condensed into a suit of thin light armor, now adorned with many more intricate patterns.

Both its defensive power and appearance had significantly improved.

Lu Yuan surged forward and leaped. A massive amount of Death Qi gathered, condensing into huge black wings on his back. With a flap of his wings, he rode the wind, gliding rapidly over the ruined buildings.

Almost there... Lu Yuan's eyes flickered as he muttered to himself, The day I can fly freely using Death Qi isn't far off.

* * *

BZZZT—

Two super-alloy longswords, crackling with intense electrical energy, flashed through the air, leaving deep gashes.

They instantly pierced a towering figure, over two meters tall and wreathed in Death Qi.

The super-alloy longswords protruded from the figure's back, the electrical light on them somewhat dimmed, but Xie Jun, appearing suddenly, deftly caught them.

A large amount of blue electrical energy surged from Xie Jun's body and arms, flowing into the longswords.

Instantly, the blue light emanating from the longswords flared violently.

Xie Jun, wielding both longswords, dashed forward and executed a sweeping cross-slash.

RIP—

His figure abruptly reappeared ten meters away. Behind him, the massive, Death Qi-enveloped figure slowly split in two from the middle.

The creature roared, gathering vast amounts of Death Qi from its surroundings in an attempt to mend its grievous wounds.

However, several other figures darted out from the sides. A barrage of colorful energy attacks slammed into it relentlessly, as if they cost nothing.

Before long, the massive Death Qi body abruptly disintegrated, collapsing like a crumbling sand sculpture until it was reduced to a pile of black ash.

Someone walked forward, poked around in the black ashes twice, picked up a thumb-sized black bead, and said cheerfully, "Another one down."

Xie Jun flicked his wrists. The two super-alloy longswords, guided by a magnetic field, automatically flew into the alloy scabbard on his back. His movements were effortlessly stylish and cool.

He looked relaxed, a satisfied smile gracing his otherwise stern face.

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