Book 2: Chapter 50: Ancient Murals |
Yin Hu continued to read through the beginning of the painting one more time, all in the hope of noticing another pair of black dots similar to the one he found around the central crystal. He did not find anything even remotely close.
All the colors on this section were bright and colorful.
Impressing the feeling of peace and tranquility to any who had the opportunity to witness this work.
He eventually moved on to the next section, seamlessly transitioning into another image that looked very much the same as the previous one. Yet, this time the two black dots were shown joining together and forming a larger dot that covered the majority of the crystal. It had a red hue that he nearly missed.
The way everything else was drawn gave him the impression that they were all oblivious to what was happening there. In what had to be the most important place in the city.
The rest of the image continued like the last picture, but there were fewer golden circles.
Most eye-catching of them all, the cultivator at the highest tower remained in his spot, but this time without the gold.
If anything, that section seemed darker than the rest.
Yin Hu took his time to continue studying the gargantuan mural and all the sections within it. Each picture showed the growth of the black dot into a blob that covered the majority of the castle without anyone noticing. He had a suspicion that it had something to do with the cultivator in white Qi. The surroundings around him kept growing darker until he lost the majority of his Qi and was instead covered in black dots just like the original two he found around the crystal.
He quickly learned this was no disease they faced.
The very next painting showed the cultivator joining with the black within the castle, making it transform into a blob that erupted from the castle. Crushing anyone or anything that it happened to brush against it. Killing, destroying, and causing mayhem. It all reminded him of how everyone reacted to the Void Qi the First Calamity had supposedly wielded against this world. A power that did nothing but cause chaos.
At first, the blob was unstoppable. Crushing half of the cultivators within the palace within the very first day, but the longer it lasted the more the bunny humanoid cultivators resisted and learned to fight against it. Studying its reactions, strengths, and weaknesses, knowing well that many of them would die in the process.
Yet, it did not matter to them.
Yin Hu couldn’t help but feel invested in the story as he saw paintings of cultivators jumping into the blob and igniting their cores to go supernova, just to push it back and buy time for everyone else. Sacrificing their lives for scant days and little information as they recorded how the blob reacted to each element erupting within it. This no longer became a fight or a single battle.
This had turned into a war that lasted a generation of long lived cultivators. One in the epicenter of their civilization, isolated from the wider world.
How did they end up losing?
It didn’t make sense to Yin Hu as the cultivators began to push it back. Why hadn’t they called for backup or reinforcements? Why had a few of them starved? If they were so meticulous and learned all its vulnerabilities, why hadn’t they won the battle?
This palace would not be abandoned and the painting would not have been drawn if they were the victors.
Yin Hu frowned as the painting showed the city from a distance, filled with battle fronts. It was falling through clouds? Descending from a great height to the lowest they could have fallen to in a short amount of time. That painting struck a chord with him. It reminded him of the isolated island and what he had been surrounded by. The endless layers of clouds that he had dropped when he had jumped.
He stayed at it for longer than necessary.
I’ll come back to this part… Maybe…
“I see…” Yin Hu placed his hand where the crystal in the next painting was. “No wonder they had no help.”
They lost not because they weren't strong enough to defeat the blob of Void Qi, but rather because it had full control of the crystal that had been the very central power that had ascended them so far in the first place. It was not the reason they were falling. What with the cultivator of white Qi merging with the blob, it had full knowledge of how to manipulate it and control all of the arrays and illusions that protected the city from the outside world.
The same ones that rendered all of his party members incapable of noticing a massive building that towered over the forest right in front of them.
Yin Hu frowned as he trailed his hand over the final paintings. The bunny race had won the war, celebrating their victory for a time until realization dawned on them all.
The evil thing had known it was going to die near the end.
It had decided to not die alone. Planning to take every single person in the city. It set off the crystal, powered by thousands upon thousands of the highest levels of Qi Stones, and trapped everyone within. They had slain the creature, but in response, it had unregistered the central power crystal from anyone. Surrounding it with empowered barriers, obscured the city, prevented anyone from going in and out, and even began to suffocate it from Qi.
Weakening everyone in the long run and making it impossible to ever break the trap.
No one would be capable of helping them and they wouldn’t be able to help themselves ascend to previous heights either.
Sheesh, that thing is powerful. Even Da Ruis and Rong can’t tell they’re standing before a gigantic castle.
Yin Hu had to wonder if that was the blip he had noticed. It made sense with his previous theory of what his perception ability was.
An illusion breaker and not a general pinpointing tracker.
He finished reading as he watched them struggle to reach the inside. Failing due to the blob releasing unfiltered Void Qi with red, yellow, and purple tints that even the bunny cultivators shied away from and refused to deal with.
Mutual destruction was the final outcome and all for nothing.
Being an isolationist civilization only made their chances worse since they had no true contacts with the outside world to get a message through arrays and barriers that strong.
The mural ended abruptly.
A line of white paint that went jagged and fell down to the ground.
Even cultivators that lived for thousands of years eventually needed either Qi for sustenance or food. Starvation had begun to take root, even for their level of cultivation. That was how long they had been stuck in the array, incapable of getting into the castle due to the Void Qi left by the blob. All of them dying off one by one. No one cannibalized the other. Rather the majority had tried to light their cores in an ultimate eruption, but they were too drained of Qi and weak to even crack the barriers that had been their very thing that had once ensured their survival.
Ain’t that just grim… Good thing we can deal with Void Qi.
He had Da Ruis in his camp, his official Void Qi eliminator and Sparring Instance maintainer.
While the old ghost was eccentric in all the wrong ways, he was still a very useful member of their party. Watching him turn the First Calamity and all the Void Qi surrounding the crater into the Sparring Instance had been a sight to see. Even if he had no clue what the technical details were.