Chapter 226-1: This Is the History of My Race (1) |
Green Wood City.
In the early morning, a thin mist like gauze shrouded the entire city.
Sunlight filtered through layers of leaves and sprinkled onto the streets. Dappled light and shadow swayed with the breeze.
This was a green city living in symbiosis with vegetation.
Towering trees and buildings were fused into one. Vines climbed the walls, leaves interlaced with brick and stone, as if every house had naturally grown out of the earth.
The air in the city was filled with the fresh scent of plants. A large number of Earth’s bird species roosted here.
This area had originally been heavily polluted, but under the construction of the Green Wood race, its ecology had been restored.
It possessed the best ecosystem among Earth’s major cities.
The city’s core concept was also coexistence with nature. Even the city’s cleaning system was entrusted to plants, relying entirely on the decomposing ability of vegetation.
Along both sides of the streets and in the gaps between buildings, a large number of plants with decomposing abilities had been planted. The roots of these plants could secrete a special enzyme that decomposed organic waste such as fallen leaves, food scraps, and even paper, turning them into fertilizer for plant growth.
In addition, the city set up multiple ecological processing stations, each composed of dense plant communities.
Household waste was sorted and delivered to these stations. Biodegradable organics were quickly decomposed by plants and microorganisms, transformed into soil nutrients, and used for urban greening projects, forming a closed-loop ecological cycle.
Moreover, the rivers and lakes of Green Wood City also assumed part of the cleaning function.
A large number of weak-grade spiritual plants were planted in the rivers and lakes. They could purify water quality and absorb harmful substances in the water.
Domestic sewage in the city was discharged directly into the water bodies without treatment, where aquatic spiritual plants and microorganisms purified it, eventually turning it into clear water that re-entered the city’s circulation system.
Humans had once proposed bringing in this technology, but ultimately failed.
It was not that the Green Wood race was unwilling to provide it, but that humans could not master the innate abilities of the Green Wood race, nor could they cultivate special plants in Earth’s weak spiritual-energy environment.
At this moment, in the central district of the city.
Inside a building covered in greenery.
The game pod lid slowly opened, and Ashen Sigil bent forward to rise.
“Cough, cough.”
He had just taken a breath of air from the real world when he could not help but cough, even feeling a sense of suffocation.
A heavy, oppressive smell permeated the air, as if even oxygen had become far more scarce.
Ashen Sigil raised a hand to rub his temples, feeling as though his head were filled with lead.
Having grown used to the Monster World, where spiritual energy was abundant and energy flow could be felt with every breath, the air of reality made him feel especially unwell.
Yet the air quality of Green Wood City was already recognized as the best among Earth’s major cities.
Even so, it was still hard to compare with the Monster World.
Every time he went offline, he felt terrible. From spirit to body, a sense of rejection would arise.
He even wanted to log back in the very next second and return to the Monster World.
He rose slowly. Long hours of gaming had left his legs a bit weak.
Stepping out of the game pod, Ashen Sigil lowered his head to look at his hands. The wood-grained fingers trembled slightly beyond his control.
The heaviness of his body brought an unprecedented sense of weakness. It felt like even lifting an arm cost him tremendous effort.
Walking to the window, he pushed open the vine-twined frame to let fresh air pour into the room.
However, the air outside was not much better than inside.
Returning to the computer desk, he glanced around. Vines crawled all over the walls of the room. Greenery hung from the ceiling, and sunlight spilled in through gaps in the leaves.
Unlike before, the greenery drooping on the walls now looked like shapeless blotches of ink.
Contours became blurry in his eyes, lacking their former clarity.
Sunlight through the window was no longer bright beams, but diffused into hazy patches of light with indistinct edges.
He tried hard to focus, wanting to see the dust motes floating in the air, but the dust seemed to melt into this chaotic field of vision, no longer distinguishable.
Each blink felt like stirring a turbid lake, making the scene before him even more blurred.
He took a deep breath to adjust his state, but it was as if a boulder blocked his chest. Every breath came with a faint pain.
Compared with the Monster World, where spiritual energy was abundant and allowed him to soar freely, reality was simply a cage.
In the game, he possessed hawk-like sharp eyesight, capable of seeing minute movements a thousand meters away. Mountains and rivers appeared to him as clear as a painting.
When he activated the Owl-Headed Fiend’s perception, he could gain an unprecedentedly fine-grained perspective.
But back in reality, he could hardly see the full picture of this small room. It always felt as if a veil had been draped over everything within his sight.
Ashen Sigil lowered his eyes to the terminal on his wrist. The screen showed an unread message.
He tapped it, and a cold female voice sounded.
“Mr. Ashen Sigil, your game time has exceeded the safety threshold. It is recommended that you undergo a physical examination immediately.”
Ashen Sigil ignored it. He reached for the body regulation solution on the desk, twisted off the cap, and drank it in one gulp.
He pressed the red button on the desk. The lights shifted to green, and a projection fell from the ceiling, forming a light-screen display in front of him.
With a trace of doubt, Ashen Sigil began browsing the race’s internal historical records.
Just now, during his resurrection cooldown, he had been surfing the forum and found a post.
[An ancient legend of the Boundless Forest Domain. Newbie seeking background info supplement, with recorded video footage]
Seeing the title, and already very interested in the Monster World’s historical background, he clicked to view.
But the content of the video in the post left him dumbfounded.
Wasn’t this exactly the Green Wood race’s origin as recorded in history.
Yet since part of the Green Wood race’s history had been lost, he could not make an accurate judgment as to whether this described the true precursor of the Green Wood race.
So he chose to go offline and search the Green Wood race’s historical archive.
He entered the Green Wood race’s official website, clicked the history category, and began reading the historical materials recorded on the Starnet.
In the archive, the history of the Green Wood race was divided into five stages.
The first stage: The Chapter of Origin.
This part of history was already incomplete in the archive, and its narrative leaned toward myth.
A bit like the human myths of splitting heaven and earth, Nuwa creating humans, and other unverified content.
It told of the Divine Mother descending from the heavens, bringing the light of wisdom and life.
The ancestors of the Green Wood race were born from the spores scattered by the Divine Mother, bestowed with the ability to communicate with nature. This was the reason the Green Wood race was innately close to nature.
In this process, the Divine Mother taught the people of the Green Wood race how to live in symbiosis with plants, even how to draw energy from the earth.
Through the wisdom bestowed by the Divine Mother, the Green Wood race established a prosperous civilization of wisdom.
The origin story also laid the foundation for the Green Wood race’s faith and culture that continued to this day.
To this day the Green Wood race still venerates the Divine Mother, but there is no longer any verifiable historical content. It is impossible to determine what the Divine Mother actually looked like, so the statues of the Divine Mother in Green Wood City were entirely created from the imagination of later generations.
It is even hard to prove whether this segment of history ever truly existed.
The second stage of the Green Wood race’s history: The Chapter of Cataclysm.
This part of history was severely lost, only vaguely recording the years of the Green Wood race’s prosperous development, until the cataclysm descended.
The story was a bit like the ancient apocalyptic tales in human myths, such as the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark or Dayu controlling the floods, the world burned by heavenly fire like Ragnarok, and the appearance of ten suns.
The content was likewise unverifiable.
This stage was also the darkest hour in the Green Wood race’s history, when the survival of the race faced a severe test.
In the end, their ancestors chose to flee their homeland and seek hope for the continuation of the race in a new world.
The third stage: The Chapter of Exile, World Overlord.
This stage had quite a bit that could be verified, and even a small amount of video footage remained.
It recounted the development of the Green Wood race after escaping to the new world.
When the Green Wood race first arrived in the new world, due to using different teleportation arrays, they were transmitted in batches to different regions of the world.
The historical material mentioned one point.
Those teleported to the new world were children of the Green Wood race aged 6 to 8 years old. Not a single elder followed them.
Later scholars speculated that during the cross-space teleportation, some taboo had been triggered, causing all ancestors above that age range to perish.
At that time, the Green Wood race’s strength had waned and their numbers were few. They were forced to depend on a powerful native force, the Crimsonlink race.
After brief contact, the Crimsonlink race realized that the Green Wood race possessed terrifying growth potential.
If this force were allowed to take root in the world, the Crimsonlink race would lose its status as world overlord.
During this stage, the Green Wood race was suppressed in all aspects.
They were forced under the Crimsonlink race’s exploitation to mine resources and build plant cities, and were even forbidden to use their innate talent that allowed them to control nature. The race’s culture and faith were gradually eroded.
Until a young Green Wood warrior named Ashen Vine appeared.
Unwilling to let the Green Wood race remain slaves forever, he rallied Green Wood warriors in the name of the Divine Mother and tried to resist oppression.
In the eyes of the Crimsonlink race at the time, this act undoubtedly violated a taboo.