Chapter 5308: Secret of the Ancient Realm

Chapter 5308: Secret of the Ancient Realm

Boom!

As the earth quaked, another ten more monuments surfaced. These ten monuments didn’t contain Chu Xuanyan’s name, and they looked visibly newer too.

“Why did another ten more Ancestral Divine Monuments appear?”

The crowd from the Ancient Realm was perplexed. Only eleven people had entered their Ancient Realm, so it didn’t make sense for another ten more to appear.

Shoosh!

While the crowd was struggling to make sense of the situation, ten chains suddenly rose from the ground and shackled the ten Ancestral Divine Monuments. Moments later, the light from the underground finally dissipated, signaling the end of the phenomenon.

“They have been locked up. Does it mean that the additional ten Ancestral Divine Monuments aren’t to be used for the Ancestral Ritual?”

The chief and elders of the Ancient Realm understood the symbolism behind the chains, but if those additional Ancestral Divine Monuments weren’t to be used for the Ancestral Ritual, what could their emergence represent?

The Ancient Realm was truly acting bizarrely this time around. Even those who had lived in the Ancient Realm for many years were unable to make sense of it.

In truth, the invitations that had been sent out every year were done under the orders of the Ancient Realm’s Ancestral Idol. It was under the orders of the Ancestral Idol that they had sent out more invitations than usual, but what happened every step of the way wasn’t something that they could control.

The opening of the wooden gate leading into the Ancient Realm was one thing. The shackled Ancestral Divine Monuments before them were another thing. They might get some hints about what was to come, but the outcome was beyond their control.

“Lord Chief!”

The elders of the Ancient Realm looked at their chief with worried faces.

They could ignore the ongoing tests, but the matter concerning the Ancestral Divine Monuments was extremely important. A wrong step here could cost them their lives. On top of that, they wanted to know the purpose behind the additional ten Ancestral Divine Monuments.

“Invite Lord Ancestor,” the Ancient Realm’s chief ordered.

A few elders headed off.

Not too long later, they returned with a sedan. They opened the sedan and revealed an old man seated inside. The old man was shrouded in a layer of beautiful glowing runes that gave off an ancient aura.

However, the elder had slanted eyes and mouth, looking as if he had gone senile.

“Paying respects to Lord Ancestor!”

The Ancient Realm’s chief and the other elders kneeled down and kowtowed to the old man in the sedan. The chief proceeded to ask everything he was curious about, but the old man didn’t answer at all. He kept drooling as if he had lost his mind.

“Why is it like that? It has already been five years now, but Lord Ancestor still isn’t saying a word! Lord Chief, is it possible that the prophecy is off? Is it even possible for Lord Ancestor to be reincarnated?” an elder asked meekly.

“Audacious! Can’t you see the light shrouding Lord Ancestor? Do you think that can be faked? Why would such light shroud him if he isn’t the reincarnation of Lord Ancestor?” the Ancient Realm’s chief bellowed.

The elder hurriedly kowtowed and apologized. However, the other elders couldn’t help narrowing their eyes in skepticism.

The Ancient Realm had been around for ages now, but there were hardly any records on their ancestor. Even their predecessors didn’t know much about him. All that was known by the current generation was that they were trapped in the Ancient Realm, and they were reliant on their Ancestral Idol for energy to cultivate.

Every now and then, the Ancestral Idol would spit out Sacred Temple Beads and order them to invite various people over. The invitees would have to clear some simple tests, and those who passed the final test will be entitled to the best Sacred Temple Bead.

Of course, there was a trade-off.

The people of the Ancient Realm called it ‘talent assessment’, but the challengers would have a portion of their energy sapped during the tests. The energy could be recovered later on, and it wouldn’t inflict any permanent damage on the cultivators.

This process was also known as the Ancestral Ritual.

It was an important ritual because the people of the Ancient Realm were reliant on the energy bestowed upon them from the Ancestral Idol for survival. Should the Ancestral Ritual fail and the Ancestral Idol stop providing them with energy, they would all be goners.

The people of the Ancient Realm also didn’t like leading such a life, but there was nothing they could do about it. They were unable to leave the Ancient Realm. They had no choice but to roam the world together with the Ancient Realm.

Outsiders saw them as the master of the Ancient Realm, but they saw themselves as the servants of the Ancestral Idol. They had no freedom whatsoever.

An opportunity surfaced five years ago. The Ancestral Idol prophesied that an ancestor of the Ancient Realm still had a fragment of his soul lingering in this world. This ancestor would soon reincarnate in the Ancient Realm with his memories intact.

This was huge news to the people of the Ancient Realm. This meant that their ancestor would be able to provide them valuable guidance.

Shortly after the prophecy, one of the elders in the Ancient Realm suddenly turned into a fool. Everyone initially thought that he had fallen ill, but unique glowing runes soon appeared around him. These runes emanated an air of divinity and exerted bloodline suppression on those from the Ancient Realm.

This led the people to think that their ancestor had reincarnated into the body of this elder. Thus, they began worshiping the elder as their ancestor.

Five years had passed since then, but the elder’s mental state didn’t improve at all. He didn’t even speak at all, let alone provide them guidance.

This confused the people of the Ancient Realm.

It was only when the Ancestral Idol released a huge bunch of Heavenly Sacred Beads and issued a new set of instructions for the Ancestral Ritual that the people finally got an inkling as to what was about to happen. The last time such an anomaly occurred was eight hundred years ago, but things didn’t proceed smoothly then due to certain reasons.

They wondered if this Ancestral Ritual was an opportunity for them to be free from the Ancient Realm, and they took it more seriously than ever. However, the situation had started to deviate from what had happened eight hundred years ago, which meant that their prior knowledge had been rendered obsolete.

This sparked panic amongst them.

Weng!

A bright light suddenly shone from the palace. It was coming from a formation.

The Ancient Realm’s chief quickly returned to the palace together with his elders to check on the formation. The formation showed the locations of the eleven people who had entered the Ancient Realm.

The white-haired woman had been brought into one of the forbidden lands of the Ancient Realm, where a Half-God level Sacred Temple Bead had already been placed beforehand. The other ten people had also been teleported to the various tribes in the Ancient Realm.

“Why was Chu Feng sent to the Yuan Lineage Tribe? Hasn’t it already fallen into decline?” Elder Lai was surprised when he saw the allocation of the challengers on the formation map.

In the next test, the challengers had to work together with the tribes they were sent to and make their way to this palace. At this palace, they would have their ‘talent assessed’, thus completing the Ancestral Ritual.

Should the Ancestral Ritual succeed, the challenger and the tribe he was bound to would receive some benefits.

The Yuan Lineage Tribe Chu Feng was sent to had already fallen into decline, so challengers shouldn’t have been sent there at all. For the same reason, they hadn’t bothered to inform the Yuan Lineage Tribe about the Ancestral Ritual at all.

In other words, Chu Feng wouldn’t even know that he had to head to this palace to complete the ritual.

“Lord Chief, should we send someone to inform Chu Feng about the next task? He’s the strongest late Martial Exalted level cultivator, after all,” Elder Lai asked.

It wouldn’t be long before the Ancestral Ritual began. Chu Feng wouldn’t be able to participate in the final test if he failed to make it in time, which would result in his elimination. It seemed too unfair for him to be eliminated in such a manner.

“There’s no need for that.” The Ancient Realm’s chief rejected Elder Lai’s suggestion. “The Ancestral Idol has its reasons for arranging matters in such a way. We shouldn’t interfere in its decision. You shouldn’t forget that Chu Feng came in on his own. He wasn’t in the Ancestral Idol’s invitation list.”

“Lord Chief, are you saying that the Ancestral Idol is trying to eliminate Chu Feng?” an elder asked.

“I dare not to fathom the will of the Ancestral Idol. In any case, we just have to do what’s expected of us and not get in the way of the Ancestral Idol’s planning,” the Ancient Realm’s chief said.

“Understood.” The other elders thought that the words of the Ancient Realm’s chief made sense.

...

“What is this place? Why am I the only one here?”

As soon as Chu Feng stepped out of the spirit formation gate, he realized that he had been transported to a barren place. Even with his spirit power as a God-cloak World Spiritist, he was unable to find anyone in the vicinity at all. All he saw was a bunch of tattered buildings.

He had initially refrained from using his Heaven’s Eyes out of respect for the Ancient Realm, but at a complete loss as to where he should head to, he eventually succumbed.

Through Heaven’s Eyes, he discovered several cities in the distance. There, he spotted tattered flags bearing the name ‘Yuan Lineage Tribe’. The outer perimeter of these cities were massive graveyards with at least tens of millions of tombstones. These tombstones looked old, but not to the extent of ancient.

To his relief, he noticed a bunch of people inside one of the smaller cities.

While he called it a smaller city, he could tell from the scale of its infrastructure that it must have housed at least a few million people back when it was still at its prime. However, there were only a couple thousand people residing there now.

Chu Feng flitted toward the city, and upon arrival, he descended in front of a man. This man was a Martial Exalted level cultivator, one of the stronger individuals in the city. Chu Feng figured that this man was likely to be more knowledgeable about the Ancient Realm than the others.

“Excuse me...”

As soon as Chu Feng started speaking, the man jolted in fright.

“Spare me, milord! Spare me! Please, let me go. I don’t know anything at all. I just want to live. I really don’t know anything at all!!!” the man uttered those words in a fluster.

He kowtowed to Chu Feng thrice before quickly running away.

“What’s going on?”

Chu Feng was astounded, but he figured that the man must have been through some kind of traumatic experience. He proceeded to approach a few more people, but their reactions were all the same. They escaped in fright as soon as they saw Chu Feng. It was almost as if they were afraid that someone would punish them for interacting with him.

“What happened inside the Ancient Realm?” Chu Feng was intrigued.

This was completely different from what he had envisioned. He couldn’t understand why the people of the Ancient Realm would have fallen to such a state.

“Could it be an internal conflict?” Eggy suggested.

“That’s possible.”

Chu Feng had considered such a possibility too.

He did notice many old tombstones while surveying the area, and there were fighting marks in the cities too. The elder from the Ancient Realm whom he had met earlier on, the one who had stopped the fight between Mo Wuxiang and Xia Xingchen, was also exceptionally powerful and dressed in fine clothes. This meant that not everyone in the Ancient Realm was suffering from destitution.

An internal conflict was indeed the best explanation for the situation.

“Hey, who are you? Why are you dressed so well?” a childish voice sounded.

Surprised, Chu Feng turned around and saw a little girl around five years old. She was dressed in rags, and she didn’t even have a pair of shoes. She was standing a distance away with bare feet darkened by dirt.

Even the bun she was holding in her hand was stained by soil.

She didn’t just look like a beggar. She was a beggar.