Chapter 1 Aftermath

After a long period of time, the golden ruined city of Alamanda was no longer as glorious as it once was. Although the ruins were still brilliant, the city was full of broken walls. Few buildings in the city remained intact; only the most important and sturdy structures had been preserved.

One of these was the key facility known as the Tower of Ascension.

This was a pentagonal tower with a base of a hundred meters in circumference, making it extremely large. Apart from the gate at the bottom, there were no doors or windows on the entire spire. The smooth, light-gold exterior walls only had some protrusions of unknown function and metal supports that looked like antennas. Anna led the group to the gate of the tower based on the vague memories in her mind. The gate was already broken, torn outwards in a radial pattern, as if something had forced its way out, leaving this huge hole.

Hao Ren took the lead and walked in. He was surprised to find that the interior of this building without doors or windows was very bright: many beams of light of unknown origin shone down from above, illuminating the hall on the first floor of the tower as bright as day. The beams of light were surrounded by thin dust and mist, giving people a strange ethereal feeling: it was not difficult to imagine what a sacred place this must have been in the past.

The first floor of the tower did not have a complicated structure; it was just a magnificent hall. What was even more incredible was that there were no pillars supporting it. Considering the height of the entire tower, which was hundreds of meters, this unsupported base hall made people marvel at the advanced architectural technology and materials science of the ancient Tanan people. Around the hall, there was a circle of golden devices, which were cylindrical columns about one meter high with a slanted upper surface, seemingly some kind of operating platform. Lily curiously patted the pillar, but found no reaction.

"Forget it, even if these things aren't broken, there's no energy here to start them," Hao Ren said, looking around the hall with his arms folded. He suddenly saw some exquisite patterns on the walls in some places. "Hey, come and see this. It seems to be murals left by the Tanan people."

Everyone was immediately attracted to them. Hao Ren found the starting point of the murals, and he was surprised by what was recorded on them: it wasn't anything earth-shattering, there were no heroes or mythical figures, nor were they exquisite or luxurious decorative paintings. They depicted very simple everyday things.

They depicted the entire civilization of the Tanan people.

In the first mural, the Tanan people lived in coastal tidal flats. They were an amphibious species that gradually moved towards a purely terrestrial life due to some changes in the marine environment. They built houses on the coastline wearing primitive seaweed and animal skin clothing, adapted to drought, hunted terrestrial animals, and lit the first bonfire of civilization.

In the second mural, the Tanan people had shed their scales and evolved the structure of their fingers. Their living environment had obviously shifted from tidal flats and swamps to drier plains. They built villages on the grasslands, raised animals, and planted and harvested crops.

They built cities, developed metal tools, learned how to smelt and manufacture alloys, and comprehended the power of "electricity" from natural phenomena. Soon after, they merged this power with a certain spiritual ability inherent in their race. In the later murals, the Tanan people could be seen holding rituals around a tall metal pillar, with lightning striking the pillar and another mysterious energy erupting from the Tanan people's bodies in resonance.

They lived, learned, and tempered their spiritual power. Their innate ability to evolve quickly allowed them to acquire power from nature more easily. They explored their entire planet and built a great information network and a global energy broadcasting system. They even developed aerospace technology and some kind of space technology—however, their most powerful skill was still a wonderful technique called "soul ability," which was the result of their continuous evolution of their spiritual talent. This wonderful technique was also the Tanan people's only hope for self-preservation when the Great Disaster came.

Yes, the Great Disaster. Everything changed in the later murals. Some unspeakable disaster erupted on the planet. The power of the Tanan people was insignificant in the face of this disaster. Their magnificent cities made of metal were uprooted, and their weapons of war were useless against the enemy. The murals showed the tragic situation of the Tanan people being slaughtered one-sidedly, with the flames of war burning across the entire planet, but the enemy's appearance was always a chaotic mass of lines. The person who left these murals seemed unable to describe what his enemies were in a logical way. He could only use shadows and curves to represent some kind of disaster, and hundreds of millions of Tanan people were on the verge of extinction under the shroud of those chaotic lines.

Finally, the only survivors retreated to the three cities on the planet. The murals used exaggerated pictures to express the situation of these three cities: they were cast from metal and shrouded in layers of protective walls and energy shields, while outside the cities was boundless chaos and death. The survivors eked out a living in the city walls for several years, but the city walls were constantly weakened by the erosion of the disaster's power, and destruction became inevitable.

Anna stroked the lines on the murals: "This is the 'Origin Calamity', which mortal power cannot resist. Finally, the Tanan people realized a certain law of this disaster, and they decided to seek survival by changing their life form—"

As Anna spoke, she raised her hand and pointed to the last mural.

The lines on the mural returned to simplicity. The magnificent and complex material world was hidden. A Tanan person was suspended in the air, and half of his body had turned into a mist-like phantom, which represented the transformation of life form. Below the picture was a mess of lines, which represented the disaster. This mural seemed to depict the scene of the Tanan people finally getting rid of the disaster after changing their life form.

Anna sighed, and the last bit of memory fragments in her mind pieced together: "They left these murals to record the course of their civilization, because the Tanan people were not sure what would happen after they transformed into spiritual beings. To cope with the worst-case scenario, they left this simple and straightforward record in many buildings to ensure that other intelligent creatures visiting this planet in the future would know what kind of race once lived here."

"So the Tanan people became the Nu Ling (wrathful spirits)," Vivian said, shaking her head with a frown. "But the Nu Ling they became did not show a trace of logic. Not to mention higher intelligence, they were even as irrational as natural phenomena."

Nangong Sanba scratched his head: "Then what exactly is the disaster mentioned above?"

Hao Ren took a breath, and a vague guess gradually formed in his mind. He glanced at the scenes depicted in the last few murals and suddenly ran quickly towards the exit of the hall: "Follow me!"

The others followed him, puzzled. Hao Ren led them to a high platform they had passed earlier. Anna couldn't climb such a steep building, so Lily simply carried her on her shoulders. The group climbed onto the high platform and came to a place where they could overlook the outside of the city walls, so the scene outside Alamanda's thick protective wall was clear at a glance.

Outside the city was a primitive and desolate land, and it presented an exceptionally horrifying sight: the ground was covered with huge ravines and giant pits, like a giant face full of potholes. On one side of the city was an unprecedented super-giant crater, the scale of which almost made one suspect that it had penetrated the planet's core below. And in these countless ravines and potholes, the most striking thing was those scalp-numbing tentacles.

The First Born.

"I knew it..." Hao Ren swallowed. "The same thing happened here as in Holletta."

Nangong Wuyue swayed and covered her mouth, exclaiming softly: "Oh my God..."

"The situation on this planet is worse than in Holletta. The First Born has obviously completed a great purge of the Second Born," Vivian said with a frown, looking back at Alamanda, which was now only ruins. "The Tanan people are extinct."

It was the first time that Anna and Nangong Sanba had seen this terrifying thing. The latter was a demon hunter, so he was a little better. The former swayed twice and almost fainted directly. She was suffering from a double dose of fear, one from her human instinct and the other from the remaining Nu Ling memories in her mind. She was now almost half a Tanan person, and when she saw the tentacles that had destroyed an entire civilization, she almost fainted.

This was the disaster that the Tanan people faced, and the reason why they had to abandon their bodies and change their life forms.