Chapter 1 The Grandeur of Culture and Heritage

The magnificent walls of the ancient city of Holleta stood before everyone, every brick and line drawing the gazes of the "outsiders" from Earth. They watched in astonishment at this ancient and glorious city, its grand and solid architecture, the crowds moving between the buildings, the Leta runes inscribed on the surfaces, and the things that these things gradually revealed beyond mere material existence: culture and heritage.

Estrangement remained, and a sense of the unfamiliar was unavoidable. In fact, Hao Ren had never expected the Earthly Others to feel any homesickness upon seeing the Plane of Dreams—that was impossible because their memories in that regard had long since vanished with the impact of the Divine Blood Sin. However, he could still expect the ancient Others with profound knowledge to perceive a sense of profound cultural heritage in the sights of the Plane of Dreams. This sense of profoundness had nothing to do with whether they recognized or understood it. It permeated every brick and tile of a civilization that had withstood the test of time. As long as one came from a collective of civilization, one could naturally smell its scent. And it would help every "Chosen One" recognize the "reality" of the Plane of Dreams. Once this "reality" was established, the Earthly Others would genuinely recognize the existence of this world and think of it as a given—thinking about the meaning of this "homeland" to them.

Where was the culture and heritage? Not in repeated lectures, not in tourist brochures and data sets, and not in the holographic projections playing in a loop on the Petrified Turtle Rock. It could only be in the place where it was born and flourished: ancient architecture, orally transmitted language, and the written word that had undergone the vicissitudes of time. These were its carriers. The hawkers' cries in the streets were culture, the repair skills of the cobblers along the street were culture, the emblems on the helmets of the royal knights were culture, and even the gesture of the pedestrians on the street waving to the visitors was culture—and these things, passed down from ancient times to the present, had become elements that people took for granted and were now displayed before you. This was heritage.

The alien races living on Earth lacked these things, and that was the most tragic thing about them—even in the glorious and powerful age of mythology, when they ruled the entire planet with force, making the true native masters of the planet tremble and kneel at their feet, they could not change the fact that they had no culture or heritage. They did not know what ancestors they should worship, what their names meant, what their social structure and technical system was. The powerful Olympian gods were just a chaotic family, and every native god on the Mesopotamian plain lived a chaotic life of constantly collecting treasures and delicacies, then sleeping when they were full. Even if some of them racked their brains and, in a flash of inspiration, outlined some etiquette, laws, or cultural things, their small and extremely unstable race could not maintain them at all.

Therefore, the alien races on Earth had no cultural heritage of their own, and they had never thought about what it would be like if their race had its own cultural heritage.

In the Night Noble District of the royal city, young noble descendants of the Holleta blood clan enthusiastically introduced their Earthly compatriots to the origins and myths of the Night Nobles. They mentioned that the first generation of Blood Lords was born from the sap of the Origin Seed, and that the early blood clan's patron god was a deity named "Heltoli," who lived on the larger moon. Even today, some blood clan elders living in remote areas still believed these ethereal stories.

While visiting a war gallery, Elson, the werewolf general of the kingdom, proudly told the werewolves from Earth that their race had always been the most valiant and skilled warriors on this planet, and also early explorers of shadow magic—although later, due to their physical limitations, werewolves were surpassed by vampires in the field of shadow magic, their achievements in the pursuit of truth were still recognized by the world. Werewolves had once established powerful magical empires on this planet, and even today, the kingdoms they established, large and small, were still significant forces in this world. He also told his ignorant compatriots from Earth that werewolves had a sacred mountain, which was located in the west of this kingdom, covered with snow all year round. Pilgrimage to the sacred mountain was the wish of almost every werewolf…

The rune dwarves ultimately did not find the heritage of their lost enchantment technology, because those technologies had also been lost in Holleta. But the rune dwarves found something even more precious than that: they found the writings of their ancestors.

Those writings were engraved on one hundred and twenty-two stone tablets, preserved in the treasury of the Holleta royal family. If it were not for this extraordinary "visit," His Majesty Moron, stingy as he was, probably would not have been willing to bring out these collections for people to see. The rune dwarves' attitude when they saw those stone tablets even astonished Hao Ren: a group of burly dwarves, like muscle mounds, hugged each other and cried out loud, their snot and tears soaking their beards, and one could not see the indifference and coldness they had when they set out.

Hao Ren did not have much contact with these rune dwarves, only knowing that they were once part of the Norse pantheon. Before the arrival of Ragnarok, they received wind of it and built a giant bronze ship to escape the imminent collapse of Yggdrasil, fleeing into the depths of the ocean under the eyes of the Demon Hunters and hiding underground. They were the origin of many earth-related goblins and underground hollow tales on Earth, and only recently, with the establishment of the Shadow Council, did these reclusive hermits re-emerge.

He curiously asked Hesperides about the situation of these dwarves, and finally understood what was going on.

"They have been looking for their lost writings," Hesperides said, pointing to the dwarf stumps with bald heads but beards that almost dragged on the ground. "They attach extreme importance to the heritage of writing, but when they crossed over to Earth ten thousand years ago, what they lost the most was precisely the memory of writing. Do you see the symbols on their skin? That is the 'writing' that they barely retained. It is said that the first generation of rune dwarves could only vaguely remember these symbols when they first woke up, and then they immediately engraved these things on their bodies. As they engraved, they forgot the meaning of these symbols, and they engraved until their whole bodies were covered in blood, and they completely forgot their writing. From that day on, each generation of rune dwarves engraved the writings on their fathers' bodies on their own bodies, passing these things down from generation to generation in this way, and hoping that one day they could decipher them and re-understand the mystery of their writing. However, perhaps due to the influence of what you call the 'Divine Blood Sin,' all their efforts in this regard failed…"

In Hesperides' quiet narration, Hao Ren could recreate the scene in his mind:

Ten thousand years ago, Yggdrasil carried countless refugees from the Plane of Dreams, blasting a bloody path through the terrifying energy storms caused by the God-Slaying War. It tore through the wall of reality and crashed on Earth, and many Ark passengers died the moment they landed…

The surviving refugees were ejected from Yggdrasil one by one under the control of some automatic program and flung to various corners of the Earth. The planet at that time was still barren, and the refugees were greeted only by wilderness, mountains, forests, swamps, and wastelands. Although Yggdrasil may have pre-screened the landing sites according to the environmental index of the landing planet, it was likely that a considerable number of the more fragile refugees died within the first few dozen to several months.

And the rest woke up in fear and confusion.

The rune dwarves woke up in such a situation, waking up in the cold frozen soil belt of ancient Europe, as if they had had a long and real nightmare, and then they found that the nightmare had come true. They did not know where they came from, where they were going, or what this world was. They may have wanted to record the first-hand information they collected, but they were horrified to find that they were gradually forgetting their writing—in the process of memory fading quickly, they could only choose to engrave those things in the place that would not be forgotten most easily: on their own bodies.

And then they engraved it for ten thousand years.

The rune dwarves excitedly requested that the Holleta Kingdom allow them to take a copy of the stone tablet rubbing. Their request was naturally met, so they once again hugged and cried bitterly. These loud-mouthed guys almost made everyone in the entire gallery stop talking. After the dwarves calmed down a little, Hao Ren could not help but sigh to Hesperides: "I really did not expect that there would be Earthly Others who are as desperately pursuing their lost cultural heritage as they are. I thought you all disdained those things."

"Because the rune dwarves survived Ragnarok, they are one of the least damaged races after the end of the age of mythology, probably second only to the sirens, who were not damaged at all, so they have the extra energy to think about the issue of cultural heritage," Hesperides said lightly. "As for us… many of us are not indifferent to these things, but simply do not have the energy. Like me, the entire Olympus family has only a few survivors left, including me. Where do we have time to think about the issue of civilization affiliation?"

Vivian said next to her, "But didn't you listen very attentively when someone in the war gallery was talking about the thunder giants?"

Hesperides' expression changed, and she deliberately put on a straight face and stopped talking.

Hao Ren smiled slightly, watching the "tourists" he brought continue to visit forward under the leadership of the "guides" arranged by the Holleta side. After a long time, he nodded: "Anyway, it's finally a bit useful."

"But the greatest significance is not here." The data terminal floated beside him and reminded him.

"Of course, the greatest significance is not here." Hao Ren nodded slightly, then raised his head, his eyes seeming to penetrate the arch of the building, directly gazing at the endless and distant depths of the universe.

More and more divine power oscillations were emerging in various places in the Plane of Dreams and being captured by the drone swarm.

A "network" that had been well hidden before seemed to finally emerge.