Chapter 123: 121: The Truth of History (Combined)

121: The Truth of History (Combined)

Li Nuowei also leaned in, and the two of them flipped through the original Ancient Book together; the content in the latter half finally began to explain the reason why the Anhai Divine Society gradually disappeared into the long river of human history.

When the Anhai Divine Society rose to prominence, everyone was shocked to discover that the God of Anhai had not completely repelled the sea monster; that sea monster, which everyone viewed as gluttonous and tyrannical, was actually just a part of some unknown existence.

The God of Anhai, who had suddenly fallen silent and no longer actively responded to believers, had not fallen into a deep slumber after ending the battle with the sea monster, but was still continuing to fight that unknown existence.

In order to contend with the sea monster and its primordial kin, this visitor from outer space began to expand and cultivate her kin through her own methods; the treasures she bestowed upon her believers contained a large amount of her "Blessing."

Believers obtained wealth from the God of Anhai, but in exchange, they were slowly cognitively distorted due to being tainted by the "Blessing" within the treasures, and their bodies would slowly transform into the loyal kin of the God of Anhai; eventually, their bloodlines would permanently inherit this Blessing, which was the source of the Jiaoren Disease.

When they were influenced by the Blessing and completely transformed into fish-men, those believers would dive into the seabed without hesitation to share eternal life with the great God of Anhai, henceforth dwelling deep in the ocean, obeying the commands of the God of Anhai, and competing for survival resources against the gluttonous sea monster and its primordial kin.

As an outsider, the God of Anhai did not have many kin following her to Earth, and even if she did, they were either unfit for use or had already fallen in the battles against the sea monster. To cultivate more and stronger kin faster, the God of Anhai decided to develop believers inland and simultaneously seek aid from other Alien Gods and their kin; dwelling deep beneath the ocean, she communicated her thoughts through dreams to the believers on land who had not yet been transformed into kin.

Thus, the number one fanatical fan at the time, the leader of the Anhai Divine Society, dispatched the Saintess and other members of the organization to the mainland to seek a solution.

It was precisely this move that caused the Anhai Divine Society to slowly decline; the Saintess spread the Gospel on land while searching for an opportunity to help the God of Anhai defeat the sea monster.

Finally, through persistent searching, they found an Abnormal organization that was widely circulated inland but had few believers: the Yellow Sand Truth School.

This Abnormal organization firmly believed that one could perceive all things in the universe from sand, predict the future, know the past, measure yin and yang, turn karma... in short, they believed that the deity they worshipped was omniscient and invincible.

Although the school did not have many people, every single one was an extraordinary sage and held a lofty status in the secular world; they were either wise prime ministers of the current dynasty or brilliant strategists behind the great generals guarding the frontiers.

The era in which the Saintess lived was a time of chaos with the world divided into three kingdoms; she found the great strategist under the throne of the Han Shu kingdom.

That strategist was the famous Divine Calculator from historical records, who, relying on his method of divination by drawing in the sand, borrowed an East Wind and used strategy to defeat a larger force with a smaller one, crushing the enemy army; thus, people of the ancient world also called him "Immortal Master" or "Dongfeng Xiansheng."

The Saintess spent quite some effort before she finally got to see Dongfeng Xiansheng, begging him to calculate a way to defeat the sea monster.

Seeing that the Saintess possessed a sincere heart, and because she had also contributed a large batch of precious gold and silver jewelry to their not-so-wealthy Han Shu, and the king whom Dongfeng Xiansheng served at the time was also willing to whisper in his ear for the Saintess, Dongfeng Xiansheng finally agreed to help with the calculation.

However, this divination involved two Alien Gods and was exceptionally difficult. Dongfeng Xiansheng first performed the divination alone but failed to obtain a satisfactory result; he called over several trusted aides he had personally trained to help, and even after exhausting most of his own power, Dongfeng Xiansheng still could not glimpse the method of breaking the curse, and he himself aged nearly a dozen years because of it.

Finally, the promise-keeping Dongfeng Xiansheng not only set up an altar to perform the Sacrificial Ritual but also summoned other capable people from the Yellow Sand Truth School to help; only then did they finally receive a response from the "God of Yellow Sand" they worshipped, and the response was a book—a strange book that was difficult to touch and would turn to sand upon contact.

Opening the book, the content within was all-encompassing; whether it was astronomy, geography, or the fate of nations, it truly could know all things and see through time and space.

The people of the Yellow Sand Truth School believed this was a sacred object bestowed upon them by the "God of Yellow Sand," and the school's believers, possessing a strong desire for knowledge, scrambled and could not wait to flip through this Book of Sand.

Eerily and terrifyingly, quite a few people showed symptoms of sandification while reading, eventually turning into dust and vanishing with the wind.

Dongfeng Xiansheng sensed the horror of the Book of Sand; before being completely drawn into the content recorded in the book, he shook off the control the Book of Sand had over him and attempted to close it. However, the other believers of the school who were attracted by the Book of Sand were not all able to maintain their rationality while reading the book like Dongfeng Xiansheng.

To some of them, Dongfeng Xiansheng's act of closing the book was like having their limbs severed or their beloved destroyed; they all went mad, disregarding all decorum, and actually picked up sharp weapons nearby to stab Dongfeng Xiansheng.

Fortunately, there were others present at the time who timely stopped the actions of those who had fallen into madness, and only then did Dongfeng Xiansheng escape the danger.

Having experienced a brush with death, Dongfeng Xiansheng's attitude toward the Book of Sand in his hand changed, filled with both fear and an undisguised, obsessive love.

Although the Saintess had witnessed what happened with her own eyes and was still shaken, she remained calm and asked Dongfeng Xiansheng again about the "method to defeat the sea monster."

Having regained his composure, Dongfeng Xiansheng slowly recovered his usual demeanor and told the other party the information he had seen in the book.

The Saintess learned of a special sealing method from Dongfeng Xiansheng and received his full instruction and personal guidance.

Dongfeng Xiansheng told the Saintess that as long as they could work in concert with the God of Anhai, there was a chance to seal the sea monster.

The Saintess, having finally obtained the method to break the curse, lived up to expectations and returned to her homeland with the believers who had traveled with her and those she had recruited along the way; she told the leaders of the Anhai Divine Society everything she had seen and the Strange Array she had learned without reservation.

Upon receiving the news, the leader of the Anhai Divine Society was also extremely excited and made contact with the God of Anhai in a dream that very night.

Subsequently, the leader of the Anhai Divine Society disappeared that night; they had received the call of the God of Anhai in advance and had transformed into a higher-level kin to go to the side of the God of Anhai, and the Saintess naturally succeeded to the position of leader.

Having become the leader of the organization, the Saintess assembled the believers and, following the kin of the God of Anhai, launched a massive surprise attack on the sea monster's primordial kin, engaging in a life-and-death struggle.

This war did not last long, but its scope of influence was vast enough that it directly caused a massive tsunami recorded in history, submerging most of the coastal land.

Both sides suffered heavy casualties, but relatively speaking, the sea monster's faction was more miserable; the sea monster's primordial kin were beaten into a rout and fled in all directions, their whereabouts almost unknown after the war, while the sea monster, in the process of a fierce battle with the God of Anhai, was inadvertently caught in a moment of opportunity for a seal by the God of Anhai's kin and believers, and was sealed beneath the ancient Liuhua Port; the seal was later guarded by the lower-level kin of the God of Anhai, the fish-men.

Although the God of Anhai's faction ultimately defeated the sea monster's side, the result of the battle was not perfect for an Alien God.

The sea monster did not truly die; it was merely sealed. One day, the seal would lose its suppressive effect, or it would be broken by the returning primordial kin of the sea monster and their believers; they had only achieved a temporary victory.

At the same time, the God of Anhai was also severely wounded in the battle with the sea monster and fell into a long slumber, needing to wait for the day when the stars align to send a signal to the starry sky through a special ritual; the ritual would guide the kin of the God of Anhai located in the starry sky to descend, and they would bring the Gospel of healing and strength, at which time the God of Anhai would be able to awaken from her long sleep and once again lead her kin and believers to rule this world.

After the great war, the Anhai Divine Society suffered countless casualties, and with the deity they worshipped falling into a slumber and temporarily unable to respond to their prayers, the Anhai Divine Society no longer possessed the significance of worship, and as time passed, the Anhai Divine Society naturally declined.

At the same time, although the Anhai Divine Society was short on talent, its heritage at least remained; to avoid being targeted or coveted by other Abnormal organization factions, the organization members spontaneously chose to hide, living in seclusion in the interior, where they waited silently for the day when the stars reached their correct orbit.

Li Nuowei and Drake quickly finished browsing the content hidden in the latter half of the Ancient Book, feeling as if their worldviews had once again been twisted and reshaped.

When history is added with a bit of unimaginable magic, yet this is the true history, no one can remain unaffected.

When flipping to the end, Drake suddenly discovered that a yellowed, faded old photograph was tucked into the back page of the Ancient Book, which was wrapped in unknown leather; he took the photo out to look at it, and it was a group photo of a group of people.

There were seven people in the photo, all young, standing on a beach, with a flag of the Anhai Divine Society standing behind them, and each of them had a bright and happy smile on their face.

"This is Tianya Haijiao Beach, right?" Li Nuowei recognized the background in the photo at a glance, very familiar and very certain.

Drake nodded; he also recognized it. He flipped the photo to the back and found that the date "November 17, 1989" was written in black marker. He flipped back to the front, looked carefully at each person in the photo, and only then confirmed the specific era in which the protagonists of the photo lived.

Suddenly, Drake's gaze locked onto a beautiful woman standing in the middle of the group photo; he only felt that something was familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

He thought carefully for a while, reached into his pocket, and took out a pendant; the mother in the mother-and-child photo embedded in the pendant was exactly the same as the beautiful woman in this group photo. Judging from the material and color of the two photos, they should be from the same era, and it was highly probable that they were the same person.

"Huh." Li Nuowei also visually compared the two photos, then let out a surprised sound, his shocked eyes darting back and forth between Drake and the two photos, "Your eye shape and face shape are really similar."

Seeing Li Nuowei pointing at his own face and eyes, Drake was slightly stunned, and a possibility immediately emerged in his mind.

"It can't be such a coincidence, right?" Drake stared blankly at the mother-and-child photo in the pendant; the smile the mother revealed while holding the child felt more warm and natural the more he looked at it, and he felt a mix of emotions for a moment.

"I wouldn't rule out that possibility, and the probability is very high, isn't it?" Li Nuowei pointed at the child in the pendant photo, "Look, this child is also of mixed-race appearance. If we guess that this photo was taken around 1990, you were also born around that time, which fits your age quite well."

Drake fell silent; what Li Nuowei could guess, he could naturally deduce as well. He just didn't expect his own background to pop up in front of him so suddenly.

He had imagined what his parents looked like when he was a child; the blurry image of his mother in his fantasies gradually overlapped with the mother in the photo. Looking at the woman in the photo, it was as if he had returned to his infancy, looking into his mother's gentle eyes across the long distance of time and space, enjoying her soft and warm embrace.

So... what exactly happened later? Why would his mother abandon him in the New York area, and what was the reason?

Who was his father, and were his parents still alive?

What kind of story was behind this old group photo?

Drake's mind was full of doubts; after lifting the mysterious veil of the Anhai Divine Society, it could not completely dispel his thoughts, and he was still eager to uncover the truth.

He wanted to believe that there was a reason he was abandoned; at least judging from the photo, his mother loved and cherished her child, and she shouldn't have just thrown the child away casually.

Just as Drake was deep in thought, Li Nuowei suddenly felt a strange gaze, whipped his head around to look, and saw several pairs of sinister eyes exposed in the candlelight, "Holy shit!"

Hearing Li Nuowei's instinctive curse, Drake turned around to look, immediately shuddered, and was also startled by the scene before him.

"Child, I knew you would come back." A hoarse voice rang out from the darkness, accompanied by a pungent smell of chemical potions and a burnt odor, as a hooded figure, the only one not revealing their eyes, walked out from the crowd in the darkness holding a lit candlestick, slowly approaching Drake and Li Nuowei.

Under the astonished gazes of Drake and Li Nuowei, the hooded figure removed the hood that had hidden most of his face, revealing a swollen, twisted head covered in fresh burns with a severely deformed skull.

Although this person's head was severely damaged and could be considered unrecognizable, the two of them still found familiar traces on that shattered face.

This person was none other than the taxi driver named Ma Hong from earlier that day; he had actually not died in the car accident, but had survived by relying on some unknown method.