Chapter 590: Message Machine

Luo Qi sobered up from his shock, doing his best to restrain himself from greeting her. This was just a one-way message; talking to a message machine was truly too foolish, and even if no one knew, he could not forgive himself.

"I am a very timid person," Shi Xiansheng began to say, gazing into the depths of the Yinsong Senlin.

Cut the crap, Luo Qi thought to himself. You are a bigwig of the underground Black Market, and you have shady connections with the bigwigs of the righteous path; your life must be full of turbulent waves, and your sailing skills are exceptionally good—everything is handled with ease.

As if she knew what the listener would think, she said, "The longer a person lives, the more timid they become. You know what I do for a living: I acquire secrets and then peddle them outward, learning quite a few secrets intentionally or unintentionally. You are a Mind Master, so you are somewhat like me; you also handle secrets. We are like nets; secrets flow over us, filtering out some residue. That residue, I suspect you know, is the truth."

Luo Qi did not respond. He looked at the pine needles piled up under his feet; the pine needles that had fallen year after year were mixed with humus, feeling soft and squishy when stepped on.

"I think you must have realized long ago that I have another identity. That's right, I am a Goddess, a Goddess who gave up halfway. When I was studying at the temple, I realized I was not suited to be a Goddess. However, the Wushan Shendian is also a place that accumulates secrets. Wushan exists independently of the Mage World; the mortal world undergoes great changes, but Wushan remains hidden and unmoved. The secrets there all emit a scent of decay, older than the Grass Market outside Beisong Bianliang Cheng, so old that one can even touch the Creator God," she said with a weary smile, then raised her head and took a deep breath of the forest air, the sunlight falling on her face through the gaps in the leaves.

For Luo Qi, this opening was a bit too long. But the former Goddess's tone was inexplicably attractive, drawing him to listen quietly.

"Ah, where were we?" Shi Xiansheng sat down on a protruding tree root under a tree and continued as if chatting idly. "I don't know where to start for a moment, but since I just mentioned the Creator God, why don't we start from the very beginning of the primordial chaos? Please, would you mind listening to me tell a story of creation?"

Luo Qi listened intently. Mages rarely recorded history and did not care much about it; there were a few stories of creation, but they were unclear and had no narrative quality at all. He was actually very interested in hearing the creation story from the Wushan Shendian; according to the timeline, it might truly be the oldest version of the story.

"When all races talk about creation stories, they must first state where they came from, and the Wushan story is no exception. In the world beneath our feet, our story began tens of thousands of years ago. But in another world, we existed for much longer, supposedly tens of millions of years. My imagination is truly insufficient; I don't know what the concept of tens of millions of years is, but the beginning of this story is almost the common ancestral memory of us and all humans. You must have heard that the Progenitor Mage encountered a doomsday war in their own world, and the last few surviving Ancestors drove Sky Birds to this world."

This was the common part of all creation stories, and Luo Qi knew it himself. The surviving Progenitor Mages might have been nine, which was the beginning of the Nine Venerables of the Supreme Committee. But some people did not think so; some insisted that in their family's story, the number was not nine, and the Highland Mages also had some insights into this.

"We don't know exactly how many Progenitor Mages survived. But here, I want to ask you to remember that quantity is only an imaginary number; don't forget this sentence, this is the first secret I want to tell you," Shi Xiansheng said. Her eyes were very bright, and her expression was sincere and peaceful, without any sense of mystification. After finishing the first hint, she seemed to heave a sigh of relief and continued, "There are three Progenitor Mages with names and surnames and verifiable real deeds. When they arrived in this world, they were united, three in one, with only one goal: the Great Common Cause."

Luo Qi frowned in his Yajian; countless people had mentioned the Great Common Cause. Pei Shu had mentioned it, and the Lotus Burner had also mentioned it, as if everyone who had a name and wanted to make a splash in the world had mentioned this slogan.

"I think you might ask, what is the Great Common Cause? Different people must have different interpretations of this sentence. In some people's hearts, the Great Common Cause means exterminating humanity and achieving a single race. Most people might not be so extreme, perhaps thinking that the Great Common Cause is to make Mages great again and become gods worshipped by humans once more. There is also a small group of people, probably the elites among us, who are more capable and ambitious; the Great Common Cause in their hearts is to restore the Magic Energy of the Progenitor Mage era and make Magic flourish again. But these, in fact, cannot be the Great Common Cause in the eyes of the Progenitor Mages. This is a very simple truth, so the answer is obvious. The Progenitor Mages could easily exterminate humanity; they were gods themselves and had the most flourishing Magic. How could the Great Common Cause they pursued be these petty desires in the hearts of Mages? However, I don't want to say how holy they were; there wasn't necessarily much divinity in them. If you treat them as ordinary people, they were just people who lost their homes, experienced the end of the world, and were displaced. So what would their goal be? I think it should be to return to their homeland and restore their former glory."

Luo Qi believed she was right; she made him feel a touch of intimacy. It might be because their thinking was similar; they were both willing to strip away the divinity from Mages, or even Progenitor Mages.

"Let us return to the earliest years of the story, when the three Ancestors fled to this world and worked hard to realize the Great Common Cause. To the three of them, this world was too barren; humans were a very primitive and incompetent race and could not help them. Oh, speaking of this, I must explain one more thing. Many smug Mages educate their children by saying that the Progenitor Mages created Mages in their own image and then created inferior humans to serve the Mages. Just like that human story, Nuwa pinched mud figures in her own image as noble humans, and then flicked more mud spots with a whip, and these mud spots became lowly humans," Shi Xiansheng laughed. "Actually, of course, it is not like that. The Progenitor Mages never regarded Mages as their children, and humans already existed; they were the original inhabitants of this world. However, the Progenitor Mages did indeed create Mages in their own image and also created Magic for the Mages in this world. The initial plan of the three Progenitor Mages was very rigorous, and the execution cycle was extremely long, perhaps too long. Gradually, two of the Mages had other ideas. The first to lose patience with the plan was the only female Mage among the three; she thought the original plan was too slow and too polite to this world. The three Mages quarreled, and the female Ancestor privately created more Mages and some other dangerous creations."

Luo Qi felt a bit uncomfortable hearing this. Even now, he could hardly believe that he had faced a part of the Progenitor Mages and could still walk away unscathed. However, putting personal feelings aside, he found that he faintly agreed with her approach. Assuming the Progenitor Mages failed in a doomsday war and fled to this world, and they had the ability to create Mages, then of course it would be better to create an army; Luo Qi suspected he would do the same. There were some gaps in these stories, and the gap was why the Progenitor Mages didn't do so. If it wasn't to create Mages to help them in a decisive battle, what were they planning in this world? What was their long-term plan? Could it be that the plan was to use humans? For example, did they think humans' nuclear weapons were worth noting? They discovered that humans would add talent points to technology instead of Magic, and this kind of human talent would eventually help the Progenitor Mages win? Was the technology system more useful than the Magic system? Thinking this way, it actually made sense; the countless history of humans indeed proved that they were truly war geniuses, and they had excellent achievements in the ability to destroy the world.

Just as he was about to fall into deep thought, Shi Xiansheng's next words disrupted his train of thought completely; he even forgot what he was thinking about just now.

Because Shi Xiansheng continued, "The problem with the second Progenitor Mage was not ambition, but the erosion of fighting spirit. It could also be said that this Ancestor was truly an Ancestor who didn't attend to his proper duties. He gradually lost interest in the goal; the new world he was in intoxicated him. He often traveled around, and one day he walked to a place humans called Fengqiyuan."

What? Luo Qi's ears almost pricked up. Fengqiyuan, Fengqi Du Clan, Du Zhengyi's family?

"Ah, this is such a boring story, it's simply too cliché," Shi Xiansheng said. "This Ancestor fell in love with a human on Fengqiyuan. I think it must have been a primitive tribe of humans at that time. Fengqiyuan is a Highland, or perhaps a hill; it is said to be a place with lush forests and bamboo. Perhaps because there was wood on the soil, or perhaps because the local people were good at building dams to resist floods, in any case, the tribe of Fengqiyuan called themselves the Du Clan. Our Ancestor lived quite well there, leading tigers, carrying hawks, living with the primitive tribe, and even having many children with his wife."

Luo Qi didn't know what to say. He had heard this story vaguely, but no one had told it as if they had seen it with their own eyes. Mages and humans had reproductive isolation, but... the Progenitor Mages could even create Mages; how could they not be able to have children if they wanted to? But, wait, hold on, since they were so highly capable of controlling reproductive abilities, why did they let the species they created have reproductive isolation from the original species?

"Their descendants are surnamed Du, which is the clan name of the tribe. I think you probably already understand where your friend comes from, right?"

Luo Qi was stunned. Why did they suddenly turn into a conversation confirming identities?

Shi Xiansheng resolved his confusion, "I know you must be the future friend of that child, because I will leave my memory to his friend. You must know, he is almost the last Du Clan member in this world. Ah, don't say sad things; let's get back to the point. Did you suddenly realize why the Du Clan is so special? Because they are special. They are the true bloodline inheritance of the Progenitor Mages in this world, and also the only inheritance. I would like to ask you to remember the second point of this story: some doors in the world only open to the Progenitor Mages or their descendants."

(End of chapter)