Chapter 476: The Origin and Destination of Shengzu

Just like the few Square Bodies Chen Shu had entered before, the curves inside this Square Body were smoother than the exterior; it was no longer a perfect cube. Looking closely, the vast inner walls were covered in dense, tightly packed Runes that were still in operation, flickering with a faint white light from time to time before dimming again. Standing within it was like standing in deep space, shining with a sky full of stars.

Although he knew everything inside had been specially treated, for the sake of caution, Chen Shu still set up a Forbidden Seal at the entrance to isolate it from air and light.

Then, he held his breath and stepped inside slowly.

Many boxes were scattered on the ground, looking as if they were brand new. In the center, there was a rectangular stone platform with two items placed upon it.

One was a Black Jar, simple and primitive, about the size of a bucket.

The other was a flat stone slab.

It was a very large stone slab, far larger than the palm-sized Space Stones in other Square Bodies. Except for being only about twenty centimeters high, its length and width were perhaps a hundred times that of other Mijing Space Stones, revealing the fine texture of the Space Stone.

When Chen Shu saw it, he couldn't help but be stunned for a moment.

The shape of the internal space of a Space Stone is the same as its external shape, just magnified many times over; depending on the quality, the magnification factor also varies. The Space Stones in other Square Bodies were only about the size of a palm, give or take, while Mijing spaces were generally several hundred meters in length and width, with varying shapes and qualities.

If this Space Stone had the same quality as other Mijing Space Stones, then the space inside...

It would be enough to hold an entire city.

If a certain country possessed it, its strategic significance would likely be no less than the Heavenly Palace of Yiguo.

Chen Shu turned his head to meet Qingqing's gaze.

Qingqing pursed her lips, showing no reaction.

This woman definitely knew, but she refused to tell him, and even observed him on the sly.

Both of these sisters had something wrong with them.

Chen Shu said nothing and continued to the edge of the stone platform, picking up the jar first.

There was no seal of any kind.

Chen Shu opened it casually and took a look inside.

A full, large bucket.

It was heterogeneous, coarse powder; not the grayish-white of normal ashes, but rather feeling like glass or crystal fragments, and it had different colors. The Spirit Power within had not completely dissipated even after five thousand years, still clinging to the ashes and emitting a faint light.

Generally, when a High-level Practitioner dies, they can choose not to leave a corpse behind, but rather let the body dissipate on its own, euphemistically called "Transform into Dao."

Shengzu must have left it behind intentionally.

Spirit Soul and body, one of them should always return home.

Beside him, Qingqing also leaned over to take a look.

Chen Shu put the lid back on and said to her, "This fellow countryman is also interesting. Nowadays, the 'little fairies' on the internet say they want to be cremated into pink ashes after death, but he, on the other hand, went and made them sparkly. Why didn't he just have them turned into diamonds?"

Ning Qing did not answer, only watching him quietly.

Chen Shu shook his head and put the jar away.

Death has its heaviness, but in his view, it was not that big of a deal; he tried to face it with a relaxed attitude. Heaviness has little meaning—it is meaningless to oneself and meaningless to the person who has died.

Chen Shu also saw the Stone Tablet nearby.

The Stone Tablet, which emitted a faint white light, was, like the Runes running on the stone walls, one of the few sources of light in this Square Body.

Written on the Stone Tablet were the four characters "Xia Zu Xu Tong."

It did not write "Dongzhou," but it did write the time: "Spring, 673."

This was likely the time of Shengzu's death.

"Not surnamed Xia..."

Chen Shu muttered to himself. Afterward, he did not rush to enter the Mijing, but instead spent some time roughly checking the scattered boxes in the Square Body and outside the Mijing, storing them into the Crystal before walking to the front of the Mijing.

As expected, there was no Forbidden Seal set up.

Chen Shu turned his head to look to the side; Qingqing was already standing with him.

"Whoosh!"

The two had already arrived inside the Mijing.

Chen Shu was long since no stranger to Mijing.

The space inside a Mijing is like a piece cut out of a real space; it is pitch black. Except for the hard sensation at the edges, being inside is like being in the pitch-black, dead silence of deep space. If it were empty inside, even if one were to light a lamp, the light would not refract or reflect, but would pass through the boundaries of the space and escape to some unknown place. It is very oppressive inside.

However, in this Mijing...

The moment they arrived, light lit up in the sky, illuminating the scene below.

It was like a scorching summer day; the daylight was bright, with a fake blue sky and white clouds, and the air was clear, as if it even carried warmth. A circle of great mountains surrounded the edge of the Mijing, and on the edge of one side, snow-capped mountains dyed rouge-red by the setting sun appeared, with a complete city in the middle.

Chen Shu scanned it once and could confirm that this was the city with the snow-capped mountains in the distance that he saw in the illusions every time he passed the fellow countryman's verification.

This made him unable to help but turn his head to look at the person beside him.

Qingqing pursed her lips and looked at him: "What? Are you afraid?"

"..."

Chen Shu said nothing and flew down.

Ning Qing followed his figure.

The two landed on a relatively orderly ring road, standing side by side on a pedestrian overpass, stroking the railing and looking down.

This was indeed a complete and real city.

The overpass railing gave off a cold, metallic touch; beneath his feet was the concrete bridge deck, detailed down to the texture of the surface and the scraps of paper lying on the ground. Below was a sixteen-lane road with main and auxiliary lanes, with non-motorized vehicle lanes and sidewalks on both sides.

Greenery, street lamps, bus stops, trash cans, traffic signs...

High-rise buildings on both sides.

Except for the lack of cars, people, air, and wind—it was empty and vacant—the rest was exactly the same as a real city.

It was as if people had been living here just yesterday, and only because of some accident, everyone in the entire city had disappeared.

Chen Shu flew off the overpass and stood in the middle of the road.

This road was very wide, and countless details formed a scene that was indistinguishable from reality. Overall, it was much the same as the road and traffic regulations of Yiguo, but it was the familiar appearance buried in Chen Shu's memories; now that it had broken through the ice, it struck his heart all at once.

In a trance, it seemed as if a car had driven past.

The cars were like flowing water, brushing past him; the people in the cars all turned their heads to stare at him, some honking their horns frantically, and the wind they stirred up made his eyebrows itch.

"Beep, beep..."

Coming back to his senses, the scene before him was quiet once again.

Only one person was accompanying him.

Chen Shu held Qingqing's hand, and they continued walking forward in silence.

Erxian Bridge, Cheng-hua Avenue...

Truly famous.

The overly realistic city details made him feel as if he could hear the cicadas chirping; walking under the lush trees, one had to be careful of "rain" on a sunny day, as if this place were not a replica created by Shengzu in another world, but rather one that had only temporarily paused due to a pandemic.

Whenever he thought of the image of Shengzu building this city all by himself, and thought of him walking through this city all alone, just to savor a tiny bit of the feeling of home, a great sense of loneliness rose in Chen Shu's heart.

He squeezed Qingqing's hand slightly harder.

There were a few places in the city calling to him.

Chen Shu did not fly over; instead, he took Qingqing and strolled through the city, just as his fellow countryman had done many times before.

How did he manage to do it?

Was it purely by memory and imagination?

Or was it seen through Spiritual Power?

Chen Shu could no longer know; there was only a great sense of emotion.

Soon, they arrived in front of a residential complex.

Looking up, among the dozens of floors of the building, only one window had its lights on.

Chen Shu passed through the main gate of the complex, went by the security office, and walked into the stairwell, discovering that the elevator was imitated using a Rune and was actually still functional; he couldn't help but marvel at the craftsmanship and technology his fellow countryman had mastered over five thousand years.

The two of them stood in the elevator.

Chen Shu pressed the floor button, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a "Guangxian Media" billboard hanging nearby; he fell silent for a moment, then said to Qingqing beside him, "I remember the elevator billboard in my old home was also from this company."

Qingqing pursed her lips and just gave a hum.

"Ding."

The two stepped out of the elevator, and turning left, they were at the room where that apartment was located.

Chen Shu easily opened the door.

The apartment was beautifully decorated, clean and tidy, a large flat with a subtle scholarly atmosphere, four bedrooms, two living rooms, one kitchen, and two bathrooms, with a very bright balcony.

Chen Shu walked in slowly, unable to resist touching things.

The walls were cold, with a sandy texture.

Every room could be entered, and the details were still pushed to the extreme, as if someone had been living here just yesterday.

One master bedroom and one secondary bedroom showed signs of being lived in, another bedroom had been converted into a study, packed full of books, and the remaining bedroom had only a bed without a mattress or quilt, likely used as a guest room.

Chen Shu went to the master bedroom first and picked up the photo frame on the nightstand; it was a group photo of a family of three.

"As expected..."

Chen Shu did not look through much more and soon walked out.

Next, he came to the study.

Just walking in, there was a bookshelf; Chen Shu flipped through them at random, and every book was real, and the content inside was also real. In all likelihood, Shengzu had captured the information from the Spiritual Power leaking out of the Earth universe and restored them; as for how he did it, Chen Shu still did not understand.

On the desk sat A Book.

It was Shengzu's Autobiography, the last one...

"As expected..."

Chen Shu said to himself in his heart; this was what Shengzu had left for him here.

So he looked back at Qingqing, carefully pulled out the chair in front of the desk, and sat down, thinking to himself that perhaps more than four thousand years ago, his fellow countryman had often come here to sit in this position, either reading or writing, and for a moment, he felt a sense of space-time intersection.

It was as if he were having a conversation with him here.

He opened this Autobiography.

Inside, it recounted the story of Shengzu after he became a god.

It included the method of using the Space-Time Energy within the Crystal to become a "deity," and the confrontation between him and the deities of the Withered Plane after he became a god. At that time, the deities of this Plane had already been replaced by a new batch; the top Cultivators of the major systems reformed by his fellow countryman had fused their origins, making them more powerful than the ancient deities, and coupled with his fellow countryman who had become a god using Space-Time Energy, as well as the advantage of local defense, the invasion plan of the Withered Plane deities was clearly not going to work.

At this moment, the strongest strike from the opposite side came.

His fellow countryman did not describe the principle and composition of this strike in detail, but Chen Shu knew—

This strike condensed all the expectations of that more advanced Plane, and also condensed their collective power, sacrificing deities and origins, to the point that even five thousand years later, it would take two deities to suppress it. And at that time, it was even more powerful.

And it happened to hit Shengzu's weakness.

The most powerful deity of this Plane had his consciousness eroded, turning to attack the other deities, attempting to kill them all, seize their Divine Power, and then put these powers into his Crystal to become the power to support his return home.

The deities were caught off guard and suffered heavy losses.

By just a hair's breadth, this Plane would have been destroyed.

His fellow countryman described this process in detail in the book.

When Chen Shu read it, he found it hard to imagine what was in his mind when he wrote these words, and he couldn't help but read it over and over again.

In the end, he fused these Divine Powers, replenished the Space-Time Energy in the Crystal, and opened the passage to the Earth universe, that Great Universe, and was about to step into it, but hesitated at the final moment; the past, like books and paintings, emerged line by line, page by page.

Especially at the very end—

Because among the various deities, some were his disciples, such as the first Buddha and the first Heavenly Venerable. That Heavenly Venerable perhaps knew he could not defeat him, or perhaps knew that after this civil war was over, regardless of the outcome, this Plane would lose its power of resistance, so he did not offer much resistance, but was willing to send him home.

In the end, he gave up on returning to Earth.

Instead, he first sealed the power of the other world in the Nanzhou Forbidden Land, then used the Crystal to open the gate to the Withered Plane, and carried these Divine Powers over there.

By the time he returned, it was many years later, and he had already reached the end of his own life.

Build the Square Body, write down the Autobiography.

Only a handful of gray dust remains, sparkling.

The last line in the book reads: "At the edge of the space inside the Crystal, I have left behind the seeds of an alien world. They are destined to perish; if a latecomer can use the Crystal to travel to other universes or Planes, I hope they can find a suitable planet and set them down."

No wonder the gods have such high requirements for those who become gods; it turns out there was a precedent.

No wonder there is a Stone Tablet inscribed with a god's name beside every Square Body stone platform; it turns out they really are the final resting places of the gods.

"Poof..."

Chen Shu closed the book, feeling a sense of loss.