Chapter 124: The Truth Of History
Li Nuowei also came over, and the two of them together flipped through the original ancient book. The latter half finally began to explain the reason why the Anhai Divine Society gradually disappeared from the river of history of humanity.
When the Anhai Divine Society rose, everyone was shocked to discover that the Sea God of Anhai had not completely repelled the sea monster. That gluttonous and brutal sea monster in everyone’s eyes was actually just a part of some unknown existence.
The Sea God of Anhai, who suddenly fell silent and no longer actively responded to the faithful, had not fallen into slumber after ending the fight with the sea monster, but was still continuing to battle that unknown existence.
In order to contend with the sea monster and its original kin, the Sea God of Anhai, this alien visitor, began to expand his kin through his own methods, nurture kin. The treasures he bestowed upon the faithful contained a great deal of his “blessings.”
The faithful obtained wealth from the Sea God of Anhai, and in return, they were slowly distorted in cognition because of being tainted by the “blessings” in the treasures, their bodies would also slowly turn into the Sea God of Anhai’s loyal kin, and finally the bloodline of their bodies would eternally pass on this blessing. This was the origin of mermaid disease.
When influenced by the blessing and thoroughly transformed into mermen, those faithful would unhesitatingly dive into the seabed, share eternal life with the great Sea God of Anhai, and from then on dwell deep in the seabed, obey the Sea God of Anhai’s commands, and compete with the gluttonous sea monster and its original kin for survival resources.
As an outsider, the Sea God of Anhai had few faithful kin who followed him to Earth. Even if there were any, they were either unusable or the usable ones had already perished in the fight with the sea monster. In order to nurture more and stronger kin faster, the Sea God of Anhai decided to develop faithful on land at the time, while also seeking aid from other abnormal gods and their kin and faithful. He who dwelled deep under the sea conveyed his ideas to the faithful on land who had not yet transformed into kin through the manner of dreams.
Thus, the fervent top fan of the time, the leader of the Anhai Divine Society, dispatched saintesses and other cultists in the organization to the land to seek methods.
And it was precisely this action that caused the Anhai Divine Society to slowly decline. The saintess spread the gospel on land while searching for the opportunity to help the Sea God of Anhai defeat the sea monster.
Finally, after persistent searching, they found an abnormal organization that was widely circulated on land at the time but had few faithful: the Yellow Sand Truth School.
This abnormal organization firmly believed they could perceive heaven and earth and all things from sand, predict the future, know the past, measure yin and yang, turn cause and effect… In short, they believed the deity they worshipped was omniscient and invincible in the world.
Though the school had few people, every one was a transcendent sage and held exalted status in the secular world, either as capable ministers and prime ministers of the dynasty or as the insightful strategists behind generals guarding one side.
The era in which the saintess lived was one of world strife, a war-torn background of three kingdoms standing tripod. She found the chief strategist under the throne of the ruler of the Han-Shu state in which she was located.
That strategist was the diviner famous in history books, who with his sand-divination technique borrowed an East Wind and combined it with strategy, achieving victory with few against many, greatly defeating the enemy forces. Thus, ancient people also called him “Immortal Master” and “Mr. East Wind.”
The saintess took quite some effort to finally meet Mr. East Wind and begged him to divine a method to defeat the sea monster.
Seeing that the saintess had a sincere heart, plus she contributed a large batch of precious gold, silver, and jewels to their not-so-wealthy Han-Shu, and the king whom Mr. East Wind served at the time was also willing to put in a good word for the saintess, Mr. East Wind finally agreed to help divine.
However, this divination involved two abnormal gods and was extremely difficult. Mr. East Wind first divined alone but did not get satisfactory results. He called over several trusted aides he had personally nurtured to help, putting most of his own power into it, yet Mr. East Wind still did not glimpse the solution, and his whole person suddenly aged nearly a dozen years because of it.
In the end, the promise-keeping Mr. East Wind not only set up an altar to perform the ritual and held the ritual of wishing, but also summoned other capable people from the Yellow Sand Truth School to help. Only then did they finally receive a response from their worshipped “God of Yellow Sand,” and the response was a book, a strange book that was hard to touch and turned to sand upon touch.
Opening the book, its contents encompassed everything, whether astronomy and geography or the fate of nations. It truly could know all things and see through spacetime.
The people of the Yellow Sand Truth School believed this was the holy object bestowed by the “God of Yellow Sand.” The school faithful with strong thirst for knowledge eagerly and impatiently flipped through this Book of Sand.
Eerily and terrifyingly, quite a few people developed symptoms of turning to sand while reading, ultimately turning to sand and scattering with the wind.
Mr. East Wind sensed the terror of the Book of Sand. Before being completely drawn in by the contents recorded in the book, he escaped the control of the Book of Sand over himself, while also trying to close the Book of Sand. But the other school faithful present who were attracted by the Book of Sand were not all able to remain rational like Mr. East Wind during the process of reading the books.
Mr. East Wind’s act of closing the books was, to some among them, like having their limbs severed or their beloved destroyed. They went mad, disregarding all relations, and actually picked up sharp weapons nearby to stab Mr. East Wind to death.
Fortunately, there were others present at the time who timely stopped the behavior of those who had fallen into madness. Mr. East Wind thus escaped the danger.
After a brush with death, Mr. East Wind’s attitude toward the Book of Sand in his hand changed. Amid the fear was an undisguisable obsessive love.
Though the saintess had personally witnessed what happened at the time and was still shaken, she remained calm and once again inquired of Mr. East Wind about the “method to battle the sea monster.”
Mr. East Wind, coming back to his senses, slowly regained his previous courteous demeanor and told the other the information he had seen in the book.
The saintess learned of a special sealing method from Mr. East Wind’s mouth and received his full instruction, teaching by word and example.
Mr. East Wind told the saintess that as long as they could work together with the Sea God of Anhai, there was a chance to seal the sea monster.
The saintess, having finally obtained the solution, lived up to expectations. She brought the faithful who had traveled with her and those recruited on the road back to her homeland and told the leaders of the Anhai Divine Society without reservation about her experiences on the road and the sealing magic array she had learned.
The leader of the Anhai Divine Society who received the message was extremely excited and contacted the Sea God of Anhai in a dream that very night.
Afterward, the leader of the Anhai Divine Society disappeared that night. He had received the Sea God of Anhai’s summons in advance, transformed into higher-grade kin, and gone to the side of the Sea God of Anhai. The saintess naturally succeeded to the position of leader.
The saintess who became the organization leader gathered the faithful, followed the kin of the Sea God of Anhai, and launched a massive assault on the original kin of the sea monster, engaging in a desperate fight.
The war did not last long, but its impact was enormous enough, directly causing a massive tsunami recorded in history that submerged most coastal land.
Both sides suffered heavy casualties, but relatively speaking, the sea monster forces were even more miserable. The original kin of the sea monster were directly beaten into rout and scattered in all directions, almost untraceable after the battle. And the sea monster, in the intense battle with the Sea God of Anhai, was inadvertently seized by the kin and faithful of the Sea God of Anhai with the opportunity for sealing and sealed underground at ancient Liuhua Port. The seal was later guarded by the lower kin of the Sea God of Anhai, the mermen.
Although the forces of the Sea God of Anhai ultimately defeated the sea monster side, the result of the battle was not perfect for the abnormal god.
The sea monster had not truly died; it was merely sealed. One day, the seal would lose its suppressive effect, or be broken by the sea monster’s original kin and their faithful who made a comeback. They had only gained a temporary victory.
At the same time, the Sea God of Anhai was also seriously injured in the battle with the sea monster and fell into long slumber, needing to wait for the day when the stars align, then through a special ritual send a signal to the starry sky. The ritual would summon the kin of the Sea God of Anhai located in the starry sky to descend, bringing the gospel of healing and strength. Only then could the Sea God of Anhai awaken from long sleep and once again lead his kin and faithful to rule this world.
After the great war, the Anhai Divine Society suffered countless casualties, and with their worshipped deity fallen into slumber and temporarily unable to respond to their prayers, the Anhai Divine Society lost its meaning of faith and naturally declined over time.
At the same time, though the Anhai Divine Society was short of talent, its heritage at least remained. To avoid being targeted and coveted by other abnormal organization forces, the organization members spontaneously chose to hide and secluded themselves inland, silently waiting for the day when the stars reach the correct orbit.
Li Nuowei and Drake quickly browsed through the content hidden in the latter half of the ancient book, feeling that their worldview had once again undergone distortion and reshaping.
When history was infused with some unimaginable fantasy, it was precisely the true history, and no one could remain unaffected by the truth.
When flipping to the end, Drake suddenly discovered that on the final page of this ancient book wrapped in unknown leather was actually clipped a faded yellowish old photograph. He took out the photograph to look; it was a group photo of a group of people.
Counting inside the photograph, there were seven people, all young men, standing on a beach with a flag of the Anhai Divine Society erected behind them. Each had a brilliant and joyful smile on their face.
“This is Cape of the Horizon Beach, right?” Li Nuowei recognized the background in the photograph at a glance; it was very familiar and he was very certain.
Drake nodded; he also recognized it. He flipped the photograph to the back and found that the back was written with a black marker the date of November 17, 1989. He flipped back to the front and carefully looked at each person in the photograph, thereby confirming the specific era in which the protagonists of the photograph were.
Suddenly, Drake’s gaze locked onto a beautiful woman standing in the center position in the group photo. He only felt that she seemed somewhat familiar, as if he had seen her somewhere.
He thought carefully for a moment, reached his hand into his clothes pocket, and took out a pendant. The mother character in the mother-child photograph embedded in the pendant was exactly the same as that beautiful woman in this group photo. Judging from the material and color of the two photographs, they should be from the same era background, and very probably the same person.
“Eh.” Li Nuowei also visually compared the two photographs, then made a sound of surprise. His shocked gaze went back and forth between Drake and the two photographs, “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 surfaced in his mind.
“It can’t be such a coincidence, right?” Drake dazedly looked at the mother-child photo in the pendant. The smile the mother showed while holding the child seemed warmer and more natural the more he looked, and his heart was filled with complex emotions for a moment.
“This possibility can’t be ruled out, and the probability is quite high, isn’t it?” Li Nuowei pointed at the child in the pendant photograph, “Look, this child also looks mixed-race. If we guess this photograph was taken around 1990 at the earliest, you were also born around that time, which matches your age.”
Drake fell silent. What Li Nuowei could guess, he could naturally infer as well. He just hadn’t expected his family history to suddenly jump out in front of him like this.
When he was little, he had imagined what his parents looked like. The vague image of the mother in his imagination gradually overlapped with the mother in the photograph. Looking at the woman in the photograph felt like returning to infancy, gazing into his mother’s gentle eyes across the distant spacetime, enjoying his mother’s soft and warm embrace.
So… what exactly happened afterward? Why did his mother abandon him in the New York region? What was the reason?
Who was his father? Were his parents still alive?
What story lay behind this group photo old photograph?
Drake’s mind was full of doubts. Unraveling the mystery of the Anhai Divine Society did not completely dispel his thinking; he was still eager to uncover the truth.
He wanted to believe there was a reason he was abandoned. At least from the photograph, the mother loved and cherished her child; she shouldn’t have casually abandoned the child.
While Drake was thinking, Li Nuowei suddenly sensed a strange line of sight. He abruptly turned his head to look but saw several sinister gazes exposed under the candlelight, “Holy shit!”
Hearing Li Nuowei’s instinctive curse, Drake turned around to look and immediately trembled all over, also startled by the scene before him.
“Child, I knew you would come back.” A hoarse voice arose from the darkness, accompanied by a pungent smell of chemical potion and burnt odor. A hooded figure who was the only one not showing his eyes held a lit candlestick and walked out from the crowd below the darkness, slowly approaching Drake and Li Nuowei.
Under the shocked gazes of Drake and Li Nuowei, the hooded person removed the hood hiding most of his face, revealing a swollen, distorted head covered in fresh burns, with an extremely deformed skull.
Though this person’s head was severely damaged and could be said to be unrecognizable, the two still found familiar traces on that broken face.
This person was precisely the taxi driver named Ma Hong from earlier in the daytime. He had not died in the car accident but had survived by some unknown method.
Work and rest schedule is too hard to adjust… There will be an update later… It’s a makeup update.
