Chapter 2218 Complex History
The group looked at the mural, finding it to be filled with corpses.
The corpses belonged to both, Demons and the Chimeric Beasts. They were spread in an area filled with devastation. Broken trees, shattered hills and a lot more could be seen, with the corpses filling in the gaps.
Lin Mu and the others were a bit surprised by the trees as this was the first time they were seeing them depicted on any of the murals.
'So there was indeed plant life here once upon a time.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
"What does it say?" Crown Princess Shang asked.
"Two thousand years had passed, and no Hrothak was witnessed in that time. We thought the time of Hrothak had come to an end as no new Harbingers arrived in that time either. This made us complacent and we dropped our guard.
This was the greatest mistake we could have made. For one day, the Hrothak burst out of the ground right in the middle of one of our cities. They killed almost all the citizens and ended up wiping out the city, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake." Ziran read word by word, making the group stir.
"If there was two thousand years of no attack, I think most would become like this." Crown Prince Feng Shun gave his opinion. "Mm, even if they had warriors on standby, I doubt they would have been able to handle an ambush like this." Lin Mu agreed. "Even if they had an entire army, I doubt they would have been gathered at this specific city to retaliate against the Chimeric beasts." He added.
"It does seem like it." Ziran nodded before moving onto the next few Murals.
He read all the way to the Eighteenth mural in one go, as they seem to be describing a single event.
"The fall of the city sent waves of fear and anger across the Sacred Tear Tribe. While it had been two thousand years since the great war, our elders and warriors that had been alive since then still had the memory fresh in their minds.
The Sacred Tear tribe was not going to fall to some Hrothak. As such, we prepared for another battle. In just two days, we wiped out all the Hrothak that had attacked the city. But that was not enough to satiate our hunger for revenge.
We knew that if there were so many Hrothak appearing from the ground, there should be more of them hiding somewhere. We hadn't witnessed any Harbingers arriving, thus we reckoned there had been a group hiding all this time.
We analyzed the Hrothak and found that they were different from the ones we had battled in the past. These were Hrothak that were made to live underground, having the bodies of worms, moles, rats and other such subterranean creatures mixed with different animals.
We now knew the threat was underground, thus we began to scour caves, caverns and any opening that lead to underground." Ziran read as the group observed the murals.
They all showed the Sacred Tear tribe searching the Spatial Plane for the traces of Hrothak, along with any caves and other underground openings.
Lady Kang's gaze went to the nineteenth mural where a new development took place.
"Humans." She spoke up.
Everyone looked over and saw a figure depicted on the mural that was definitely a human. The human seemed to be standing in the sky while two demons were watching him from afar. And below them was the vast expanse of a forest along with a mountain range at the back.
"In our search, we spread our scouts far and wide, trying to cover as much of the Sacred Land as we could. In this though, we ended up encountering a race unlike ours.
Several generations had been born natively in the Sacred Lands, as such they had never seen this race with their own eyes before. But the elders and several older warriors remembered this race very well… For this was the very race that had driven the Sacred Tear Tribe out of our old home.
It was… Humans." Ziran read the mural.
"No wonder…" Crown Prince Feng Shun said. "So they were indeed exiles." He added.
"Hmm… Considering that the humans drove the Sacred Tear tribe, they should have adoringly been part of the other Demonic Tribes that lived in the Rust Sky world. As such it should have all happened before the rise of the Empires." Lin Mu said after thinking over the history of the Rust Sky world that he had learned.
"That sounds about right." Qiao De agreed. "There have wen so many conflicts with the Demons in the past, that there are simply not enough records left. Not to mention, many records were specifically destroyed so that there would be no mentions of Demons." He added.
"History is written by the victors." Monk Hushu muttered.
"Indeed." Elder Hu nodded.
It was not unusual for the history of the losers to be erased, as it would give legitimacy to those that had won and the lands they had conquered.
"What did they do when they encountered the humans?" Min Ju asked.
Ziran nodded and began to read onwards.
"The discovery of the humans was an additional burden to the tribe. Now we had two potential threats in our land; The Hrothak that were mindless but would kill all that they saw and the Humans who were our old foes and the ones that had driven us out.
We didn't know which was a bigger threat at first, thus the elders decided to observe first. The humans had not entered into a direct conflict with us just yet, thus we decided to wait and watch. Of course, we would not be so naive as to be unprepared, thus we raised an army specifically to fight against humans.
For we knew, Humans could fight with tactics and the potential danger they could pose was several times higher than the Hrothak.
After all, the Hrothak were mere beasts in the end that functioned on instincts." The half elf narrated.
The group then moved onto the twenty first mural that showed a surprising change. "Are they… Shaking hands?" Min Ju narrowed her eyes.
"Looks like it." Lin Mu was a bit surprised too. "What does it say?" "Perhaps the ancestors thought our burdens were too heavy, thus they decided to lighten them by removing one of our foes… The Humans were now our allies.
The humans sent out an envoy to talk to our elders. Much to our surprise they were respectful of our customs and even knew how to speak our tongue. Seeing this, the Elders decided to attempt a dialog with them, hoping that it would yield something good.
And it ended up favoring us. The humans decided to help our tribe in exchange for safe passage through our lands.
Of course, the Sacred Tear Tribe couldn't just allow wanton intrusion into our lands from humans thus they set certain terms. The humans could have safe passage through our lands, as long as they restrained themselves to paths we would set.
The humans had no disagreements and they went with the plan. All they wished for was to go from one end of our land to the other." Ziran read, feeling a bit shocked at the collaboration.
"To think the humans would actually agreed to work with the demons back then." Crown Prince Feng Shun had not expected that at all. "If this was revealed, the people would be in an uproar for sure." He added.
"Quite possibly more." Qiao De said. "With how the Demons have been vilified now, it would be bigger issue now. I'm sure they would search for the descendants of those humans or whatever power they belonged to and make them pay for such actions." He added.
It might seem a lot, but Lin Mu could totally see that happening. After all, taking revenge for the actions of someone's ancestors was not that uncommon in the Jianghu. Even in the Xiaofan world, Gu Yao was technically taking revenge for his clan and so were the Northern Tribes.
Ziran was getting heavily interested in this too, as he knew that Demons were not really accepted in the Rust Sky world. And since he himself could be considered to be from a Demonic power now, he had some vested interest in knowing how it all went.
"Our alliance with the humans went much better than we thought, and we managed to find out where the Hrothak were hiding. Turns out they had been breeding in large numbers underground, and had built hundreds if not thousands of nests in our land.
The humans had special tools that could track the Hrothak down and they helped us find them. In this, we also learned why the humans sought safe passage through our lands. We had been mistaken about our new home… it was not an entire world, but something called as Bridge Plane. In reality we weren't even that far from our old home land."