Chapter 1363: Back to the Royal City
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Lorissa obviously knew a lot of things, and Hao Ren found leads as well as doubts from her words. Unfortunately, the elven queen was not in her best mental state for a long chat. She was especially shocked when she learned that 10,000 years had passed. Hao Ren had to stop the conversation so that the “ancient elf”, who was suffering from space-time disorientation, could take a break.
While Lorissa was taking a rest, Hao Ren brought his team back to the central lab. He wanted to find the energy source, which existed in theory. In any case, he could not believe that the thing that carried the divine power of the goddess could dematerialize just like that. After all, even the runes of the treacherous children on the lab wall had held up. Should the vessel carrying divine power not be better than that?
The group scouted the chamber for a long time but found nothing. Lily lost her patience and yelled, “Mr. Landlord, could the energy source not exist at all?! We’ve been looking high and low for such a long time. Plus, this is all your idea.”
“It’s indeed just my inference.” Hao Ren arched his eyebrows “But it’s completely logical, isn’t it? Before the ancient mage emperors infused the divine power into the mortal cells, they must first obtain the divine power. If there were without such an energy source, the stoppage of time in the ruin would be unexplainable.”
“The most important thing is the runes.” Vivian looked up from a pile of twisted metal, and a few bats were flying around her to help. The bats had some metal pieces in their claws. “The runes on the wall could be a protection enhancement, but their function was mostly to resist the divine power of the goddess of creation. Since the central lab is full of such runes, it means this lab has once stored the divine power.”
“All right, you win.” Lily waved her Flamejoy and mumbled. She then bent down again and kept digging. But this time, her claw hit something in the metal ruins with a strange clink, and she froze.
“Mr. Landlord! Mr. Landlord!” the husky suddenly shouted. “I’ve found something.”
Hao Ren was startled for a moment before he realized what the dog maiden meant. He and Vivian looked at each other: the dog was indeed good at digging pit.
Very quickly, Lily dug the thing out and placed it on the ground. She crouched and watched the thing as if she was guarding her bones, and would growl whenever the knights came up to want to take a gander. Hao Ren, Vivian, and Becky were the only ones to come near.
Hao Ren was stunned when he saw the thing, which was familiar to him. He had seen the same thing before.
It was a tablet, irregularly shaped, and of material between metal and stone. The tablet had a soft glow and was engraved with many mysterious runes, which seemed to be meaningless. Mortals would feel a strong sense of dizziness even if they only took a glance at the runes. But the translation plugin of Hao Ren could still decode some messy, seemingly meaningless words. Hao Ren now knew why Lily was guarding the tablet and would not allow anyone to come near. It was not the instinctive behavior of the dog maiden, but she was consciously preventing the ordinary people from being exposed to the runes.
It was a Tablet of Commandments, a record of the goddess of creation’s speech.
The stone tablet was far more dangerous than ordinary divine objects because not only had it been touched by the goddess, thus containing divinity, but it also carried her divine will, which was powerful enough to distort the surrounding world and impact the mind of mortals who came near it. But the strength of the slate was inferior to that of the tablet Hao Ren found in the Asurmen spacecraft in Collow. It did not radiate much divine power, and Hao Ren had not been able to detect its presence with his demigod perception ability, but the divine runes on it were proof that it was a Tablet of Commandments.
It seemed that this tablet was also different in function and power level. Asurmen’s tablet was used to suppress Lockmarton, so it possessed strong aggression and radiation ability. While the one before Hao Ren’s eyes were mostly reserved for mortal use; it was less destructive. Any trained or gifted mortals could approach it safely, but not the ordinary knights and apprentice mages.
“What the heck is this stuff? It’s making me dizzy!”
Becky came up to take a glimpse of it and immediately had to shut her eyes. She did have some resistance to the divine runes since she had stayed in Hao Ren’s house for some time. But it was apparent that she did not get to eat enough of the ‘heavenly food.’
“It’s divine words, ones that possess meaning. So be careful.” Hao Ren said to Becky, then bent down, and slowly touched the tablet.
Fragmented words flashed across his mind. But after they dissipated, Hao Ren did no find any meaningful information.
“Mr. Landlord, what was written on it?” Lily curiously came up to him.
“I’m afraid that the divine decree in it has been taken by the mage emperors to create the primordial cells of the demon hunter.” Hao Ren shook his head and got to his feet. “Now this thing is just an empty shell. But I’m sure that this stone tablet has caused time to stand still here. It distorted the surrounding space and time. Although space and time have returned to normal, the inconsistency in time flow rates is still present.”
“So the mage emperors only created the demon hunters after getting the divine decree from the goddess of creation, right?” Lily scratched her head. “Did they follow the goddess of creation or the treacherous children?”
Vivian looked around and saw the blasphemous runes were still glowing on the walls.
The divine decree and the runes of the deicide appeared in the same place, and they were part of the same plan. This ridiculous situation was something unimaginable before this.
“Don’t forget what Lorissa said before,” Hao Ren looked at Vivian and Lily. “She said that the divine decree is fake.”
“Is this Tablet of Commandments fake?” Lily pointed incredibly at the thing she had just dug out.
“No, the tablet is genuine, but the information recorded inside may not. Even if the information is real, the process of interpreting it might be fraudulent.” Hao Ren shook his head. “After all, no mortals could read it directly. There were too many possibilities of things being manipulated.”
“What I don’t understand is why was the goddess of creation using a tablet to communicate her divine decree. It is a ‘letter’ used only between gods and demigods, and not suitable for mortal society at all. According to the teachings of the goddess and their previous experiences, the goddess could communicate directly with her followers through spiritual dialogue. Clearly, she could use a better method to conveys her message. So this tablet is suspicious,” Vivian said.
“Isn’t it necessary to have a carrier to convey the divine power? So She used a real tablet,” Lily said with her eyes blinking.
Vivian glanced at the husky with an indifferent look. “When you send a courier, can’t you write your message separately from the parcel itself? Do you have to engrave your message on it?”
The light dawned on Hao Ren when he heard what Vivian said. But the husky maiden was instantly mute.
“The elven queen should know the inside story.” Hao Ren kept the Tablet of Commandments into his dimensional pocket. He then took a final look around at the central lab. This time, he felt that he did not miss anything here. “Let’s study this after we go back.”
Hao Ren’s team returned to the Royal City with one more person: Lorissa, the mage emperor from 10,000 years ago.
Instead of going straight back to the Royal City, Hao Ren had teleported everyone outside the city and then took the horse carriage that Marshal Ophra had sent to meet them.
Hao Ren had compiled his discovery on the Gloom Mountains into a report and sent it to the Royal City at once through the Royal Mage Guild using their communication spell earlier. Marshal Ophra and King Mhoren had a great interest in the secrets buried in the ruins and shocked by the “current” ancient mage emperor. So Hao Ren was to bring Lorissa to see them.
After some rest, the elven queen felt a lot better, but there was still a hint of fatigue on her face. As the carriage passed through the gate, Lorissa looked out through the gap in the carriage window, the image of the majestic castle of Holletta was reflected in her eyes. For a moment, the ancient elf was shaken and stunned.
Along the way, the same expression appeared on Lorissa’s face several times; she had left the ruins, seen the Gloom Mountains, which had returned to nature, climbed to the top of a mountain and overlooked the fertile land where the old capital city used to be. And now, she was looking at the new city built with stones.
At last, all her emotions were condensed into a sigh. “Ten thousand years!”
Hao Ren just looked quietly at the mage empress who seemed too young for the position. After a long while, Hao Ren suddenly spoke, “Are you really Lorissa the Elven Queen?”