After the Underworld God's willpower thought form left, Chu Kuangren continued studying Chaos Daoist Celestial's Chaos Physique. He noticed that although the physique looked alright from the surface, there were thousands of gashes and pores deep inside.
Otherwise, those Chaotic qis would not seep out of this body so uncontrollably.
These were all Chaotic qis that the Chaos Daoist Celestial had cultivated for years.
While studying the Chaos Physique, Chu Kuangren glanced at Chaos Daoist Celestial, who was looking at him curiously. "Why don't you give me a rundown of what happened here inside the Slumbering Emperor Coffin and your beef with the Underworld God?"
"Yeah, that's a good idea. But before that, I've got a question for you."
"Please, go ahead."
"What is your name?"
Chu Kuangren just realized that he had not introduced himself. He flashed a smile and said, "Apologies, it slipped my mind. My name is Chu Kuangren."
Chaos Daoist Celestial laughed in reply. "Oh, about the Underworld God and I? The story began from immemorial times."
"Immemorial times? Woah, that's quite long ago…"
Chu Kuangren looked fascinated.
The immemorial time was an incredibly ancient era. It was so long ago that it had to be measured in terms of eras.
One era equaled a hundred and twenty-nine thousand and six hundred years.
From the immemorial times to this day, sixty-six eras had passed.
The immemorial times were the period of genesis for the Heavenly Dao. The Firmament Star had numerous immensely powerful beings during that time, and back then, humans were as weak as mere ants. When crossing paths with the numerous immemorial beings, they were reduced to just cannon fodder.
Later on, however, some immemorial beings noticed that these puny humans actually possessed some sort of unique energy. When humans had a deep sense of respect or reverence toward them, those unique energies inside them could strengthen these immemorial beings' powers.
The immemorial beings regarded this as the Power of Faith!
Thus, the concept of Gods was born.
Humans worshipped Gods, while Gods helped humans through hardships and earned the Power of Faith from humans. With that, this coexisting relationship was established.
That period of time was known as the Age of Immemorial Gods.
However, things changed after that.
Through observing natural phenomenons and the various powers of Gods, humans began to understand and master powers that were equivalent to Gods' powers.
That was the rise of the Firmament's cultivators.
After knowing how to cultivate, the humans slowly became stronger. Although they were still no match for some of the overpowered immemorial beings, they were not as reliant on the Gods as they were in the past. As such, they slowly lost their faith in the Gods.
This made the Gods start to feel a little uneasy.
Without the Power of Faith, their own powers would not be strengthened, and because of some natural law restriction, they had no way of learning what the humans were cultivating.
Hence, the Gods had a meeting amongst themselves.
They decided to let the humans experience a disaster and then offer them divine help at their worst times. With that, they could then regain the humans' faiths.
On top of that, they were secretly suppressing and limiting the human cultivator forces to stop them from growing too strong in numbers. Otherwise, they would break free of the Gods' control.
This method worked. In face of the never-ending disasters, the newly risen human cultivator forces had no means at all of defending themselves. Very soon, they were back seeking help from the Gods.
However, nothing in this world could remain a secret. Eventually, the bad deeds of the Gods were exposed, and they were resisted by the human race. Although the human race was weak and constantly suppressed by the Gods, the fire and resolve in humans did not die down.
The humans refused to be shepherded by others!
The humans would never accept being someone else's slaves!
Rebellions after rebellions, the human cultivator tribes became stronger and stronger. Slowly, they had the same powers as the Gods!
At the beginning of immemorial times, the Great Panhuman Revolt ensued!
That was a seemingly endless war. The humans' powers may match the Gods', but the Gods were still beings produced from the Firmament Star, and some of the stronger Gods had already attained immortality. As such, they would never die nor get destroyed.
Thus, the humans could only seal the Gods away.
Chaos Daoist Celestial was one of the main driving forces among the Great Panhuman Revolt. The God he was tasked to deal with was one of the strongest amongst the Gods, the Underworld God!
Although Chaos Daoist Celestial had help from a few other human race elites, he was able to seal the Underworld God to the boundless void.
However, he sustained heavy injuries himself. Hence, his physical body and soul were both locked inside this Slumbering Emperor Coffin, trapped here until today.
"I may be trapped here with my body mortally wounded and my soul incredibly weakened, but with the Underworld God sealed away, it would still take him a great deal of effort to kill me off completely."
"So that was how the famous saying of 'wherever the coffin shall pass, there shall be nothing but death' came about. The Underworld God's willpower thought form is trying to gather thousands of living beings' vengeful spirits to slowly dissolve your soul."
"Wherever the coffin shall pass, there shall be nothing but death?"
Chaos Daoist Celestial looked rather confused. "What is the meaning of that?"
Chu Kuangren began to explain the legend of the Slumbering Emperor Coffin to him.
The Chaos Daoist Celestial appeared more perplexed after hearing all that. "There is only one Underworld God's willpower thought form inside the Slumbering Emperor Coffin. Even if the humans back then did not have a way of rescuing me out, they should have a way of suppressing this coffin. How can they let the Slumbering Emperor Coffin loose like that and wreak havoc everywhere, killing millions of innocent lives?"
"Also, Putuo, he was nothing but a small soldier who served alongside me long ago. Why was it him who came to save me? There were surely some other people who were more skilled in soul Dao than he was back then. I have too many questions."
"Little guy, can you tell me how it is out there now?"
Chu Kuangren nodded. "Sure."
Then, he started to tell the Chaos Daoist Celestial all the tales he knew.
Now, it was Chaos Daoist Celestial's turn to sit back and listen to stories. When they got to the part about the Era of Dharma's End, and the fact that there had not been any Emperors produced in the recent ancient era, he was shocked. He found it hard to believe that the humans in the outside world had declined to this degree.
Moreover, when he heard of the Nine Heavens, he looked absolutely dazed.
Nine Heavens?
What kind of mumbo jumbo was that? Why had he never heard of it?
"The changes in the world outside have far surpassed my imagination. It seems like quite a lot of things have happened ever since I've been trapped inside the Slumbering Emperor Coffin."
The Chaos Daoist Celestial shook his head and sighed sentimentally.
"Little guy, any chance you've heard of the Heavenly Golden Daoist Celestial?"
"No."
"What about the Exquisite Daoist Celestial?"
"No, either."
"The Buddha Lord? That's Putuo's ancestral teacher."
"The founder of the Buddhist world, that I've heard of. However, it's still a mystery till today whether the Buddha Lord exists, and I'm not sure of that."
Then Chaos Daoist Celestial asked about several characters in quick succession. Although Chu Kuangren had never heard of any of them, he secretly made a mental note of those names.
After a series of inquiries, Chaos Daoist Celestial had given up and settled with the fact that the world outside was no longer what he remembered it to be.
Nobody knew if those people of the past in his memories were still alive.
The atmosphere became rather gloomy.
"What are you doing?"
The Chaos Daoist Celestial threw a glance at Chu Kuangren and asked.
"Studying your Supreme Daoist Physique."
"Study? You can study Supreme Daoist Physiques…?" Chaos Daoist Celestial gave Chu Kuangren a weird look. Immediately after that, his body shuddered, as if he had just made some unbelievable observation. "How many types of Daoist Physique energies are there on your body? How did you do it?"
"Through studying and researching," Chu Kuangren replied in a serious tone.
The Chaos Physique was truly befitting of the first-ranked Daoist Physiques. Chu Kuangren had been studying it for almost ten days now but only managed to decipher less than half of it.
Throughout these ten days, he did not rest on his laurels either. When he had the chance, he would look for Chaos Daoist Celestial and ask him about things regarding the cultivation world.
After all, he was a big shot from the immemorial past!
If he did not grab hold of this opportunity, his trip here to the Slumbering Emperor Coffin would be a waste.