Chapter 321: Kekkai of the Gods
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Hagan talked to himself as he walked around the case. As everybody got dizzy from his walking, he suddenly stopped. He said seriously, "Anfey, I can only make the element lock stop for a second. You have to move the case into your Dimensional ring."
"Is it dangerous?" Christian asked before Anfey had a chance to.
"I got it. It should be ok," Hagan said.
"Should be?" Christian could not help frowning.
"Nothing is 100 percent safe. I trust Hagan on this," Anfey said, smiling. "Christian, you guys can leave now."
Christian did not look too happy as he took a look at Anfey. He did not even want to respond to Anfey’s suggestion. Suzanna did not look too happy either. Blavi said impatiently, "It is too much to run back and forth. Hagan, you can start now."
"Okay, Anfey. You gotta be ready. Okay?" Hagan said.
"Wait a second. How could I take the case out of the Dimensional ring after I put it in? Do I have to study alchemy if I want to take it out?" Anfey asked hastily.
"Everything in the Dimensional ring stays still, including time. You can take the case out whenever you want to," Hagan said.
"I got you," Anfey responded.
Hagan took out a crystal stick from his Dimensional ring and chanted in a low pitch. He pointed at the center of the four element chains with the crystal stick. When the crystal stick just touched the element chains, the flowing silver white light on the element chains suddenly froze. Hagan hurriedly yelled, "Anfey!"
Anfey responded super fast. As Hagan called "An," Anfey had already lifted his hand. The case with the four element chains in the air suddenly disappeared. Anfey searched his Dimensional ring with his telepathy. He found the case floating in his Dimensional ring. The four element chains still had no lights on them.
"Hagan, wonderful job!" Blavi was excited and patted Hagan’s shoulder.
"It is nothing. I am the greatest alchemist." After seeing he had completed the difficult task, Hagan was so happy that he started to brag.
"Huh? Who is Master Jacob if you are the greatest alchemist?" Christian teased.
"I am the future greatest alchemist. Master Jacob is the current greatest alchemist. Two totally different things, got it? Don’t even talk if you do not know about it." Hagan tried to save his embarrassment. He turned around. Seeing the stuff in Anfey’s hand, he asked in surprise, "Anfey, what is in your hand?"
"I do not know. A box," Anfey said.
"Open it," Hagan suggested.
Anfey held his breath to try to sense if there were any element surges in the box. He carefully opened the box after he was sure there were none. He found a smaller box inside the box.
"Which f*cker did this?" Anfey did not know if he should laugh or cry.
"Open it. I do not think it is empty inside," Blavi said, walking over to Anfey.
Anfey opened the smaller box and found a smaller box inside it. Anfey was usually more patient than most people, but after opening about eight boxes, Anfey lost patience and did not care to check it before he opened the next one. When he grabbed the ninth box, he opened it quick.
"Hold on!" Hagan suddenly yelled.
"What?" Anfey was shocked for a second and looked up at Hagan.
"Don’t move." Hagan carefully walked over and took the box from Anfey. He gently put the box on the floor and took out a small knife. He was prying something off the top of the box. There was a red gemstone on it, which did not look like anything special. Hagan tried to take the red gemstone off. After a while, with a sucking sound, he pried the red gemstone out. As Anfey took the red gemstone away from the box, a strong gust of red light spewed out and lit the whole chamber in red.
"Just as I thought!" Hagan said, wiping the cold sweat off his forehead because he knew what could have happened.
"What is it?" Anfey asked. Everyone else felt the intense waves of fire element surges. It was terrifying.
"It is the Fire of Hell," Hagan answered as he took out a magic chemical bottle. He took a drop of it on the crystal stick and slowly lowered the crystal stick into the box through the hole where the red gemstone was. After a while, he raised the crystal stick back up. There was a dark red magic crystal stuck to the bottom of the crystal stick.
"This is…" Hagan could not believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes hard and suddenly opened them wide. He stared at the dark red magic crystal.
"A supreme magic crystal would not have such strong element surges. What the hell is it?" Christian looked enticed by it.
"If my guess is right, this should be the Red Dragon magic crystal." Hagan made his final judgement.
"Red Dragon?" Anfey and others gasped and asked at the same time. Anfey had some understanding of super creatures. Red Dragon was one of them. However, dragons had been extinct on Pan Continent for a long long time. It was really confusing when they suddenly found a dragon magic crystal.
"If we did not come here, this magic crystal could have had Fire of Hell running for thousands of years," Hagan sighed softly. "Super creatures are so powerful!"
"If we triggered the Fire of Hell, what could have happened?" Anfey asked in a low voice.
"Only Suzanna would have some slim chance of survivng. The rest of us would definitely die," Christian said bitterly.
"So calculating!" Anfey still looked calm, but he was pretty upset about it. The people who set this device up definitely took advantage of the weakness of human nature. No one would carefully check every box unless the person was a robot without any emotion.
"Anfey, here you go." Hagan passed the magic crystal to Anfey. Maybe because Hagan had been through terror and excitement for the past few minutes, he blattered out, "Take good care of it!‘
"I know." Anfey took the magic crystal. The magic crystal felt like a little oven in Anfey’s hand. Anfey wondered if it was his illusion.
"Putting even ten times the gold coins in the chamber together, we could not even buy such a magic crystal. Anfey, you need to take good care of it. I want to make a fire series magic wand with it." Hagan was worried.
"Fire series magic wand? I am wondering if I should start to learn fire series magic." Christian’s eyes did not leave that magic crystal until Anfey put it in his Dimensional ring. Christian was not willing to move his eyes away from it until it was gone.
"Let’s see what’s inside." Hagan’s hands started to shake. He carefully opened the box. The more they hoped, the more disappointed they got. Hagan suddenly looked very disappointed. "F*ck!"
Anfey bent down to take a look. There was only a greyish book. It did not look like anything special. They could not believe that a Red Dragon magic crystal protected such a book. It was such a contrast.
Could it be an instruction book for martial arts? Postmodern people had more non-linear thinking skills than the people in this world. Anfey squatted with a serious look. He reached his hand out to the book. The case owner forgot that the magic array could protect the book from being stolen but could not prevent corrosion from time. The book was so old that it turned to ashes when Anfey touched it.
Anfey immediately took his hand back and cursed, "Darn it." Anfey expressed the same feeling as Hagan did but in different words.
"It is very unfortunate," Christian sighed. This book should be very important, otherwise it would not be protected by the Red Dragon magic crystal. It was so unfortunate that they could not get a chance to read it.
Hagan covered his mouth and said with a weird voice, "Stop talking. Don’t breathe either. Keep absolutely quiet."
Anfey and the others were shocked for a second, but followed Hagan’s instruction immediately. Hagan had successfully moved the element lock and seen through the setup of the Fire of Hell. They all proved that Hagan was capable and had knowledge they did not. Everybody knew people were specialized in different areas. Now Hagan was their leader.
Hagan took out a light blue magic chemical in a slow motion. He released a drop and dipped his crystal stick into it. The chemical suddenly turned into a cloud of twinkled mist, slowly covering the book and seeping into it.
Hagan laid on the floor and gently blew on the book. As a cloud of dirt rose from the book, words clearly showed on the page.
"Gee! This is ancient language." Hagan was shocked after seeing it.
"Can anyone read it?" Anfey asked.
Everyone looked at each other. Hui Wei was good at ancient languages, but he was thousands of miles away right now. It would not have been hard to bring him with them, but even though Anfey was calculating, he did not think they would need Hui Wei so badly now. It was too late to regret it now.
"Hagan, can you put this book in the Dimensional ring?" Anfey tried to think out of the box.
"Sure, but when you try to take it out of the dimensional ring, it would become a pile of dirt," Hagan said.
"What should we do then?" Anfey asked.
"Let me try to read it. I hung out with Hui Wei a lot. He learned some basic alchemy with me while I learned some ancient language with him. It was just that recently I have been too busy to continue to learn. I do not know much about it," Hagan said with a bitter smile.
"No matter what, you know more than us. Just try it," Anfey said in a low voice.
"Ok." Hagan nodded. He looked down and started to read carefully.
They did not think it would take Hagan so long to read it. Maybe it was because Hagan knew this book would disappear forever, or he was into reading it. He gently blew on the page when he finished reading. A new page would appear after the previous page turned into ashes.
Anfey and others did not want to interrupt Hagan, so they all waited in the corner of the chamber. Blavi got impatient and went out few times. Every time he came back, he would tell everyone the time changes: It was getting dark, already dark,the moon had come out, and so forth.
Without knowing how much time had passed, Hagan looked shocked after he blew at the page. He reached his hand into the box to search for something. Anfey walked a few steps forward to take a look. He found the box had become empty, which meant the mysterious book had totally disappeared.
"Hagan, what did it say in the book? Did you understand it?" Anfey asked.
"I think…" Hagan tapped his forehead with his left hand and looked like he was in terrible pain. Hagan was so tired from the trip. Now it took so much out of him to read the book. He would have been lying if he said he was not tired. To be more specific, Hagan felt exhausted.
"No hurry. Do you want to rest a little bit?" Anfey said quietly.
Hagan shook his head and thought for a while before he slowly opened his eyes. "Anfey, this book told stories about Kekkai of the Gods."
"Kekkai of the Gods?" Christian was intrigued and walked over.
"Yes. Unfortunately, I did not understand most of it. It would have been great if Hui Wei were here," Hagan said.
"That is alright. Tell us what you understood," Anfey said.
"Basically, it talked about how humans had more and more power, which terrified the gods. Some gods thought the reason humans got so powerful was because humans were strong-willed and had unlimited evolving ability. If they wanted to constrain humans in a certain area, they had to change their living conditions."
"What does it mean?" Anfey asked. It seemed that everyone heard what Hagan said, but did not understand.
"It was the living conditions that made humans stronger. The conditions were so bad: there were gigantic dragons, behemoths and other super creatures. To protect their living space, humans had to fight against these super creatures. At the same time, the magic and combat powers both got better in their fights. Humans also developed a great system of writing. Humans could pass their knowledge to others in the writing." Hagan took a deep breath and said, "Compared with other races, dragons only had dragon language, orcs had really simple language, and elves’ writing was way too complicated. Only human language was rich. One important reason humans could dominate the continent was they had more advanced cultures."
"Cultures? I think it was overstated." Christian said in shock. One’s understanding of the world determined a person’s point of view. Christian did not agree that powers had nothing to do with cultures.
"I do not know about it, but it said so in the book." Hagan forced a smile. "With difficult living conditions, humans have tried really hard with their strong will and become stronger with unlimited evolving ability. Supreme powers appeared in humans and were a match with super creatures. Some of them almost had the chance to become gods."
"Continue," Anfey said.
"Gods thought they should not let this situation continue. In fact, the land we are on has been changed a lot by gods. All the super creatures and supreme powers survived after the war had scattered them to the corners of the world and kept them far away from this continent. Gods also set a gigantic kekkai to keep us on the continent. The end of the world we think is actually just the border of the kekkai. They provided us a wonderful space without any pressure."
"Storm Sea?" Anfey suddenly thought about the conversation between merchants he heard at Tumen Commercial Union. It was said that there was an enormous Storm Sea in a faraway place. The waves could be as high as hundreds of yards. No one could pass there, not even top powers.
"That could be it," Hagan said.
"Do gods want to control humans this way?" Anfey asked.
"In the war between beasts and gods, gods wiped out a lot of cultures humans had created in the name of war. That did not stop humans from advancing, but definitely prolonged it. That war had taken so much out of the gods that they went back to sleep for a long time. When they woke up, the situation was not as bad as it should have been."
"Continue," Anfey encouraged.
"That’s all I got. I did not understand the rest of it. The book said there were three holy items that allowed the kekkai to keep operating. However, I do not know which three holy items." Hagan shook his head. "I wanted to memorize those words that seemed important and ask Hui Wei about it later. But reading so many pages, I do not even know which parts were important."
Everybody was quiet. What Hagan told them was so sensational. However, as they recalled the theory Hui Wei had talked about before, the two were quite similar to each other.
"Christian, what do you think?" Anfey asked slowly.
"I think it sounded a little ridiculous." Christian forced a smile. Most people thought gods were kind and sympathetic. When Christian heard the exact opposite, he could not take it.
"I think it was ridiculous. If gods hated humans so much, why didn’t they just kill all of them?" Blavi said.
"What does bread mean to you?" Hagan asked.
"It is food," Blavi said, confused.
"The beliefs of humans are the food for gods. Even though humans made them worry, the power of belief that a large amount of humans provided to gods was far more than what elves and orcs could provide. They did not want to lose it. Do not forget, there are beasts besides gods that we are not familiar with. Gods need us to believe in them." Hagan started to rub his forehead. "These were in the book. Do not ask me how I know about them. I am so confused now."
"Ok, let’s not talk about it anymore. What gods think has nothing to do with us. It is beyond our comprehension," Anfey said quietly. "Everybody, we need be careful. Do not tell anyone else about this. It would not do anyone any good. Hagan, you’d better go to sleep. It is already dark. Tomorrow morning, we have to get back on the road."