Capítulo 762: Chapter 393: The Truth, A Foreordained Ending, Three Years
Ronan immediately dismissed the idea of secluded cultivation, and stepped out of the secret chamber again.
The old, empty corridor stretched on, with the door to Prophet Eve’s room closed tightly. Ronan glanced at it before walking straight to the other side’s end.
Once again arriving at the Quivada Oasis, Ronan descended and strolled across the oasis land.
The severely corrupted plains occasionally emitted strange sounds like the groans of giant creatures, and the soil, seeping sludge, writhed slightly like blood and flesh. Some otherworldly demons ran across the field, and upon catching Ronan’s scent, they all actively gathered towards him.
The self-separated titanium, like countless golden pigeons, flapped its magnificent wings from under Ronan’s magic robe, then formed into enormous winged blades, wrapped with tar-like flames and rolling heat waves, wantonly scattering in all directions…
One by one, the demons were easily harvested like clusters of black wheat under the blades of the [Golden Origin]. Ronan’s lips moved slightly, and while the golden titanium rampaged, his fingers released crystal-clear ice flakes between them. The ice flakes condensed into exquisite snowflakes around him, and any snowflake sent out would stir up an icy storm across the corrupted plains.
Mirrors appearing like fluid mercury constantly floated around him, and occasionally Ronan’s form would abruptly explode into dozens of figures glowing with silver light.
At the transition between day and night, a pitch-black and profound sun rose on the land of Quivada Oasis, like a bottomless abyss, greedily devouring all evil and corruption around…
Metal and fire, ice type, space-related, energy system, and Ahaxia of the undead series [Ghost Arrow]… Spells of various systems switched freely within Ronan’s hands. He was like an untiring casting machine, only stopping when his spiritual power was completely exhausted, using the Deep Knowledge Crown to summon a certain number of elemental guards, then starting meditation to recover.
Ronan always maintained a “Dream Entry” state, and over on the projection, occasionally some messy and trivial information and images would be transmitted, forcing him to split some of his mind to handle them.
The “hard training” simultaneously occurring on both sides inevitably caused some interference to the body.
Due to the huge time flow discrepancy between dreams and reality, and various influencing factors… the actual situation was far more complex.
However, with Ronan’s constant adjustments and self-adaptation, the impact was gradually decreasing.
Two months later, on a certain night.
Beside the blazing orange bonfire, Ronan focused on fiddling with a black metal plate in his hand under the fire’s light.
The metal plate emitted faint rune fluctuation, and on one side, some glowing fragment-like material floated.
It was the metal plate acquired from the Silver Ear Goblin Treasure Vault, potentially documenting clues about “Songlin’s Hammer”. Ronan would take it out to study during leisure times, having pieced together a small section of the pattern on the plate, which, at this rate, could be completed in a few years.
Just as Ronan gently fiddled with a small glowing “fragment” on the metal plate, suddenly his movement halted abruptly, and his entire body shivered slightly.
“Buzz—”
A vast torrent of information surged out from the depths of his mind, a flash of silver snakes passed before his eyes.
Ronan immediately closed his eyes, and in an instant, torrents of soul power surged layer upon layer within him like tides, naturally permeating [Star Force Field], visibly expanding rapidly, presenting a scene of transparent rippling water around Ronan’s body.
This process persisted for the time span of two hourglasses before gradually fading.
Once all fluctuations completely settled, Ronan slowly opened his eyes.
“The advantage of using soul projection for Dream Entry is that it doesn’t occupy the real-world training time, but the drawback is….”
Ronan took a light breath, and upon casting [Golden Soul], invisible golden fire soared from his body, releasing strands of soul impurity ash smoke.
“Upon Dream Entry’s conclusion and projection’s return, there’s a ‘settlement’ process that requires enduring soul impact far exceeding what’s encountered normally.”
Of course, if the soul strength gradually increases, this impact becomes insignificant.
Ronan pulled up the character panel to see the progress behind the “strength meter” section showing “37%”, a 6% increase from the last time.
Ronan’s eyes flickered slightly.
This time, in the dream, he was still during the Keldim Empire period, only the time had slightly moved forward.
At that time, the Keldim Empire had already discovered the “central hub” they had been seeking, and the “Waterway Plan” was formally initiated.
As a waterway supervision officer for Keldim, he spent a full eighty years underground with a small team composed of Wizards, Astrologers, Imperial Knights, and craftsmen, ultimately dying in an underground demon uprising incident.
Speaking of which, this was the first time Ronan’s session ended in “Reincarnation Dreams” in a “non-natural death” form.
“During the waterway construction, signs of otherworldly demons had already been discovered. The closer to Quivada Oasis, the more space rifts encountered, and the more frequent the demon activities…”
Ronan sorted through the eighty years of life experiences as a waterway supervision officer, analyzing: “Back then, the Ancient Wizards battled the otherworldly demon invasion and shattered the world continent in that warfare. The hidden dangers were not completely eliminated, with traces buried in the underground and the continent’s underside…
The Keldim Empire’s Waterway Plan unveiled all this, releasing those demons from ancient seals…”
Ronan’s expression was complex.
Twice in the dream, he as a “witness”, was getting closer bit by bit to the truth of the Keldim Wizard Empire’s downfall.
He couldn’t evaluate whom to blame for the occurrence of all these faults.
As an empire that ruled over more than ninety percent of the Upper Ring’s continents, Keldim had the ambition to advance further, breaking through to the Middle Ring, which gave birth to the “Waterway Plan”.
When they realized they had inadvertently touched upon some ancient taboo, on one hand, the empire, at its peak, believed it had the power to solve the ensuing series of problems.
On the other hand, from the moment the idea of the “Central Hub” was proposed, Keldim had invested too much in this grand plan, placing all their “bets” on the magnificent blueprint envisioned after the “Waterway Network” was completed.
They could no longer turn back.
Discovering that there were seals opening to the Otherworldly Demons underground, they still pushed forward, which led to the great disaster that followed and the fall and destruction of Keldim.
But even if they decisively abandoned the “Waterway Plan” at that time, due to the huge early investment, the empire was left hollow and would inevitably decline over time.
To put it bluntly, the fate of the Keldim Empire was almost predetermined.
Ronan organized all the findings from this dream entry, sighed lightly at the burning campfire in front of him.
This time, the memory of the Ancient Spirit Texts in the dream was not delayed; on the original twenty thousand basis, it increased by nearly seven thousand more.
Ronan continued to cast projections and enter dreams.
After he could visualize a silver snake in his mind and used soul projection to carry out reincarnation dreams, Ronan found that each “dream entry” world was no longer completely random; he had some degree of choice.
He could rely on the last dream entry to find those “similar-smelling” petals on the black dandelion.
For example, this time—
A petal from the dandelion gently fell, and Ronan entered a new “reincarnation.”
When he opened his eyes in the dream, he saw—a few wizards on a small boat dressed in the unique robe style of the Keldim Empire, cautiously placing a square box emitting a mysterious glow into a peculiar altar in a stone wall gap in a quiet and damp waterway.
“Holy Shrine Altar?..”
Ronan blinked, attempted to step forward, but was immediately rebuked harshly from the side.
He instinctively gripped the iron pickaxe in his hand.
Oh.
This time, he had become a low-level craftsman responsible for building the waterway.
……..
The petals of the black dandelion withered one by one, reality and dreams ran parallel.
Time flowed silently like water at the white sandy shore, drifting towards unknown distances.
The scorching magma gushed like viscous blood from cracks in charred black ground rock, dyeing the entire space a glaring orange-red, the air filled with the pungent smell of sulfur corrosion; occasionally, bubbles bulged from the magma river below, bursting and splattering sticky sparks, which singed on the rock surfaces, emitting tiny wisps of green smoke with a “hiss” sound.
Ronan hovered quietly in front of a jagged black rock pillar.
He remained calm, softly chanting the syllables of ancient spells.
A crisp “crack” was heard as the rock pillar, like a giant beast’s fang, fractured at the root, then opened to reveal a small peculiar black altar inside.
The whole altar bore traces of high-temperature melting and corrosion, yet the square black box placed at the center remained relatively intact.
Ronan carefully took it out, gently flicked a spot on the top with his fingers, and heard a mechanical “click” as pure white flames leaked from the box’s slits.
Ronan’s gaze suddenly brightened, and he took a deep inhale.
In an instant, the pure white flames from the stone box rushed towards Ronan’s mouth, nose, eyes, and pores, and in no time, a thin layer of pure white flames engulfed him completely.
Ronan bathed in pure white firelight; the magic robe on his body remained unaffected, but the body beneath the robe emitted a series of dense, crackling, and long-drawn explosive growth sounds.
This process continued until all the pure white flames in the stone box drained; the pure white flames on Ronan’s body were also completely absorbed within him.
He put away the stone box in his hand and slowly stretched his limbs.
The body that was already well-proportioned and slender seemed even more perfectly proportioned at this moment, with semi-transparent golden rune chains’ shadows emerging from his body, each taut and poised as if about to break free, and a mark resembling a golden gear on his right wrist constantly flickered…
“Crack crack crack——”
Amidst a series of crisp bone-cracking sounds, the aura around Ronan gradually withdrew, his billowing magic robe slowly settled, and those semi-transparent golden rune chains gradually faded away.
When all the commotion completely subsided, Ronan looked down at the back of his hand, clearly seeing that the mark of the golden gear seemed to have faded quite a bit, with tiny cracks around the gear, as if about to shatter at any moment.
“How many is this now?”
Ronan mused to himself, looking at the Holy Shrine Altar before him, which was showing signs of melting collapse in the lava’s high temperature.