Don't forget—there were more than just two players in this [Prosperity] trial.
Rewinding slightly, before [Prosperity] had descended, several figures deep in the Sighing Forest were staggering through dense fog and countless prowling Twisted Night Pythons, step by labored step, out of this treeless forest.
But with all the trees gone, how could they tell they'd left?
Because underfoot was no longer the carpet of shed snake-skin leaves, but blood-soaked, crimson mud that squelched red with every footstep!
The landscape before them had transford into a boundless scarlet desolation—the Barren Soil. And at the center of this uncovered wasteland sat a jarring, wave-churning Blood Lake!
Zuo Qiu and An Jing stared at the undulating scarlet waters, the shock and dread in their hearts refusing to settle.
Who could have imagined that at the heart of the Sighing Forest lay a lake churning with putrid blood?
Who could have fathod that the so-called Septic Final Tomb wasn't a stone monunt standing on the ground, but an inverted pyramid suspended in the sky—a mausoleum that [Decay]'s pilgrims were ant to gaze up at!
The tomb hung overhead like a floating colossus, with uncountable facets, each one etched by corrosive black blood into illegible [Decay] script.
Whenever the rotting black blood completed its circuit across every facet and through every inscription, it converged at the pyramid's point, condensing into a single viscous droplet—wailing, shrieking—that fell into the Blood Lake below.
And when the accumulated blood finally filled and overflowed the lake...
The Sighing Sorrow Tide would erupt.
Septic blood surged like a reversed tide into the Barren Soil, propelling dense [Decay] outward. The rising fog of evaporating blood grew ever thicker, its crimson hue fading as it spread until, upon reaching the forest proper, it beca the Sighing Sorrow Tide that players knew.
Zuo Qiu and An Jing had arrived just as a fresh surge was winding down—yet even its tail end nearly shattered their defenses and aged them to death on the spot.
The Historian clutched a page he'd acquired from so unknown source—a Learned Poet's page—face pale, body taut. But despite the crushing pressure of death, his eyes still blazed with hunger for historical truth.
He kept searching for weak points in the crimson tide, trying to push through the fog toward the Blood Lake's depths, but attempt after attempt failed.
While the Sighing Sorrow Tide raged, probably no one could get through.
"Puppet Master, help —I can't hold on! This is my last Page of the Great Wall of Holy Light. I've burned through every reserve I had. It's your turn!"
An Jing lived up to her na—completely silent. The cool-beauty Puppet Master didn't lift a finger. Instead, she frowned and looked off to the side.
Zuo Qiu grew anxious. He called out again, but An Jing simply made a hushing gesture.
The Historian's breath caught. Following the Puppet Master's gaze, he discovered that in another direction beyond the Blood Lake, a person—a living person—had just spread his arms wide and plunged buck naked into those horrifying waters.
The man's body was so covered in scars and rotting flesh that they recognized him instantly!
Zhen!
The one who'd split from the player team at the very start and gone alone into the forest's depths!
This follower of [Decay], at this [Decay] Pilgrimage Site, had committed himself to His embrace in a way neither of them could comprehend.
Zuo Qiu's pupils shrank violently. He shouted in disbelief:
"He's lost his mind! He's insane!
He actually dared enter the Blood Lake?
Does he have a death wish?
The [Decay] legend is false!
How could anyone bathe in putrid blood and co back alive?
Not even Lin Xi could do it!"
"What legend?"
Curiosity flickered in An Jing's eyes. She turned back and seamlessly took over the defenses.
Countless puppet strings suddenly burst from the Ranger puppet's nostrils and mouth, then lashed the air around the pair, weaving into a translucent silken "cocoon."
The raging [Decay] tide flowed around the seemingly fragile cocoon walls as if the space within contained nothing but empty air—no living beings at all.
Zuo Qiu watched this marvel, eyes gleaming.
"[Silence] truly excels at concealnt. Brilliant."
"A parlor trick, nothing more. Far less fascinating than the history you speak of. Go on—I'm curious about this legend."
"It's just a rumor.
After the [Decay] Chosen One, Lin Xi, walked out of the Septic Final Tomb alive and ascended to the top, a story began circulating in the [Decay] channels: anyone who could bathe their entire body in the putrid blood of the Final Tomb would receive His direct blessing.
But it was all false."
"Interesting. Your shock at seeing this place seed genuine—this must be your first ti here. Yet you know so much about the Septic Final Tomb?
This Blood Lake clearly cos from the blood droplets falling from the tomb above us. And that floating tomb is very likely the vessel of His descent. So—what exactly is false?"
"It is my first ti. But I do possess certain mories regarding the Septic Final Tomb. I know that no one has ever walked out of that Blood Lake alive.
Even if he's a [Decay] follower, against the accumulated sedint of tens of millions of years of [Decay], he's nothing more than a sheet of white paper with a faint red stain!
He actually thinks he can dye himself by jumping into this viscous [Decay] blood? Hah—a fool's dream.
Paper this thin won't take any color in that lake. The mont white paper hits the water, it'll be dissolved and shredded by the thick plasma, reduced to [Decay]'s ash and piled alongside the rest—becoming part of this Barren Soil!
How else do you think this vast wasteland ca to be?
Over tens of millions of years, countless [Decay] pilgrims who sought His blessing leapt into this lake, only to be ground to nothing by its thick waters—washed and compressed into the bleeding mud beneath our feet.
What we're standing on isn't dirt. It's the blood and flesh of tens of thousands of [Decay] followers!"
'Not dirt... but blood and flesh?'
The Puppet Master was shaken. She directed the Ranger puppet to lift its foot and grind the soil beneath, watching black blood seep up and cover her foot. A tremor ran through her heart, her gaze settling into sothing solemn.
'So this is faith.'
The obsession of pursuing faith was so fervent that countless naless pilgrims, dying one after another, decorated the flowing history of [Decay].
No wonder this Historian was willing to risk his life just to see this with his own eyes, even though he'd already had the mories. Because everything before them now was living history—history forged from blood, flesh, and faith.
Witnessing it firsthand was incomparably more staggering and real than revisiting mories.
Silence fell again. The fog gradually thinned, the thick blood in the lake beginning its next cycle of accumulation. Only then did the Puppet Master break the quiet. She raised an eyebrow and regarded Zuo Qiu with keen interest:
"Your mories—they couldn't have been shared by Lin Xi, could they?"
Zuo Qiu sighed and shook his head:
"I'm just a 2,300-point Historian. Beyond knowing the na, I have zero connection to that Chosen One. My mories...
Are from the People in the Coffin."
An Jing blinked, then it hit her—a sudden realization.
"So the History School was the one who consud the People in the Coffin?
That ans Lin Xi took the fall for you, and in a huge way!
Nearly everyone believes he received [Decay]'s blessing and then killed the guides who showed him the path."
"No. The People in the Coffin's 'disappearance' was indeed connected to us.
But their deaths... had nothing to do with us."
'Huh?'
An Jing found the statent contradictory—but the Historian imdiately resolved her confusion.
"The History School has always sought to complete the Underworld's historical record, but that work is inseparable from researching the Sighing Forest. [Decay]'s history has always been scarce. Supposedly only the [Decay] script carved on the Septic Final Tomb records so fragnts of [Decay]'s past. So everyone desperately wanted to find a path there.
Long before the People in the Coffin even existed, we'd identified several possible routes through old records. But given how perilous the deep Sighing Sorrow Tide was, we abandoned the effort after many failed attempts.
Until all history was understood, we didn't want to beco history ourselves.
But we never imagined anyone could surpass the History School in their obsession with uncovering the past. And that obsessive group was the People in the Coffin.
This organization of barely a hundred [Decay] followers sought to etch their nas into the annals of history—and to do so, they intended to pave a road to the Septic Final Tomb with their own lives!
They used a so-called 'overlapping zones' thod to progressively narrow the search area, marking each stage with the death of a different mber, inching their way toward the Final Tomb.
Realistically, even if all six players in a trial were People in the Coffin, the ground they could cover in the vast Sighing Forest was a drop in the ocean. It was a virtually impossible quest.
But [Fate] favors madn. Even the People in the Coffin themselves never expected that, at the brink of total wipeout, one lucky survivor among them actually located the Septic Final Tomb!
Not only that—he witnessed a ritual there: a [Decay] pilgrim sacrificing himself as an offering.
The suicidal pilgrimage terrified him. Without a second thought, he fled. He ran until he reached a zone free of the Sighing Sorrow Tide, then hid, planning to wait out the trial and spread the explosive intel afterward.
And that's when the most ironic twist occurred.
A [Corruption] player who'd embraced the desire of greed sohow discovered his hiding spot. And rely for the sake of an exquisitely carved Magic Lamp in his hands, killed the one and only Person in the Coffin who knew the route to the Septic Final Tomb.
The History School never even t the People in the Coffin. They'd nearly all died in the trials spent searching for the route.
But the History School was also fortunate. In one particular trial, a [mory] believer among us killed in self-defense a [Corruption] teammate who'd tried to rob him—and from that player's mories, extracted everything related to the People in the Coffin!
But since the People in the Coffin only existed as a mory within a mory, we couldn't reconstruct all the details. Even at our best, we only recovered the portion about the Blood Lake.
So we impersonated the People in the Coffin and planted clues, hoping to use the deaths of fanatical worshippers to fill in the missing route. After that... Lin Xi successfully made it here."
An Jing was so stunned by the absurdity of this historical truth that she was montarily at a loss. She looked at the Historian, opened her mouth, but no words ca out.
"That's just how history works, isn't it?
The past is passed from person to person. We rember their stories. In the future, soone else will rember ours.
All I do is verify whether those stories are true—and fill in the details to make them more vivid."
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