Immortal Freeloader 135 (Patreon)

As much as I wanted to spend a long time in the ruins, I did not. The beast wave that had been triggered by my operations at the ruins was too big. I could have dealt with the beasts, but there were too many Golden Core cultivators around the region.

I didn’t want to risk facing them.

So, instead of staying in and examining the ruins, I just picked anything that I could feel an echo of Everdawn Essence, and anything with some kind of writing.

I needed the material to decipher the written language, which was different than anything that was included in the language jade I had consumed.

When I went back to the safe house I created, I removed the isolation ward, examining the sudden beast wave. It was interesting. Previously, the beasts had been rushing toward the ruins with a singleminded determination. But, once I had removed the isolation ward and the ruins reappeared, that determination stalled.

Instead, they did what a bunch of beasts that had been forcibly gathered would do. They started killing each other. Their fight had extended into the ruins, destroying it even further.

“That’s good news,” I said even as I worked hard to disassemble the safe house and bring everything with me, both the plants and the other things. It was good because it suggested that whatever control the mist had was less like a true intelligence, and more like some kind of automated problem.

At least, that was true at the outskirts.

I didn’t immediately go to my second safe house. Instead, I moved deeper into the mist and picked a second location for myself. One that I could turn into a more permanent base I could use to replenish the reserves of the flying boat.

My initial plan was to choose one of the five and reinforce it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t risk that someone else might visit me.

In the end, I picked a mountain that took almost two hours to arrive with my boat. Trying to walk would have taken months, and even a Foundation Establishment cultivator would take a few days to move. Only when I replanted the spiritual plants and started generating the necessary amount of Qi, I dug a deep cave.

And, carefully categorized everything I had acquired. Shards of pottery, some still carrying interesting designs, telling the broken stories of religious ceremonies or heroic battles. Now, it was a tomb for a civilization, its whispers muted by the wind.

“It’s weird how perspective can change,” I muttered. Just a year ago, I would have treated any museum as a pointless distraction that a bunch of snub intellectuals maintained to lord over others. However, now that I somehow found myself responsible for the safety of billions, it was different.

They turned into a warning, reminding me of the potential cost of failure. If I failed, billions of people might have ended up the same way.

“Depressing,” I said as I shook my head, and focused on more practical concerns. I focused on a large fresco, depicting what must be an Emperor, the symbol of Everdawn clear, his face noble and wise, his hand outstretched in a gesture of victory.

The writing underneath was a good basis for deciphering their language. Which was complicated, as translating a language without knowing a word was difficult.

But, not impossible.

Admittedly, the only reason I even thought I could decipher the language was my own calligraphy skill. It allowed me to, for the lack of a better word, catch glimpses of intent, particularly with the pieces that still had an echo of intent.

I knelt down, carefully brushing away the dust from various pieces as I tried to put together the language. Though, it wasn’t as easy.

It cost me a full week.

I had stopped by the base of the conspiracy, hoping that there was some kind of dictionary there, but there was not. All the material they had had been translated into the current language.

During that week, I visited Janassa a few times, getting a few rewards for the Kartpa Alchemy technique. It didn’t push it over Minor Familiarity, but it was to be expected. My other objective was to see whether learning techniques had caused the same fluctuation.

It did not, or at least, the fluctuation had been small enough to avoid my notice.

I was tempted to repeat the experiment on other objects, but I delayed for the moment, choosing to focus on exploring the ruins, which took most of the week. In the end, I managed to get not only a working understanding of their language but also a very rough understanding of the Everdawn Empire.

I was lucky enough to come across many history books in the ruins, which, even in their destroyed state, revealed a lot about the Empire, which gave me a better understanding of it.

I had already known that they had been huge before their destruction, but learning that they were large enough to cover up the whole oversized continent, and did so for thousands of years — at least what the scraps claimed — was even more than I expected.

There were rough mentions of occasional rival kingdoms popping up and being destroyed, but those had been merely in the background. There were many mentions of kings, but the context implied that they were some kind of subordinate to the Emperor, often family members.

I didn’t need to guess that it was a bad idea, as even the scarps of historical information I was able to gather had mentions of too many rebellions. Still, even with those, their aim seemed to be taking over as the Emperor rather than breaking the Empire.

Of course, those events had been classified as rightful heirs saving the Empire from traitors and corrupt emperors who lost their mandate, but I didn’t take those parts too seriously. It was clear that the books had been written for propaganda.

Considering the working principles of Everdawn Essence, I was pretty sure that the existence of a great number of historical records was not just about the ego of the Empire. Everdawn Martial arts required devotion, every single book reinforced the loyalty toward the Empire.

As I read that, one obvious strategy to get strong appeared in my mind. I could go deeper into the mist, and try to take over the position of the Empire. But, I ignored that thought the moment it appeared. It was too reckless for my taste.

Instead, I continued to patiently parse through the texts, trying to learn more. Despite thousands of years of history, the society that the books described had been strangely static, which would have been interesting if I hadn’t already seen the same thing with the cultivators and the mortal kingdoms.

The only other interesting thing was the mentions of the martial sects, but their presence had been contentious at best. Barely a few mentions, and always referring to them as traitors and betrayers. It made an interesting reading, mostly because the style of their mentions didn’t feel like they were written by the same people.

It was hard to describe properly. It was more of a subtle feeling I got through calligraphy, which was muddled further by the age of the books. But, those bare mentions of rebellion introduced a sense of discord across the text, like someone had picked an impressionist painting, and painted a fruit bowl to the corner in a different style.

Together with the other events, it gave me a better — though still dubious — understanding of what was going on. The Everdawn Empire was the dominant party, but not enough to completely unify the whole land. There were semi-independent kings, and even more independent martial arts sects, which, at one point, decided to rebel in a more wholesale manner.

I immediately made it a priority to discover one of these martial arts sects and see how their martial arts worked.

I needed to see if they were more similar to Everdawn Saber, or Tiger Fist.

So, the rest of my time, I spent trying to put together a more reliable map that described the local area, and comparing it with the old map of the Everdawn Empire, hoping to give me a better idea of how to find one of the martial sects.

However, even as I continued to dig through the historical records and other scraps I managed to discover, I noticed another suspicious point.

Nothing I had read had even a mention of Qi cultivators, immortals, or anything similar.

Too bad I didn’t have the time to focus on that yet.