The Land of Lost Tracks and the Forbidden Testament
In the Glorious Palace, Jason Thompson, the director of the Glorious Kingdom's Intelligence Bureau, sat cautiously.
When Rosen appeared, Jason immediately stood up nervously.
Jason knew all too well how his predecessor had died. This time, the news he brought was far from good. If Rosen vented his dissatisfaction on him and secretly left him half-dead, what would he do?
"No need to be so nervous. Tell me about the specifics of the world conscription," Rosen said casually as he sat down.
"The Glorious Kingdom needs to provide conscripts equivalent to one million points of spiritual strength," Jason said, growing even more tense.
"One million?" Rosen frowned, causing Jason to stand up again in fear.
The spiritual strength of Sequence 9 troops was generally nine points, which meant at least 110,000 Sequence 9 transcendent troops would need to be sent to the front lines. This was no small number, especially since the World Government required the troops to be from territorial forces.
Seeing Jason too frightened to speak, Fara reluctantly stepped in to explain.
A total of 110,000 Sequence 9 troops was equivalent to 20,000 Sequence 4 troops.
Rosen could manage this, but it would mean nearly depleting the troops within his territory.
If he found it difficult, other kings of the kingdom certainly couldn't muster such a strong force to send to the front lines at once.
Therefore, the one million points of spiritual strength required for the conscription would need to be further distributed among the divine territory lords across the entire kingdom. While this conscription quota was higher than that of an ordinary kingdom, it wasn't excessively so.
After all, the Glorious Kingdom, though called a kingdom, actually ruled over an area somewhere between a kingdom and an empire.
In recent years, the number of new nobles in the kingdom had increased significantly, so this conscription quota wasn't intended to make things difficult for the Glorious Kingdom.
Of course, Rosen couldn't assign the entire conscription quota to the nobles of the Glorious Kingdom.
In ordinary divine territories, it was difficult to cultivate high-level troops.
If only low-level troops were sent to the front lines, they would undoubtedly become cannon fodder without any backing. Few would return alive, and even the merits earned in battle would be difficult to tally due to the scattered nature of the troops, leaving them vulnerable to being stolen by others.
Therefore, as the king, Rosen had to dispatch at least ten percent of high-sequence troops and at least one hero to lead them.
While casualties couldn't be completely avoided, at least the merits earned wouldn't be easily stolen.
After some thought, Rosen decided on the troops he would send.
The Calamity Apostle, a Sequence 1 hero, would lead fifty Sequence 2 Shadow Demons, one thousand Sequence 3 Shadow Demons, one thousand Sequence 3 Metal Slimes, and finally ten thousand Sequence 4 War Treants.
The troops Rosen dispatched, when converted into divine strength, amounted to at least 700,000 points.
The remaining 300,000 points could easily be gathered through conscription within the kingdom.
His decision to be so generous was partly because this war had been triggered by him, and partly because stronger forces would earn more merits on the battlefield. Given the Abyss's terrifying ability to produce troops, there might be an opportunity to elevate the kingdom to an empire.
The kingdom's conscription took only a few days, but waiting for the world government's transport fleet took half a month.
Many people might not understand—why use transport ships to send troops to the front lines?
Wouldn't it be much more convenient to use teleportation arrays? One could simply station the soldiers in a divine territory, then teleport a single divine territory lord over. No matter how you calculate it, it would be more efficient, faster, and cheaper than using transport ships. Yet, the world government still insisted on using them.
The reason was actually quite simple—teleportation arrays were too unreliable during wartime.
The essence of long-distance teleportation was compressing the space between two points. However, the more the distance was compressed, the harder it became. Normally, once compression reached a certain level, it would stop, because further compression would cause both the cost and difficulty to increase exponentially.
Thus, long-distance teleportation arrays created a spatial passage during transport.
And since it was a passage, there was naturally an intermediate section.
During wartime, enemy gods who controlled spatial authority loved nothing more than locating these spatial passages, intercepting them in the middle, and even using them to destroy the teleportation arrays on both ends. That was why, during war, primitive transport ships were still the most practical and had the highest tolerance for errors.
After sending off all his troops, Rosen prepared to set out in search of a Sequence 5 miracle artifact.
Now that the world government's attention was entirely focused on the Abyss battlefield, it was the perfect time for him to head to that place and retrieve the artifact. That place, after all, was a world government-designated forbidden zone—one of the highest-level restricted areas, where only true gods were permitted to tread.
...
The Human World, Lost Mist Sea.
This was a sea region extremely scarce in extraordinary resources, making it unsuitable for human transcendents to thrive.
However, the true gods of the world government had forcibly moved nine massive continents here, each capable of housing tens of trillions of people, shaping the Lost Mist Sea into the most densely populated region under their rule. This also turned it into a place where extraordinary sequences were almost completely absent.
The nation formed by these nine continents and their hundreds of trillions of inhabitants was none other than the Lost Nation, humanity's largest empire.
Even its emperor was chosen on a rotating basis from among the human true gods.
Lost Nation's Eastern Isle—one of the nine continents, positioned at the far east.
Rosen had completely disguised himself as an ordinary person and infiltrated Eastern Isle undetected via data transmission.
The mysterious empire, which had only been briefly mentioned in historical secret realms, was about to unveil its secrets before him.
In truth, historians were not ignorant of the Lost Nation's secrets. However, those secrets themselves were taboo. All research results from historians investigating in secret had been recorded in the Hidden Brass Book, leaving only the most surface-level basic information in historical archives.
Eastern Isle's Hundred Flowers City was renowned for its perfume production and all flower-related goods.
As Rosen walked through the city, his first impression was that something was off.
Everyone in Hundred Flowers City was polite. Everyone was kind and loving. Everyone was hardworking and healthy. Everyone was positive and full of hope. The humans living here had none of the inevitable negative aspects of human nature—this place was filled only with pure goodness, truth, and beauty.
However, true human nature was always a mix of good and evil, complex and ever-changing.
Absolute truth, goodness, and beauty—unless one had been brainwashed—simply did not exist.
This was a favorite practice of certain alien races. For example, the Abyss Lords, who raised humans in the Abyss Plane, loved to strip them of all goodness and leave only their evil and negative traits. Meanwhile, the Angelic Race preferred the opposite—they preserved only human goodness while completely erasing all traces of wickedness.
Coming to Hundred Flowers City this time, Rosen felt as if he had stepped into the paradise of the Angelic Race.
All things in existence followed a natural balance. The equilibrium between good and evil—that was morality.
Absolute goodness and absolute evil both defied the instincts inherent to human life.
Imagine this: right in front of a man, you kill his child, sleep with his wife, and yet, because of his extreme adherence to truth, goodness, and beauty, he abandons hatred and wholeheartedly tries to persuade you to be kind. The sheer terror of such absolute goodness was self-evident.
So, while everyone in Hundred Flowers City appeared normal, in reality, they were all under mind control. This kind of control was something explicitly forbidden by the world government. Brainwashed humans were not recognized as true inheritors of human civilization's legacy—worse, they weakened it, turning into a cancerous blight.
Even human demigods, when absorbing faith, were prohibited from distorting the free will of their believers.
Previously, when Rosen had used the Old Gods' True Realm to implant demonic seeds and alter the morality of his followers, he had only dared to make subtle adjustments—targeting troublemakers rather than completely rewriting their self-awareness. Yet, in Lost Nation, such restrictions did not exist. Under the rule of true gods, the minds of hundreds of trillions of ordinary humans had been forcibly brainwashed and controlled without hesitation.
After carefully observing for several days, Rosen confirmed that the hidden truth of Hundred Flowers City was exactly as recorded in the Hidden Brass Book.
If an ordinary person retained only their goodness, truth, and beauty, then where did the darkness buried within human nature go?
The answer was that it was sealed deep within their spirituality, forming a second personality of absolute evil.
When a person reached the end of their life, this second personality would be extracted at the moment of death by a massive magic array covering the entire city. These extracted personalities were then systematically sent into the Spirit Realm.
Thus, the hundreds of trillions of people in Lost Nation were, in reality, nothing more than tools—endlessly producing concentrated manifestations of human malice.
When Rosen had read about this in the Hidden Brass Book, he had found it hard to believe.
But now, seeing it with his own eyes, he felt a deep sense of dread. His instincts urged him to turn and leave Lost Nation immediately.
Because such an enormous volume of human malice being injected into the Spirit Realm without causing any disruption was far beyond the control of ordinary true gods. It made him suspect that behind Lost Nation lurked a far greater power—the Great True God that stood behind the world government itself.
Only an entity of such magnitude could compel the world government to go so far as to sacrifice the legacy of human civilization.
Rosen's true body retreated into the Divine Archive, deciding that from this point on, only his Bronze Dragon clone would roam outside.
Meanwhile, his Yinglong clone would return to the Brilliant Kingdom. If anything happened to the Bronze Dragon clone, the Yinglong clone would immediately open the doors of the Divine Archive from within the Brilliant Kingdom's palace, shifting its spatial anchor away from Lost Nation. That way, even if a Great True God attempted to trap him, it wouldn't be so easy.
After making all the necessary preparations, Rosen controlled his Bronze Dragon clone and set off on his journey.
Historians loved nothing more than unearthing secrets from the past, and they certainly wouldn't turn a blind eye to Lost Nation.
As a result, the number of demigod historians who had died in Lost Nation was too high to count.
The world government had long suppressed high-sequence historians while promoting archaeologists instead—and Lost Nation was one of the key reasons for this.
Among all the historians who had perished in Lost Nation, the most brilliant was undoubtedly the Sequence 3 historian, Austin Richard. While still at Sequence 3, he had created three unique skills, all of which, without exception, had ascended into miracle skills.
Had Austin not fallen in Lost Nation, Wendy would never have had the opportunity to become a deity.
Austin's first stop upon arriving in Lost Nation had been Hundred Flowers City. He must have known the extreme danger he faced here, so it was highly likely that he had intentionally left behind clues. But after so many years, whether those clues had survived the passage of time was anyone's guess.
Rosen spent an entire month searching, yet he found no traces whatsoever.
Either Austin had never left behind any clues, or time had already erased them completely.
After all, Hundred Flowers City had been renovated countless times—practically every few centuries, it underwent a complete reconstruction.
Although Rosen wielded the Authority of Time, at most, he could only peer into events from a few hundred years ago.
Unless someone with the Authority of Ancient Scholars excavated historical imprints from the past, allowing them to see across longer spans of time, or unless he ventured into the Spirit Realm—where the Hundred Flowers City of Austin's era was undoubtedly preserved—there was no way to uncover what had truly happened.
However, for now, Rosen had no intention of taking the risk of entering Lost Nation's Spirit Realm.
Any clues left behind would inevitably be erased by time.
Austin must have understood this as well, so when he left clues, he would have taken such factors into account.
What, then, was capable of enduring across the ages?
Rosen continued his search throughout Hundred Flowers City, examining every aspect, every minute detail.
At last, he found it.
The clue had been in plain sight all along.
People died, but their bloodlines were passed down to their descendants.
All it took was selecting a large and populous family, sealing the clues within their bloodline, and allowing the family to spread and intermarry throughout Hundred Flowers City. After tens of thousands of years of interbreeding, every resident of the city would inevitably inherit traces of that bloodline.
Deep into the night, Rosen infiltrated ordinary households one by one, effortlessly collecting blood samples from countless individuals.
Then, using the Laws of Flesh and Blood, he delved into their genetic heritage, searching for the hidden traces.
Sure enough, he had found the right path.
Austin had left behind two clues.
The first was a set of coordinates, pointing toward the next clue. It also included a warning—each clue would be hidden even more carefully than the last. Anyone lacking the capability to uncover them should flee from Lost Nation as soon as possible.
Only by following the trail step by step would one be qualified to retrace Austin's footsteps and uncover the secrets of Lost Nation.
As for the second clue, it pointed to a legacy that Austin had left behind in his homeland.
Austin was clearly a man of great pride. Even though he knew that coming to Lost Nation would almost certainly lead to his death, he had insisted on making the journey. His arrogance extended to the point that he had not even entrusted his legacy to his own family.
To him, ordinary people were unworthy of inheriting his knowledge.
Only a historian who, like him, had braved the dangers of Lost Nation would be qualified to claim his legacy.
Following the coordinates, Rosen departed from Hundred Flowers City and arrived at Monument City.
This city resembled an ancient historical capital, home to a vast number of ordinary scholars dedicated to the study of history. However, the history they studied was limited to the lives and deeds of the saints who had once graced Lost Nation's Eastern Isle.
After reading through the recorded achievements of these so-called saints, Rosen felt nothing but utter madness.
One such saint, for example, had lived in a time when famine ravaged his city. His family alone made up one-third of the city's population. Yet, instead of prioritizing their survival, this saint convinced tens of thousands of his kin to sacrifice themselves, choosing to starve to death so that their grain could be given to the rest of the city's hungry population.
This was the standard of sainthood in Lost Nation—to willingly make grand sacrifices for the survival of humanity.
When Austin had first arrived in Monument City, standing before these stone tablets that immortalized the saints' deeds, he must have found them utterly ridiculous.
Starving tens of thousands of one's own blood relatives to save strangers—could such a saint be anything but a lunatic?
And yet, the most absurd part came afterward. The remaining two-thirds of the city's population, despite being on the brink of death from starvation, refused to eat the grain left behind by the saint's family.
In the end, the entire city starved to death, with no survivors, truly showcasing the noble sentiment of sharing life and death through hardship.
However, as Rosen looked at these monuments to the sages, he noticed some hidden issues.
Starvation and death only occur in eras of backward productivity.
Transcendents might go hungry because cultivating spiritual ingredients is difficult.
But ordinary people shouldn't go hungry. Although transcendence was nearly extinct in the Lost Nation, its technology wasn't far behind the outside world. So how could a famine that starved an entire city have occurred?
Monument City had also been renovated many times, but the countless monuments in the monument forest outside the city remained intact.
Even if they were slightly damaged, they would be restored by the people of Monument City.
Rosen spent several days searching the monument forest and finally found the second clue Austin had hidden.
This clue was concealed within the deeds of a sage named Ryan Foster. Rosen had learned about Ryan Foster in the historical realm. Ryan Foster happened to be one of Austin's aliases, and this sage's deeds were also quite peculiar.
This sage named Ryan possessed transcendent abilities, allowing him to transfer the illnesses of others onto himself.
In the end, Ryan saved countless lives, but after his death, those he had saved, out of guilt, followed him in suicide.
Unlike other sages who came from other cities in East Island, Ryan was explicitly from Monument City. Therefore, Monument City even had a Sage Hall dedicated to preserving Ryan's relics. Every year, the people of Monument City would visit the Sage Hall to pay their respects.
After sneaking into the Sage Hall, Rosen finally found a fragment of the Eternal History Book.
Activating this fragment, Austin's testament appeared on the page.
Rosen was slightly stunned. He had thought it would take many clues to finally uncover Austin's whereabouts.
He hadn't expected that by the second city, Austin had already left behind a testament.
Moreover, the testament began by stating that only those who possessed the Arcane Brass Book could read the remaining content and survive.
Rosen immediately summoned the Arcane Brass Book and began reading Austin's testament.
It turned out that when Austin first arrived at East Island of the Lost Nation, he was confident that his abilities would allow him to delve deep into the Lost Nation and uncover the secrets the World Government was desperately hiding. However, upon reaching Monument City, Austin accidentally discovered a fragment of the truth.
The Spirit Realm was formed from the souls of the Ancient Gods, and humans originated from primitive humans, who in turn originated from the World Tree.
However, the World Tree created primitive humans using the Ancient Gods themselves as the initial template.
Therefore, in essence, humans and the Ancient Gods shared the same origin.
In the Lost Nation, the evil thoughts of humans were transformed into a second personality, which was then trapped within the body for a lifetime. Finally, this second personality was sent to the Spirit Realm, likely to pollute the souls of the Ancient Gods, causing the dormant Ancient Gods to develop a second personality composed of evil thoughts.
Reading this, Rosen could easily deduce the World Government's goal.
Since the Ancient Gods were invincible, the plan was to separate their thoughts of good and evil, splitting the Ancient Gods into one of absolute good and one of absolute evil. These two Ancient Gods would naturally be incompatible and opposed to each other.
This was the World Government's absolute secret, even involving the hidden Great True Gods.
Simply knowing this secret meant one could not escape the pursuit of the Great True Gods.
Therefore, when Austin realized he had learned something he shouldn't have, unsure whether he would live or die if he continued, he left behind his testament. This didn't mean Austin died shortly after leaving the testament, but rather that every step he took afterward was a life-and-death gamble.
(End of Chapter)