It was impossible to know how much time had passed. Qingxuan stirred with a groan, and instantly sat up. How careless of him to fall unconscious in this god forsaken ruins. He could've been eaten by a demonic beast or something of that sort. He scratched his head in annoyance.
The moment he expanded his vision, his eyes widened in shock. This was a completely different environment from where he fought the desert python.
Tangled wires and metallic filaments hung like cobwebs, some still faintly glowing with residual power. The walls were lined with alcoves that had once held delicate machinery, now twisted into useless shapes.
The remnants of countless scrolls and tomes were scattered across the floors and ledges, their protective casings splintered, spilling parchment etched with formation diagrams, array patterns, and alchemical formulas. Some were charred black, others faded to near invisibility, yet the faint traces of arcane symbols still whispered their secrets to those capable of discerning them.
Here and there, pill cauldrons and alchemical furnaces had collapsed, their contents fused into strange crystalline masses, occasionally pulsing with a faint inner light as if holding fragments of knowledge in suspension. Shelves that once held rare and sacred ingredients now lay inverted, spilling powders that shimmered with colors unseen in the living world.
The air hummed faintly with the residual energy of experiments left unfinished: formation constructs that flickered between material and etheric forms, scrolls that whispered in half-forgotten languages, and shattered devices that would, if whole, have allowed one to glimpse distant realms or manipulate Yuan energy in impossible ways.
Every step Qingxuan took stirred motes of dust and sparks of dormant power. The entire pagoda was a tomb of knowledge and technology, a mausoleum of the destroyed Sect's genius.
'Is this the inside of the Pagoda? My God..' Qingxuan was dumbfounded and for good reason. He could live here forever. This was an ancient library of ancient scrolls and tomes, that alone was enough to get his attention. The destroyed technological equipments here were just the icing on the cake.
He needed information, and here it was.
Qingxuan picked out an ancient scroll from a cracked shelf. "Celestial Alignment and Divination Codex.." Qingxuan read through the opening of the scroll and felt his heart shaken. This was an ancient scroll that contained Diagrams to align formations with the positions of stars, enabling enhanced Yuan energy flow and precognition. It Included instructions for some "Heavenly Observatory Array" that revealed future events.
He smiled, and placed it into his interspatial ring. Celestial Labyrinth Formation. An ancient formation technique.
Ancestral Convergence Array: An ancient array that Combined mechanical and mystical conduits to amplify cultivation speed for multiple practitioners simultaneously. Often used to temper soul or refine pills.
Heaven-Severing Pill Method: Increases the user's Yuan endurance and body resilience, capable of sustaining extreme mental or elemental strain.
Qingxuan read through the openings of several scrolls and could not stay still. This was priceless knowledge from ancient eras.
Divination techniques. Formation techniques, Astronomy, Pill Refining Methods, Divine Maps, Array formations, even ancient languages and arcane systems, even knowledge of ancient races. He packed all he could.
After about an hour, he sat atop a heap of scrolls, with one in hand. In one hand, he ate from a bag of dried fruits and meat.
"Ancient Yuan Spirit Body.." Qingxuan bit into a fruit, as he read through one of the scrolls on ancient races. The Ancient Yuan Spirit Body was a bloodline that could grant extraordinary alignment and attunement to the Yuan Power of Heaven and Earth. Wielders of this bloodline were considered Heaven's Children and were naturally attuned to the Dao. To them cultivation was a second nature, and advancement in realms was as easy as breathing.
"Whew! So mysterious.." Qingxuan rubbed his blindfolded forehead. To be fair, he was kinda bummed out that most of these bloodlines just didnt exist anymore. It would've been fun to see what they were truly capable of.
Qingxuan slid down from the heap of books and scrolls and headed towards another collection of ancient tommes. As he walked past them, he paused when he came across a large scroll with a giant eyeball imprinted on the front.
"Interesting." He chewed on an apple, took out the scroll with one hand and sat on the ground.
He opened the first page. "The world's attempt to restore the sight of Heaven resulted in the birth of multiple anomalies across the world. Numerous eyes had been born, passed away and forgotten across eras." Qingxuan barely understood a thing. Maybe it was metaphors, or there was some actual secret in this text. But would they answer questions such as How did Heaven go blind? Wha constituted the Eyes of Heaven? When did they live? He asked inwardly and scoffed.
Still the scroll did provide a pretty good list of some rare eye bloodlines.
Ancient Devil Eye bloodline.. The Eye of Death.. Eye of Destiny.. Eye of Order, Eye of Chaos.. Spacetime Eye.. Qingxuan smirked at the thought of having an eye that could control space and time.
"That would've been cool.. but it looks like most of them have been lost in ancient eras.." He scratched his head. He didn't recall ever reading about an eye bloodline in the Martial Universe novel.
Unless… The realization hit him harder than he expected. 'Unless my birth has altered the timeline of this world..' He froze for a moment… and then shrugged. The Qingyan Town's Lin clan was clearly alive. Once there was a Lin Clan, there would be a Lin Dong, and once there was a Lin Dong, the world would be fine.
He hoped to not have to carry that burden on his shoulders. At least not for now anyways.
He quickly put the scroll away and was about to return to his heap of books when something else caught his eye.
It was a giant cracked golden key with inscriptions on it. Underneath the key, he saw a rather interesting text on a scroll.
"The Heaven's Legacy Race.." Surprisingly, the race in mention bore an insignia that was identical to the insignia on all the scrolls and items he had touched in this place. Could this ruins have once belonged to an ancient race known as the Heaven's Legacy Race? Qingxuan was about to find out.
He opened the text, and it exploded into colours and images around him.
'Long before the Ancient War scarred the heavens and split the world into light and shadow, there existed a race known as the Heaven's Legacy Race.
They were not the strongest in flesh, nor the most violent in battle.
Yet even the mightiest ancient sects treated them with reverence and fear.
They were the Race That Watched Heaven, a race that were born observers.
From birth, their souls were naturally aligned with the Heavenly Laws, granting them extraordinary talent in, Divination and fate reading, Causal prediction and probability foresight, Heavenly formations and artificial constructs, Soul-based technologies far beyond ordinary cultivation.
They did not merely cultivate Yuan or symbols, they studied Heaven itself.
It was said that when a Heaven's Legacy child opened their eyes for the first time, Heaven would hesitate.
Their greatest authority came from their connection to a divine entity known in fragmented ancient records..'
Qingxuan paused here. The information was beginning to connect. Since they were so aligned with Heaven, could it be that they were the so called Heaven's eyes? He continued looking through the text.
At the peak of their civilization, the Heaven's Legacy Race created, or discovered, a treasure known only by its true name: The Heaven-Illuminating Crystal the (Seed of Heaven's Sight)
This crystal was not a weapon. It was a Heavenly Medium. A crystallization of Heavenly Observation Laws. Legends claimed that if fully awakened, it could give clarity to the mythical Eyes of Heaven…
eyes that do not merely see the world, but judge it.
And Heaven noticed. So did Chaos. During the Ancient War, the ancient race of extra terrestrials learned of the crystal's existence.
To creatures born of corruption and chaos, Heavenly Observation was their absolute bane. Thus, the Heaven's Legacy Race became a prime target.
They descended not to conquer, but to annihilate. The war that followed shattered the skies above this region.
Knowing they could not win through force, the Heaven's Legacy elders made a final decision…'
Qingxuan paused and then laughed. "It's like reading fiction back in my old world." He had only one word to describe this narration. Peak. If Long Feng and Lan Xue had seen him be so silly, their jaws would've probably dropped.
'So basically, the Heaven's Legacy Race were not Heaven's Eyes, but sought to create Heaven's Eyes which led to their annihilation at the hands of the Yimo..' He corrected himself and continued the text.
'Beneath their sect, they activated a forbidden grand array.
Entire landmasses were folded and inverted. Space was severed from the outside world. The Devil vanguards were sealed beneath reality itself. The cost was extinction. Their cities collapsed. Their people perished.
Their bloodlines faded into myth.
They would rather destroy everything than have their greatest treasure fall in the hands of their enemies.
The Devil army was sealed. And the Heaven-Illuminating Crystal was hidden. Not sealed. Not destroyed. Simply Hidden, awaiting one whose eyes could endure Heaven's gaze.'
The text ended there and Qingxuan slipped out of the trance. He stared at the cracked golden key in his hand and a crazy idea surged into his mind, but he ultimately dismissed it. It couldn't be that easy.
He finished his meal, then took out the Heaven Splitting Bone Root. He needed to upgrade his cultivation with the little peace and comfort he had in this place..
Things would just get tougher from now on now that he was armed with this information..
A/N: Anyone?