The Legacy of the Stone Kings

Xiao Chen stood silently in the great hall, his thoughts heavy with emotion. The severed limbs and shattered stone skulls that drifted slowly within the colossal chamber twisted his heart with bitter sorrow. It was a feeling difficult to bear.

The stone kings of a bygone era had used their own bodies to complete the divine diagram—preferring destruction to surrender, they had found eternal silence. Blood had stained the skies, and they had fallen on the battlefield. That was the final fate of those peerless kings. Their blood had been completely spent, their forms shattered beyond recognition. Never again would they manifest their earth-shaking heroic bearing, overlooking the world with disdain.

Xiao Chen let out a long sigh. This world held too many regrets. Powerful as the stone kings had been, they had passed with unwillingness and unyielding pride. After endless ages, all things had returned to dust.

"Who… brought the bodies of the mighty back to this place?" Xiao Chen's voice was low. It had been a long time since he had felt such emotions. He had grown accustomed to life and death, to joys and separations. His heart had long since hardened to iron, even numbed. But today, something weighed heavily upon him.

He did not know when the great hall had fallen silent. There was no trace of divine energy, and the floating, shattered stone bodies had come to a halt, suspended motionlessly in the chamber.

Xiao Chen separated from the divine diagram, revealing his form as he stood in the hall. No power of destruction appeared to annihilate him. Clearly, he had been accepted.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Xiao Chen walked forward. His clear footsteps echoed through the empty hall, making the place feel even more desolate.

He walked straight to the high platform at the front and stopped. Gazing up at this ancient dais built entirely from massive stone blocks, he rose into the air and landed upon it. This was the platform that had once held the nine ancient lamps. On its surface, nine blurry impressions were still clearly visible—the wear marks left by the bases of the nine lamps.

Xiao Chen reached out and gently touched them, feeling a peculiar coolness.

Suddenly, the nine blurry impressions erupted into nine pillars of flame. It was very abrupt. There was no scorching heat—only the same faint coolness he had felt when touching the platform.

The divine diagram, which had been slowly rotating beside Xiao Chen, descended as if summoned, floating above the nine soft but cool flames, as if drawing upon some mysterious power.

Xiao Chen was amazed. He had already seen images of the past: the flames of the nine lamps had once refined the bone diagram, nurturing the birth of the divine diagram. Now, though the lamps were gone, their seat-marks still retained a portion of divine power for the diagram to absorb.

At that moment, the divine diagram trembled continuously, revealing mysterious patterns and indecipherable characters. Xiao Chen stared intently, trying his best to discern them, but could not grasp their meaning.

Vaguely, some indeterminate time passed. The divine diagram quivered, merging with the nine flames to recreate a vivid scene, unveiling another fragment of buried history.

Under a blood-red setting sun, the divine diagram shattered, hurtling in all directions. The largest piece bore the broken bodies of the stone kings down to the shattered earth. At the same time, the nine lamps descended, burying themselves deep within the nine regions. The ninety-nine stone steps in the sky carried everything away, including the Land of Chaos itself, surging toward the heavens. Only a small patch of ruined land remained, held firm by the great hall's suppression.

The ensuing images flashed by quickly. Xiao Chen could only grasp the general situation.

Though the Otherworld had won, it had been a bitter victory. Nearly all their stone men had fallen. After that battle, no stone man had ever been seen again in the world. Moreover, the Otherworld's own realm had been shattered. Though its race had not been exterminated, its vitality was severely damaged. In the end, they took most of the seized Land of Chaos and reforged it, merging it into their own world, causing it to brim with boundless vitality once more. From then on, they dwelled in this stolen, broken world.

Years later, supreme ancestral gods began searching for the nine lamps buried beneath the earth, seeking to claim them. But that triggered the convergence of the essence of heaven and earth, creating a hazy new world of supreme power. The nine lamps illuminated everything within, shaking themselves free from the Otherworld and fixing themselves in that new world. "Though the body dies and the form vanishes, the flower of the heart does not wither; the undying wish blooms anew, covering the Nine Provinces once more…" At the moment that new world formed, the final heroic voices of the several peerless kings shook the cosmos. A fragment of the divine diagram emerged, bearing their remains as it shot into the sky. Yet their shattered souls remained forever on the soil of the Nine Provinces, transforming into flames that surged toward the nine ancient lamps. At that moment, they perished utterly, but their sacrifice made the flames of the nine lamps shine all the more brilliantly. The nine lamps fixed the Nine Provinces, and a spark of life caused this world to reawaken with vitality. Finally, the nine lamps sank beneath the earth.

As for the Otherworld's original homeland, it was thoroughly ruined. The Otherworld gods took refuge in the Nine Provinces but dared not stay long, fearing a repetition of disaster. They began to seek a new world.

That fragment of the divine diagram carried the broken bodies of several stone kings back to their homeland. Though it was only a small parcel of ruined land, the diagram brought their shattered stone forms into this great hall. Then the divine diagram tore through the world barrier and departed.

Those stone kings had fallen on the battlefield and been buried in foreign lands; though they had the fortune to return home, they would slumber here forever. Though dead, their bodies were not ordinary flesh. Nourished by the great hall, they did not turn to dust. Instead, they gathered the soul-blood of all the living beings of this land over the ages, forming a curtain of blood outside the hall to protect this last patch of ruined earth. And so the great hall was further strengthened, becoming a forbidden ground where even a supreme ancestral god could not set foot. As for the surging black wind and the black giant within it, they were the embodiment of the resentment and hatred of all the living beings who had fallen in the Land of Chaos throughout the ages—not only the hatred of kings, but also the boundless ancient grievances of ancestral gods. Until that hatred was dispelled, the black wind would never be extinguished and would persist forever.

The divine diagram flashed once, and the scenes within vanished.

At this, the nine flames on the stone platform also went out, and the impressions left by the nine lamps disappeared completely.

When he understood all this, Xiao Chen was deeply silent. He stepped down from the stone platform and looked at the broken stone bodies floating silently in the hall. He felt boundless reverence and sorrow.

Those peerless kings of old—their soul-fire had eternally protected the Nine Provinces. Their shattered forms had turned into cold, hard stone fragments, buried in this forgotten wasteland. The kings who had once looked down upon the world would never reappear; their heroic postures of yore could never stand again in this world.

In their day, how grand and majestic they had been, laughing in defiance of heaven and earth. But now, such a desolate scene was all that remained.

Xiao Chen felt an urge to weep. These were true kings, true men of valor—they were genuine men.

For so many years, his heart had been as cold and hard as iron. But at this moment, it pounded violently. Xiao Chen felt hot blood surge through his veins. He felt as though he, a withered tree, had suddenly been brought back to life.

He stood silently in the great hall for a long time before preparing to depart.

Just as he was about to step out of the hall, several of the broken stone skulls behind him trembled lightly, and the divine diagram rotating beside him shook violently.

Crack… crack…

A shattering sound came from behind. The stone platform was cracking, shedding pieces of stone debris, revealing several stone relief portraits.

The stone reliefs contained no other scenery—only a few men.

Xiao Chen was astonished. He looked at the reliefs, then back at the broken stone skulls in the hall. It was they!

There were no great Dao essences, no supreme combat techniques—only their portraits.

Xiao Chen hurriedly approached, staring intently at the reliefs. Here he felt an overwhelming pressure, a desire to kneel in reverence.

The men had different demeanors—some were as calm as a deep abyss, others were supreme and dominant through the ages. Their varied postures were lifelike, as if they had returned to the world. But Xiao Chen knew that these true, peerless men had vanished forever and could never reappear.

They had left these portraits for a reason. Xiao Chen gathered his divine consciousness to observe them.

Could it be a legacy? A heritage of the stone men passed down across the ages?

Xiao Chen could not grasp their meaning. Was this a transmission across the span of eternity? Had the mysterious power within the great hall acknowledged him? Were the stone-man methods of those peerless kings to be passed down to him?

He sat before the first relief, concentrating his divine consciousness to study it carefully.

That man was as calm as a deep abyss, his eyes deep and wise, giving a sense of unfathomability.

Xiao Chen sat there for a full three years, yet he still could not discern any profound technique or transmission hidden within. Finally, he decided to imprint the image completely into his mind.

But the relief seemed to possess an inexhaustible magic. When he stopped looking at it, its spirit and form would immediately vanish from his mind. He could not fix it in his heart.

Xiao Chen became even more convinced that the portraits of those peerless kings were truly sacred articles, possessing extraordinary significance. He had to engrave them in his mind. Even if he could not fathom their meaning now, he would comprehend them later.

Thus, he sat before the first relief for five entire years before the image of that calm, abyss-like man finally manifested a hazy outline in his heart. Meanwhile, the stone relief itself had become considerably blurrier.

He sat there for a full decade. The first relief was finally completely branded into his heart. And on the stone platform before him, that area was now empty—the original image had vanished entirely.

Thoughtfully, Xiao Chen sat down before the second relief. This man's spirit was vastly different from the first's. This one could be described as supreme and dominant through the ages. The overbearing, world-exclusive demeanor seemed to burst forth from the stone, pressing down on all. "Looking down upon the world, I alone am supreme" was the powerful impact this relief gave.

Xiao Chen sat in absolute silence for another decade before imprinting this image into his mind. When the decade was up, the original image on the stone wall had disappeared.

Thus, Xiao Chen spent a full fifty years imprinting the five reliefs into his heart.

For an expert of his level, this was an almost inconceivable matter. To merely leave the imprints of a few portraits had cost a being of the ancestral god class so much time!

Finally, Xiao Chen strode out of the great hall. The curtain of blood outside seemed to have fully acknowledged him and no longer attempted to erase him.

Boom!

Just then, in this dead-silent place of the great hall, such an abrupt sound rang out.

In the distance, the foundation beneath the great hall shook violently. A broken, ruined stone hand—seemingly on the verge of crumbling into pieces, shattered nearly beyond recognition—struggled to shatter the hard ground and extended itself with difficulty, filled with an endless atmosphere of age.

There… a living stone man was buried there.