Artisan Ghost, Diary, and Truth

Ronan stood at a distance that was neither too close nor too far, carefully observing the ghost in the distance.

He appeared to be a middle-aged man with a thick beard, wearing an old-fashioned short coat, and carrying a hammer and nail in each hand, like a craftsman from the ancient Keldim Empire who specialized in repairing waterways.

Ronan listened to the Artisan Ghost muttering something for a while, but couldn't decipher its meaning.

Ronan's gaze passed over the Artisan Ghost, and a low, dilapidated hut behind him caught his attention.

The area where the Artisan Ghost repeatedly lingers seems to be centered around the hut, perhaps the place where he worked in his lifetime. Some obsession sustains him, preventing him from leaving the world.

Ronan narrowed his eyes, casually extinguished the flame in his palm, and took out a simple-looking black Square-Horned Cowbell.

He approached the hut, his footsteps rustling on the ground.

As they approached the hut, the Artisan Ghost, who seemed to be wandering along a path as if following some kind of procedure, suddenly raised his head, his empty, lifeless eyes staring straight at Ronan.

The next second, his originally somewhat sinister, honest face quickly became ghostly and distorted, his mouth opened into a black hole that kept expanding until it pulled his entire face into it.

"Howl--"

The Artisan Ghost transformed into a ghostly green wind and rushed straight towards Ronan.

The energy fluctuations are not particularly strong, only around level two.

Ronan kept walking and gently shook the cowbell in his hand. The cowbell did not make any sound, but instead, thick black smoke came out of the bell.

A pale-faced boy with bloodshot eyes and complex patterns on his forehead quickly pushed through the black smoke and stepped out. Without saying a word, he rushed straight towards the eerie green wind.

Black smoke enveloped the green wind, and a beast-like roar could be heard, but soon only the sound of large mouthfuls of chewing remained.

Ronan never glanced at the battle formation; his eyes were fixed only on the dilapidated stone hut.

As a level four vengeful Aihaxia, Ashiya's strength increased dramatically after being tempered several times by Ronan as Ghost Arrow embryo. He could even fight against a normal Level Four Wizard, let alone a mere second-tier Ghost Body.

To Aihaxia, this Artisan Ghost was at best a rather chewy piece of old bone.

Ronan let Aihaxia eat and walked to the stone house. The original door of the stone house had long since disappeared, leaving only a large hole formed by something hitting it.

He flicked a flame with his finger, sweeping away the years of accumulated spider webs. In the fleeting flash of firelight, some unknown little creatures that depended on the darkness rustled and scattered at his feet.

Ronan pulled a corner of his robe over his mouth and nose, then slowly stepped into the stone house.

The room was extremely small and filled with rubble. It was clear that many tools had once been placed there, as well as a narrow single bed, but it was all rotten.

Ronan used his mental power to brush away the layers of grime and dust, looked around the hut, and found nothing of value. However, on one of the inner walls, he found many chisel marks, which, upon closer inspection, resembled ancient writing.

"The Spirit Lake Book".

Ronan took out the Spirit Lake Book from his Space Ring and tried to search for information by comparing it with the writing on the wall. He actually found some textual information about the Keldim Wizard Empire.

The information was scarce, but it was enough for Ronan to roughly translate the text on the wall.

Ronan sometimes wondered why such a powerful empire as the Keldim had once ruled an entire Upper Ring Continent had so few remaining documents.

He didn't even know whether the empire existed in the near-ancient, medieval, ancient, or prehistoric period, as if it had been deliberately erased from history.

[Trade officials discovered the Quivada Oasis and ordered the construction of a waterway.]

It's an immense honor. No one is better suited for this job than you.

The inscription on the wall mentions both "Quivada Oasis" and "Ancient Waterway," and reading it through, it seems to be the diary written by the Artisan Ghost outside before his death.

Ronan looked down the "Diary Wall" and saw that a section of the wall seemed to have been attacked by magic or physical means. A layer of stone had been peeled away, and little of the text remained.

He could only skip over it and look down.

[Within the city, luxurious public fountains were also built to provide safe drinking water.]

As Ronan translated and read, his understanding of more than five thousand Primordial Spirit Writing greatly improved his thinking and comprehension. Even when he was just starting out with a new language, he learned it incredibly smoothly and quickly.

The diary entries on the wall were mostly praising the greatness of the waterway construction project, using a limited vocabulary and repeating the same few sentences over and over again.

But Ronan didn't find it boring. It was as if he had traveled back to ancient times and was experiencing the novelty and fun of peeking into a corner of the prosperous and powerful Keldim Wizard Empire from the perspective of a small craftsman.

After finishing his meal outside, Aihaxia licked his lips and drifted in ominously.

Ronan ignored him and continued looking at the diary on the wall. After a few lines, the style of the diary took a sharp turn for the worse!

[The intestines... the heart was just an empty shell...]

His chest cavity had been hollowed out.

Another person has become a dried corpse! I told you they'd dug up the entrance to hell.

Even after countless years, the messy handwriting still conveys a sense of panic and fear.

Ronan could almost picture it—at night, in a small hut lit by a dim kerosene lamp, how a terrified stonemason, with trembling hands, chiseled these incoherent words into the wall, stroke by stroke.

"It looks like the craftsmen of Keldim unearthed something extraordinary while building the waterways. Perhaps this is the truth behind the decline of the once mighty Keldim Empire, its eventual complete fall, and its annihilation in war and dust."

Ronan's eyes flickered slightly, as if he were deep in thought.

Further down the page, there's not much valuable content left; it's all just disjointed, short sentences that don't make sense, and the content is constantly filled with words like "monster" and "horror."

Some of them did match the characteristics of the Lizard Monster he had encountered before.

I... I can no longer see the sunlight.

Sharon was not the greatest engineering feat of all time... it was the most foolish decision ever made.

Noble, powerful, and proud as they were, they themselves unleashed the devil...

My dear little Sharon.

Ronan slowly withdrew his gaze from the handwriting, a complex feeling rising in his heart.

He seems to have discovered the truth behind the downfall of the Keldim Wizard Empire, the root cause of how the vast Ancient Waterway ultimately became a battlefield of flesh and blood.

But none of that matters anymore.

The nameless craftsman's lingering attachment as Nether Ghost was to his daughter Sharon, who remained on earth. Did he still dream of seeing his daughter again as a spirit? For the incredibly powerful empire of that time, this was certainly not an impossible dream.

Perhaps in the last second before the craftsman died, he stubbornly believed that one day the wizards of the empire would completely wipe out the demons that had come out of the ground, and that this was just an accident that no one had expected.

Little did he know that his proud empire would ultimately perish in this disaster.

"Call--"

Ronan let out a soft breath, calming the ripples that had spread across his heart.

Every time I read through the pages of history, I am inevitably stained with the dust of time, which makes my heart feel inexplicably heavy.

He led Aihaxia out of the hut and searched the area around the dilapidated stone house. Finally, under a slab of rubble, they found the second spell node slot.

The mental energy was injected and activated. Fortunately, the node was not damaged, so I casually tossed in a high-level magic stone.

Near the cabin, a lighting system covering an area of nearly one kilometer was activated, its soft light dispelling large swathes of darkness, drawing out the monsters lurking within.

With a single glance from Ronan, Aihaxia, his face grim, transformed into a cloud of black smoke and charged out. In the distance came the agonizing screams of a monster on its deathbed and the buzzing of Ghost Arrow.

"We should have let this guy out to run wild a long time ago... This is the perfect place for it to shine."

Ronan shook his head and used the Crown of Deep Knowledge to sense the situation at the Elemental Pool.

Before he left, he used the Crown of Deep Knowledge to create thirty-five Elemental Lifeform forms, each of which had a subtle connection with the Crown of Deep Knowledge, and Ronan could even remotely control them.

Currently, two of the thirty-five level-three Elemental Lifeform forms have been lost, which is within expectations and considered normal attrition. There shouldn't be any major problems.

Ronan thought for a moment, then decided to explore further along the waterway leading to the dilapidated stone house.