The long shelves held piece after piece of bone, creating a scene both eerie and sacred.
Lu PingAn strolled among them, yet could not sense a single soul. Time had long washed away everything that was not Sedimentation besides knowledge.
What record was harder to detect than human memory?
What collection was more hidden than the bones of the dead?
What secret was worth burying with countless lives?
"After we bore the poison of knowledge, we were destined to be unable to enter reincarnation. Our souls should shatter into fragments and return to the earth, but some things are destined never to dissolve."
These Gravekeepers were destined never to receive the treatment of ordinary dead people from the Surface World. After their souls suffered such devastating damage, even without the world's rejection, they could not possibly reincarnate intact in the Underground World and begin another cycle.
And even if they could enter the cycle... considering that the Underground World possessed an even more primitive social structure than the world above, it was obvious they had not brought knowledge down with them.
"These bones are the grave we must guard."
The nameless old Gravekeeper calmly spoke of his duty.
There were not many Gravekeepers, and they often died young, so they needed to be replenished regularly. In a sense, this was also murder.
Yet some things had been passed down just like that.
Beneath the Great Cemeteries spread throughout the world lay bones that even the earth could not digest. They were this world's true inheritance.
"The cemeteries are our true libraries. I don't know how many Great Cemeteries there are in this region. Much of what they store overlaps, and none of it forms a complete system, but that does not prevent us from passing it on."
Every "book collection"