Chen Chuan nodded slightly. "Mr. Lan, you mean the unexplored area at the other end of the Hidden Treasure?"
Lan Shengu replied, "That's the place."
His expression was grim. He took a deep breath and said:
"The Hidden Treasure should have contained supplies, metal currency, books and records, or simply cultivation medicine for Fighters. But I just went through it, and most of what I found was used for sacrificial offerings. Some items were even issued by the imperial household, with reign dates and Imperial Treasury serial numbers on them. I also found this."
He took a sheet of something like leather parchment from his pocket. It looked soft and rather heavy. When he spread it out in his hands, it revealed a drawing of a monstrous creature. Strange, bright red writing marked various parts of its body, while annotations in other places detailed its internal structure, making it resemble an anatomical diagram.
He pointed to the writing. "This is 'invocation text,' the script our ancient ancestors used to communicate with spirits and gods.
"This script could not only communicate with spirits and gods, but also respond to people's thoughts and feelings, bringing such beings into existence through offerings. According to historical records, particularly those from antiquity during the period of change, they seemed to be everywhere—in remote mountains, lakes and marshes, and human settlements alike. Everyone burned offerings and worshipped them, and every household prayed to them, causing their numbers to grow.
"A high-ranking priest of the Xuan Sect in a later age made a rough survey of the records and found that Fengyuan County, somewhere in what is now Shannan Province, had over ten thousand named and recorded spirits and gods. At first, they lived alongside humans in relative harmony, but later they began enslaving and imprisoning people,