Ji Chen's gaze froze.
The old man pointed his bone staff at the very center of the mural. Carved there was a strangely shaped, incomplete weapon, bound by countless chains at the bottom of the Abyss.
"In the last epoch, the Supreme One Divine Court collapsed. The Divine Lord suppressed everything Supreme One had amassed. This thing alone, he could neither take away nor destroy."
"The core of Supreme One's war reserves-the Epoch Artifact."
The old man coughed twice and spat out a mouthful of black blood. Between the suppression of the Nothingness mark and the backlash from the broken curse, this body had reached its limit.
"Back then, the Divine Lord marshaled the full might of the Divine Court to seal this weapon in the deepest reaches of the Wilds' earth veins. Our ancestors..."
The old man's lips twitched. His smile looked worse than tears.
"Our ancestors were the Supreme One Remnants assigned to guard this weapon."
Ji Chen said nothing. He tightened his grip on the shattered Compass. The Supreme One Remnants? He headed the Heavenly Strategy Pavilion and knew many secrets Supreme One had left behind, yet he had never seen this force mentioned in any records.
Zhou Xuan's expression did not change. Everything he had deduced earlier fell into place here. The gray sand where time stood still. The natives who had survived ten thousand years without dying.
"To prevent the weapon from awakening, the Divine Lord laid down a blood-oath curse. Using a law that halted time, he locked our entire tribe here." By this point, the old man could barely force a sound from his throat. "Longevity? Immortality? This is a punishment that tears out our sinews and strips our bones, generation after generation. Our divine souls rot day by day through the years,