Imprint and Influence

Forest City outskirts.

Underground palace ruins.

Not long after the villagers reported it to the public security bureau, a group of archaeologists arrived to conduct a rescue excavation.

Professor Zhou Dunlin of Forest City University's archaeology department looked to be in his fifties. His hair was half black and half white, and his features were honest and kindly, yet he possessed a pair of remarkably striking eyes.

Together with his heavy amber tortoiseshell glasses, they gave him the air of an old-school man of letters.

At that moment, he stood at the entrance to the underground palace, magnifying glass and brush in hand, carefully brushing away the dust from the wall's surface.

Layer upon layer of white bones, as though they had grown from the sand and stone to begin with, were "carved" out by him.

"No wonder the villagers all said this was a burial site... Look at all these skeletons piled here. Anyone would think they were human sacrifices buried with the dead."

Another member of the archaeological team walked in. Looking at the heaps of corpses, he could not help sighing. "Old Zhou... what do you make of it?"

Zhou Dunlin adjusted his glasses. "According to carbon-14 testing, the artifacts here should date back five thousand years... to the era of Great Liang. That period... produced divine artifacts!"

"Here we go again."

Old Xie, another member of the archaeological team, pressed a hand to his forehead. Before Great Xin came the Great Ancient Dynasty, and before the Great Ancient Dynasty came Great Passage...

These were all dynasties explicitly recorded in historical texts.

Yet history had suffered several breaks in continuity, making them impossible for later generations of archaeologists to trace...

For instance, the controversy over whether Great Liang had ever existed!

Many archaeologists believed that no such