Sect Masks, the Upper Three Sects' Eternal Original Sin

The Blood-Red Sky Screen hung high in the heavens, its dark crimson light coldly sweeping across the shattered land.

The beautifying filter over human nature had completely shattered, exposing the most fundamental deception within the human heart.

Whether commoners or the powerful, once they tore away the false, gentle skin bestowed by the gods, all that remained was greed, selfishness, callousness, and cruelty.

Every touching bond and pure friendship from the original story had turned into an absurd illusion.

Countless living beings were still immersed in the despair of their collapsed values when the Sky Screen's cold subtitles rearranged themselves once more.

Huge, glaring blood-red words crashed brutally into the hearts of every veteran powerhouse from the original story, mercilessly tearing apart the continent's last shred of dignity.

[The continuation of the ninth deception: Sect disguises.]

[The Upper Three Sects were not righteous, prestigious sects. They were ruling lackeys personally cultivated by the gods.]

[The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, and the Clear Sky Sect bore eternal, blood-soaked original sins.]

[Their glorious facades, morality and righteousness, and sect pride were all hypocritical masks used to deceive the world.]

The barrage fell completely silent, then exploded several seconds later, filled with biting mockery.

[I knew the Upper Three Sects weren't clean!]

[They were packaged as top-tier prestigious sects in the original story, but they were just dogs raised by the gods!]

[They looked glorious and righteous on the surface, but their hands were covered in blood behind the scenes?]

[There isn't a single clean faction in the Douluo World. They're all hiding filthy dealings!]

[The gods packaged bad people as righteous figures and smeared good people as Evil. They turned black and white upside down from beginning to end!]

The Sky Screen's image abruptly shifted, exposing sect secrets buried for eternity without the slightest concealment.

The first scene focused on the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect.

It was a luxurious city of golden halls and jade towers. The sect's disciples had always been renowned across the continent for their elegance, benevolence, and wisdom.

The world recognized the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect as the most open-minded sect. They never thirsted for slaughter, remained neutral and amiable, and treated others generously.

But the Sky Screen tore open its splendid exterior, revealing a blood-red purgatory buried deep underground.

Beneath the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect lay more than ten thousand Soul Beast skeletons and the remains of thousands of foreign Soul Masters.

Within the scene, the ancient Glazed Crystal Secret Art was cruel and savage, using the blood of living people and the origins of Soul Beasts to temper auxiliary martial souls.

For hundreds of millions of years, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect had continually captured foreign commoners and wild Soul Beasts, carrying out brutal sacrifices to preserve the purity of its bloodline and bolster its wealth and fortune.

The gods had deliberately embellished its image as neutral and gentle,

but in truth, it was the continent's largest living blood-refining facility.

Not only that, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect had controlled the continent's economy for generations, monopolizing heavenly treasures and rare resources.

They deliberately drove up the prices of cultivation resources, squeezing the common people at the bottom until the poor would never have a chance to rise.

On the surface, they aided poor families and performed charitable deeds, but in truth, they harvested the fortune of the lower class to nourish the sect's direct lineage.

Ning Fengzhi stood atop the broken sect walls, and his refined, gentle face instantly turned pale.

He had always taken pride in the sect's thousand years of benevolence and righteousness. He had faithfully upheld the path of neutrality and believed himself innocent before heaven and earth.

As he watched the mountain of skeletons piled underground and the cruel, bloody secret arts of his ancestors, his body trembled uncontrollably.

"So... our generations have all worn the skin of sin."

His gentle voice was hoarse and broken, and the faith in his eyes completely collapsed.

"So-called noble sect integrity was nothing more than a bloodstained disguise."

At his side, the gaunt Sword Douluo, Chen Xin, stood silently, his sharp eyes filled with coldness.

He had spent his life protecting the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, believing he was guarding a pure land in this world.

Only in the end did he learn that what he had guarded had never been a benevolent sect, but a prison of sin drenched in blood.

The Sky Screen continued shifting, focusing on the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.

Thunder roared as jagged mountains rose high.

The Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan had always been domineering and powerful, brave and skilled in battle. The world revered them as a top-tier assault sect.

People feared the Dragon Clan bloodline, convinced that they were valiant and loyal defenders of their territory.

But the truth was enough to make one's scalp prickle.

The Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan was a violent butcher's blade planted upon the continent by the gods.

In ancient times, whenever any faction questioned the gods or resisted their rules, the Blue Lightning Clan would slaughter them.

The surviving Prehistoric Ancestors, native powerhouses who resisted the gods, and unusual Soul Beast races had all perished beneath their thunder.

For hundreds of millions of years, they had cleansed the rebels under orders, staining their hands with the blood of native living beings.

To consolidate their bloodline's status, they forcibly seized the souls of weaker beasts and violently absorbed the bloodlines of other species.

The Dragon Clan's strength was not innate. It had been built from the flesh and blood of countless other races.

Yu Yuanzhen stood frozen atop Thunder Mountain, blue lightning flickering chaotically around him.

He had been proud all his life, proud of his pure Dragon Clan bloodline and of his sect's decisive slaughter.

Now, as the Sky Screen played scenes of his ancestors slaughtering civilians and massacring rebels, overwhelming shame and guilt crushed him until he could barely breathe.

"We... are the gods' executioners."

His low, self-mocking murmur vanished into the wind and thunder.

The final scene settled upon the Clear Sky Sect.

Mountain ranges stretched endlessly, with solitary peaks piercing the clouds.

The Clear Sky Sect had withdrawn from the world and avoided conflict. Everyone knew that the Clear Sky Clan valued loyalty and righteousness, possessed iron-blooded resolve, and endured in silence.

Tang Hao, Tang Xiao, and Tang Chen—every member of the Clear Sky Clan had been given the tragic aura of a hero in the original story.

The Sky Screen mercilessly tore away the final mask.

The Clear Sky Sect had been the first native force tamed by the gods.

The first sect master of the Clear Sky Sect had voluntarily defected to the gods, betraying the Prehistoric Ancestors and selling out information about his own people.

During the war that destroyed the Prehistoric Civilization, the Clear Sky Clan had personally slain native powerhouses and opened a breach for the gods' invasion.

They were the sect with the deepest original sin and the most thorough betrayal.

Their later retreat into seclusion was not born of guilt or repentance, nor was it because they despised conflict.

It was because the gods had deliberately ordered the Clear Sky Sect to pose as a tragic, reclusive sect and create the image of tough, heroic men.

That way, they could win the sympathy of the continent's living beings and conceal their eternal sins of betrayal.

Tang Chen gripped the Ancient Warhammer, his aged body trembling violently as the hammer's handle creaked in his grasp.

He had devoted his life to pursuing the martial path, worshipping the iron-blooded pride of his ancestors.

Now that he had witnessed his forebears betray their own people, submit to the gods, and slaughter the ancestors, his faith shattered completely.

"Traitors... our generations have all been traitors."

His hoarse, grief-stricken roar echoed through the mountains. For the first time, this old man who had been invincible his entire life felt powerless.

Tang Hao stood beside him, his dark face utterly bloodless.

When he had left the sect and exiled himself, he had believed himself to be a tragic, fallen hero.

Only now did he understand that the blood flowing through him had always been the tainted bloodline of traitors.

All three great sects had broken down. All of them had fallen into despair.

Not one of the glamorous Upper Three Sects from the original story was clean.

One refined living blood and oppressed the lower class; one slaughtered civilians under orders and served as a weapon of murder; one betrayed its own people and submitted to foreign enemies.

The gods had fabricated the illusion of righteous factions to conceal filthy sins.

They made the world revere evil and despise the innocent, overturning right and wrong across the entire continent.

Blood-red barrage comments flooded the sky with ceaseless mockery, and countless people were completely disheartened.

[So none of the Upper Three Sects had good people! They're all guilty!]

[The heroes we worshipped were all actors deceiving the world!]

[The gods packaged traitors as tough heroes and butchers as gentlemen!]

[From beginning to end, there was not a single pure land or innocent faction in the Douluo World!]

In a remote Barren Mountain, within a prison of restrictions.

Tang San numbly watched the Sky Screen reveal the sects' dark secrets, his eyes lifeless.

Shrek's false friendship, the gods' manufactured prodigies, the beautifying filter over human nature, and the sects' hypocritical masks.

Everything he had once looked up to, believed in, and pursued had completely collapsed and shattered.

He was in a continent of sin, living within lies and walking forward upon the corpses of his own people.

His entire life, from birth to imprisonment, had been nothing but a filthy and laughable deception.

Above the clouds, Li Xuan stood quietly in white.

His indifferent gaze swept over the three collapsed sects without pity or emotion.

The system panel froze coldly in place:

[The tenth deception: Sect masks.]

[The Upper Three Sects were all forces employed by the gods and bore eternal original sins.]

[Not a single top faction on the continent's surface was innocent.]

[The faith of all living beings had completely collapsed, and the continent's brainwashing system had utterly disintegrated.]

The Blood-Red Sky Screen slowly withdrew its images, crimson light reflecting across the shattered mountains and rivers.

A chilling preview was carved into the gloomy heavens:

[Next chapter: Divine Blood Contamination—the origin of the entire continent has rotted!]

[The toxins left behind by the gods have contaminated the bloodlines of every living being in the Douluo World!]

There was no redemption, no hope.

After layers upon layers of deception had been stripped away, all that remained was a rotten, filthy continent of despair, riddled with wounds.