Chapter 2
The guard lowered his head. "Your Majesty, I don't know."
King Ultra had not expected him to offer any answers. He merely closed his three eyes slowly and said calmly:
"The slate is only a medium. What matters is the writing on it, and the purpose of writing is to convey information!"
At this, his three eyes opened again, blazing with terrifying light. "Then what kind of information could make seven archaeological experts choose suicide, one after another, after translating it? What exactly is recorded on this slate?
"I always thought our lives mattered more than information passed down from ancient times, so I wanted to seal this slate away. But now, perhaps I was wrong.
"Issue the order immediately. Summon every archaeological expert and researcher of ancient scripts in the world to the capital!
"If one person cannot bear the weight of this information, I refuse to believe that so many people together cannot!"
Following King Ultra's order, archaeological experts from all over the world arrived in the capital and began studying this supposedly ominous slate.
Rubbings of the slate were made and delivered to every expert. Someone stayed beside each of them twenty-four hours a day to ensure their safety.
They also had to meet in the largest research room every day to share their research and discoveries.
With every archaeological expert in the country working together, the information on the slate was deciphered in just three days.
Yet when they looked at the information they had deciphered from the slate, they all fell silent.
[Year 730 of the Solar Calendar. We discovered a vast number of ruins in the ocean. Deeply aware of civilization's fragility, our king ordered the creation of a recording slate. Even if our civilization vanishes in the future, this slate will prove that we once existed.
Although the previous civilization has vanished, our merciful king still had the information we obtained about that civilization recorded.
The previous civilization has provisionally been named the Upper Cave People. It was ultimately destroyed by a meteor shower unseen in a thousand years... It existed for a thousand years in total. (Restored by the fifth civilization, restored by the sixth civilization, reproduced from rubbings and restored by the seventh civilization. The original records below concerned the second civilization's living habits, civilization, and culture.)]
[Year 670 of the Earth Calendar. Upon seeing this slate, our king left these words, mourning the civilization of the Solar Calendar, which met with a flood unseen in a thousand years... It existed for a thousand years in total. Our Earth Clan... (Restored by the fifth civilization, restored by the sixth civilization, reproduced from rubbings and restored by the seventh civilization. The original records below concerned the third civilization's living habits, civilization, and culture.)]
[Year 1002 of the Yama Calendar. Our Promi Clan obtained this Slate of Destiny in Year 103 of the Great Sun Calendar, but the king deemed it ominous and sealed it away. Nine hundred years have passed since then.
Today, a flood descended from the heavens, shattering all things. On the brink of life and death, we recalled the first three civilizations recorded on the slate. How similar they were.
In reality, the first civilization encountered a meteor shower unseen in a thousand years, the second encountered a flood unseen in a thousand years, and the third faced meteors again. Now our Yama civilization faces another flood. Those who come after us-(Restored by the fifth civilization, restored by the sixth civilization, reproduced from rubbings and restored by the seventh civilization. There were no further records below.)]
[Year 902 of the Fifth Civilization's New Solar Calendar. By the time we discovered this slate, it was already too late. Nine hundred years had already passed. After translating the information on it, we spent another sixty years verifying it and reached a conclusion: civilization cycles every thousand years!
Of course, if we still have records after a thousand years, then we were wrong.
If no further information follows, I hope this can serve as a warning to future generations. Civilization cycles every thousand years. Meteors, floods, meteors, floods, meteors!]
[Year 190 of the Sixth Civilization's Flint Calendar. The fifth civilization left behind a vast number of slates. Even after the devastating impact of the meteor shower, we still found many of them.
When we saw the information on this slate, our civilization descended into chaos. Countless people could not accept the fact that civilization was destroyed every thousand years. Countless ordinary people chose suicide.
Year 389 of the Flint Calendar. After two hundred years of chaos, our civilization has begun to stabilize again. Our king has devoted himself to good governance, and all our people stand united. We believe that as long as we are of one mind, even the flood seven hundred years from now cannot destroy us!]
[Year 509 of the Flint Calendar. We know that what awaits us is a great flood descending from the heavens, so we have changed our way of life, moving from basins to plateaus.
We have dug 327 river channels and countless reservoirs. We will continue this work. We will surely defeat the great flood five hundred years from now!]
[Year 802 of the Flint Calendar. We have once again used the earth we excavated to build up the plateaus better. To keep the great flood descending from the heavens from washing our homes away, we have even built our homes directly inside caves.]
[Year 970 of the Flint Calendar. We Flint people stand united. The great flood will arrive in another thirty years. Although we believe we will succeed, we still wish to leave our history behind!
This may also be the last history our civilization leaves behind! (Repaired, reproduced from rubbings, and copied by the seventh civilization.)]
[Year 460 of the Seventh Civilization's Blazing Sun Calendar. The scouring floodwaters made it difficult for us to find these slates. After investigation, we confirmed that six civilizations did indeed precede us, and all had been destroyed.
After another thirty years of debate, we finally decided to leave our mark on this slate.
Because the sixth civilization descended into chaos after discovering the slates, we have not made the slate public. The populace remains ignorant.]
[Year 609 of the Blazing Sun Calendar. The information on the slate was made public, and the populace descended into chaos. Some widely proclaimed that the previous civilizations were destroyed because they had shown disrespect to the gods. Even we fell into deep doubt upon receiving this news.
Civilization is destroyed once every thousand years, and the pattern of destruction repeats every two thousand years. Could there truly be a god high above, looking down upon us?]
[Year 703 of the Blazing Sun Calendar. We have begun moving underground from the surface. Large numbers of people have begun to believe in the religion mentioned above.]
[Year 709 of the Blazing Sun Calendar. After years of research, we have finally established one thing: our civilization is abnormal. It is being deliberately manipulated.
A civilization's normal evolution takes at least tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years, for intelligence and civilization to develop gradually.
Yet the information we obtained from this Slate of Destiny shows that no more than a thousand years passes between the destruction of each civilization and the rise of the next civilization, belonging to a different race with different genes.
That civilization even develops at tremendous speed over the following thousand years. Although all six civilizations before us followed this pattern, we still do not believe it is normal. Could there truly be a god watching us in the boundless universe?]
[Year 6 of the New Blazing Sun Calendar. The Blazing Sun people who disrespected the gods have been eliminated. We are believers in God. As long as we believe in God, the meteors will not fall! O great God of Creation and Destruction, we are your most devout believers.]
[Those who disrespect the gods shall ultimately be destroyed!]
After everyone finished reading the translated information from the slates, silence fell over the room. Even a pin dropping could have been heard.
They had long since discovered, through countless historical ruins, that theirs was not the only civilization on this planet.
But they had never imagined that seven civilizations with different cultures, different ways of thinking, and even different races had already appeared on this planet, and that each had existed for a thousand years!