【Nine Hundred and Fifty Years in the Divine Era】
【Less than a hundred years left, as time dwindles, you cherish the remaining days spent with the Flower God and the Great Compassionate Tree King more and more.】
【Feilijisi and Lilupal often sneak peeks at the intimate moments between the two deities. Even though they’ve become the Governors of the Oasis, the two great Town Spirits still maintain their childish innocence in the presence of the deities.】
【You occasionally scold them, but mostly let the two Mothers of Town Spirits come before you for amusement.】
【You thought this time would last until the simulation ended. Until one day…】
【Disaster struck.】
【Under the sinister grin of the crescent moon, with the red sand as its source, the black tide of decay flowed over the desert and valleys, turning the clear spring once surrounded by roses into a filthy mire.】
【Its filth contaminated the earth, mortals trembled in despair, sages called it the Black Tide. It was like a raging flood, engulfing fields, villages, and cities.】
【Overnight, another plague afflicted the land. The people’s once normal skin was covered with jet-black scales, and pain gnawed at them deep within.】
【At the same time, Yue Nü City, where the Town Spirits resided, also suffered a blow. Black pestilence welled up from the depths of the earth, sweeping over the entire city-state.】
【Under the protection of Feilijisi and Lilupal, the city-state escaped the first wave of the attack.】
【You ascended to the highest point to observe, your heart heavy. Some of the people in Tuleidula City-State had also been infected by the black scales.】
【You knew this was a plague called "Devil-Scale Disease," a manifestation of the terrifying consequences of Abyssal leakage.】
【Through the earth’s pulses, you could sense the terrifying power that transcended the stars, and you keenly perceived its source.】
【The Red Sand Kingdom.】
【You realized that even if the Flower God hadn’t helped the Red King open the passage to the stars and Abyss, he still came into contact with that power, which was practically taboo for this world.】
【Instructing the Flower God to protect the Eternal Oasis, you headed directly to the Red Sand Kingdom.】
【When you arrived, you discovered that the once prosperous city-state had been overturned overnight, revealing a vast labyrinth covered in black waves.】
【In the heart of that labyrinth, the towering mausoleum of the Divine King stood tall, the majestic Sphinx still exuded divine aura, but under the shroud of the Black Tide, they seemed to be more eerie.】
【Looking at the Red Sand people, who were bewildered, their faces filled with the loss of their homeland, kneeling down to pray to their deities, your heart sank.】
【You crossed the near-ruined city-state and arrived in front of the huge labyrinth. The automated constructs guarding the mausoleum did not attack you, quietly fulfilling the fixed duties set for them from the beginning of their creation.】
【You entered the mausoleum labyrinth. While you had never been there, you guessed that this was a grand structure built by Ahkmal in the past two hundred years. The Abyssal aura faintly rippling from the deepest part of the labyrinth could not be concealed, so you continued deeper.】
【You bypassed all the mechanisms along the way and easily reached the deepest part of the underground.】
【There, you saw shattered blue-violet crystal spikes and a plethora of knowledge from outside the world of Teyvat.】
【Ahkmal stood before the crystal spikes.】
…………
Bathed in the Abyss.
“Was my pursuit… wrong?”
With his back to Luochen, Ahkmal knew his friend’s presence.
He was asking his friend, yet it was more like a question to himself.
Luochen looked at his friend, who was no longer the spirited young man he first met, his expression calm.
The scepter that represented royal power was discarded, his long hair flowed loose, whipping in the wind.
“You were too hasty.”
Finally, Luochen spoke.
He understood Ahkmal's wish, to grant mortals wisdom and create an ideal nation free from disasters.
But in the Divine Era, this was more like an unachievable dream.
Even Morax, after thousands of years, only gradually reached the stage of returning the era to humans.
Ahkmal wanted to take the final step right from the start, doomed to a tragic end.
“Yes, I was too hasty, misled by the vision painted by my subjects.”
Looking up, Ahkmal murmured: “The Divine Punishment of a thousand years ago scattered wisdom and history. For a better future, the king should master the past. The current land of the Oasis King holds all the wisdom of today.”
“Through hundreds of years, then hundreds more, I built a magnificent labyrinth for my kingdom, and imprisoned myself in the depths of the labyrinth seeking forbidden knowledge, searching for an antidote to reject the mortal body.”
“In the end, I succeeded, but what I gained was not the wisdom to rule over all beings, but poison from outside the world.”
He laughed self-deprecatingly and straightened up, his voice low.
“This body has already burned to ashes, the paradise of the people cannot be retrieved, a pure nation stripped of sadness, but… ”
“Only the poison I mistakenly consumed should not remain in this world. My friend, please do me one last favor.”
At this point, Ahkmal finally turned around, his golden eyes showing a plea for the first time.
Then, light words mingled with the surging venom, disappearing in the wind.
After a long silence, Luochen nodded lightly, then turned to leave.
Without any regrets, the Red Sand King's final, carefree laughter came from behind.
【According to the legends of the desert people, the kingdom of wisdom and authority was buried by the sand of retribution overnight.】
【They say Ahkmal ultimately extracted his own wisdom from his flesh and blood, casting it into the endless, meandering, serpentine corridors, stairs, doorways, and beams.】
【They say Ahkmal’s body gradually rotted on the throne, devoured by giant insects, while his spirit merged with the millions of screaming souls of the royal city, forever wandering lost in the howling apocalypse, winding their way along serpentine dark passages, hurtling towards the bottomless abyss.】
【That night, the desert trembled repeatedly, the giant walls of Ahkmal's palace collapsed, the bulls and griffins perched atop once proudly overlooking the lifeless dunes, now unwillingly slumped into their gilded embrace.】
【Countless people, wise or foolish, hero or coward, all disappeared in the swirling sandstorm that night.】
【After the disaster, you took the survivors and left this place, reborn beyond death, rebuilding another city-state - Gule City.】
【As for the blue-violet crystal spikes buried under the yellow sand, they may resurface in the distant future.】
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