After a long time of destruction, Alamanda, the Desolate City of Gold was no longer glorious. Despite the splendor of the ruins, the entire city was filled with broken walls and debris. There were very little buildings in the city that were still intact. Only those that were most important and strong were preserved.
A key facility called the Tower of Transcendence was one of them.
This was a pentagon tower with a base circumference of a few hundred meters; the scale was enormous. Other than the door at the bottom, there were no other door and windows in the entire tower. There were only a few bumps and a metal bracket like an antenna across the bright and clean pale gold exterior . Anna followed the messy memory in her head and led them to the high tower's door. The door was broken and torn apart. It seemed that had something burst out of it and left the huge hole.
Hao Ren walked in front of them and he was surprised to find that the inside of this windowless building was very bright. There were a lot of mysterious beams of light coming down from above to illuminate the hall as bright as day. Thin dust fog swirled around the beams of light, looking very ethereal. It was not hard to imagine what a sacred place it used to be.
There were no complex structures on the ground floor of the tower. It was just a magnificent hall, and the most amazing thing was, there were no pillars supporting it. Thinking of the tower that was hundreds of meters high, the hall without any form of support allowed them to marvel at the Tannaeans' advanced costruction technology and material science. There was a golden device in the hall. It was a pillar of about a meter or so, and its upper surface was tilted, making it seem like some kind of console panel. Lily patted the pillar curiously, but there was no reaction.
"Forget it. These things, even if they're not damaged, there's no energy to start them," said Hao Ren as he held his arms and walked around the hall. Suddenly, he saw some exquisite murals on the walls. "Hey, check this out. Looks like murals left by the Tannaeans."
Everyone was immediately drawn to them as Hao Ren found the starting point of the murals. He looked at them in amazement: the murals did consist of earth-shattering scenes; there were no heroes or mythological images; and they were not exquisite, decorative paintings. What was depicted on these murals were just simple daily things.
The murals depicted the Tannaeans' whole civilization.
In the first mural, the Tannaeans lived in the coastal areas. They were depicted as amphibious creatures that gradually transitioned into a terrestrial life due to some kind of change in the marine environment. They dressed in waterweeds and animal skins, built houses on the coastline, adapted to drought, hunted animals, and ignited the first bonfire of their civilization.
In the second mural, the scales on the Tannaeans had faded and the structure of their fingers evolved. The environment in which they lived in had apparently shifted from tidal flats and swamps to drier plains. They built villages on grasslands, reared livestock in pens, planted and harvested.
They built the city, developed metal tools, learned how to smelt and made alloys. They understood the power of "electricity" from natural phenomena and soon merged it with a certain spiritual ability that was present in their own race. In later murals, they were shown holding a ritual around a towering metal pillar. Lightning struck the pillar, and in their bodies, there was another magical energy that resonated with it.
They lived, studied, and tempered with their spiritual power. Their innate ability to evolve rapidly made it easier for them to gain power from nature. They explored their entire planet, built great information networks and global energy broadcasting systems. They even developed space technology, but their greatest strength was still a wondrous skill called the "Power of Soul". This was the result of their evolving spiritual talents. This wonderful skill was also the only hope for the people to save themselves when catastrophe came.
Yes, a great catastrophe. In the late stages of the murals, everything changed. Some kind of unspeakable catastrophe broke out on the planet. The power of the Tannaeans was not worth mentioning in front of this calamity. The magnificent city forged by metal was uprooted, and their weaponry had no effect on this enemy. The murals showed the horrific slaughter of the Tannaeans, and the flames of war burning across the planet. However, the enemy's face was just frenzied lines. The man who left these murals seemed to have trouble describing their enemy in a logical way. He could only use a cluster of shadows and curves to show some kind of disaster. And hundreds of millions of Tannaeans were wiped out by these frantic lines.
In the end, the remaining survivors retreated to the three cities on the planet. The murals showed the situation of the three cities via exaggerated images: the three cities were molded from metal and enveloped in layers of protective walls and energy shields. Outside the protective layers lay boundless chaos and death. Survivors lived behind the protective walls for years, but the walls had been weakened and eroded by the ravages of disaster, thus destruction was inevitable.
Anna touched the lines on the murals gently, and said, "This is the 'Origin Scourge'. The power of mortals could not fight against it. In the end, the Tannaeans were finally aware of the regular pattern of the disaster. They decided to survive by changing their life forms—"
Anna raised her hands and pointed to the last mural.
The lines on the murals changed to a simple form. The magnificent and complex physical world was hidden away. A man was floating in the air, and half of his body had transformed into a misty shadow, which represented the transformation of life form. At the bottom of the scene were a bunch of messy lines, which represented the disaster. This mural seemed to depict a Tannaean, who had finally emerged from the disaster after changing his life form.
Anna sighed. The last piece of memory in her head was finally pieced together. "They left these murals to record the course of their civilization, because the Tannaeans were not sure what would happen after they turned into spirits. In order to deal with the worst, they left this simple and straightforward record in many buildings to make sure that other intelligent creatures who visit this planet someday would know what kind of race lived here before."
"So this is how the Tannaeans turned into vengeful spirits." Vivian frowned and shook her head. "But, the vengeful spirits they turned into aren't logical at all. They're even as unpredictable as natural phenomena, let alone higher intelligence."
Nangong Sanba scratched his head and asked, "So, what's that catastrophe all about?"
Hao Ren gulped. A vague speculation in his mind was gradually forming. He glanced at the scenes depicted on the last few murals, and suddenly ran to the exit as he yelled, "Follow me!"
They all followed him. Hao Ren led them to the front of a high platform. Anna could not climb such a steep building so Lily put her on her shoulder. They climbed up the high platform and came to a position where they could see beyond the city walls. The sight outside the heavy protective walls of Alamanda became clear.
Outside the city was a primitive and barren land. It was an unusually frightening sight: the ground was covered with huge ravines and craters like a giant face full of potholes. On one side of the city, there was an unprecedented megcrater. Its size was so huge that they almost suspected it penetrated the core of the planet. And in the countless ravines as well as potholes, the most shocking thing froze their blood—tentacles.
The Firstborn.
"I knew it…" Hao Ren gulped and said, "The same thing that happened in Holletta also happened here."
Nangong Wuyue was startled and whispered, "Oh my…"
"The condition of this planet is worse than that of Holletta. The eldest son had apparently completely purged the second son," said Vivian as she frowned and looked back at the ruins in Alamanda. "The Tannaeans went extinct."
Anna and Nangong Sanba were seeing this horrible thing for the first time. Nangong Sanba was a demon hunter, so he could still take it, but not Anna. Anna was startled and she almost fainted. She suffered a double scare; one came from her own human instincts and another from her memory of the vengeful spirit. She was now almost half-Tannaean. She almost fainted when she saw the tentacles that destroyed the entire civilization.
This was the calamity that the Tannaeans faced, the reason why they had to give up their bodies and change their life forms.