The spiritual qi revival five hundred years ago was a rupture in the boundaries of space and time.
What followed was a blood-soaked history of humanity’s struggle against mutated beasts and rampaging spiritual energy.
But what came before was a blank so complete that not even fragments could be found.
No one knew what human civilization had looked like before the revival.
Metal fragments unearthed from rock strata had no identifiable purpose, and patterned stones beneath mutated-beast nests had no records to explain them. It was as if the moment spiritual qi broke free of its restraints and swept across the continent like a flood, every trace of the civilizations that came before had been erased as well.
In the ensuing “Great Cataclysm,” mutated beasts razed towns, while spiritual energy melted bronze cauldrons and corroded the writing on stone steles. Half of humanity perished in the ruins. The survivors took refuge in underground shelters, remembering only the terror of the cataclysm, with no knowledge of how their ancestors had lived before the revival.
A century later, humanity emerged from the shelters and built defensive walls. Four hundred years ago, the first core city, Qiming City, lit up its spiritual-energy shield. Over the following century, twenty-two core cities rose from the ruins, becoming humanity’s last havens.
Yet even within these twenty-two cities, history from before the revival remained a mystery. The surviving scrolls of powerful clans mentioned only the “first emergence of spiritual qi.” Academy records began in the early days of city construction, and even the stories of centenarians went no further than “my great-grandfather hid in a shelter.”
No one knew what that blank stretch of history concealed. Was it an ancient civilization far beyond anything today? The truth about spiritual energy, sealed away for a thousand years? Or had the spiritual qi revival itself been part of a scheme? The question lay hidden in the bricks and stones of every city and in the bloodlines of every survivor, waiting for the right moment to awaken and reveal the past buried beneath the spiritual qi.
