Chapter 40

Outside the stone door, the more than thirty millipedes did not leave but began to devour the headless millipede's corpse, showing no sorrow for the death of their companion.

Qin Yu, seeing that the millipedes would not leave for a while, could not go out, so he turned around and began to examine the stone chamber.

The stone chamber was somewhat like a hall, empty and devoid of any objects. Inside, there were two stone doors. Qin Yu carefully pushed one of them open, trying not to make any noise to avoid alerting the millipedes outside.

As the stone door opened, Qin Yu's mouth opened wide in shock again. Looking ahead, he saw a vast expanse of white, with piles of bones as high as hills, blurring his vision. The distinctive smell of decaying bones hit his nose, and Qin Yu, unable to bear it, quickly retreated and closed the stone door.

"How can there be so many bones here? Could it be that the Entropians like to bury their dead in a stone chamber?"

Qin Yu was certain that these were human bones, piled up as high as hills. It would take countless human bones to form such a pile. Unless this was the burial custom of the Entropians, it was far too abnormal.

"Let's hope the other door doesn't lead to more bones." Qin Yu muttered, then pushed open the other stone door. Fortunately, he breathed a sigh of relief. This stone chamber did not contain any bones, only a stone bed and a stone table. The walls were embedded with fireflies, and with the light from the fireflies, he could see that there were some items on the stone table.

Qin Yu walked into the room and quickly approached the stone table. He found a piece of silk cloth folded on the table.

It was a yellow silk cloth, a type of thin silk. Qin Yu immediately noticed that there were words written on the cloth. Curiously, he picked up the cloth and unfolded it to read.

The words on the silk cloth were densely packed, as small as fly heads. Qin Yu had to put in a lot of effort to understand the content written on the cloth.

Putting down the silk cloth, a strange light flashed in Qin Yu's eyes, and his expression was unpredictable. In the end, he slammed his fist hard on the stone table.

The reason for Qin Yu's intense emotional波动 was precisely the content recorded on the silk cloth. This silk cloth was written by an Entropian to record some things he hoped future generations would see.

The Entropians had migrated to Copper Cymbal Mountain from elsewhere, but even the Entropians themselves did not know where they came from. They lived in Copper Cymbal Mountain, where there were many wild beasts and venomous snakes, making their situation very precarious, and their population grew very slowly. This situation only changed with the arrival of the Thousand-legged God.

As recorded on the stone pillars of the Nine Stars and Three Talents Array, the Thousand-legged God appeared before the Entropians, helping them drive away wild beasts and venomous snakes. From then on, the Entropians became the most powerful force in the Copper Cymbal Mountain area, and their population grew rapidly.

To thank the Thousand-legged God, the Entropians revered it as a guardian deity, with a status higher than the clan leader. They also built many altars to worship and offer sacrifices to the Thousand-legged God. The cave where Qin Yu was now was specially excavated by the Entropians over several generations for the Thousand-legged God to live in.

After the cave was built, the Thousand-legged God lived inside and never came out again. The Entropians were not allowed to enter the cave and disturb it.

After the Thousand-legged God had lived in the cave for several hundred years, it suddenly appeared before the Entropians again and offered to teach them a talent: spatial teleportation.

The Thousand-legged God took a batch of newly born children into the cave. Three days later, these children were sent out. Indeed, when these children grew up, they possessed the talent of spatial teleportation, able to appear in a distant and unfamiliar place thousands of kilometers away.

Of course, this teleportation was not without limits. A person could only use it three times within a year, and the farther the distance, the fewer times it could be used. The first batch of young people who gained the spatial talent lived to be over eighty years old, and after they died, their bodies were sent to a place designated by the Thousand-legged God. It told the Entropians that since they had received the blessing of the god, they were no longer ordinary people and could not be buried according to the customs for ordinary people. Their bodies had to be buried in specific locations within the cave as required.

From then on, whenever a new baby was born in the Entropian clan, it would be sent into the cave to receive the blessing of the Thousand-legged God. However, over time, the Entropians noticed a phenomenon: except for the first and second generations who received the blessing, none of the subsequent generations lived past seventy years, and the younger generations died even earlier, with more than half of the young adults dying prematurely.

This phenomenon caused panic among the Entropians. However, the Thousand-legged God told them that this was a punishment from heaven for gaining divine powers. But if they could endure for a few generations, their bloodline would completely separate from ordinary people, and they would gain long lives.

The Entropians firmly believed the words of the Thousand-legged God. Thinking that their clan might become immortal, they were overjoyed. The current sacrifices seemed insignificant compared to becoming a god.

After a few more generations, there were no more elderly people in the Entropian clan. Men would die once they reached thirty years old, and women could live a bit longer, up to forty years.

The young people, lacking reverence, did not respect the Thousand-legged God as much as the older generation. Seeing their parents and elders die prematurely, they began to oppose becoming gods and demanded to abandon the activation of the talent.

The Thousand-legged God did not agree to their request, and tensions arose between the two sides. The conflict deepened over time and finally erupted due to an incident.

The protagonist of this incident was the author of the silk cloth. At the age of twenty, his mother died. According to the rules, he had to send her body to a specific location in the cave designated by the Thousand-legged God within a specified time.

The author of the silk cloth did not send his mother's body to the cave on time but instead tried to secretly bury her outside. He took her body to a hill at night to bury her.

Just as he was digging the grave and moving his mother's body, he suddenly heard a series of urgent cries, even more unpleasant than the cawing of crows. He strained his ears and realized that the sound was coming from his mother's heart.

Under the bright moonlight, he witnessed a red creature emerging from his mother's heart. The red creature was small, stared at him for a while, and then jumped away, flying off into the depths of the forest.

The sudden appearance of the red creature shocked the author of the silk cloth. By the time he regained his senses, the red creature had already disappeared. However, this incident made him more cautious. The next time a clan member died, he secretly followed the people who carried the body into the cave and mixed in with them at the place where the bodies were placed, which was the stone chamber Qin Yu had seen earlier.

This time, he was prepared and stayed by the body for three days, the same amount of time as when his mother died. Sure enough, he saw the red creature crawl out of the body's heart again. He was prepared and immediately covered the red creature with a net to prevent it from flying away.

A month after the author of the silk cloth captured the red creature, the Thousand-legged God suddenly announced that a grand sacrificial ceremony would be held. If the ceremony was completed, their lifespans would become long, and they would no longer die prematurely.

The news from the Thousand-legged God made the entire Entropian clan jubilant. Everyone prepared the items required for the sacrificial ceremony as instructed by the Thousand-legged God. Only the author of the silk cloth felt that something was amiss, as he sensed the presence of the Thousand-legged God in the red creature, indicating that the red creature must be hiding a significant secret.

On the day of the sacrificial ceremony, all the Entropians gathered at the Thousand-legged God's cave, waiting for it to lead them in the ceremony. However, to their surprise, after everyone gathered at the altar, the Thousand-legged God did not appear. Instead, countless millipedes emerged, their legs beating the ground in a strange rhythm that echoed throughout the altar.

The author of the silk cloth saw countless clan members collapse under this strange rhythm, and then red creatures emerged from their hearts, just like when his mother died.

Seeing this, the author of the silk cloth fully understood. The Thousand-legged God was not a divine creature but had deceived the clan's trust and was cultivating these red creatures inside the clan members. Once these red creatures emerged, the clan members would die.

Feeling a strange sensation in his heart, the author of the silk cloth rushed into the stone chamber, hastily wrote down these words, and then entered the adjacent stone chamber where the bodies were placed, waiting for death to come.