358: The Ultimate Truth of Martial Arts

After Shen Bei achieved victory in the flag-planting battle in Changtu County's Permanent Dungeon,

although he was covered in injuries, it couldn't stop Shen Bei's urge to be among the first wave to enter the Dungeon and scavenge.

At that time, Shen Bei, an Acquired, was being chased and hunted, trembling everywhere.

Finally, he found a dilapidated building.

Inside, there was a sitting corpse, and in a crack in the wall, he found a jade tablet carved with a beast's head.

He never expected it would be used in this place!

“The coincidences of fate are so beautiful, simply marvelous,”

Shen Bei tsk-tsked twice.

Without this jade tablet, Shen Bei would definitely have to search around for the entrance Yun Zhiyi used.

Sneaking in couldn't compare to entering openly and honorably.

More importantly, it saved time.

Yun Zhiyi and his team must have suffered constant sacrifices to reach this place.

But Shen Bei and Zhuang Bifan didn't want anyone to be sacrificed.

Without another word, Shen Bei pushed open the stone door.

The door opened silently, revealing an empty space inside, with only a prominent staircase in the corner leading to the top.

However, the area of the current floor was clearly smaller than the outer perimeter.

Shen Bei measured his steps.

He came to the conclusion that the first floor was divided in half.

In other words, behind the wall in front of Shen Bei, there was still space.

“Could it be the back door?”

Shen Bei stroked his chin, pondering; Yun Zhiyi probably entered through the back door.

His side had no risks, so there should be danger behind that wall.

He didn't think about it too much.

Shen Bei ascended the stairs, and the second floor was still empty.

It wasn't until he reached the eighth floor.

The unchanging scene finally changed.

On the walls, several murals were carved.

Shen Bei looked closely; they roughly depicted an Acquired's path of counterattack and rise.

Shen Bei wasn't curious about the other murals, but one of them, in particular, was filled with a large amount of Acquired text.

Shen Bei stumbled and struggled to decipher it for a while before he finally understood.

“So the Martial Dao Pinnacle that Yun Zhiyi saw was this thing!”

That's right.

Three years ago, Yun Zhiyi stood here and saw the so-called Martial Dao Pinnacle.

According to Shen Bei's rough translation, the content of this mural was roughly divided into three parts:

First, it introduced that above the Martial God, there was a Realm of power called “Divine Ability.”

This point was not far off from Bai Wei's guess; there was indeed a higher Realm above the Martial God.

However, a Martial God alone cannot Breakthrough this barrier on the earth's surface; one needs to go down into the Dungeon, to the other side of the sea.

This part of the content ended here and did not elaborate further.

“Is this considered the Martial Dao Pinnacle?”

When Shen Bei first saw this, he asked himself.

From Shen Bei's perspective, it was not at all.

Breakthroughs in power were bound to happen sooner or later.

Like an established fact hidden in a mist, if Zhang San didn't discover it today, Li Si would discover it the day after tomorrow.

There was no difference.

And the second part of the descriptive text took a different turn.

Here, the mural mentioned a country: Wu Xiang Country.

In the Dungeon, the Acquired knew nothing about science.

So over the long years, any phenomenon they couldn't understand would be explained by the concept of “immortals.”

In the era when Apocalypse Sect ideology was extremely prosperous, children were constantly indoctrinated with various religious ideologies from birth.

Unlike modern society on the earth's surface, the Acquired born in the Dungeon who did not believe in ghosts, immortals, or demons, and did not believe in Yin and Yang Reincarnation, became outcasts shunned by everyone.

And “Wu Xiang Country” was precisely the only country in this Dungeon, where religion was greater than imperial power, that did not believe in gods and demons.

Therefore, Wu Xiang Country was described in the murals as: a human purgatory, a place of evil demons, a country of outcasts.

Of course, these three terms were the “most civilized language” Shen Bei picked out from countless vicious metaphors; as for the other words, they were simply unbearable.

In fact, from Shen Bei's modern perspective, Wu Xiang Country was not at all a country of outcasts; instead, it was an unimaginable clear stream in that ignorant Dungeon at the time.

They might have been the earliest country in the history of the Dungeon that only pursued science and truth.

The people of Wu Xiang Country only believed in things that could be repeatedly proven, and they often scoffed at theories of immortals and demons that were rumored to be miraculous.

It seemed that discussing such elusive things was an insult to their knowledge.

If these “scientists” of Wu Xiang Country had not been labeled “heretics” by fanatical religious believers, they would have certainly left an incredibly brilliant chapter in the subsequent history of the Dungeon.

Although… the science of the Dungeon was very unscientific, this was still scientific progress.

But even such a country, whose dedication to science and truth was so rational as to inspire awe, had only one thing that baffled everyone.

Their historical steles, where every word could be scrutinized and every sentence proven, actually contained extensive records of a bizarre item that only theology could explain: the Living Dead Jade.

With Shen Bei's current translation level in Acquired text, he could only decipher the general meaning between the lines of the complex text on the mural.

Although he couldn't precisely interpret every single word and sentence, this didn't prevent Shen Bei from understanding what happened to this most mysterious ancient country from a thousand years ago.

This was like when Zhuang Bifan once went on a business trip to Dongguan; after dinner, he walked with lazy steps, enjoying the cool breeze by Swan Lake, and although the girls under the neon lights at night didn't say a word, only gestured to him, Zhuang Bifan still perfectly understood their meaning.

In today's rapidly developing economy, in order to contribute to the economic construction of New China, a strong sense of social responsibility surged in his heart, and he worked tirelessly until four in the morning, movingly contributing a small part to the great unity of the people of the whole country.

After extensively setting the stage for the concept of Wu Xiang Country.

The description of the Living Dead Jade then began.

According to the descriptions in these ancient steles of Wu Xiang Country, the marvel of the Living Dead Jade lay in its ability to make anyone who approached it enter a mysterious state of “life is also death, and death is also life.”

Unlike the classic theory of “Schrödinger's Cat” in physics, this “neither living nor dead” state produced by the Living Dead Jade was genuinely real.

In such a state, the concept of “time” lost its end.

The concept of “life and death” no longer existed; in modern terms, the “entity” composed of elementary particles became dispensable.

And the so-called “Soul,” under the influence of the “Living Dead Jade,” existed eternally in some special form.

So when someone was fortunate enough to be affected by the Living Dead Jade, then in a sense, that person attained what was called “Eternal Life.”

When Shen Bei read this, he initially thought it was a made-up story; how could “life” be in such a strange state?

This was very unscientific.

However, from the earlier introduction and setup of Wu Xiang Country, it could be seen that Wu Xiang Country never recorded things that could not be repeatedly verified, such as immortals, metaphysics, etc.

For them, mountains were mountains, water was water, including lightning and thunder, raging fires, tornadoes, sandstorms, etc.; the people of Wu Xiang Country never believed that these phenomena were the will of “God,” but rather ordinary natural principles, all of which had scientific theories to explain them.

Although these Acquired's explanations of these principles still seemed quite naive, it must be remembered that this was the Dungeon, a ten-thousand-year-old Dungeon where science did not exist.

And a country so dedicated to science would never inexplicably worship a so-called “divine object.”

This was completely contrary to Wu Xiang Country's principle of believing in science, so there was only one explanation left for all of this: the Living Dead Jade probably truly existed.

Seeing this, Shen Bei gasped in a cold breath…