241: The cruel truth

Engraved on their battle armor were lifelike, spread-winged Ice Phoenix totems, the symbol of the Awakening Faction within the Valkyrie Empire, representing change and rebirth.

At this moment, the five powerful warriors all had faces ashen as paper, their life force visibly declining at a rapid pace.

Streams of pure energy were forcibly extracted from their bodies by the black tentacles, converging into crimson energy flows, which ultimately poured into a colossal, illusory ice coffin deep beneath the temple.

"Hurry up! Those old stubborn Gravekeepers won't last much longer! We must complete this sacrifice before the Puppet legion returns!"

A clearly Bishop-level cultist urged in a sharp voice.

They were actually using living Valkyrie warriors to nourish their own sleeping Queen.

Su Lei's figure instantly appeared at the entrance of the temple.

"Who's there!"

The leading Bishop whirled around, his eyes filled with horror.

His response was a golden hand that appeared out of thin air.

Smack!

A soft sound, like crushing a ripe tomato.

That Bishop-level cultist, along with the dark Spell he was about to cast, was effortlessly crushed into nothingness by the golden hand in that instant.

After a brief moment of horror, the other cultists launched their attacks.

In an instant, dark arrows, corrosive curses, and Soul shrieks—dozens of malicious attacks—poured in from all directions, completely engulfing Su Lei's figure.

Su Lei merely took one step forward.

Those malicious Spells, capable of causing even powerful experts of the same level to Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering, dissipated and vanished as if encountering an invisible barrier three meters from his body, without even stirring a ripple.

He walked through the temple with a leisurely stride; wherever he passed, the bodies of the black-robed cultists began to twist and fold without warning, eventually being compressed into Vague of flesh and blood by an invisible yet irresistible force.

In just ten seconds, all members of the sect within the temple, except for one survivor Su Lei deliberately left, had been reduced to stains on the ground.

Su Lei walked up to the only surviving cultist, who was already paralyzed on the ground, terrified and incontinent, and gently placed his hand on the cultist's crown.

"No, no, spare me..."

Su Lei's Divine Soul power, like the sharpest scalpel, brutally pierced into the opponent's Sea of Consciousness, beginning to frantically plunder all his memories.

A massive and chaotic torrent of information, like a bursting dam, flooded into Su Lei's mind.

Soon, he found what he was looking for.

The Forgotten Ones Sect had reached a devilish secret agreement with a certain faction within the Valkyrie Empire.

This faction called themselves the Gravekeepers; they were the Queen's most loyal guards and the most conservative and stubborn force in the entire Empire.

Their mission was to sustain the Queen's life at all costs.

However, the Queen was not truly asleep.

A more vague memory fragment from this cultist's superior sent a jolt through Su Lei's Divine Soul.

It was a piece of information about a secret from ten thousand years ago, capable of overturning everything.

After the final battle that determined the fate of human civilization, Venerable Tianhe had secretly come to the City of Frozen Ice.

He did not launch an attack; he merely left a Law imprint on the Queen's ice coffin.

The imprint's name was Genetic Withering.

It would, from a genetic level, cause the Valkyrie, a pure combat race, to continuously weaken and degenerate generation after generation, until their ultimate demise.

And the Queen, as the matriarch and core of the entire race, bore the primary and most terrifying power of this curse.

Her vitality had been continuously draining over ten thousand years.

She had been engaged in an endless, painful struggle against this malicious curse.

The only way to prolong her life was to constantly absorb the life force of her descendants to replenish her own deficiencies.

This was the root of the irreconcilable conflict between the Gravekeepers and the Awakening Faction.

The Gravekeepers believed that sacrificing a portion of their people to preserve the Queen's life was a matter of course and the highest honor.

Because as long as the Queen lived, the Valkyrie would endure.

The Awakening Faction, however, believed that such a method of clinging to life by devouring fellow clansmen was the most thorough desecration of Valkyrie's honor.

They would rather see their entire race Direction a glorious demise than become nourishment for the Queen's continued existence.

The Forgotten Ones Sect exploited this irreconcilable conflict between them.

They found the Gravekeepers and proposed a devilish deal.

The Forgotten Ones Sect would help the Gravekeepers "clean up" the disobedient Awakening Faction members and sacrifice their life force to the Queen.

In return, the Gravekeepers would provide the Forgotten Ones Sect with an opportunity to closely study, and even touch, the crown of wisdom.

The true goal of the Forgotten Ones Sect, from the very beginning, was this second cornerstone of civilization.

Su Lei slowly withdrew his hand; the cultist he had Soul-searched had already become a dried corpse with wide-open eyes, devoid of all Soul radiance.

He turned around and looked at the five Awakening Faction warriors he had rescued, who were still in a deep coma, remaining silent for a long time.

He finally understood why Oriental Shuo of the Martial Alliance would try to stop him with a so-called peace treaty.

Because in the past ten thousand years, the descendants of the Council of Venerables and the Valkyrie Empire had indeed been at peace.

But behind this peace lay a curse, personally laid by humanity's greatest hero, enough to slowly rot and destroy a glorious civilization.

This so-called peace was merely a chronic massacre that had lasted ten thousand years.

Su Lei transmitted this bloody and cruel truth, in the form of a mental imprint, back to the ice house forgotten by time.

After a long while, Oriental Shuo's old, hoarse voice came through the mental link.

"Venerable Tianhe, he, how could he do such a thing..."

The lifelong belief of this old man, who had upheld the alliance his entire life, was utterly shattered and ground into dust at this moment.

Li Xue凝's voice carried a chilling coldness: "So, what we face now is not only the Forgotten Ones Sect, not only the Puppet guards of this city, but also the Gravekeepers, who would deal with devils to protect the Queen."

"And even..."

"The Valkyrie Queen, who was driven to a dead end by our ancestors and has clung to life by devouring her own kind for ten thousand years, long since transformed into something neither human nor ghost."

Su Lei severed the mental link with the ice house.

He walked to the five rescued Awakening Faction warriors.

Their life force had been excessively drained, and they had fallen into an irreversible deep coma, their bodies like flickering candles in the wind, liable to extinguish at any moment.

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