116: Chapter 116 The Story Begins in the Dilapidated Ancestral Hall (The Finale)

New Era, Year 37.

A youth from Earth named Lin Yu took a deep breath of air tinged with a faint, sweet spiritual energy, feeling as if his lungs had been washed by the purest stream.

Through the porthole of the Floating Shuttle dedicated to the "Stargate Exchange Program," he looked down at the magnificent city below that had become the heart of the entire world—Newborn City.

In the distance were immortal mountains floating above a sea of clouds, their peaks dotted with jade palaces and pavilions; from time to time, sword light streaked across like meteors, vanishing into the azure sky.

Nearby, modular anti-gravity building complexes stood in rows, with shimmering psionic pipelines running between the buildings like the veins of a giant dragon, and countless shuttles of various sizes moved orderly along established aerial tracks, forming a wonderful picture that was both classical and sci-fi.

"Unbelievable..." Lin Yu murmured to himself.

In Earth's history classes, they had learned everything about the God Prison world, knowing the tragic epic known as the "War of the End" and the heroes honored as the "First Generation."

But the shock of words was not even one-ten-thousandth of what he saw with his own eyes.

The shuttle landed smoothly at the Central Spaceport. Lin Yu stepped out with the crowd and was immediately surrounded by the oncoming bustle and vitality.

There were local "players" wearing uniform Daoist robes with long swords on their backs, fiercely discussing something with several Earth technicians wearing exoskeleton-assisted armor;

There were street vendors loudly hawking "Lao Gan Ma Brand Exorcism Incense, a century-old brand, quality guaranteed";

There was also a group of teenagers carrying schoolbags, excitedly discussing the [Clear the East Suburbs Two-headed Wolf] mission they had just picked up from the Guardian Academy mission board.

This was a truly living, flourishing world.

Following the navigation's guidance, Lin Yu crossed the bustling streets and finally reached his destination—Newborn City Central Plaza.

In the center of the plaza, the statue of the Old Ancestor, symbolizing the "new heavenly dao," towered into the clouds.

It had no clear facial features, as if composed of light and the laws themselves—Majesty, justice, yet carrying a sense of transcendent detachment, quietly overlooking the world He had personally saved and shaped.

And beneath the statue lay the golden coffin famous in both worlds.

Lin Yu's heart rate accelerated slightly.

He slowly approached, every step feeling like he was treading on the pulse of history.

Sunlight spilled over the coffin, reflecting a warm but not blinding glow.

On the coffin's body, the scenes personally carved by Skillful Hands Mending remained lifelike even after thirty-seven years.

He saw the brute laughing as he went to his death amidst ten thousand troops, the Tank with a determined gaze behind a shield wall, the scholar calmly walking toward the furnace while pushing up the virtual glasses on the bridge of his nose... countless vivid, living faces and scenes formed a magnificent silent epic.

He could feel the oncoming, scorching emotion that was enough to burn the soul.

Then, he saw the inscription on the base.

A line of text that was completely out of place with the tragic glory of the entire coffin, filled with an aura of absurdity and mockery.

"Get the Old Ancestor a golden coffin; we did it."

Lin Yu was stunned. He stood there, repeatedly mulling over the sentence, completely baffled.

This seemed more like a prank, a joke; how could it be engraved on such a sacred monument?

It was completely inconsistent with the image of the great "First Generation" he had learned about in history class—those who spared nothing to sacrifice everything to save the world.

"Very strange, isn't it?"

A gentle and steady voice came from behind.

Lin Yu turned around abruptly and saw an old man dressed in a simple grey robe, standing behind him at some unknown time.

The old man didn't look very old, but his eyes held a heavy sense of time far beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

His aura was as deep as an abyss and as vast as the sea, yet it was perfectly contained within his body, blending into the surrounding environment. Had he not spoken, Lin Yu would not have noticed his presence at all.

"You are..." Lin Yu was a bit reserved; he could feel that the person in front of him was by no means ordinary.

"The Dean of the Guardian Academy, Shi Yan," the old man introduced himself with a smile.

Lin Yu's pupils suddenly contracted!

Shi Yan!

That legendary figure!

The first "local player" born in the New Era, the legend who survived on "moving bricks for steamed buns" missions and eventually grew step by step into a core member of the World Guardian Council—Little Stone!

"De... Dean!" Lin Yu hurriedly bowed.

Shi Yan waved his hand, indicating there was no need for such formality.

His gaze also fell on the golden coffin, his eyes becoming distant and soft.

"You must be thinking, why would such great heroes leave behind such a... nearly nonsensical inscription."

Lin Yu nodded and replied respectfully, "Yes, it seems to be at odds with the... greatness of theirs that I know."

"Greatness?" Shi Yan laughed, his smile carrying a hint of nostalgia, a hint of melancholy, and a deeply hidden sense of shared pride. "Child, you think of them too seriously. Greatness was never their pursuit. Or rather, they used the most irreverent ways to achieve the greatest things."

He pointed a finger at a scene on the coffin.

It was a player with a sharp chin and monkey-like features, sneakily stuffing a bundle of firewood into an incense burner.

"See him? I Love Exploiting Loopholes. He was the first to discover that 'offering incense grants a buff,' but his original intention was simply because he couldn't afford the cheapest incense sticks and wanted to see if he could get away with using free firewood. Because of this 'petty' act, the Incense Faith system that could later resist the Evil Gods was born."

He pointed to another place, a player surrounded by countless traps, commanding his companions to dig holes frantically.

"Infrastructure Maniac. His life creed was 'there is no enemy a hole can't solve; if there is, dig it deeper.' Back then, when the bandits of Black Wind Stockade besieged the ancestral hall, the cultivators were still in the sky preparing spells when half of them were trapped in the holes he led people to dig. They didn't rely on immortal arts to fight; they relied on... engineering."

Shi Yan's voice paused. He seemed to remember something, and the corners of his mouth curled up unconsciously.

"As for the origin of this inscription... that was the beginning of all their stories. Do you think they originally descended into this world for some noble ideal?"

He shook his head, his eyes full of laughter.

"No, their original and most united goal was to raise money to get a better new coffin for the Old Ancestor in a broken coffin that was about to fall apart. Preferably a golden one, to blind the eyes of the Demon Sovereign on the neighboring mountain. It was that simple, that... absurd."

Lin Yu was completely dumbfounded.

He felt the grand and tragic "First Generation" image built by textbooks in his mind shattering inch by inch.

Replacing it were vivid, living, and even somewhat... "shameless" images.

They weren't gods; they were a group of... cynical madmen.

"But... they..."

"They ultimately saved the world, right?" Shi Yan took over his words, his gaze becoming profound. "Yes. But what supported them to the end was not some hollow slogan, but these most simple, direct, and even somewhat laughable obsessions. 'For the Old Ancestor's golden coffin,' 'to dance on the Demon Sovereign's grave,' 'to tear down the rival's ancestral hall'... these were the things they talked about and were willing to give everything for."

"Because for them, saving the world was too grand, but protecting their home, protecting the Old Ancestor who would give them strange tasks, and protecting this group of brothers they could joke around with and face death with—those were the most real emotions."

Just then, a crisp school bell rang from the other side of the plaza.

A group of children wearing the junior department uniforms of the Guardian Academy swarmed into the plaza like birds out of a cage.

One group of children, led by a female mentor, walked toward a special area at the edge of the plaza.

There were no hard psionic crystal floor tiles there, but soft soil, planted with various strange flowers and grasses.

That female mentor was dressed in a light green gown, her temperament as gentle as the moon.

She squatted down, patiently explaining to the children the habits of a strange little grass that would emit a faint glow when bathed in moonlight.

Under the sun, the faint crescent mark on her forehead appeared and disappeared.

Shi Yan's gaze lingered briefly on the female mentor, the gentleness in his eyes almost overflowing.

Lin Yu followed his gaze and only felt that the female mentor was so beautiful it calmed the heart, as if her standing there made the entire bustling plaza become gentle.

"This world isn't perfect either." Shi Yan suddenly withdrew his gaze, his voice gaining a hint of solemnity. "Although the Evil God is dead, the 'distortion' and 'madness' it represents will not disappear. And opposing it is another extreme—the obsession with 'absolute order' and 'optimal solutions' left by Fairy Yunshang. Like those," he glanced at another group of students nearby practicing swordsmanship, their movements uniform and as precise as machines, "some people always believe that the efficiency of erasing emotions and individuality is the only path to becoming strong. This war may last until the end of the world."

Lin Yu felt a chill in his heart. He finally understood that beneath the surface of peace, undercurrents still surged.

"However," Shi Yan changed the subject and looked again at the mentor called "Yue Ya'er" and the children around her, a smile reappearing on his face, "as long as there are such new sprouts continuously growing, and people willing to protect these seemingly 'useless' beautiful things, this world will always be full of hope."

Lin Yu fell silent.

He felt that in these short ten-odd minutes, he had learned more than in the past ten-plus years.

He looked again at the golden coffin, at the line of inscription he once couldn't understand.

At this moment, he finally understood.

That wasn't a joke.

It was the most affectionate confession left on this land by a group of souls from another world.

It was the most romantic account they gave to themselves and all their fallen comrades after going from an absurd beginning to a great expedition of crowdfunding creation.

It was their starting point and their ending point.

It was their medal and their epitaph.

Lin Yu's eyes felt a bit warm. He bowed deeply and solemnly to Shi Yan.

"Dean, I... I want to know more. About the stories of all of them, about... the beginning of everything."

Shi Yan laughed.

He reached out and, like an elder, patted the shoulder of this young man from Earth.

The afterglow of the setting sun dyed the entire Newborn City a warm gold, also casting a faint light of inheritance on his and Lin Yu's figures.

"Want to know its story? Child," Shi Yan's voice held a hint of prank-like laughter that only the first generation of players would understand as he looked into the distance, toward where the story began, "that has to start from a long, long time ago, with a dilapidated ancestral hall and a shaky, broken coffin..."