Menia, Cynthia, and Eriga all turned their eyes toward Saiketia at once.
Their understanding of the subterranean sacred relic was superficial and one-sided; they knew only that it was intimately tied to Mother, and that her bloodline could awaken it in exchange for tremendous power.
As for what form that bestowed power would take, none of them knew.
Saiketia, however, certainly did. She had inherited the purest bloodline and took after Mother most closely. While Mother doted on Cupid above all, if anyone were to be considered the true heir of Paphos Island, it was without question Saiketia, as a female.
Her lustrous platinum-blonde hair gleaming, Saiketia swept a glance over the unconscious "demigods." Snuggling into her lover's embrace, she said, "Sealed within the basement is the Primordial God—the Primordial God who gave birth to the Goddess of Beauty."
What kind of entity was the Primordial God? Zhang Yuanqing asked, "...Is it a deity?"
Saiketia furrowed her delicate brows in thought. "It is a god, yet more like an object. I cannot describe it accurately. Dearest Amini, come down to the basement with me, and you will understand everything."
Zhang Yuanqing nodded and pressed no further. "If we are to make a sacrifice to the Primordial God, is Cupid enough?"
A flicker of sorrow showed in Saiketia's eyes. "Cupid was Mother's firstborn. The bloodline he inherited is in no way inferior to mine."
The implication was clear: he was more than enough!
As Cupid's full sister by the same father and mother, she felt a genuine pang of grief. Even though this brother had been mischievous, petty, and spitefully jealous, they had still spent a thousand years together.
Even so, she harbored no resentment toward Amini. Amini was the love of her life, and Cupid had brought death upon himself; Amini could not be blamed.
"We have even less time left than the footballers of the far east. Let's head down to the basement." Zhang Yuanqing gave his avatar a meaningful look, gesturing for him to bring Cupid's corpse.
As for the unconscious "demigods," they were left where they lay.
Pushing open the heavy iron door of the main building, they turned right into the storeroom. Two torches were mounted on the stone wall, their dancing flames casting a warm glow.
Zhang Yuanqing noticed that the wooden hatch once sealed by enchantments had already been opened, revealing a pitch-black opening beneath.
Taking the initiative, Saiketia quickened her pace and took the lead. She pulled one of the torches from the wall and led the way down the stone steps into the basement.
The warm light drove back the subterranean gloom. The stone staircase spiraled downward, plunging into the dark.
Barely a meter wide, the stairs accommodated only a single person at a time. They formed a line with Saiketia in front and Menia bringing up the rear, both goddesses holding torches aloft.
Zhang Yuanqing looked around. The walls flanking the stairs were built of dark stone bricks with clean joints. Shielded from the corrosive sea breeze, their surfaces remained remarkably well preserved.
*Tap, tap, tap...*
Their footsteps echoed through the darkness.
The basement went extraordinarily deep. It took a full ten minutes of downward climbing before they ran out of steps and set foot upon the landing floor.
This was an expansive hall, roughly ten meters high. Water droplets clung to the floor and ceiling, and the humid air was tinged with a stale, decaying scent.
Menia raised her greatsword high. A brass-colored radiance erupted from the blade, slicing through the darkness like sword light and illuminating the entire hall of around six hundred square meters.
With their visibility restored, Eriga, Menia, and Cynthia swept their eyes across the hall, locking their gazes simultaneously onto the space straight ahead, right against the wall.
A raised stone dais had been constructed there, reached by six steps. Resting upon the dais was an enormous clam-shaped creature. Its outer shell was golden, and a viscous fluid seeped from between its parted valves.
Possessing night vision, Zhang Yuanqing had already inspected the golden clam. By now, his gaze had shifted toward the walls, where he noticed several uncolored murals carved into the stone.
Looking at the giant clam, Saiketia said, "Mother said this is the Primordial God. I came down here once in the past and approached it closely. Most of the time it slumbers, requiring Mother's blood to awaken.
"I felt that it possessed no self-awareness and was more like an object. But if it weren't an entity transcending deities, how could it have given birth to the Goddess of Beauty?"
"What do those murals on the wall depict?" Zhang Yuanqing asked.
"Mother carved them long ago," Saiketia answered. "She said she was born remembering many things, yet forgot them very quickly. Mother believed those were the memories of the Primordial God. Fearing she would forget everything, she carved those memories onto the stone walls."
Zhang Yuanqing listened with a look of utter bewilderment. Was the Goddess of Beauty really born from a clam? Weren't ancient gods human beings who cultivated step-by-step until reaching the pinnacle?
Still, if these truly were the memories of the "Primordial God," their value was astronomical.
Zhang Yuanqing walked over to the wall and studied the murals. Taken together, the narrative they formed depicted this:
The world was a chaotic expanse. The sky was gloomy and the earth barren, until a beam of heavenly light descended from an infinite height, bathing a clam-shaped creature in illumination.
The clam-shaped creature opened its hard shell and expelled several radiant, shining figures.
Among them were a deity enwreathed in howling winds and crowned with thunder and lightning; a deity emanating brilliant light and an aura of immense solidity; a deity with finned ears and a body covered in scales; a vague figure steeped entirely in darkness, whose very body was made of shadow; and a voluptuous female deity.
The murals utilized extensive line work to outline the scene. Though uncolored, the Goddess of Beauty's artistry was remarkable, rendering every detail lifelike.
*Wind-Thunder Mage, Knight, Siren, Void, and Desire...* Zhang Yuanqing distinguished the classes symbolized by each figure one by one.
*Fuck, were all the gods of the First District born from a clam shell?!*
Zhang Yuanqing was shaken to his core, but skepticism immediately crept into his thoughts.
He had seen a similar mural inside the Bronze Sacred Tree in Takamagahara. That mural depicted the collapse of the sky, with countless "meteors" descending upon the mortal realm, where human ancestors nearby unexpectedly gained wondrous powers.
From then on, practitioners of cultivation had emerged.
Although the veracity of neither mural could be proven, the one inside the Bronze Sacred Tree was plainly far more logical than the one left behind by the Goddess of Beauty.
Zhang Yuanqing was much more inclined to believe that humans acquired divine power from extraterrestrial meteors, rather than gods being birthed from a clam shell.
He moved his gaze across the wall, taking in the rest of the mural.
The subsequent imagery grew decidedly unsuitable for minors—it was practically paywalled content. Countless living beings swarmed around the massive clam creature, frantically copulating, including the very deities it had spawned.
Through this, mountains and rivers emerged upon the earth, followed by grasslands and forests. Living creatures proliferated, and all manner of things multiplied and flourished.
*So everything in the world just came from breeding, huh! Birthing is one thing, but why make the drawing so explicit...* Zhang Yuanqing's gaze suddenly froze, snapping back to the earlier portion of the mural.
*Wait, why is there no God of Light?!*
The classes of the First District were all gathered, yet the God of Light was conspicuously absent. If the God of Light were truly a deity of the First District, there would have been no need for the Goddess of Beauty to treat him differently.
Furthermore, in the real world, a God of Light class did not exist.
Coupled with the information from the Compass of Light, Zhang Yuanqing could basically confirm one truth: the God of Light was a deity of the Third District!
Yet why would a deity belonging to the Third District appear in the First District during ancient times?
He turned to Saiketia and asked, "According to the mural, aside from Mother, were the other gods also birthed by the 'Primordial God'? And why isn't the God of Light depicted?"
He was probing to see whether Saiketia knew anything of the God of Light's origins.
Saiketia nodded. "That was what Mother claimed, but none of the gods—including the God King—acknowledged it.
"As for why the God of Light is missing, I don't know either. Mother never said."
*She doesn't know where the God of Light came from, which means it's even less likely she knows why he appeared in the First District...*
*Not a single god admitted to being born from a clam, so did the Goddess of Beauty simply aggrandize her own origins? Was there any point in that...? If I hadn't seen this mural, I wouldn't even know this so-called sacred relic had anything to do with the birth of gods. If the mural's contents were true, would the gods have ever handed the golden clam over to her?*
Numerous questions raced through Zhang Yuanqing's mind. Then, he shifted his gaze to Cupid's corpse.
Herasine had mentioned that the feud between the God of Light and the Goddess of Beauty started because Cupid shot the Arrow of Rejection at the God of Light's beloved, ultimately leading to the demise of the Goddess of Laurel.
While neither the Goddess of Beauty nor Cupid had ever confirmed this tale, it remained the accepted consensus across Paphos Island.
Cupid might possess deeper knowledge regarding the God of Light.
With that realization, Zhang Yuanqing glanced at his avatar. "This brat's remnant spirit hasn't dissipated yet. You know what to do."
*Like hell I do!* The avatar rolled his eyes. Reluctantly, he cast Spirit Devouring. A viscous, jet-black energy welled up in his eye sockets, blanketing the whites and pupils entirely. Parting his lips, he inhaled softly, drawing a translucent phantom of Cupid out from the corpse he was holding.
At this moment, the little god of love bore a vicious gaze and a snarling, twisted visage, utterly devoid of the cherubic plumpness he had displayed in life.
The instant this remnant spirit emerged, the avatar swallowed it whole.
The avatar's body froze at once as he weathered a tremendous mental shock. Two minutes elapsed before he opened his eyes, clutched his head, and panted in a low rasp:
"Hurry up and share it, then dispel me. An avatar is a consumable, sure, but you can't abuse me like this..."
Devouring the remnant spirit of a fellow high-stage Dominator was an excruciating ordeal.
Zhang Yuanqing wasted no words and immediately established a memory share with his avatar.
Shards of memory stripped of spiritual corruption flickered through his mind like bolts of lightning. From among those fragmented recollections, he caught hold of a crucial piece of information:
Deep in an ancient mountain pool, an extraordinarily gorgeous blonde woman soaked lazily in the icy water. Her beauty defied description. She was stark naked, her skin fairer than snow, her figure lush and captivating. The water reached just to her chest, revealing the clear contour of her supple, milky cleavage, while glimpses of pale porcelain shimmered beneath the surface.
Yet because these were merely memory fragments, they carried no active influence of "Charm"; otherwise, Zhang Yuanqing would have already been consumed by burning desire.
Perched upon the woman's shoulder was a boy just as naked, bearing two pairs of snow-white wings upon his back like an adorable little angel.
"Cupid," the beautiful woman said, stroking the boy's head with a sigh. "The God of Light is unaffected by my charm. His heart belongs only to Laurel; he has room for no other woman."
Cupid knitted his faint brows and huffed, "Mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, adored by every man in existence! Only that God of Light is haughty and arrogant—he even berated me once!
"Why fret over a single God of Light, Mother? You already have Father, don't you?"
The beautiful, elegant woman shook her head slowly.
"It isn't the same!
"Your father is the most valiant of gods, a mighty champion who guards the order of the world. However, if I wish to accommodate the Primordial God and become the true Mother Goddess, I must obtain 'status.' Your father's divine rank is insufficient."
Cupid remained defiant. "If Father's rank isn't enough, you could turn to the God King. The God King is the mightiest of all deities."
The woman offered a faint smile. "Eriga is the God King's child, yet even the God King will not do."
"Could the God of Light really grant you that 'status'? He isn't even the God King's equal."
"Rank is not simply a matter of power. The 'status' I desire is a form of standing, a rank superior to that of gods. I do not know if the God of Light can grant it to me, but I wish to try, because..." The woman's tone turned solemn.
"He is the servant of the Sun."
Chapter 946