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“No need to call me senior, young man. If you pass this trial, you will be the new lord of Veluriyam Capital. All that perplexes you about this realm will be made plain then. When that time comes, I will be your subordinate as well. Why then, should you call me senior?”

Jiang Chen blinked. “Were you Great Divine Veluriyam’s servant, senior?”

“Quite so. Among the six palaces, I am the only guardian who was the great divine’s loyal servant from the beginning. The others were... ‘invited’... through various methods.” Xia Tianze couldn’t help chuckling when he said the word ‘invited’. Clearly, the great divine hadn’t done so with courtesy in every case.

Any underhanded methods though, were understandable at the time. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Jiang Chen knew some of this. He had fostered good rapport with all five of the previous guardians, and had been informed obliquely of how they had come to reside in their respective demesnes.

Honored Master P’eng, for example, had been ‘swindled’. Lured into a competition with the great divine for some inexplicable reason, he had lost utterly and been subjected to the task of eternally overseeing his palace.

It was hard to say how the guardians felt now about all of that, though. From how Jiang Chen had heard them talk about their experiences, they bore only the slightest grudges against Great Divine Veluriyam – and more due to the fact that they had been fooled than anything else.

However, the great divine had also used an unknown power to preserve their lives, sealing them away agelessly within the six palaces.

No matter how much time passed in the outside world, they were immortally unchanging. Time did not ravage their forms.

“Well, then. If you can’t guess yourself, let me elucidate you. I feel a vague aura from you, something that leads me to believe you may just be the future leader the great divine himself foresaw.” Xia Tianze’s firmness was hard to argue with.

Not that Jiang Chen wanted to either. Wasn’t this the reason he had come to the Six Palaces of Heritage in the first place? For the Veluriyam Pagoda’s secrets?

The Xia senior’s words confirmed Jiang Chen’s suspicions. There was a great mystery here, as was there in the human domain at large.

“Please enlighten me, senior,” said Jiang Chen.

“Ah, I told you not to call me that. It doesn’t befit my station,” complained Xia Tianze.

“Seniority still applies. As of right now, I’m not yet the future lord of the Veluriyam Pagoda.” Jiang Chen was quite stubborn in his own right.

“Fine. I wouldn’t have guessed you were so obstinate. Perhaps that is part of the reason you were able to reach this place,” sighed Xia Tianze. “To speak of the Veluriyam Pagoda necessitates beginning with the ancient Veluriyam Capital. In that time, it was the site of Great Divine Veluriyam’s heritage and one of the three leaders of the human race. In fact, it served largely as the supreme leader.”

Xia Tianze’s tone was filled with respect as he mentioned Great Divine Veluriyam. Evidently, the servant blindly respected his late master.

“In the ancient demon-sealing war, Great Divine Veluriyam strategized and participated in almost every battle against demonkind. As a result, Veluriyam Capital bore the brunt of their return firepower. The strongest of the demons, the celestial demons’ sovereign, was sealed by the great divine himself–just barely so, sadly at the cost of his own life.” Xia Tianze grew very mournful.

“One moment please, senior,” Jiang Chen interrupted with some astonishment.

“What?” Xia Tianze paused.

“Do you speak of one of their lords? Or are you certain it was the demons’ sovereign?” asked Jiang Chen.

“The sovereign, of course! The celestial demons had many lords, but an especially strong one among them served as heir designate to the celestial demon sovereign. Even he was nothing before Great Divine Veluriyam. The sovereign himself, on the other hand, was a nightmarish opponent to deal with. Several other powerful human cultivators participated in the sealing as well: six in total, including the great divine. Five died, while the lone survivor was grievously injured.”

What?

Jiang Chen was shaken to his core. If Great Divine Veluriyam had been the foremost leader of mankind, he would’ve been at the peak of his generation.

He’d needed five helpers, four of whom had perished in the attempt, to seal the celestial demon sovereign away...? To simply seal him away...?

He felt his throat tighten. The demonic invasion had been tremendously fearsome beyond all imagining. No wonder the ancient demon-sealing war had been so disastrous.

This was ten times more dreadful than the surviving modern of accounts depicted it as.

“The ancient seniors’ noble spirits are profoundly admirable,” he praised from the bottom of his heart. To walk straight into danger while being completely aware of it...

In any time, in any world, there existed a small group of people who possessed dignified and virtuous souls that their mundane peers could not understand. They sacrificed themselves, knowing full well the ultimate cost.

Not out of indifference to their own lives, but a desire to protect what they saw as more important.

Most mortals were weak and pathetic existences.

These rose above out of that frailty, burning with their own brand of magnificence and grandeur.

Great Divine Veluriyam had been such a man. The ancient demon-sealing war had relied on such men and women to preserve the human domain’s continued existence and heritage.

Without their extraordinary sacrifices, the humans of Divine Abyss might have fallen into eternal slavery to the demons, their own heritages extinguished entirely.

Truly, they had undertaken and succeeded at a historic endeavor!

Xia Tianze was greatly moved. “The great divine had great foresight. He planned long and hard for that battle, foreseeing his own death in the process. Because of this, he built the Veluriyam Pagoda and the Six Palaces of Heritage ahead of time, making these and other arrangements on mankind’s and his own heritage’s behalf. Young man, the Veluriyam Capital you see right now is completely different from the city of yore.”

Jiang Chen accepted this statement. For the current Veluriyam Capital, the pagoda was only a symbol. Its real ruler was Sacred Peafowl Mountain.

Aside from the lone pagoda, nothing remained of its ancient predecessor.

He surmised that the latter’s heritage and ultimate secret was contained in these Six Palaces of Heritage.