This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 212: Hairy blood flourishes

Nie Weiyang stood in the cold refuge hall, his fingertips still tinged with the coolness of the stone keepsake he had touched, but what was colder was a chill that rose from the depths of his soul.

The long and clear story he had just heard gradually faded away; the events remained in his mind, but the emotions were gone.

All of this revealed to him a chilling truth.

The three cycles are not parasitic monsters from outer space.

Although it is unknown how it came to be connected with the Golden God, their initial formation was actually something that came from the collective prayers and faith of countless confused souls inside this planet... something that was forcibly prayed for!

……

...Nie Weiyang raised his hand to cover his face, his knuckles turning even paler from the force.

A mixture of absurdity, anger, and utter speechlessness surged within his chest.

What's wrong with some people?! Do they just have to find something to believe in?! If there's nothing readily available, they just make up one to believe in?!
Now look what's happened! Such a huge pitfall has been dug for those who come after! A scourge capable of destroying everything that exists, and its source is... spiritual emptiness?!

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down and detach himself from his emotions.

Well... maybe we can't entirely blame those people.

In such a desperate and chaotic era, seeking solace for the soul was almost instinctive.

How could they have foreseen that the collective will could distort reality and give birth to such a terrifying entity?

Nie Weiyang shook his head, temporarily suppressing these turbulent thoughts, and began to take stock of the gains from this dungeon.

Besides the usual resources, a large amount of experience, and some equipment with good attributes, there is also a [Beia's Wooden Sword (Replica)]. The item description states that placing it in the material world will create a continuous purification and protection field, the size and duration of which are determined by the energy input.

This is good; I can sleep better from now on.

When he finished packing and turned to walk out of the high hall of the shelter, he found that the area near the exit was quite lively.

Some soldiers who had just completed the dungeon challenge and some ordinary people with strong abilities were gathered together, exchanging their experiences.

Nearby were several historians and narrators who were accompanying the army, quickly taking notes on the information they were dictating.

These people are the historians of the new world.

The long-standing tradition of recording, describing, and preserving history in Chinese civilization has not been interrupted even in these end times.

Apart from the small settlements that had scattered early on, any settlement of a certain size had someone specifically responsible for recording everything that was happening, and the city was no exception.

Nie Weiyang slowed his pace and listened attentively to their discussion.

He soon discovered that these people entered instances on different timelines.

Not everyone went to that distant era when the two religions of heaven and earth were fighting each other. For many, their experiences took place after that time, and in their minds, the era of Bya had long become a vague legend.

However, the accounts of this legendary figure, Baya, in these people's narratives contain significant discrepancies.

In their history, Baya was always a great white mage, never a paladin. Faced with his final choice, he used a powerful and forbidden black magic to save everyone. In other words, the real Baya never truly transcended the limitations of his time. Even just half a century after his death, records of his personality, specific words and deeds, and life details became drastically different, and the discrepancies only increased with time.

“This level of deviation… is a bit illogical,” a middle-aged man with the badge of “Zhu” hanging from his waist, indicating that he was a historian, said with a frown. “For a figure like Bya who profoundly influenced the course of the times, later generations may have emphasis and interpretation in their records of his ideas and specific deeds, but such a fundamental contradiction usually does not appear in the core of his character and major life events.”

"This... doesn't quite conform to the basic laws of information dissemination and memory evolution. Something must have gone wrong..."

"Of course." Nie Weiyang listened quietly, but he couldn't tell them in such a public setting that this might be a problem caused by a 'shift in the definition of boundaries'.

However, one day they will find out all of this, or deduce the relevant information themselves...

Nie Weiyang's gaze swept over the soldiers and survivors who were passionately discussing each story, and then looked at the bewildered historian.

He suddenly realized clearly that this chaotic refuge, which he had locked onto with keywords, was like a two-dimensional piece of time.

If contemporary humanity, as a whole, rereads this history from the perspective of countless individuals, the deviations stemming from time, space, cognition, and even some invisible force are compressed and highlighted, and vividly displayed in an incredibly intuitive way.

Here, history is not a river flowing to the sea, but a complex structure that can be observed from different angles, thus presenting completely different scenes.

What they are seeing now may just be one of the distorted cross-sections.

The real Baya, the white mage who truly protected those behind him, has long been lost in layers of misunderstanding and oblivion. Even Nie Weiyang himself has never seen Baya's true appearance—

Because subjective will is the greatest distortion of external information by human beings.

Last week, there was no second administrator, so there was no way to use "anchor keywords" to target and mine information.

At that time, what people obtained from the Chaos Refuge was only scattered, seemingly random and often contradictory fragmented information, which was difficult to piece together the whole picture, let alone feel the incongruity and heaviness of history being tampered with and distorted layer by layer, as clearly as Nie Weiyang does now.

Even now, Nie Weiyang could feel that among everyone here, he was the only one who clearly and strongly felt such a sense of resonance and... loneliness.

Well, it might be a little lonely.

Nie Weiyang approached the shadows, and just as he stepped onto the lucky charm, he heard a voice rapidly approaching.

Yi Jian ran over quickly, his face bearing his usual slightly irritating grin, and shoved a still-steaming package into his arms.

He raised an eyebrow and squeezed the package. Inside was a warm box that, to his overly acute sense of smell, emitted a strong, spicy, and salty aroma that intensely stimulated his taste buds—and something deeper.

"Old Han and I... cough, Xiao Jiang and I gathered some ingredients together, and we just had the cooks make a pot of it. I'll pack some for you too," Yi Jian said with a smile. "Want to open it and see? I'm actually quite curious to know if eating this will be helpful for you."

Nie Weiyang's other eyebrow also twitched, not just raised, but twitched a little.

He opened the box as instructed.

A rich, spicy aroma wafts towards you.

The box contained a rich, dark red sauce, thick broth, and was filled with dark red blood clots, tender meats, and various side dishes.

This is a bowl of spicy blood curd.

(End of this chapter)