The black rocks bore white drawings with bold lines, as if they were drawn with ground bone. The drawings were relatively simple and depicted a group of small beings. However, what puzzled Lu Yuan was that these little beings did not have heads that looked like elephants but were normal in appearance, similar to ordinary humans. Lu Yuan's eyes shimmered as he extended his Spiritual Power. Not long after, he found similar white rock paintings nearby.

They appeared to depict the everyday lives of these little beings. It seemed life was quite challenging for them; the drawings repeatedly showed instances of their demise. They died of diseases, floods, falling rocks, hunger, cold, and wild beast attacks...

Lu Yuan continued to search for these white rock paintings. The drawings began to change their tone. He spotted one depicting the little beings kneeling down, praying. The little beings seemed to suffer greatly from various disasters and had reached the brink of extinction. For survival, they held a grand sacrificial ritual. They presented the remaining scarce food from their tribe on the altar, even offering up some of their own as sacrifice.

Then, in the next painting, it showed that the earnest prayers of the little beings were answered by the heavens. A huge head with an elephant trunk and a single eye appeared in the sky. To emphasize the enormity of this head, many small beings were painted at the bottom for reference.

"Elephant God?!" Lu Yuan exclaimed. Is this the origin story of the Elephantman Tribe?

As he suspected, in the subsequent paintings, each of the little beings that participated in the sacrifice began to mutate. Their size started to grow, becoming several times bigger than before. Their normal heads morphed into those resembling elephants. A small number of them even sprouted two heads and four arms.

The mutated beings became incredibly strong and powerful. They feared neither the biting frost nor the raging flame. They did not get washed away by the floods, and boulders from the mountains were easily shattered by their fists. The predators that once saw them as prey then found the roles reversed, becoming easy prey for them instead.

What followed was purely the little beings' celebration. They shattered the caves and dwellings they once lived in and built one Stone Pestle after another on the ground. They also built an incredibly large mountain. They offered various prey to their deity. The already colossal head of the Elephant God in the sky grew larger and larger until its shadow loomed over the entire world. The creatures living on the surface, under the erosion of the Power of Elephant God, became evil and violent. Their appearances started to mutate...

The origin of the Elephant God Secret Realm... Lu Yuan retrieved his gaze from the last painting and looked upward towards the dark, foggy horizon. He now stood at the very top of the Stone Pestle. Some gigantic bones were scattered on the ground, presumably torn from some ferocious beast. These bones, after some kind of special treatment, looked like ancient and crude weapons.

Similar to the Lament Ruins, this depicted the process of a normal world falling under the domination of an Ancient Evil God... It looked like these Ancient Evil Gods each had their own ways of cultivating followers, and these ways were, without exception, brutish and violent...

But... Lu Yuan couldn't help but frown. The question remained: How had this kingdom of an Evil God ended up in its current state? All the Elephantmen went dormant… No, perhaps, it might be more accurate to describe them as having died…

Lu Yuan was reminded of the Elephantmen he had killed, none of whom had flesh-and-blood bodies. Once killed, their bodies would shatter into pieces of rock. They also hardly retained any consciousness. They were merely walking corpses, driven by the slight remains of the Power of Elephant God in their hearts.

And why were these Elephantmen all kneeling before they died? Were they praying for something? The previous Lament Ruins showed something similar. Although I've never been to the third Evil God realm, I can guess it was likely the same. Otherwise, the current world situation would not be dominated by organizations like Yellow Bear exploring Secret Realms. It would be the worldwide extraordinary organizations conducting a protracted war against creatures emerging from the Evil God realms. Just like… just like the scene depicted in the Pot Heaven Secret Realm Mural!

Lu Yuan furrowed his brows, unable to comprehend why all the Ancient Evil Gods had "abandoned" these faith communities they once ruled over. He was very curious about what event had occurred in ancient times that affected these Ancient Evil Gods.

Maybe next time I can ask that lady who likes to bathe in the Netherworld River in my dreams? Lu Yuan pondered. He proceeded to open his profession panel. He saw that with his exploration of the ancient secret, the fusion progress of [Student] and [Ancient Language Expert] had increased from the original 47% to 56%.

This progress was rising quite fast. Lu Yuan was overall very relaxed about the fusion of these two auxiliary professions. The skills unlocked on both profession panels offered increasingly diminishing benefits to him. The fusion into a more robust new profession would be beneficial. Speaking of which, this was his first official profession fusion.

He went on to look at the changes on the [Martial Arts Master (Supernatural)] panel. Just after the recent round of battle, his lv3 [Martial Arts Master (Supernatural)] Experience Points had already reached over one hundred. It wouldn't take long to accumulate four hundred Experience Points and level up to lv4.

The three basic profession skills on the panel—Grandmaster Domain, Dharma, and Universe Qi. Except for Dharma, which he always kept as a trump card and hadn't used, and thus had received no Experience Points increase, the skills Grandmaster Domain and Universe Qi seemed to be leveling up faster than Lu Yuan had expected. This was due to their continuous use in a series of battles, along with the strengthening of the Blood Orb within his body. Their Experience Points had already reached more than fifty and were not far from reaching lv2. By the time all these skills were leveled up to lv3, he might be qualified to unlock the first Core Skill of [Martial Arts Master (Supernatural)], barring any accidents.

Having already mastered one profession, Lu Yuan, who was no longer a novice, clearly understood how to make the most of a profession as quickly as possible.

A better Experience dungeon than the Lament Ruins. Fighting while exploring, with three professions upgrading simultaneously... How exhilarating. Lu Yuan sighed, leapt off the Stone Pestle, and darted rapidly towards the distant foggy area, leaving a blurred shadow on the plain.

After a short while, another black Stone Pestle appeared in front of Lu Yuan. Similar to the previous one, a group of Elephantmen were kneeling around it. Without any hesitation, Lu Yuan's muscles and bones roared, his organs glowed, the Blood Orb rotated, and he charged forward with Universe Qi that resembled white thunderbolts...

「● ● ●」

BOOM!

A robust figure, emanating intense light, smashed the silver blade glow like a war god and punched a massive Ancient Elephant God's creature on the head. The latter did not make a sound before its mountain-like body exploded on the spot. Before the scattered flesh and blood could explode outwards, they were all taken away by the surging glow raised by his hand.

"Beast Xilin!" Yin Muqing said coldly, looking at the muscular man who had suddenly appeared in front of her. Her face looked a bit unsightly.

"If I hadn't intervened, you might have gotten hurt..." With a short buzz-cut, deep-set eyes, and a scar on his brow, the wild and ruthless-looking man smiled at Yin Muqing, saying in somewhat awkward Sum Country language, "No need to thank me."

"You..." Yin Muqing subconsciously tightened her grip on the silver long knife in her hand, her eyelids twitching slightly, but she swallowed her anger. This powerful opponent ranks twenty places higher than me on the Supernova leaderboard... I don't have the confidence to strike him. The fact that he could easily smash my blade glow just now indicated that both his Light of Spirit and the size and quantity of his Star Caves are far superior to mine.

Yin Muqing looked coldly in the direction of another man covered in glow, who spread his hands helplessly as if to say—"That's just how he is, and he isn't one of us Havel members, so there's nothing I can do."

Yin Muqing snorted. Havel specifically sent two Supernova Members this time, both of whom are stronger than me. With one playing the good cop and the other the bad cop, I'm extremely frustrated but can find no reasonable way to vent it. Even though I was prepared for such encounters in the Secret Realm, this real encounter leaves me feeling very suffocated.

"Let's go!" Yin Muqing took a deep breath and finally chose to leave with a gloomy face.

The group of Flying Bear Generals from Yellow Bear weren't stupid; they could see that the people from Havel were deliberately disrupting their action plan and pace. But if their most formidable member, Supernova Yin Muqing, couldn't do anything about it, then they certainly couldn't either. The members of the Yellow Bear Exploration Team held their frustration in, comforting themselves with the thought, 'The Secret Realm is so vast that it can't be fully explored anyway. It's not a big deal to just go around them.'

「● ● ●」

[Elephant God. Ming King Stance (Supernatural)]: 60%...

Standing amidst the debris on the ground below the Stone Pestle, Lu Yuan checked his gains and progress from this battle and fell into contemplation. Perhaps because I dragged out the recent battle a bit too long, the awakened Elephantmen consumed more energy. As a result, I received less energy. Twenty or so Elephantman hearts, including one from a four-armed Elephantman, only resulted in an 18% increase in Experience progress. It seems I'll need to focus on quick battles from now on. I can't keep thinking about preserving my strength...

Lu Yuan sighed. I had wanted to conserve some of my Blood Orb's energy this time. After all, there were many battles to follow, which is why I was slower in killing. Now it seems that was a bit penny wise and pound foolish. The main thing is that these Elephantmen are not made of flesh and blood. There's no Flesh and Blood Essence to absorb after killing them. Otherwise, I wouldn't need to worry about endurance; I should be getting stronger with each fight... I wonder if I should directly switch to the [Elephant God. Ming King Stance] for the next battle since it doesn't consume much energy.

As he was contemplating, Lu Yuan climbed up the Stone Pestle and continued investigating the drawings on it. These drawings were almost the same as what he had seen on the previous Stone Pestles. They mostly described the origins of the Elephantmen, with some stories specific to their own Stone Pestle Tribe interspersed in-between. For example, on a certain day, their tribe held a small sacrificial ceremony. On another day, their tribe hunted a particularly fierce beast, and so on.

To be honest, this content is quite boring. The Elephantmen's ability to draw and tell stories leaves a lot to be desired. If it weren't for the steady increase in the fusion progress of the [Student] and [Ancient Language Expert] professions, I would've lost interest completely.

As Lu Yuan was skimming through these ordinary, chronicle-like rock paintings mainly to advance his progress, suddenly...

His eyes narrowed. Among the mundane rock paintings, he found something that interested him.

On a certain day, a high-ranking Elephantman came to this tribe.

Its height and body size were three times that of a regular Elephantman and twice that of the tribe leader, a Four-Armed Elephantman.

Moreover, it had three heads and six arms.

When it appeared, Elephantmen from dozens of Stone Pestle Tribes all knelt, welcoming its arrival…

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