The process is quite similar to that of the Eternal Fierce Sun, continuing to provide devout faith to Shire.

But it isn't about "admiring the Goddess Shire"; it's about fearing the day when the Dark Night Goddess might truly awaken from the river of time. Seeing that the higher-ups still arranged for people to believe in Her, She might show a bit of leniency.

After all, Goddess Shire doesn't have the energy to eliminate every believer, but eliminating the higher-ups and their descendants is still very easy.

To avoid being implicated, they specifically left Shire's most loyal devotees here, creating for them an ecological park.

And then...

Those higher-ups, with a thousand sins, sealed everyone in this large relic and exiled the entire area to the shadow plane.

They feared these so-called "fanatics" later regretted it and stopped believing in the Dark Night Goddess.

In such a case, they wouldn't even have a chance to find a way to plead for the Goddess's forgiveness and would be directly eliminated.

This area later became known as the Shadow Country.

Of course, as to why the high-ranking members of the Dark Night Church didn't choose to join the Shadow Country themselves...

Isn't it obvious?

After tasting the sweet fruit of power, expecting these people to lay down the fruit in their hands is like killing them.

However, the residents of the Shadow Country remained sealed for many years, never able to successfully leave the area.

Later, to continue the bloodline of civilization in their vast but resource-limited world, the people of the Shadow Country committed an incredibly insane act.

The owner of the Shadow Temple declared herself the Master of the Dark Night.

She replaced the statue of the Dark Night Goddess with her own image, beginning the path of stealing the Dark Night Goddess's faith.

At the same time, as the strongest in the Shadow Country, she began to internally initiate memory erasures.

Through daily memory cleansings, she successfully twisted the majority of people into another form.

Every once in a while, the Shadow Country needed to perform a targeted purge of its excess adult population.

They had to ingest lethal poison and die under the gaze of the crowd.

This was called the "Holy Judgment" in the Shadow Country.

It was something the Shadow Country people were supposed to rejoice in, a reward to return to the Goddess's embrace.

These Shadow Country people, whose memories had been erased from a young age, believed so firmly.

And no one knew how much time had passed, but the Emperor never emerged from the temple again.

If it weren't for daily orders still being conveyed from the temple, many Shadow Country people would have thought the Emperor had died.

During this period, there were also some Shadow Country people who sensed something was wrong, broke free from the brainwashing, and began to rebel against the Emperor.

But under the Emperor's absolute military control, all rebellions vanished like smoke.

Until one day, outside the Shadow Country, an outsider inadvertently stepped into this twisted country.

That person was called Rudelson.

Yes, the very Mad King of the past.

The Mad King deeply sensed the distortion of the Shadow Country and decided to help the rebels of the Shadow Country overthrow the Emperor.

However, the Emperor's guard was too formidable.

At that time, Rudelson was no match.

The reformers who had hidden themselves decisively passed on various Secret Techniques of the Shadow Country to Rudelson, after discovering his intelligence and remarkable capacity for learning.

Among them were even many Secret Techniques considered heretical content by the Dark Night Goddess Church back then.

Later, Rudelson quickly grew during his mad acquisition of knowledge and overthrew the then-Emperor.

But what disappointed everyone was that when they led the troops into the Emperor's bedchamber, they discovered a shocking scene.

The Emperor sitting on the throne had already died countless years ago.

What remained on the throne was a skeleton and a mechanical intelligence cube continuously executing the skeleton's orders from when it was alive.

As they broke in, the cube relayed the Emperor's final words.

She expressed her hope that after overthrowing her rule, the successors would continue to sit on the throne, becoming the evil dragon after her, waiting for the next millennium's brave ones to overthrow it.

The Emperor truthfully expressed her thoughts.

The Shadow Country, which could no longer expand outward, had limited resources.

If the population was allowed to grow unchecked, soon the entire Shadow Country would fall into a situation of resource shortages and cannibalism.

The Emperor did not want such things to happen, so she chose to raise the butcher's knife herself.

This way, the successors had a monarch to pledge allegiance to and an enemy to hate.

In this world exiled to the shadow plane and cut off from the world, the Shadow Country would continue its lineage as much as possible until the seal was broken.

——Until the day they successfully stepped into the Shadow Country.

Rudelson was immensely shocked by this.

The rebels were also deeply silent.

In the end, the most trustworthy existence among the rebels sat on the throne, continuing this endless torment.

However, this time they had a new idea.

This group of people began to research the foundation for posthumous resurrection based on the physique of the Shadow Country people.

Rudelson, unable to leave this country temporarily, simply joined in the research.

Later, the research achieved a breakthrough.

Based on the undead curse of the Shadow Country people, it was developed.

But this was based on the Shadow Country people who had survived in the shadow plane for an extended period.

Although they couldn't go out, one generation after another, bathing in the power of shadows for long, was already physically different from humans.

The undead curse allowed Shadow Country people to continue living in the state of the living.

Once this was confirmed, the second Emperor chose to make the first Emperor's matters public.

They decided to depict the story of the Shadow Country in murals, passing it down to successive generations.

From then on, the population cap of the Shadow Country was locked.

No longer would people be allowed to reproduce with one another.

Reproducers had to prepare for the possibility that their offspring could face the "Holy Judgment."

Of course.

If both husband and wife were prepared to leave the future to their children, they could lift the undead curse and enjoy their final time with their children.

Later.

In front of the statue of the Dark Night Goddess, there appeared a genuine batch of people who believed in the Goddess.

Of course, that statue had already transformed into the appearance of the first Emperor.

To the people of the Shadow Country, the Shadow Empress, who maintained the initial stability of the Shadow Country, was the true Dark Night Goddess.

Fifty years passed after that.

The residents of the Shadow Country noticed a loosening of the seals.

Some wanted to test whether the boundary of the seal now allowed for exit.

Rudelson volunteered to be part of the first exploratory team.

Unfortunately, the entire exploratory team went and never returned.

People could only conclude that the time for the Shadow Country to emerge had not yet arrived.

Time passed like this for another ten years.

Suddenly one day, people discovered newcomers in the Shadow Country.

Everyone gathered around, and soon someone realized that among those people was Rudelson, who had previously disappeared for a long time.

They laughed heartily and rushed forth to embrace him.

However, what awaited them was a brutal massacre.

Rudelson, inexplicably powerful along with the others who had entered the Shadow Country, crushed all the resistance forces of the Shadow Country.

There they conducted one inhumane magic experiment after another.

Later, when there were barely any living people left in the Shadow Country, he quietly departed again.

The remaining Shadow Country people dwindled to barely a count on ten fingers.

With resentment, they carved the final scene onto the wallpaper and, within a few years, passed away due to various reasons.

On the last of the murals, someone carved Rudelson's menacing visage, along with a group of attackers.

In the mural, the attackers were conspicuously wearing the standard Mage robes of the Lokeshi Empire's Mage Academy.

This made everyone's scalp tingle.

This was also why General Locke wanted to keep this information hidden.

No one wants to associate with the Mad King now.

Why did the Emperor insist on killing Rudelson back then?

Largely because Rudelson was from the Ense Empire.

If they now told the outside world that there were connections with certain people from the Lokeshi Empire back then...

Firstly, it would damage the Lokeshi Empire's image on the continent.

Secondly, it might even force them to bear the brunt for the Ense Empire.

General Locke genuinely did not want to see such a scene.

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