Chapter 1487: The Shrine and the Spirit Tablets

This shrine was the most mysterious area of the entire Opera Path Ancient Treasury.

In the past, only the previous Red King was qualified to enter the shrine. Although Chen Ling had been here before, he had only taken a hurried look... In his memory, the Red King seemed to spend most of his time alone in this small shrine.

Even the four senior brothers and sisters, who were the artifact spirits of the Opera Path Ancient Treasury, had never been inside.

Chen Ling straightened his red-bottomed, black-patterned opera robe and stepped inside.

The shrine was small, but the interior furnishings were exquisite and elegant. On the central altar, the incense in the burner constantly emitted curling blue smoke, and behind it, five spirit tablets stood quietly.

On each tablet, the same few large characters were written:

——【Opera Actor Without a Name】.

Last time, Chen Ling had only looked from afar, but now that he walked closer, he discovered that there were subtle differences in the fonts on these five tablets... These five tablets were written by five different people.

Chen Ling’s gaze fell on the last tablet.

He remembered very clearly that when he came last time, this tablet was not there.

This fifth tablet was most likely placed here by the Red King himself before he ascended to heaven...

Chen Ling gently picked up this tablet. The material of the tablet was somewhat special, cool to the touch, but at the same time, Chen Ling could feel a familiar aura sealed within it. It was like a blazing sun frozen beneath a thick layer of ice; although no heat was being emitted for the moment, Chen Ling could clearly "see" its existence.

“This is...” Chen Ling’s fingertips gently rubbed the surface of the tablet.

“A backup plan you left for me?”

If Chen Ling hadn’t guessed wrong, the fifth-generation Red King had sealed a large part of his power into this tablet before ascending to heaven.

Chen Ling felt the faint aura of the Opera God Path, and a sense of complexity welled up in his heart again...

He glanced at the table to the side, picked up a soft cloth, and gently wiped the surface of the tablet... The Red King had no tombstone, only a spirit tablet. Chen Ling couldn’t go to a grave to pay his respects; the only thing he could do was to keep his tablet as clean as possible.

After an unknown amount of time, when the tablet was completely spotless, Chen Ling slowly placed it back on the altar.

Afterward, Chen Ling’s gaze turned to the other four tablets.

Acting on the principle that since he had already cleaned one, he might as well clean them all, Chen Ling wiped the first four tablets one by one.

To Chen Ling’s surprise, apart from the fifth-generation Red King’s tablet, the tablets of the first four generations of Red Kings also contained some sealed power, though perhaps due to the long passage of time, not much of this power remained. Moreover, the material of the first-generation Red King’s tablet seemed different; it felt as warm and smooth as jade to the touch.

In the fourth-generation Red King’s tablet, Chen Ling sensed the familiar aura of "Nuo," and the image of "Yao," whom he had seen in the Red King’s memories, surfaced in his mind.

It was a very strange feeling.

Wiping the tablets was like having a silent conversation with the Red Kings of the past; Chen Ling could vaguely sense the personality of each one of them.

Chen Ling’s gaze then fell on the first three tablets... If the fifth-generation Red King was Chen Yan and the fourth-generation was Yao, then what was the background of these first three generations?

The world Chen Ling was in was already the one that had developed most smoothly after the efforts of the fourth and fifth generations to correct it. Chen Ling found it hard to imagine how they had managed to reverse the era and restart the world in the chaotic and disorderly worlds of the first three generations.

Especially the first-generation Red King; no one had brought him into the Twilight Society, no one had guided his growth step by step, there were no era archives, and not even the concept of "reversing the era to restart the world"... Perhaps even the Hibernation Plan and the Human Domain had not yet appeared.

This was a hellish start that Chen Ling couldn’t even imagine.

Chen Ling wanted to know more about these first three generations of Red Kings, but unfortunately, the only thing he could do was wipe their tablets and guess their personalities through the little power remaining in them...

Looking at the five identical 【Opera Actor Without a Name】 inscriptions, Chen Ling couldn’t help but ask:

“You all clearly had your own names... why are you all ‘Opera Actor Without a Name’?”

The curling blue smoke drifted silently;

the five tablets stood on the altar, silent and still.

Chen Ling didn’t say anything more. He continued to explore the shrine. As he pulled open the drawer next to the altar, a clattering sound of parts colliding rang out...

Seeing what was in the drawer, Chen Ling’s expression turned strange.

“Dao Foundation Fragments?”

In the simple wooden drawer, fragments radiating the aura of the God Path were displayed. The moment they were exposed to the air, their colorful glow instantly illuminated the entire shrine as bright as day.

Chen Ling remembered that the memories the Red King left him contained information about how to restart the world.

There were two necessary conditions for restarting the world. One was to collect the corpses of the Nine Lords and unify all the Red Star wish power, injecting it into the corresponding era archive. This step was the most important; it was equivalent to maximizing the power of the Lord of Ruoshui, creating a Ruoshui Domain capable of enveloping the entire Earth’s causal spacetime, thereby allowing the "archive" to overwrite reality.

The second condition was to import the information of the existing world into the archived world. No matter how strong the power of the Lord of Ruoshui was, it couldn’t reshape the Fourteen God Paths. The God Path Ancient Treasuries contained all the civilization information in history; only by transferring the power of the God Paths to the archived world could the archived world be considered truly complete... And to achieve this, one had to collect all the Dao Foundation Fragments of the God Path Ancient Treasuries.

Missing even a single Dao Foundation Fragment meant that the corresponding God Path would not appear in the next world, and human history would become incomplete and fragmented.

Since the establishment of the Twilight Society, members had been looking for opportunities to collect Dao Foundation Fragments from different Ancient Treasuries. The fragment of the Soldier God Path was one Chen Ling had retrieved himself...

Chen Ling took stock of the number of Dao Foundation Fragments in the drawer and fell into deep thought.

Ten pieces.

No... counting the Dao Foundation treasure of the Force Path Ancient Treasury in Chen Ling’s hand—that is, the bone-scraping knife with centipede legs—it should be eleven.

Among the fourteen conventional God Paths, the Dao Foundation Fragments of the Medical God Path, the Puppet God Path, and the Witch God Path had not yet been collected...

Well, the Medical Path Ancient Treasury was in the South Sea Domain, and the Puppet Path Ancient Treasury was in the Xuanyu Domain. Both of these major domains had only recently been destroyed. Before that, both Ancient Treasuries were firmly held by the Paper Kite Rescue Association and the Esoteric Sect.

Although the Chess Path Ancient Treasury and the Calligraphy Path Ancient Treasury were also in existing domains, the commander of the Deep Blue Knight Order was a member of the Twilight Society, and there was also a young master in the Pu family who was a member of the Twilight Society. With these two, it wouldn’t be too difficult for the Twilight Society to infiltrate the Ancient Treasuries and obtain the fragments.

So far, the Twilight Society had taken all the Dao Foundation Fragments they could get. The remaining ones were either because there was no opportunity or because there was a shortage of manpower.

But why hadn’t the Dao Foundation Fragment of the Witch Path Ancient Treasury been obtained yet?

Hadn’t the Wuji Domain been destroyed long ago?