Under the night sky.
Feng Qi stepped onto land again, his feet sinking into the soft sand.
He couldn't remember how many days he had been swimming in the sea.
Now standing on solid ground, it all felt unreal, like the ground beneath him wasn't quite there, too soft to hold his weight.
But after a few steps, his body adjusted.
That odd floating feeling vanished.
Behind him, Xiao You and the others followed him onto the shore.
Having not touched the ground for so long, Po Jia staggered a bit, struggling to steady himself.
Lei Ting and Taihang also landed.
Compared to Po Jia, they seemed more relaxed.
Only Xiao You stayed floating in midair, not wanting to walk at all.
Feng Qi looked toward the island.
There wasn't much greenery here, just strange, jagged rocks scattered around. Countless firefly-like creatures rested on the rocks, lighting up the whole island.
As they moved forward, the startled fireflies rose into the air, spreading like a wildfire across the sky. Soon, the entire island was filled with their glowing dance, a spectacular sight.
They stepped past the rocky area, going deeper, and Feng Qi saw a lot of odd statues.
These statues were all carved from stone.
No one knew how many years they'd stood here. Time had worn them down—many were weathered to the point where their faces couldn't be seen.
Each statue was different, but most had a silver snake-like mark carved into their chest.
Moving on, they came across a ruined building.
Feng Qi stepped inside and realized it was some kind of temple.
At the front were many sacrificial altars, each with a jade statue standing before it.
Time had dulled the jade, and many statues were broken.
Broken stones lay scattered around the temple. Feng Qi looked up and saw the roof had caved in, leaving a huge hole through which the "glorious galaxy" above could be seen.
The temple wasn't big, and they finished looking around quickly.
Not staying long, Feng Qi led Xiao You and the others deeper into the island.
From everything he saw along the way, he could tell there had once been a civilization here.
Maybe war, maybe migration, maybe some disaster... whatever it was, this island now had no living races left. Otherwise, there would still be signs of life, and these old ruins and statues wouldn't be so abandoned.
Time had nearly erased all traces of the people who once lived here.
As they went further, the broken buildings became more common. From these collapsed structures, Feng Qi could faintly imagine how prosperous this place used to be.
When he reached the center of the island, he was stunned.
Metal wreckage lay everywhere. Though rusted by time, the sheer amount of it showed how advanced this civilization had been.
At the end of the wreckage stood a tall, square building.
A soft silver glow radiated from around it. An ancient formation still flickered weakly, drawing in light from the stars.
Feng Qi walked forward. Looking down, he could make out ancient runes etched into the metal wreckage beneath his feet. Many metal tubes, like wires, connected the ruins.
These old things reminded Feng Qi of robots.
Curious, Feng Qi stepped into the tall building at the end.
Inside, jade pillars, each about three meters wide, stood in neat rows. In the center, a spiraling staircase led downwards.
He walked to the edge and looked down, but the deep black below swallowed his sight.
"Could there be a trap down there? Maybe it'll refine us when we enter," Taihang suddenly spoke, breaking his silence.
"Dog, that's just something you'd do. Stop thinking everything's a scheme," Lei Ting shot him a disdainful look, full of scorn.
Taihang, clearly annoyed, nodded but didn't argue back.
Even though he was part of the team now, Taihang still saw himself as the lowest member and never fought with anyone.
Especially when facing Feng Qi, his face was always full of flattery.
"Boss, should we go down and check it out? Maybe there's a miracle item waiting for us," Xiao You said seriously.
"Forget miracles, I'd be happy if there's just some treasure," Feng Qi replied, a bit helpless at her naivety.
They started down the spiraling stairs into the depths of the building. Along the way, the murals carved into the walls caught Feng Qi's attention.
To see them clearly, he slowed his steps.
The murals showed a race with a silver coiled serpent mark carved into their left chest. They worshipped the bright silver moon in the sky of their domain field as their totem. The silver coiled serpent mark on their chest was adapted from the patterns on the moon.
Just like how ancient people, gazing at the moon, thought the surface looked like Wu Gang chopping the laurel tree.
Or like a jade rabbit pounding medicine.
When the people of this island looked up at the full moon, they believed it was a silver serpent coiled there and took it as their tribal totem.
It was clear this race had a long and ancient history.
Races that still worshipped totems as their origin were rare in all his years of wandering.
According to the murals, after they started worshipping the totem, several warring tribes nearby gradually stopped fighting and united.
That's how the Silver Serpent Clan was born.
The Silver Serpent Clan described in the murals didn't practice any cultivation techniques, nor did they have any advanced technology. They lived like a primitive tribe, surviving by hunting domain beasts in the oldest ways.
As he continued downward, the murals changed.
You could see the Silver Serpent Clan began to grow. They learned to plant spiritual plants and raise domain beasts.
As their civilization progressed, food sources increased. With basic needs met, the population of the Silver Serpent Clan exploded.
Further down, the murals showed the first major crisis in their development.
An invasion from an outside race.
The invaders were depicted as twisted and monstrous, brutally slaughtering members of the Silver Serpent Clan and stealing the resources they had gathered.
The clan suffered heavy losses from this war.
But this battle awakened a strong sense of crisis in them.
With their numbers greatly reduced, the Silver Serpent Clan started to seek ways to become stronger.
It was during this time that their first pioneer priest emerged.
He developed the first cultivation technique for the Silver Serpent Clan, allowing them to absorb the moonlight shed by the "Silver Serpent God" and refine it with spiritual energy to nourish their bodies.
This rough cultivation technique marked the beginning of the Silver Serpent Clan's rise.
After that, the clan began to grow rapidly.
The old system where men hunted and women farmed, raised animals, and children was abandoned. Their social structure became more defined.
At that time, the High Priest held supreme authority, seen as the earthly agent of the Silver Serpent God, its most faithful servant.
Every member of the Silver Serpent Clan, regardless of gender, would receive blessings from the priesthood at the age of 10, which would decide their future role within the tribe.
This stage of the Silver Serpent Clan was marked by strong unity, and their combat strength skyrocketed.
Progress in their civilization also brought new ideas.
Some began to doubt the existence of the Silver Serpent God.
The clan fell into internal conflict, facing its second extinction crisis.
The civil war dragged on. The murals showed corpses everywhere, countless lives lost due to differences in belief.
In the end, the faction that worshipped the Silver Serpent God won.
The Silver Serpent Clan finally entered a period of peace, and their civilization continued to grow.
The later murals recorded the growth of the Silver Serpent Clan.
They explored ways to use resources, expanded their research into cultivation methods, reformed their social structure... As the clan developed rapidly, their population reached 500,000.
Their third crisis came from the growing demand for resources due to population growth. For the first time, the Silver Serpent Clan stepped beyond their territory and began expanding outward.
During this period, the Silver Serpent Clan experienced glory but were also forced back to their domain field several times.
In the worst of these setbacks, nearly the entire priesthood died in battle, and their social order nearly collapsed.
But the resilient Silver Serpent Clan survived once again.
With the clan's growth, new channels for obtaining resources opened, and they developed in leaps and bounds.
Many scholars emerged during this time.
They began studying how the world worked, exploring the origins of life and the future path of their race.
At this point, the priesthood no longer held absolute power.
The first clan king was born.
The priesthood became more of a symbol of the old order but was still respected by all members of the Silver Serpent Clan, serving as one of the institutions responsible for maintaining internal stability.
The clan's development had now fully entered the realm of civilization.
The Silver Serpent Clan enjoyed an era of flourishing diversity.
There were more than 200 professions in the clan, and each one's duties were clearly carved into the murals.
During this period, the Silver Serpent Clan formally embarked on a path of conquest.
To gain more resources and territory, building their combat strength became the top priority in the clan's development. Every member of the Silver Serpent Clan took pride in joining the war units, expanding the clan's lands.
The murals didn't show how much time had passed, but Feng Qi could sense how many years it must have taken for the Silver Serpent Clan to reach this point.
Their rapid rise, however, reached a turning point in the next part of the murals.
The founding of the Silver Serpent Empire and the vast expansion of its territory marked an era of rapid development for this power.
But with growth came new crises.
As time passed, the Silver Serpent Empire became bloated, and it could take years for orders from the clan king to reach the frontiers.
With each step of expansion, the seeds of collapse were being sown.
The first crisis of collapse came from external threats.
At that time, the Silver Serpent Clan was strong, but there were still even stronger forces outside.
These forces had natural advantages over the Silver Serpent Clan, born with superior bloodline potential. From the moment they were born, they already had the ticket to becoming powerful. The Silver Serpent Clan's foundation was completely outclassed.
Facing these truly powerful races, the Silver Serpent Clan lost again and again.
Massive resources were funneled to the frontlines, but the front could no longer sustain the rear through war. The development of the Silver Serpent Clan entered a vicious cycle.
To solve this problem, the scholars of the Silver Serpent Clan began researching how to build and grow their combat power despite their weaker bloodline potential.
Many schools of thought emerged during this time.
The most promising of these was called the "War Machine" school.
Scholars of this school dedicated themselves to developing war engineering weapons, aiming to create powerful war machines that could turn the tide at the front, letting machines fight instead of warriors against these powerful races.
During the years when the Silver Serpent Empire was steadily retreating, the war school grew rapidly with the backing of clan resources.
Finally, foreign invaders reached the capital island of the Silver Serpent Clan, and the crisis of annihilation arrived.
That day, endless seawater surged in from all directions, flooding much of the Silver Serpent Clan's territory. Many traces of their civilization sank to the ocean floor.
The doomsday flood had come.
In the murals, that day marked the last hope of the Silver Serpent Clan—the war corps was deployed.
Countless war machines and puppets faced off against the invaders.
Even though the mural's style was abstract, Feng Qi could still see how fierce the battle was.
Countless machine wrecks fell from the sky, the heavens burning red like fire.
By the end of the battle, nearly all of the war machines forged from the clan's deepest resources were destroyed, but the Silver Serpent Clan won their final victory through this sacrifice.
However, the price they paid was irreversible.
The Silver Serpent Empire, already on the verge of collapse, could no longer function and fell apart completely.
The territory remained, but it was divided into separate powers.
The former royal capital still stood, but it no longer held absolute control over the various Silver Serpent factions.
The Silver Serpent Clan fractured into multiple racial powers.
Over time, each faction developed its own distinct civilization.
Some continued to grow through cultivation. Their physical traits, shaped by different cultivation methods, began to diverge from the original Silver Serpent Clan.
The description in the murals suddenly reminded Feng Qi of something Old Mist once said when talking about domain races.
He said that many races that seemed completely unrelated might actually share the same origin.
For example, after a race collapses, the surviving members scatter, migrating to different environments and practicing different cultivation paths. This would lead to changes in their physical features over time.
Especially when it comes to different cultivation techniques.
At its core, cultivation nourishes the body and evolves one's life form.
Stretch that over 100,000 years, or even 1,000,000 years.
Two different cultivation methods would definitely produce what seem like two entirely different races.
After all, these two races would no longer be connected or interbreed, so drifting apart was inevitable.
Cultivation methods, living environments, and racial culture… all these were factors that could change a race.
The Silver Serpent Clan in the murals was going through such division and transformation.
During this period, some factions migrated due to foreign invasions, others collapsed due to internal conflicts.
The grand Silver Serpent Empire became a thing of the past.
As the fragmented Silver Serpent Clan followed different paths of growth, they took on new names.
The Silver Star Clan, Silver Serpent Clan, Silver Soar Clan… Silver Moon Clan.
When Feng Qi saw the familiar Silver Moon emblem, he froze.
Below the emblem, there was a brief introduction to the Silver Moon Clan.
The murals described the Silver Moon Clan as the last glory of the Silver Serpent Empire, the rightful inheritor of the War Machine school.
They held the knowledge of crafting war puppets and war engineering machines, and they were the last to leave the Silver Serpent Empire.
At the end of the murals, the remaining members of the priesthood still held their ground in the ruined royal capital. They carved these murals with spirit patterns, using this as a way to remember their former glory.
It all began with the priesthood, and in the end, it was the priesthood who wrote the final chapter of the Silver Serpent Empire.
In the last mural, the priests stood before a massive half-finished war machine. They stood on the island drowned by the sea, looking toward the silver moon, offering their final prayers.
Their eyes were full of hope, but also regret.
This final mural was visually stunning, and to Feng Qi, it felt like a group of elderly men, standing alone beneath the starry sky.
Even though they could no longer move forward, they still blessed the scattered descendants, wishing them a bright future as they carried on the legacy of the Silver Serpent Empire.