DNDAS

Chapter 69: Merged

1500 years was too long. The majority of the people that now lived at this place were the descendants of those who had migrated here and survived by a fluke. They too had gradually forgotten what their ancestors had done, as well as the oath that had been made.

Fu Li held up the night pearl and studied the mural from start to end. The last picture was of the divine dragon bursting forth from the water, soaring into the highest of the Heavens as humans knelt on the ground in worship. Perhaps the humans of that time would still remember this divine dragon and prostrate themselves in front of him a thousand years later.

However, to humans, 1500 years was too long, so long that all could be forgotten.

The mural was so ugly that it was laughable. There was no sense of beauty to be said and the body proportions lacked harmony; the heads were big and the bodies small. There was completely no attention paid to how they looked – they looked like child's graffiti. Fu Li touched the humans kneeling in the mural. A chunk fell off the stone that had already been eroded by wind.

"Southern Liang, Fifteenth Year. Five villages suffered flood damage, but were fortunate to be rescued by the divine dragon. None in the five villages was harmed. The divine dragon passed on from exhaustion, saddening all villages. Divine advice was sought – burying the divine dragon in the water and trapping its divine bones would prevent its divine soul from scattering. With this letter, we warn the later generations – our service of the divine dragon must not end. Established Southern Liang, Eighteenth Year."

The Liang Kingdom of the Southern Dynasties...

Based on the time period, the fifteenth year of Southern Liang should be 516 CE. It had taken three years to completely do up the mural in the cave, which was also to say that these villagers had died at the hands of roving bandits in the second year after the completion of the mural.

There was no heroism, no emotion in the deaths of these two to three hundred people. Their death was a silent one. There were no records of them throughout the long course of history.

Fu Li gently touched the words on the mural. He turned towards Gong Fu. The stifled and sad feeling in his heart couldn't be expressed in words. If even he was in such a state, how complex was Gong Fu's emotions?

He had hated these humans for 1500 years, but discovered at the end that they had died for his sake while he had suffered endless imprisonment within the water. 'He' had indeed revived, but had not flown into the sky as a divine dragon. Instead, he was an evil cultivator that crawled out of the bottom of the ocean for the purpose of vengeance.

Fate made fools of people.

Fu Li hadn't understood the meaning contained in these five gentle words. Only today did he finally grasp its meaning. These five words were too somber, so somber that it smothered breath.

Gong Fu stretched out a pale finger and gently touched the divine dragon flying among auspicious clouds in the last image. The stone wall was ice-cold. Under Gong Fu's touch, the divine dragon turned into fine powder bit by bit, leaving only a sunken vacant space.

"Gong Fu daren?" Fu Li watched the mural slowly vanish. He wanted to say a few words of persuasion, but was stopped by Zhuang Qing.

Zhuang Qing shook his head at him. Nobody could differentiate between right and wrong in this intertwining of gratitude and grudges. Outsiders had even less right to interfere.

Image after image vanished under Gong Fu's hands. Gong Fu moved very slowly. He seemed to be carving these drawings into his heart before slowly eroding it. The humans of this era had long lost the need to be rescued by others. They were capable of saving themselves. Why then did he have to let these things remain only for them to be interpreted as myths by people who were not in the know?