Chapter 1044: Chapter 915: Reactor and Civilization Tombstone

Before the Sea Soul had even docked, Aiven’s Remote Vision had already swept across this vast landmass whose outline resembled a gigantic turtle shell.

To his astonishment, he discovered this was an immense stretch of land covering no less than 8.97 million square kilometers; it would be no exaggeration at all to call it a continent.

Even compared to his own Duchy there was a gap, but not a very large one anymore.

However.

When the King of Sea Monsters, Kraken, eagerly leapt ashore ahead of everyone else and the entire scene in their field of view solidified completely, he suddenly froze in place.

The facts were just like Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, no matter how small the possibility, it will eventually happen and cause the greatest possible damage.

This moment was exactly such a case.

Rumble—!

A surging ripple of power erupted from Kraken in an instant, his terrifying might overturning everything around them; sand, soil, vegetation... all were flung into the air.

Fortunately, Aiven’s Heaven and Earth are One diverted Kraken’s sudden outburst straight up into the sky; otherwise everyone nearby would have gone tumbling along with it.

"Why? Why is it that even those Demigods of later Eras can rely on an indeterminate Status to live until now, yet the clans of Ancient Land Turtles have already been completely wiped out?!"

Once this land had fully emerged from an indeterminate Status, he easily perceived the nature of the ground beneath his feet, and could not help losing control of his emotions.

There was no doubt that this land had indeed been condensed from matter drawn out of the void by Ancient Land Turtles.

Yet this was not a homeland where his kind still lived, but another graveyard belonging to the Land Turtles!

Because these gigantic Ancient Land Turtles had not managed to reach the rank of Demigod, at this moment they were no different from soil, rock, and seawater, and naturally had no possibility of being brought back from the dead.

Right now, no one else knew how to comfort him.

The shattering of a long-cherished hope was a blow of almost unbearable weight, even to a powerful Divine Creature.

At this point, Aiven had already completed the age determination of the biological material beneath their feet.

Just like that God of Imagination who was confirmed to have fallen into eternal silence, this was likewise a being from 2.5 million years ago, the age of the Primordial Civilization.

And. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

It wasn’t only the Ancient Land Turtles and the God of Imagination; all along the way, they had not encountered a single living Demigod belonging to the age of the Primordial Civilization.

Temporarily setting this question aside, their attention returned to Kraken.

Back when he’d guarded the King of Sea Monsters through the process of Fertility, he had learned that in the storm- and current-wreathed southern polar region of the world, there existed an Eternal White Land identical to the Far North (Chapter 501).

But unlike the Arctic, which had only a shell of ice, beneath the southern Eternal White Land there truly lay a solid landmass.

Before the Era, that had been the burial ground of the Ancient Land Turtle race; after their Death, they gradually congealed into a landmass, buried beneath a polar ice shell that was over 4,000 meters thick at its deepest point.

A colossal species like the Ancient Land Turtle, capable of giving birth to islands and even continents, could never have had large population numbers to begin with, and on top of that, there were these two graveyards.

It was almost certain already that, as an egg only hatched in the current Era, the King of Sea Monsters, Kraken, was in all likelihood the last surviving Ancient Land Turtle of this Era.

As for why he, bearing such a powerful Extraordinary bloodline, had been able to safely weather the Era Catastrophe, or rather, multiple Era Catastrophes, and successfully be born in the Fifth Era—

As the God of All Things Fertile, Aiven conjectured that aside from the fact that he was an egg whose tissues had not yet undergone Differentiation and was not fully developed—

After filtering out those somewhat unreliable myths about the ancestors of Ancient Land Turtles spawning three entire continents, the greatest likelihood was this:

The Ancient Land Turtle race had at least spawned many of the islands in the Broken Star Sea; the World’s Favor they had earned from that could hardly be less than what humanity had gained from the "Age of Discovery."

It was precisely under the care of the World Consciousness that this race, which had made such a significant contribution to the world, was allowed to continue in Kraken.

"Mr. Kraken, it’s still too early to draw a conclusion. In your inherited memories, wasn’t your ancestor, the Innate Divine Tartaros, a Demigod?

Perhaps He is somewhere in the Endless Ocean right now..."

Aiven hadn’t finished speaking words of comfort to Kraken when—

Rumble!

On the inland side of the land not far from them, a small hill was suddenly flipped over by a giant hand like cracked bedrock.

A giant over a hundred meters tall, dressed in leather armor, appeared in the forested mountains behind the pass; his bright, clear eyes, brimming with Wisdom, glanced at them once, then he strode in great steps toward the interior of the land.

"Wait!"

At this moment, a surge of wild delight sprang up in everyone’s hearts.

Unlike those previous monstrous Demigods that had already lost their minds, this seemed to be a God of Giants who had randomly fallen into a "normal" Status.

Which meant... they could talk to him!

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!...

Everyone immediately turned into streaks of Flowing Light, soaring into the air and giving chase to that giant at high speed; even the King of Sea Monsters, who had been burning with grief a moment ago, was no exception.

Following behind that Demigod giant whose steps looked slow yet were in fact swift, they crossed this vast expanse of complicated terrain, as though walking across an ancient battlefield where some massive god-war had once taken place.

What they saw and heard was vastly richer than what they’d seen at sea just moments before.

A hundred-meter giant whose skeleton was all that remained, nailed to a mountainside by a greatsword; a terrifying giant serpent whose upper jaw had been pierced by a lance and had weathered into a range of rocky mountains...

What appeared to be towering mountain peaks were in truth the sprawled remains of a dragon; in a pond lay a massive shield, mottled with rust yet the size of a small island...

Though thunderstruck, none of them ever slowed their pace.

When they had followed the giant into the depths of a secluded mountain hollow, they suddenly lost sight of his figure.

Gurgle gurgle...

Within this hollow, which spanned dozens of kilometers, steam billowed, and at a glance there were more than a dozen boiling pools of various sizes scattered about.

"Is this a hot spring area?"

Liweina, who often soaked in the hot springs of Pamukkale, stared with interest at the rising steam as she asked.

"No, this should be a nuclear reactor that may have been operating for several million years..."

Olivia, the discoverer of the Periodic Table of Elements, opened her True Sight Demon Eye for a sweep and immediately detected the clues hidden here.

There were a total of seventeen nuclear reactors, generating an endless stream of energy through the fission of uranium-235 enriched to 3%, and they were still operating normally to this day.

However.

Given that Catrio’s Wheel, the ring-shaped dome encircling the entire moon’s interior, was a remnant of the super-ancient Primordial Civilization, then constructing nuclear reactors really shouldn’t have been any challenge at all.

Buzz—!

At that moment, some device underground suddenly let out a hum, and a light appeared on a smooth rock face on the other side of the hollow.

The giant who had just led them here was standing right beside that rock wall.

But compared to the giant, what first seized their attention was that glowing rock face.

On it, a line of hieroglyphics appeared, identical to those on the Golden Treasure Box: "Epitaph of the Zero Civilization."

Immediately after—

A bald human figure whose head was a little too large in proportion to his body appeared within the light and shadow, then spoke slowly:

"Greetings, descendants who come after I know not how many years. I am the Governor of the Zero Civilization. In the 499,982nd year since the birth of humankind, I shall tell you the origin of humanity and... its future."

Aiven and his party all shuddered violently.