Chapter 567: Origin of All Wisdom
It’s basically confirmed now: the Ancient Wisdom Shard inside the Power Core is redundant. It serves no purpose whatsoever.
Could it be that Igor the Azure Sage, while crafting the Power Core, was momentarily careless and accidentally left an Ancient Wisdom Shard inside?
But this possibility is almost negligible. As far as Leon knew, Igor the Azure Sage was famously meticulous in alchemy. As the gravedigger of the Silver Age, how could he possibly make such a rookie mistake...
So...
The only possibility is that this Ancient Wisdom Shard must be hiding some secret. Otherwise, it would never have ended up inside the Power Core...
With this thought, Leon frowned slightly, pinching the shard between his middle and index fingers, and began to channel magic into it...
One minute, two minutes, three minutes...
At first, Leon had some hope. But as time slowly passed, the Ancient Wisdom Shard still showed no reaction. Its patterns remained unchanged, just like an ordinary piece of untreated metal. In the end, Leon could only stop channeling magic with a sense of helpless resignation.
At this point, Leon truly felt powerless...
But deep down, he knew the Ancient Wisdom Shard couldn't possibly be as simple as it seemed...
What exactly was the right method?
For a moment, Leon furrowed his brow, gradually sinking into deep thought. Staring blankly at the shard in his fingers, he was lost in contemplation—when suddenly, a timid voice sounded from outside the barracks: "Master Merlin, may I... may I come in...?"
Come in...
"Yes, Master Merlin..." Hubert entered the barracks, naturally carrying Slaughter. The Dragonblood Orc walked in with great caution: "Master Merlin, all the tasks you assigned to me are complete."
"Oh..." Leon shot Hubert a gloomy glance, then finally shifted his gaze to the patterns on the metal shard.
Just that one look was enough to make Hubert shiver all over, frozen like a statue. After spending so much time around Leon, he could tell that something was off with Master Merlin right now, so he could only stand there as carefully as possible to avoid bad luck.
Half an hour quickly passed. Hubert noticed that Master Merlin was definitely acting strange today, staring at that tiny thing in his hand, lost in thought.
What on earth is that thing, to captivate Master Merlin like this...?
Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Hubert carefully shifted his body and craned his neck, trying to get a clear look at what Master Merlin was holding.
When Hubert saw it was just a metal shard, his disappointment was painfully obvious.
"What are you doing?" At that moment, Leon suddenly turned his head and shot the Dragonblood Orc a cold look, his whole body radiating a chilling aura.
"Ah!"
When Leon turned his head, their faces were less than half a meter apart, scaring Hubert so much he instinctively staggered back several steps, cold sweat pouring down his face and terror written all over his features. "Master Merlin... Master Merlin, I... I’m sorry, I was just curious."
Heh, curious...
Hearing Leon’s mocking, icy laugh, even the thick-headed Dragonblood Orc realized Master Merlin was angry—and that the consequences would be serious.
What do I do... What should I do...
Hubert instantly panicked. He knew all too well what happened when Master Merlin got angry. Just as his nerves were stretched to the breaking point, he suddenly saw a flicker of flame.
It was Saedus!
"Ah... Master Merlin, your drawing is amazing..." The moment Saedus appeared, Hubert was scared half to death. Pointing at the patterns on the metal shard, he tried his best to flatter Leon with his not-so-brilliant mind.
"Looks like Saedus really needs to teach you what it means to be an orc..." Hearing Hubert's ridiculous flattery, Leon's expression grew even darker, black lines forming in his mind. He couldn't help but wonder what on earth Hubert was thinking—did he really think the patterns on the shard were just a drawing?
Wait a minute...
Just as Leon was about to have Saedus give Hubert a thorough lesson, he suddenly froze.
Right... why couldn’t the patterns be a drawing?
Up until now, he'd been trying to decipher the patterns using magical and alchemical knowledge, never once considering the possibility of art...
Maybe he’d been overcomplicating things all along...
"Master Merlin, I was wrong, I really was wrong, you..." Hubert bowed his head and frantically apologized, only to realize Saedus had vanished without a trace.
While Hubert was still nervously on edge, Leon’s voice rang out, no longer as somber as before: "Hubert, do you still want to stay here?"
"No, no..." The Dragonblood Orc waved his hands in terror. He had no idea if Master Merlin was acting strange or not, but since there was no punishment, it was a stroke of luck for him.
With that, the Dragonblood Orc dragged Slaughter and left the barracks.
"Guess I'll have to rely on luck..." Leon let out a bitter laugh as a surge of magic rippled through the air. He cast an enlargement spell, and sure enough, the patterns magnified into a series of images. The result left Leon utterly stunned—though the images were still a little blurry.
After some adjustments, the images finally came into focus—there were four in total. In the first, a towering figure tore open the boundless void. At first glance, it didn’t seem special, but Leon frowned, because based on the scale, that figure had to be at least a hundred meters tall.
What does that mean...
Since the dawn of Northend World, the only intelligent beings with such massive bodies—other than dragons—were the Primordial Deities. The figure in the first image clearly wasn’t a dragon; Leon could distinctly see it had four limbs and a head...
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It really might be a Primordial Deity...
Only now did Leon realize the secret hidden in the metal shard might be far more complicated than he’d imagined. After all, the figure in the images was considered a forbidden Primordial Deity.
Leon stared at the first image for more than ten minutes before finally shifting his gaze to the second. In this one, the Primordial Deity was covered in wounds, bleeding profusely—it looked gravely injured.
No way... Leon was once again stunned. That was a Primordial Deity, a being with power beyond the Sky Rank. He just couldn’t fathom what could possibly exist in that era to wound a Primordial Deity so severely.
It was almost unbelievable...
Still stunned, Leon turned his attention to the third image: the Primordial Deity fell from the void into a place engulfed in flames. The fourth image showed the Primordial Deity being swallowed by endless fire.
Did a Primordial Deity really die just like that?
Leon looked over the four images several times, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. He guessed it must have been a Primordial Deity who tore through space, arrived somewhere, fought a terrifying enemy, was gravely wounded, fell into a place full of fire, and finally was lost there forever.
Though the Primordial Deity’s enemy didn’t appear in the images, Leon was certain such a terrifying foe must have existed...
But where exactly did the Primordial Deity tear open space and arrive?
Fire... nothing but fire everywhere...
That’s definitely the most important clue...
Leon stared at the third and fourth images, brow furrowed, suddenly recalling something the alchemical golem had said back at the Merlin Family manor: "At the end of the River of Wailing..."
Wait a minute...
Could the place where the Primordial Deity fought that terrifying enemy have been the Blazeforge Realm?
The sudden realization startled even Leon himself.
But...
Thinking it over carefully, it actually seemed possible. The River of Wailing itself was a river of fire, thousands of meters wide—exactly matching the scenes in the third and fourth images.
And the Sky Rank golem had once said, "At the end of the River of Wailing..."
Leon couldn't help but speculate in that direction.
Afterward, Leon picked up a quill and copied down all four images. Once finished, he picked up the Ancient Wisdom Shard again and glanced at its reverse side—smooth, with no patterns. Thinking for a moment, he casually cast an enlargement spell, and immediately saw what looked like a row of characters.
"Primordial Script..."
After a careful inspection, Leon took a deep breath. By now, he could recognize that row of characters—it was definitely Primordial Script.
"Origin... of all wisdom..."
Primordial Script itself carried a mysterious energy. Just translating those few characters nearly drained all of Leon's strength. After finishing, he put the Ancient Wisdom Shard back on the alchemy table and sat nearby, gasping for breath—while his mind spun with thoughts...
The only civilization worthy of being called the origin of all wisdom seemed to be that of the Primordial Deities. They were the first intelligent species born in Northend World, creators of Primordial Script, which mages hailed as the source of all knowledge.
The phrase 'origin of all wisdom' appearing on the back of the Ancient Wisdom Shard left Leon utterly baffled. He was sure it was a crucial clue, but he just couldn't figure out what it meant. Was it referring to the identity of the Primordial Deity?
If that assumption was correct, then perhaps the Primordial Deity who fell in the Blazeforge Realm was the one mages kept mentioning during the peak era of magic—Constanzo...
To be precise, Constanzo was second only to the King of Deities among the Primordial Deities. He was the sage among the seventy-two, and he created Primordial Script.
Whenever mages mentioned Constanzo in the magic peak era, they couldn’t help but marvel at his wisdom—his name became synonymous with intelligence itself.