Gou Zai Fei Men made up myths

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The atmosphere at the Qingyun Alliance camp was relatively calm, but undercurrents were still swirling. Shi Tie led the disciples of the Battle Hall on guard day and night, protecting the entrance to the fissure as if it were an iron barrel.

Jin Hao's injuries have been largely healed under Mu Qingqing's careful care. However, the strange stellar energy remaining in the wound on his arm is quite stubborn and requires a slow and gradual process to resolve.

Han Lin stayed behind to oversee the rear, coordinating supplies and reassuring the people.

Su Xiao's Shadow Guards, like an invisible spider web, silently infiltrated all directions, capturing every suspicious fluctuation.

But the focus of all this, Shen Mo, was neither at the camp nor at the edge of the fissure. He had already quietly returned to Qingyun Mountain, to the Liuyun Palace overlooking the sea of ​​clouds.

The palace doors were tightly shut, isolating it from all the noise of the outside world. There were no lights in the quiet room, only a few dim starlight filtering in from the window, and a jade slip floating in the air, emitting a soft white light.

The jade slip projected a clear image, which was a high-precision photograph of the murals, inscriptions, and fragments of objects that Jin Hao and others brought back from the outskirts of the "Starfall Ancient City".

Shen Mo sat alone in front of the light and shadow projected by the jade slip, his shadow stretched long and almost blending into the surrounding darkness.

He had been in this position for a very long time, so long that he seemed to have turned into a stone statue.

On the low table in front of me lay an open thread-bound book with yellowed pages and worn edges. On the cover were a few slightly immature but already impressive characters in ink: "The Travels of Master Liuyun".

His gaze slowly moved between the ancient murals and broken inscriptions projected onto the jade slip, and the words he had already memorized and fabricated himself in the book.

Again and again. Each glance was like a sharp carving knife, etching deep, unhealable cracks into his already unshakeable Dao heart.

On the mural, the blurry figure holds a long ruler in his hand. It is of ancient design, with a hazy starlight flowing across its body. Seven stars appear and disappear, and one end is slightly curved like a hook... His fingers trembled as he opened the book "Travel Notes" and stopped at a certain page.

There, in order to make the story more "realistic," he sketched a rough draft in the blank space with clumsy strokes.

Beside the sketch was a note he had casually written at the time: "The Galaxy Ruler is three feet and three inches long. Its entire body is like a flowing river of stars, containing the power of the seven stars. It can measure the entire celestial sphere and determine the direction of the universe. The end of the ruler is slightly curved, like a hook to reach for the moon, which subtly corresponds to the shape of the Big Dipper."

The size is exactly the same. The shape is identical. The seven stars are arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper... even the curve of the "moon-reaching hook" is strikingly similar!

Then look at the rubbings of the inscription. Those ancient, distorted, and difficult-to-decipher characters, after being initially identified by the female cultivator from Xuanbing Pavilion who had some knowledge of ancient characters, and after he had spent the last few days rummaging through the old documents of Qingyun Sect and verifying them with a combination of guesswork and verification, their general meaning was constantly being supplemented and revised, becoming clearer and clearer... and pointing more and more towards that conclusion that gave him the creeps.

"The Star River True Lord, on a night when the stars fall from the heavens, descended through the void, built the City of Falling Stars, observed the stars and predicted destiny, and measured the heavens with a ruler..."

"Named 'Galaxy,' it was formed by gathering stardust from the nine heavens and fusing it with the essence of the earth's veins, taking three hundred and sixty years to complete. It possesses unfathomable power..."

"A cataclysmic event occurred, stars collapsed, the city god was destroyed, the True Lord disappeared without a trace, and even the ruler vanished..."

These fragmented, vague, yet interconnected records constantly overlap, corroborate, and intertwine with the fragments about the patriarch's close friend "Xinghe Daoren" that he casually fabricated in "The Travels of Patriarch Liuyun" to add a legendary touch!

"...The Patriarch traveled to the Northern Sea of ​​Stars and met a Taoist who called himself Xinghe. He rode a star raft and controlled flowing light, living a free and unrestrained life. The two discussed the Dao at the summit of a meteorite for three days without ceasing."

"The Daoist Xinghe showed a foot-sized object, calling it 'Xinghe,' saying it could measure time and determine the fate of mountains and rivers. The Patriarch clapped his hands in admiration and became his confidant..."

"...Later, extraterrestrial demons invaded. Xinghe Daoren fought in the heavens with his ruler. Wherever the ruler's light passed, stars fell. He finally repelled the demons, but the Xinghe Ruler was also damaged, and its spiritual light dimmed."

"The Taoist priest fled far away with his ruler, and his whereabouts are unknown. The Patriarch often thought of this and sighed with regret..."

Shen Mo still vividly remembers the feelings he had when he wrote those words.

That was shortly after he returned from the Flowing Cloud Water Mansion, when he used the name "Starry Sword Immortal" to overpower Jin Yan Zhenren of the Blazing Sun Sect, and the reputation of the Azure Cloud Sect was just beginning to improve.

To boost morale and unite the people, and to add some brilliance and mystery to the sect's meager history, he spent his spare time rummaging through the dusty miscellaneous books, local chronicles, and myths and legends in the Sutra Repository while "fabricating" the sutra repository. He racked his brains to connect, blend, exaggerate, and even completely imagine fragmented and unrelated information to weave together the magnificent "travels" of Patriarch Liuyun.

The character Xinghe Daoren is a fictional character created to highlight the patriarch's wide circle of friends, all of whom are extraordinary.

The concept of the Star River Ruler arose from a fragment of an ancient book called "Illustrated Catalogue of Strange Treasures" that he was flipping through one day. He saw a blurry image of a ruler called "Measuring Ruler" and a few vague descriptions. Inspired by this, he combined his imagination of the starry sky and created the character.

He even remembered that, in order to add details to the "Starry River Ruler," he referenced an ancient jade disc in the sect's storeroom that had been neglected and was engraved with a simple star map, as well as a legend in a miscellaneous book about "the Big Dipper governs death and the Southern Dipper governs life," and imagined the setting of "the seven stars arranged in a way that coincides with the Big Dipper."

That sketch was something he found interesting and drew on a whim. After finishing it, he even mocked his own poor drawing skills, saying it was undignified.

All of this is just a "story." A story he "created" for his own needs. Like a child building a castle out of mud, though done with care, no one will consider it real.

But...why?

Why do the murals and inscriptions unearthed from these ancient ruins, sealed for countless millennia, record an existence that perfectly matches his fabricated story in terms of name, identity, name of magical artifacts, form, characteristics, and even some of his experiences?

Coincidence? How could there be such an absurd coincidence?! Even the details he deliberately added back then to increase "realism," which he considered ingenious, such as "the arrangement of the seven stars coincides with the Big Dipper" and "the slight curve of the ruler's end resembles a hook reaching for the moon," are exactly the same?!

The "Flowing Cloud Badge" that Su Xiao and his group brought back from the Flowing Cloud Cave earlier was exactly the same as this scene.

Shen Mo slowly closed his eyes, trying to calm his emotions, which were churning like a raging sea. His fingertips unconsciously traced the edges of the pages; the rough texture reminded him of the reality of it all.

No, it's not a hallucination. The images in the jade slip are real, the aura on the fragments is ancient, and the traces of time on the inscription cannot be faked. So, the problem... is it himself? Is it his "fabricated" memory?

He suddenly opened his eyes and looked at the travelogue again. His gaze seemed to pierce through the pages, trying to see the truth hidden behind it.

He reread the passages about "Xinghe Daoren" and "Xinghe Ruler" word by word, trying to find any possible prototypes or references from reality.