Aurelian evaluated all the presents, from the ones that were part of his “descendance”, the current king and the other members of the royal court had the surprised expressions he expected, with the exception of Sarina and Kana that for some unknown reason for him kept their cool.
“I can understand Sylas’s daughter not being impressed, but to think that the little girl doesn’t seem to care about being in presence of someone that lived a couple of millions of years go… what the hell is happening to the young generation?”, he said.
Kana wasn’t paying too much attention to Aurelian, in her young lovestruck mind as long as Aster was with her, there was nothing to be afraid, fortunately reality was quite close to that, since Aurelian’s cultivation didn’t change, he was still a half-step mortal transcending cultivator which nothing to worry about for Aster.
Sarina on the other hand only shrugged.
“Unfortunately for you, it’s not the only miracle we have seen in recent days”
She looked at Aster and a beautiful smile flourished on her face.
“Curing corruption, flying before reaching the star alignment realm, defeating a star vertex cultivator while being in the elemental core realm… let’s just say that at this point it’s a bit harder to surprise me or my daughter hahaha”.
Aurelian sighed.
“Whatever, come with me, if you all suddenly decided to investigate the past, then thing must be worse than I thought, so there is no space for mystery and secrets anymore”.
The gate of the vault opened and after exchanging gazes everyone followed the first king inside, of course they were in alert just in case something happened, one can never be too cautious after all.
As expected inside of the vault there was nothing but a lot of treasures, Aster even got a glimpse of a couple of stellar ranked things here and there, Lilia had a lot of things in her spatial ring so of course she taught her son how to recognize the different grades of treasure, to prevent him from losing a fortunate encounter.
Aurelian noticed Aster evaluating the things in his treasury and he nodded, “as I expected, this kid must be the direct descendant of a Heavenly Conqueror… I just hope he isn’t related to one of those bastards”, he thought.
Orson, Leister and even Milia were marveled at the sight of a room full to the brim of things they haven’t seen before, there were alchemy materials, cultivation manuals and even spirit jades which were more valuable and rarer than spirit stones.
To be honest if not for the fact that he has seen all the things Lilia has gathered through many years, Aster would have also been surprised by all the things in the room, as if the first king knew this day would come, there was a table prepared with some chairs, everyone took a seat and the first one to speak was Orson.
“Has the ancestor always been the gatekeeper through all the history?”.
Aurelian nodded.
“Yes, I couldn’t trust the task of guarding the entrance to my ancestral tomb to anyone but me, that’s why I set the rule that each gatekeeper chooses its successor, so I have been just changing my identity to keep on supervising this place”.
Sylas who has already recovered from the shock gritted his teeth.
“According to your words, you have the power to suppress someone way above the star vertex realm… then why the hell haven’t you put an end to all this war nonsense”.
…
Everyone remained silence, Orson, Milia and this time even Leister agreed with Sylas, so they waited for the first king to explain.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your wife Sylas but…”.
Sylas hit the table to interrupt Aurelian.
“Don’t you dare to speak about her, I’m not pathetic enough to blame you for her death… she gave her life to defend our family, what I can’t tolerate is the fact that if you had opened your mouth earlier, we could have prevented many innocent people dying in this conflict you started!!!”.
Kana didn’t get to know her grandmother so she didn’t show too much of a reaction, Sarina on the other hand felt her eyes getting a bit teary, her mother’s death was still fresh in her mind, she was about to speak when she felt Aster suddenly holding her hand.
Aster turned to see the first king.
“It seems you owe many people a proper explanation, especially since your little play got out of your hands due to that idiot second king am I right?”.
Aurelian had a weird expression on his face, “kid don’t add more fuel to the fire”, he thought before saying.
“Before we get to that part, let me tell you my story, since you are for sure a second or third generation of a Heavenly conqueror, you should have probably already heard of me, back then I was known as the rising star of the Viridian Griffon Heavenly Quadrant!!!”.
Aster shook his head, Lilia has told him about the existence of other heavenly quadrants, but even she has only seen four of them so far, the universe was so vast that there probably were more than those four.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your story, but I only know the names of four heavenly quadrants and yours is not in the list”.
Aurelian nearly choked, he at the very least thought he could impress the kid in front of him with some of his glorified adventures but apparently that was not going to be possible.
“Ahem, that being the case let’s do a quick introduction, I used to be an energy and soul cultivator, like all the youngsters I was ambitious, and in an exploration, I found something that would have allowed me to become a Heavenly Conqueror but… an innocent man becomes guilty when it owns a treasure”.
Aurelian’s story was more or less like this, he found a couple of incredibly rare treasures, he wasn’t the only one in that expedition, among the other people there was the son of a Heavenly Conqueror which he thought was his friend, and even if before they agreed to equally share the spoils, the greed overcame their supposed “friendship”.
He was ambushed by his former friend and his subordinates, he was chased away for countless of star clusters, one by one he managed to get rid of his persecutors with the only exception of the guy that started all this, they fought each other for many days without a result.
Aurelian sighed.
“That’s when those two things stepped in… have you ever heard that if there is poison, its antidote tend to appear near of it, well that was exactly the case, the treasure I found was a branch of something called “Cosmos Pillar Tree”, the one that bastard kept was its enemy a “Netherworld Corrosive Vine”, unfortunately even with the support of our respective “allies”, we only lethally wounded each other”.
Aster interrupted him this time.
“Wait, those things were sentient beings?”.
The firs king nodded, “yes, sentient arrogant beings if you ask me, however the cosmos pillar tree at the very least didn’t have any ill intentions towards me, it only offered me its power to suppress the other guy, the netherworld vine on the other hand killed and then possessed that traitor bastard”.
“None of us was able to win, so the cosmos pillar tree transported us at a random location as far as it could, with a last effort it was able to imprison the netherworld vine in a planet before creating a wall to prevent it from escaping, since it had used all the energy it accumulated through the years, it went to sleep not before telling me that if that thing ever escapes it would bring a disaster upon all the existence”.
“I also landed in the planet, I was exhausted by the battle and I suffered damages in my dantian, so my energy cultivation was basically crippled”.
As if it remembered something heartwarming, the first king smiled before continuing.
“I who lost my faith in people, was then blessed by fate, a curious girl found me half dead in the forest and took care of me, when I woke up my energy cultivation had reversed all the way from being a heavenly transformation to a mere mortal transcending realm”.
“But none of that was important for me… I fell in love with my benefactor and formed a family, we lived our life the best way we could, but time doesn’t forgive anyone, I got older and my beloved passed away, when I thought I could finally rest, that damned vine started breaking havoc, I once again had to unite forces with the cosmos tree to suppress it”.
“That’s when I decided to not let anything destroy the land that my wife used to love, and that was the very same day the Luonto continent came to exist, I made all the tribes join hands to become a whole entity, I brought peace and prosperity, the cosmos tree was planted to supervise the place where the netherworld vine was imprisoned”.
“For some time, things went on smoothly, I reached the end of my lifespan but since I was also a soul cultivator, the cosmos tree helped to stay in this place in a spirit form, to wait for the day someone with enough potential to finally destroy the netherworld vine was born in Prasil”.
Orson had an embarrassed expression.
“But your descendant was killed by the second king… so why didn’t you interfere at that point?”.
Aurelian snorted.
“I presented myself as the king of Prasil because originally there was only one continent, nut with time people forgot of me and dissidents appeared, that’s when Riga was created, at first, I didn’t care… but that cunning bastard, somehow got in contact with the vine which told him the truth of this place, he tried to enter my tomb so I confronted him, although I seem to be strong the truth is that I don’t have any battle capacity, that’s why I engraved those spirit formations outside”.
“Although I did make him flee with the tail between his legs, the one that was the king at that point didn’t follow my suggestions which is understandable, because I told him to kill that cunning guy… who was his father, the usurper instead escaped but not without causing a calamity in Luonto”.
Aurelian turned to see Sylas directly to his eyes.
“The answer to your question is that, I can’t leave this place… I’m limited to only move within the castle, if not I would have been able to detect the killing arrays the vine told that bastard to set in all those cities, the usurper escaped to Riga to do who knows what”.