Seventh Hundred and Fifth Chapter: History
During the day, in the underground of the ancient city of Bastis, within a vast library, figures were bustling about. They were both men and women, mostly wearing light-variant North Ufeiga robes, dusting off thick layers of grime from the books. Some figures gathered around a large stone table, carefully flipping through various scrolls sent over, examining the numerous ancient characters inscribed within.
These figures were all zombies under Doro’s control. After deciding to temporarily ignore the plague of the Eternal Life Cult, she focused primarily on uncovering the secrets of Heoperis. Due to the limited clues she had regarding Heoperis, she could only follow the leads provided by Shadi and start from history.
…
“Heoperis exists only in history…”
Because of this vague clue, Doro could only find herself in the underground library of Bastis, a place storing the most mundane historical records of Buseirite, and used her zombies to search for useful information amidst the multitude of records.
Doro herself sat inside a tent outside the camp, closing her eyes to rest and absorb the various information recorded in the library through meditation.
…
“Fellow citizens, today I am able to reside in Bastis and conquer all of Buseirite, thanks to your decades of hard work. Our Santo tribe originated from humble beginnings, struggling for survival among bandits and warriors for many years. Today we have defeated various strong enemies and unified Buseirite. First, it is due to divine assistance. Second, it is due to the help of the people. Third, it is due to your assistance. Here, I raise a toast to you.
“Although the war has ended and we have won, please do not let your guard down. The history of Buseirite is chaotic, with no dynasty able to rule here for long. However, I believe we can overcome this pattern because I have found the root cause of this fate.
“Listen, fellow citizens, the tragedy of Buseirite stems from its ethnicity! From its history!
“The tribes on this land have always been fragmented since ancient times, each fighting alone. We never considered ourselves as one ethnic group. We always fought under our tribal names rather than under the name of Buseirite. This is the root of our hundred years of chaos. Now, I want to change this!
“We need a common name, a shared consensus, and a unified culture. And this must start with a shared history. History shapes culture, and culture shapes ethnicity. We clearly share the same language, but we are not the same ethnicity. The main reason is that we do not share a common history!
“Buseirite has never had a history! No one paid attention to these fleeting matters beyond the swords and battles. But now, things will change. I will rewrite the history of Buseirite. All future children born in Buseirite will remember this history.
“The tribes often claim they are the continuation of some ancient dynasty or the last descendants of another. Each believes they are the true masters of Buseirite. Those dynasties did not truly end. Now, I will organize the history and show them the truth. Let them see that those dynasties have long perished! They are over! There is no place for them in modern Buseirite! A new dynasty will soon be born!
“Buseirite will move toward unity through swords and history!”
…
A zombie sat on a stone bench at the stone table, carefully reading the contents written on a piece of parchment. These contents were transmitted through the zombie’s senses to Doro, who sighed slightly after reading.
“This is… the final unified dynasty of Buseirite, the founding monarch of the Santo Dynasty, Santis’s speech at the victory banquet. He wanted to achieve cultural unification by writing the history of Buseirite, but unfortunately, before he could complete the history, his son died from a minor injury during a ‘hunting accident,’ supposedly treated by ‘well-trained doctors.’ His dynasty collapsed again, and the history was left unfinished. However, fortunately, the materials collected for writing the history are all here…”
As she looked at Santis’s manuscript, Doro thought to herself. She had already read many historical records of Buseirite and understood some reasons behind the fall of the Santo Dynasty.
Although the library contained a lot of information, with her superlative information processing ability, Doro had almost finished reading most of the books in the underground library, gaining insight into the chaotic history of Buseirite.
“Due to prolonged turmoil, almost all factions in Buseirite lacked the tradition of recording history. Most of the historical materials collected by Santis were o*al stories passed down through generations within each tribe, which were chaotic and scattered, with many contradictions. It would be difficult to compile them into a complete history.”
“But fortunately, there are still many commonalities within these scattered and chaotic historical materials. By sorting out these common elements, we can roughly outline the thousand-year history of Buseirite…”
Doro thought to herself, then she began organizing and summarizing the trajectories within these histories, attempting to clarify the timeline of an era.
“It roughly happened five hundred years ago… The Kida Dynasty was established, with its king named Zabibah… Around four hundred and fifty years ago, the Saba tribe established the Saba Dynasty, founded by Queen Basna… Three hundred and eighty years ago, the leader Diub of the Hamiat tribe defeated the Hutu tribe in the Black Sandstone Battle, establishing the Hamiat Dynasty. The Hutu tribe claimed to be the last descendants of the Kida Dynasty… Three hundred and ten years ago, the leader of the Najid tribe, Candor, led three thousand cavalry to raid Bastis, defeating the Sand King who ruled there, and established the Najid Dynasty. Its king claimed to be a descendant of the Saba Dynasty and the rightful ruler of Buseirite. Candor ruled for twelve years before dying in the process of suppressing rebellions, and the dynasty was inherited by his son Todd…”
Doro concluded the information from countless historical records, sorting out the chaotic history of Buseirite. Soon, she discovered some unusual aspects.
“The histories of these dynasties summarized from these historical materials seem to have only beginnings and processes, but no endings…”
Sitting on the ground of her tent, Doro pondered this thought. Within just a few hours, she had reconstructed the brief histories of several short-lived dynasties, but she could only reconstruct the processes of their establishment and a small period after. The late history of these dynasties was completely unrecoverable due to the lack of corresponding historical records.
The historical materials came from o*al stories passed down within each tribe, which usually only recorded the rise of the dynasties, never their falls. Doro searched through all the historical records in the library but could not find any details about how these dynasties fell.
Every dynasty inevitably goes through creation, development, and extinction, but in the historical records of Buseirite, various dynasties only recorded their establishment processes, with only a few documenting some development. None documented their extinction.
After a dynasty was established in Buseirite, it would quickly collapse for unknown reasons, leading to prolonged turmoil and fragmentation until the next dynasty unified the region.
“So many short-lived dynasties, each with clear processes of establishment but no explanations for their fall. Do the tribes of Buseirite only like stories of dynastic rises and not falls? Do they avoid spreading and recording the fall of dynasties?”
Looking at the history she had summarized, Doro wondered curiously. Initially, she thought the tribes of Buseirite avoided recording the fall of dynasties due to some special tradition. However, after reviewing the records from the Santo Dynasty period, she realized things were not so straightforward.
“Almost all the records of the fall of Buseirite dynasties are missing from the stories collected from various tribes. This is surprising and makes the task of compiling a history extremely difficult. We must gather more records about how these dynasties fell.”
But the recorders collecting additional materials said that indeed, none of the stories from each tribe mentioned the reasons for the fall of these former dynasties. This was not due to deliberate avoidance but rather due to the gradual forgetting over a long period.
“This reason is absurd. Stories might be slowly forgotten over time, but this process does not specifically target certain subjects. It is impossible for only the parts about the fall to be forgotten. Something must be wrong…”
On the other side of the stone table, Doro’s zombie was carefully reading an old historian’s notes left behind. The content recorded in the notes negated Doro’s previous belief that the lack of records about the fall was due to tribal traditions.
“How interesting… So, the absence of records about the fall of these dynasties is not due to Buseirite traditions? Then what force is erasing these records?”
Doro thought while rubbing her chin. She felt slightly excited now, as she had found an anomaly in the history of Buseirite. Now she just needed to see if she could use this to find clues about Heoperis.
“All historical records of ancient Buseirite dynasties are missing. What about the closest one, the Santo Dynasty? If I recall correctly, it has only been forty years since the fall of the Santo Dynasty. Could there be any related records within such a short period?”
Doro thought to herself. She had previously learned about the fall of the Santo Dynasty from Alima and others, but they could not provide specific reasons. They knew only that the dynasty lasted two generations before disappearing, and the exact causes and events were unknown. They only vaguely knew it was related to tribal rebellions. Logically, this should have been just sixty years ago, and it made no sense for records to be so unclear. However, Doro was now in the library of the Santo Dynasty and might find something useful there.
She started having the zombies in the library carefully search for information about the Santo Dynasty, as it was the dynasty that built this library and was the closest to the present.
Soon, Doro found a large amount of historical records about the Santo Dynasty, but the events recorded were almost all concentrated in the early stages of the dynasty, during the reign of King Santis. Records about the later periods were significantly reduced, with much of the material severely damaged by insects, weathering, and natural deterioration.
“Strange… The extent of the damage doesn’t seem to have occurred in just a few decades. Moreover, the damage is only concentrated in the materials from the late periods of the dynasty. If I had come here twenty or thirty years later, the records would probably be gone. What kind of force is eliminating these records?”
While examining the incomplete records from the late period of the Santo Dynasty, Doro thought with interest. Fortunately, although the records were severely damaged, they were still readable. Doro could extract some information and determine the general causes and processes of the decline of the Santo Dynasty.
“Continuous sandstorms devastated the already fragile agriculture… The queen, feeling neglected, conspired with her family to seize more power and allied with discontented tribes… Exiled criminals organized forces at the border and rose again…
“In the end, a palace coup erupted in Bastis amid internal and external troubles. The second king died in the coup, and the queen supported her son as a puppet king, igniting a nationwide crisis. The exiles eventually led a counterattack army that conquered Bastis, and the Santo Dynasty ultimately perished in the flames of war…”
In the midst of numerous incomplete historical records, Doro pieced together the end of the Santo Dynasty, but upon completing the reconstruction, she felt even more puzzled.
“What’s going on… The reasons and end of the fall of the Santo Dynasty are not very different from other dynasties? It’s just a typical process of destruction… There isn’t much poison recognition involved, and other dynasties’ falls are similar. Why would such content be gradually erased by mysterious forces?”
Frowning, Doro thought to herself. She originally thought that these stories of the fall of dynasties concealed some secret, and the mysterious force was erasing records to prevent the secret from being revealed. But now, Doro had pieced together the process of the fall of the Santo Dynasty, and there was nothing extraordinary inside.
“Odd… Could some of these records be fake? Is the history I reconstructed not real? But where are the authentic records, and how would I know?”
Doro thought depressingly. Then she continued having her zombies sift through various documents in the library, hoping to find more valuable information.
However, just as Doro was about to finish searching through all the documents without any significant findings, she suddenly discovered a set of handwritten manuscripts filled with various writings in a finely crafted box.
Doro had her zombies examine it closely and found that it was indeed the history compiled by the historians of the Santo Dynasty. The entire library was built to compile this information, but due to the fragmented and chaotic nature of Buseirite historical records, these histories were not very well compiled. Few of the histories of previous dynasties were completed.
“Huh… Given the state of the records here, the only relatively complete history would be that of the Santo Dynasty itself…”
Looking at the historians’ manuscripts, Doro couldn’t help but think. At this moment, an interesting idea suddenly popped into her head.
“Yes, the history of the fall of the Santo Dynasty, like the histories of other ancient dynasties in Buseirite, is being gradually eliminated by some force. If I were to compile the history of the Santo Dynasty now, including the history of its fall, what would happen? Would my created history be affected by that force?”
This idea appeared in Doro’s mind, and after a brief consideration, she decided to try it. Since she couldn’t find any other clues in the library, why not give it a shot? Who knows if she could observe the effects of that force?
Thinking this, Doro immediately acted. She had the zombies in the library find the paper and pen left by Gemar, transforming them into historical compilers seated at the ancient stone tables and benches, starting to compile the history of the last dynasty of Buseirite, the Santo Dynasty.
Under Doro’s manipulation, countless zombies took their seats and began writing diligently, swiftly compiling the history of the dynasty that had fallen sixty years ago based on the historical materials Doro had collected in the library, recording the stories that had once occurred.
The king’s birth, the rise of the tribe, intense wars, desperate situations, turning points of dawn, unstoppable conquests, the establishment of the dynasty… Doro recorded the past of the Santo Dynasty in the form of a chronicle. As she finished compiling the early and middle periods of the dynasty’s history and began to delve into the late period, an unexpected voice echoed in her mind.
“Warning… The following actions will cause divine forces to disturb the history and destiny of this region…”
Hearing the system voice she hadn’t heard in a long time, Doro was slightly stunned and blurted out in her mind.
“What the hell? Divine forces interfering with the history of this region?”
“Correct. Upon preliminary investigation, the history of this region is cursed. This area cannot contain any official written history, nor can it harbor any powerful legal forces.”
