Starforce Warriors-Chapter 987: The Price Of Evolution (2)

This phenomenon sparked Li Xiaofei’s curiosity. Nearly all the structures in both the Near Elemental Clan and the Mountain Clan outposts had remained intact. Even if some bore signs of past battles, none had suffered significant destruction.

So why were the deity statues the only things completely destroyed? Had the clans shattered them on purpose while fleeing, to avoid the desecration of their gods? Or had they been destroyed by the Oblivion monsters?

It was strange. Li Xiaofei acquired several more ancient Reaper texts and maps, along with insights into their evolutionary cultivation methods.

The Mountain Clan had been a clan that focused primarily on cultivating the physical body. They had relied on devouring the local resource known as Flame Rocks as the foundation of their evolution, attempting to absorb the evolutionary energy within the stones to nourish and strengthen their bodies.

This approach was completely different from the cultivation path taken by the Near Elemental Clan. Yet both had ultimately ended in evolutionary failure. The texts here provided more explicit explanations of what it meant to fail in evolution.

Many ancient Reaper King-ranked clans, once they identified what they believed to be the optimal path of evolution, had committed their entire clans to it, sparing no effort or cost in pursuing it to the end.

In the beginning, these evolutionary paths had often progressed smoothly. Many ancient clans experienced rapid growth. But once evolutionary stagnation occurred, the clan’s situation would become dire.

When the speed of evolution reached a certain minimum threshold, Oblivion monsters would appear. These monsters had strength comparable to, or even slightly greater than, the ancient Reapers. They could not be killed off completely.

Once they emerged, their numbers would only increase. They would apply constant survival pressure on the Reaper clans. If the Reapers were unable to achieve a breakthrough in their evolution under such pressure, it would spell the end.

The Oblivion monsters would then erupt in overwhelming numbers, sweeping across the entire clan’s territory in the shortest time possible. In the end, the Reaper clan would be completely annihilated. Then, the Oblivion monsters would vanish as suddenly as they had appeared.

This was the complete process through which the ancient Reaper King-ranked clans pursued evolution within the Evolution Temple. Only those clans that continually evolved could survive under the looming threat of extinction. Otherwise, only eternal death awaited them. This was the price of evolution.

After finishing the ancient texts and documents, a strange thought surfaced in Li Xiaofei’s mind. Why did it feel as though the Reapers’ evolution was being forced upon them? The ancient Reaper clans seemed more like domesticated pets, or experimental test subjects.

It was as if they had been placed here to undergo some kind of Gu refinement experiment, constantly evolving and developing, and once the 'experimental data' became unsatisfactory, the one overseeing it all would release a 'virus' to wipe them out.

Is evolution... just a massive experiment?

Leaving the Mountain Clan’s fortress behind, Li Xiaofei continued searching through the black wasteland. Fortunately, the Mountain Clan had preserved a greater number of maps and documents, with more detailed descriptions of the surrounding world. Using these maps and records, Li Xiaofei pressed forward with his search.

In the blink of an eye, a full year passed. During that time, Li Xiaofei discovered a total of sixteen ancient evolution outposts. He slew over a hundred million corpse-transformed ancient Reaper warriors and obtained a vast number of resources.

His strength continued to grow. He finally broke through the Golden Immortal Realm, and stepped into the Great Luo Golden Immortal Realm. His combat power surged once more. Li Xiaofei felt like he was grinding on a private game server, farming for absurd levels and gear but with no real opponent to challenge him, and no other players to show off in front of. It left him feeling oddly unsatisfied.

In addition, he had gathered a wealth of information on the ancient Reaper clans from the major fortresses and palace complexes. His understanding of the Reapers grew deeper and deeper.

The more he learned, the more Li Xiaofei came to feel that the Reapers were a distorted race; one that didn’t seem like a natural product of evolution.

He recalled what the Ancestor of Wisdom had once said to Lin Beichen. The Ancestor of Wisdom had seemed eager to collaborate with Lin Beichen on a plan of critical importance. But he had been refused by the Sword Immortal of the human race.

Now that he thought back on it, Li Xiaofei sensed a faint but unmistakable urgency in the Ancestor of Wisdom’s words and actions. This crisis, Li Xiaofei believed, likely did not originate from the human race. It came from something else. Moreover, the deity statues worshipped in every evolution outpost had all been destroyed.

Without exception. Each of those statues had been shattered into countless fragments, so thoroughly broken that they could not be restored, nor could their original appearance be discerned.

This deepened the growing doubt in Li Xiaofei’s heart.

What exactly were those broken statues hiding? What truth were they meant to obscure?

One day, Li Xiaofei arrived at yet another Fortress of Death. This was the evolutionary site of a Reaper clan known as the Ruò Iron Clan. Judging from the scale of the outpost, the Ruò Iron Clan was likely the strongest Reaper clan he had encountered since entering the Evolution Temple.

The castle complex stretched for hundreds of kilometers. A towering Central Shrine stood in its center, rising high like a mountain tens of thousands of meters tall and dwarfing the surrounding buildings and terrain like mere pebbles and dust.

It was difficult to imagine that such a vast and powerful Reaper clan had already vanished into the dust of evolutionary history. Li Xiaofei ordered the undead bone dragon Ao Ying to search the peripheral structures while he entered the colossal and majestic Central Shrine.

The search took a full month. Only after that did Li Xiaofei manage to finish exploring all 101,000 rooms within the Central Shrine of the Ruò Iron Clan.

Countless undead Ruò Iron Clan warriors perished beneath Li Xiaofei’s blade, spear, and sword. At last, in the very heart of the shrine, at the highest and grandest hall atop the complex, Li Xiaofei discovered a complete, unrecoverable skeleton.

It was a silver corpse, standing two meters tall. Its form resembled that of a human but its physique was more slender and elongated.

At first glance, it seemed overly thin. But upon closer inspection, its bone and muscle structure was revealed to be perfectly refined, like a forged weapon, gleaming with a cold metallic light.

Its head was humanoid but its face was unusually flat. Its features, from its eyes, nose, and mouth, were faintly visible, but they were all pressed tightly against the silver skin, as if someone had slapped a freshly molded doll in the face with a frying pan.

"This is the most human-like ancient Reaper I’ve found among all the evolution outposts," Li Xiaofei noted to himself, examining it carefully.

From the residual energy on the corpse, he deduced that this silver Reaper had been extremely powerful in life, likely at least at the twelfth level. Perhaps it was precisely due to that residual energy that the corpse had resisted the reanimating power of the resurrection lightning, and had not, like the others, become one of the undead Ruò Iron warriors.

As for its fatal wound... It was a mark at the center of its chest, where the heart would be. Li Xiaofei stared at that mark, falling deep into thought.

Because it was a handprint. A human handprint, with six clearly visible fingers. Li Xiaofei was certain this handprint belonged to a human because it was astonishingly clear that the palm lines, fingerprints, even the contours of the joints were all distinctly visible. It looked as if the finest sculptor had painstakingly etched it in, stroke by stroke.

"A broken palm?" Li Xiaofei murmured as he studied the print, his brow slightly furrowed.

The palm lines of this six-fingered handprint formed what was known as a broken palm. It had been mentioned before, prior to his transmigration, Li Xiaofei had studied all manner of strange and obscure knowledge under one hundred and eight different masters.

One of them had specialized in the art of fate and physiognomy. During idle moments, that old master had once spoken to Li Xiaofei about palmistry, including the concept of the broken palm.

What was a broken palm? It referred to a palm where the lines of wisdom and emotion intersected and formed a single straight line running across the entire palm from one side to the other.

In the field of fate interpretation, there were many sayings about the broken palm. That old master had once said that if a man had a broken palm, he was destined for great success; but if a woman had it, she was deemed worthless.

He had also said that a broken palm indicated someone driven and ambitious, likely to succeed, but also someone impulsive, ruthless, and prone to abandoning moral constraints when pursuing goals.

All this information had been buried deep in Li Xiaofei’s memory, seemingly useless. But just now, while he had been closely examining the handprint, it had suddenly resurfaced in his mind.

Still, Li Xiaofei was unsure what this six-fingered, broken-palm handprint was meant to signify. The god statue worshipped by their ancient clan stood behind the silver Ruò Iron Clan powerhouse.

This deity statue was the only one that had not been completely destroyed. Its lower half remained intact. It was in the form of a human. Armored, but barefooted with two legs and two feet. The feet had five toes.

Judging by its shape, it appeared to be a female. Unfortunately, everything from the waist upward had been shattered, leaving a pile of rubble on the ground. Even with the hint provided by the intact lower half, Li Xiaofei was still unable to reconstruct the statue from the scattered fragments.

"Many branches of the ancient Reaper clans had human bodies and beast heads. So this half-statue doesn’t really prove anything," he muttered. "There’s no way all these ancient Reaper clans worshipped a human as their deity, right?"

Li Xiaofei shook his head, trying to dismiss the absurd notion forming in his mind. He turned his attention to the corpse of the silver Ruò Iron Clan powerhouse, beginning a careful search.

As the strongest figure of the Ruò Iron Clan, and the only one whose corpse had resisted corruption by the power of Oblivion, surely there would be something valuable on him.

Li Xiaofei searched thoroughly. Even the items that looked like potential storage tools were examined with caution. But in the end, he only found a small figurine nestled in its arms.

It was a humanoid figurine. Hand-carved, detailed little by little. The lower body was human. The upper body wore clothing and was human-like in form. Its face, however, was blurred. It had no facial features. The surface bore clear signs of wear from repeated handling. One could imagine that this silver Ruò Iron powerhouse must have often held this figurine in its hands and fiddled with it when it had still been alive.

It had even developed a natural patina. The material of the figurine seemed to be a kind of white bone but it was far heavier than metal. Li Xiaofei weighed it in his palm; it had to be at least tens of millions of kgs.

"Throwing this at someone would definitely pack a punch." He examined the figurine for a while but found nothing else unusual about it.

He put the figurine away. After some thought, he also decided to preserve the corpse of the silver Ruò Iron Clan powerhouse. Then, he made his way to the Ruò Iron Clan’s archive.

Yes, this once-glorious Reaper clan had its own library, and it was relatively well preserved. Li Xiaofei stepped inside, and was greeted by large stone slabs. Each was inscribed with ancient characters and diagrams in deep relief.

The archaic Reaper script, by now, posed little difficulty for Li Xiaofei to decipher. The records detailed the evolutionary path of the Ruò Iron Clan. It was, by far, the closest thing to a human-style cultivation system that Li Xiaofei had seen.

The Ruò Iron Clan valued a dual approach, refining both inside and out. They guided external forces from heaven and earth into their bodies, refining their internal organs, emphasizing a philosophy of inner sage, outer king, and sought to strengthen the body through organ-based cultivation.

They absorbed a type of energy from heaven and earth called Vital Qi to fuel this process. The founder of this cultivation method was a powerful figure known as the Ruò Iron Clan’s ancestral patriarch.

At the beginning, the Ruò Iron Clan had been a small clan of just a few hundred members. It was by following the correct evolutionary path that they had developed rapidly, rising to prominence and eventually growing into a super-clan with a population exceeding ten million.