Chapter 340 – Truths and Lies (XXVI)

Chapter 340

Truths and Lies (XXVI)

… I’m a bit stumped. Well, not a bit–a lot stumped. As there was nothing for me to do when I came out, I decided to simply sit and go through the rewards once again, slowly inspecting them a bit closer.

The first one I took a gander at was the ‘Writ of the Eras’–it really was a singular parchment with crude letters drawn across its surface in black ink, quickly and haphazardly. It was a cause for a frown on my end as all other wordy things procured by the system had perfect calligraphy and were clearly either written by the master of an era or artificially produced as though printed.

This, however, was clearly a document not made by the system, merely ‘kept’ by it. Or stolen by it. Or, well, replicated by it. Somebody, at some point in time, wrote this. Further proof were random annotations to the sides, though they’ve all been blurred or redacted. Honestly, most of the damn thing was redacted. It was clear that, besides just the names of the eras, there once were dates detailing their length, and even descriptions were dwindled down to a few words to a sentence, at most.

Regardless, even this ‘much’ was more than I could have ever learned otherwise.

As far as I could tell, this world really struggled with ‘homogenized’ eras; I’ve seen the current age be called sixteen different names, and the few previous ones that were mentioned also varied wildly.

Even within the system’s rewards, whenever specific ‘eras’ were mentioned, it didn’t seem universal but more so an approximation of a time and a place written within the context of the original item.

Even if–and it’s a big ‘if’–this parchment I’m holding is an objective list of ages throughout the world’s history, what good is it if most groups have different naming schemes? Regardless, it’s kind of… fascinating, but also kind of… useless?

[Epoch of Silence — the beginning before the beginning; less than nothing is known about it]
[Ethereal Age — Dao and Heavenly Laws emerge]
[Primordial Era — Qi and first life manifest from ethereal energies]
[Age of the Beginning — mortal men and women emerge]
[Epoch of Wars — beginnings of cultivation and shamanism and of the eternal dance of wars between the two]
[Ancient Era of Martial Arts — golden era of Martial Arts and its dominance over magic, where Heavenly Court was established]
[Epoch of Magic — shamans push martial artists to their last bastion, the Heavenly Court, where, just before their death, the First Emperor of Mankind emerges and turns the tides]
[Imperial Era — Emperors and Empresses keep rising and falling; the first true Dao Emperor is born]
[Second Epoch of Silence — ‘The Great Silence’, as even those who lived it would never utter a word of it; beware, ye who read, it is here it all began]

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[Age of Demonic Wars — organized invasion of Demonic Wars, thrusting the worlds into the age of chaos and their near utter annihilation]
[Era of Restoration — a slow restoration of lost inheritances and felled ancient powers as humanity strove to regain its apex position]
[Age of Quiet — to the blind, nothing ever happened; to the wise, they knew to stay quiet]
[Epoch of Divergence — the fall of one who questioned earmarked the beginning of change; what shall come of it… none known]

That’s a lot of epochs, but also… not that many?

As far as I remember, there are actually 30-something (36 or 37, I think?) epochs classified back on Earth. Comparatively, 13 isn’t even half that number–just barely a third. Does that mean that this world is about 30% ‘younger’ than Earth? Maybe.

I mean, it wouldn’t be out of question–Earth itself is like four and a half billion years old, whereas the first life appeared almost a billion years later. Humans themselves wouldn’t show up for a long, long, long time after, and the way we quantify eras sort of reflect that.

Here, it is entirely possible that there hasn’t exactly been five billion years since ‘the beginning’, but it’s also possible that even if it’s ‘just’ 2 billion years or something, because of magic and such, people emerged and expanded far quicker, which meant there would be more recorded history.