During the daytime, deep beneath the ancient city of Bastis, within the vast library, figures were bustling about, busy with various tasks. There were men and women, nearly all wearing North Wu robes with only slight variations in style. They used dusters to clear away the thick layer of dust from the scrolls. Some figures gathered around wide Stone tables, carefully poring over the various scrolls that had been brought in, examining the many ancient characters within.
These figures were all Dorothy's Corpse Puppets. After Dorothy decided to temporarily set aside the Order of Rot's plague, she focused her main attention on uncovering the secrets of Heopolis. As the clues she possessed regarding Heopolis were extremely limited, she could only follow the hint given by Shadi and start with the so-called history.
...
"Heopolis only exists within history..."
Because of this vague and unclear clue, Dorothy could only locate the underground library of Bastis, a place theoretically storing the most mundane historical records in all of Buserite. She then used her Corpse Puppets to enter and search through the vast amount of information together.
Dorothy herself sat inside a tent in the camp outside the city, resting with her eyes closed, absorbing the various types of information recorded in the library through meditation.
...
"Fellow countrymen, my ability to enter Bastis today and conquer all of Buserite is thanks to your tireless assistance over decades. My Santo tribe originated in obscurity, constantly struggling to survive among bandits and ruffians. That I can defeat various powerful enemies today and unify Buserite is, firstly, due to the divine aid of the Save the World. Secondly, due to the help of the common people. Thirdly, due to your help. I raise this cup in respect to you all.
"Although the war has ended and we have achieved victory, please do not let down your guard. The history of Buserite is a chaotic history; no dynasty has ever been able to rule here for long. However, I believe we can overcome this pattern, for I have found the root cause of this destiny.
"Listen to me, fellow countrymen, the tragedy of Buserite stems from its people! It stems from its history!
"The tribes on this land have been fragmented since ancient times, fighting among themselves, never having a unified consensus. We have never considered ourselves a single people of one nation; we have always fought under the names of our respective tribes, not under the name of Buserite. This is the root cause of our centuries of chaotic warfare. And now, I shall change all of this!
"We need the same name, the same consensus, the same culture, and this must begin with the same period of history. History can shape our culture, and culture can shape our nation. We clearly share the same language, but we are not the same nation, primarily because we do not share the same history!
"Buserite previously had no history! No one paid attention to such fleeting things outside of swords and blades. But now, it is different. I will change all of this. I will complete the history of Buserite, and all children born in Buserite from now on will engrave this period of history into their memories.
Those tribes always claim to be the continuation of this ancient dynasty or the descendants of that ancient dynasty, each thinking they are the true masters of Buserite and that those dynasties never perished. Now, I will organize the history properly and show it to them, let them see that the dynasties they claim are long gone! They are over! There is no place for them in today's Buserite! A new dynasty is about to be born!
"Buserite shall march towards unity through swords and history!"
...
A Corpse Puppet sat on a Stone stool beside a Stone table, carefully reading the content written on a piece of parchment. This content was transmitted through the Corpse Puppet's senses into Dorothy's mind. After reading it, Dorothy couldn't help but sigh slightly in her heart.
'This is... the words of Santis, the founding monarch of the Santo Dynasty, Buserite's last unified dynasty, spoken at a victory banquet. He indeed wanted to achieve cultural unity for Buserite and intended to compile its history, but unfortunately, before the history could be completed, his son died from minor injuries sustained in a 'hunting accident' at the hands of 'well-trained doctors'. His dynasty was overthrown once again, and the history could not be completed before the dynasty collapsed again. However, fortunately, the historical materials collected for compiling the history are all here...'
Looking at the draft of Santis's words before her, Dorothy thought this in her heart. Before this, she had already read many historical materials of Buserite and learned some reasons for the Santo Dynasty's demise.
Although there was a large amount of information stored in this library, with her powerful information processing ability, Dorothy had almost finished reading the collections in more than half of the underground library, learning about the various chaotic pasts of Buserite.
'Due to prolonged turmoil, almost all factions within Buserite lacked the tradition of recording history. Most of the historical materials collected by Santis were various stories passed down orally within the various tribes. Not only were they chaotic and fragmented, but there were also many contradictory points within them. Compiling them into a complete historical record would be very difficult.
'But fortunately, among these large amounts of scattered and chaotic historical materials, there are still many commonalities. By organizing these common points, one can still roughly outline the history of Buserite over the past thousand years...'
Dorothy thought this in her heart. Afterwards, she began to organize and summarize the trajectories within this history, attempting to clarify a chronological line.
'Roughly 500 years ago... the Jida Dynasty was established, its king was named Zabbay... Roughly 450 years ago, the Saba tribe established the Saba Dynasty, founded by Queen Basna... 380 years ago, the leader of the Hamiyat tribe, Dib, defeated the Hutt tribe in the Battle of Black Sandstone and established the Hamiyat Dynasty. The Hutt tribe claimed to be descendants of the Jida Dynasty....310 years ago, Kando, the leader of the Najid tribe, led 3000 cavalry in a surprise attack on Bastis, defeated the Sand Bandit King entrenched there, and established the Najid Dynasty. Its king claimed to be a descendant of the Saba Dynasty and the legitimate ruler of Buserite. Kando ruled the dynasty for 12 years and died during the process of suppressing a rebellion. The dynasty was inherited by his son, Todd...'
Dorothy synthesized information from countless historical materials, sorting through Buserite's chaotic history. Soon, she discovered something unusual within it.
'The history of the various dynasties summarized from these historical materials... seems to only have beginnings and processes, but no endings...'
Sitting on the ground of her tent, Dorothy pondered this in her heart. In just a few hours, she had reconstructed several short-lived dynasties from the dust of Buserite's past. However, what she could reconstruct was only the process of the dynasties' establishment and the history for a short period after their founding. The history of the dynasties' final periods, however, was completely impossible to reconstruct due to the lack of corresponding historical materials.
The historical materials here came from stories circulating within the various tribes of Buserite. These stories often only recorded the process of a dynasty's rise but never recorded the process of its demise. Dorothy searched through all sorts of historical materials in the library but could not find how the dynasties in the stories met their end.
A dynasty must have three stages: founding, development, and demise... However, in all the historical materials of Buserite, various dynasties only had records of their establishment. A few dynasties recorded some development, but not a single dynasty recorded the process of its demise.
After an ancient dynasty in Buserite was established, it quickly perished for unknown reasons. Then, the entire Buserite fell into prolonged chaos and division until the next dynasty unified it.
'So many short-lived dynasties, the process of their establishment is relatively clear for each one, yet there is not a single reason given for their demise. Do the tribes of Buserite only like stories of dynasties rising and not stories of dynasties falling? Do they have a taboo against spreading and recording content about the overthrow of dynasties?'
Looking at the history she had summarized in her mind, Dorothy thought about it with curiosity. At first, she thought that the Buserite tribes' historical materials not recording the stories of dynastic demise was some kind of special tradition. However, when she read the remnants left by the historians of the Santo Dynasty, who had also organized this batch of historical materials, she found that this was not the case.
"Among the historical materials collected from the various tribes' stories, the process of demise for almost all Buserite dynasties is lacking. This is very surprising and makes the work of compiling historical records extremely difficult. We must collect more records about how these dynasties perished."
"But the record keepers who collected more historical materials said that in the stories preserved by each tribe, there was indeed no mention of the reasons for the demise of these former dynasties. This was not because they deliberately avoided it, but because over a long period, the stories of that part of the demise were gradually forgotten.
"This reason is very absurd. Stories will indeed be slowly forgotten and buried by time, but this process will not specifically select targets. It is impossible to only forget the part about the demise. Something must have gone wrong somewhere…"
On the other side of the Stone table, one of Dorothy's Corpse Puppet, holding a notebook of a former historian who worked here, was carefully flipping through it. The content recorded in the notebook negated Dorothy's previous idea that the lack of records of the demise was due to the tribe's tradition.
'Interesting… So… the lack of records of the demise of this large number of dynasties is not due to Buserite's tradition? Then what power is erasing these records?'
Touching her chin, Dorothy thought to herself. She was slightly excited now. She had found the strange point in Buserite's history. Now it depended on whether she could find any clues about Heopolis from this.
'All the records of the demise of Buserite's ancient dynasties are gone. So… what about the Santo Dynasty, the most recent one? If I remember correctly, it has only been a little over forty years since the Santo Dynasty fell, right? It's such a short time ago, I wonder if I can find any relevant records…'
Dorothy thought this in her heart. She had previously learned about the reason for the fall of the Santo Dynasty from Alima and other Buserite people, but they couldn't give a concrete explanation. At most, they only knew that the Santo Dynasty only lasted for two generations and then was gone. They didn't know the specific reasons and events that led to its demise, only that it was roughly related to tribal rebellion. Theoretically, this was only sixty years ago, and there was no reason for the records to be so unclear. However, Dorothy was now in the Santo Dynasty's library, and perhaps she could find some clues there.
Subsequently, Dorothy began to instruct the Corpse Puppet in the library to carefully search for information about the Santo Dynasty. Since the Santo Dynasty was the dynasty that built this library and was also the most recent dynasty, it had the most information inside.
Soon, Dorothy found a large amount of historical materials about the Santo Dynasty in the library, but the events recorded in these materials were almost all concentrated in the early period of the dynasty, that is, during King Santis's time. The historical materials after King Santis were greatly reduced, and many of them suffered severe natural damage such as insect infestation and weathering, becoming incomplete.
'Strange… The extent of this natural damage doesn't feel like something that could occur in just a few decades, and the damaged areas are only concentrated in the materials from the late period of the dynasty. If I had come here twenty or thirty years later, there would probably be no relevant records left at all. What kind of power is eliminating these records?'
Looking at these incomplete materials from the late Santo Dynasty, Dorothy touched her chin and thought with interest in her heart. Fortunately, although these materials were severely damaged, they were not completely unreadable, and Dorothy was still able to find some information from them. From this, she extracted the general reasons and process of the Santo Dynasty's decline.
"Continuous sandstorms and natural disasters damaged the already fragile agriculture and animal husbandry… The second generation king's queen, neglected, and her family colluded with dissatisfied tribes to seize more power… The criminals exiled by King Santis organized forces on the border and rose again…
"Finally, Bastis erupted in a palace coup amidst internal and external troubles. The second generation king died in the palace coup, and the queen supported her son as a puppet king to ascend the throne. The nationwide crisis war was thus ignited, and the exiles eventually led the counter-attacking army to conquer Bastis. The Santo Dynasty finally fell in the flames of war…"
Among countless incomplete historical materials, Dorothy barely pieced together the beginning and end of the Santo Dynasty's demise, but after piecing it together, she became even more confused.
'What's going on… The reasons for the demise of the Santo Dynasty are not much different from those of other ordinary dynasties? It's just a very ordinary process of dynasty destruction… There is not much Spirit Sight in the entire content, are the demises of other dynasties also like this? Why would such content be gradually erased by a mysterious power?'
Frowning, Dorothy thought in her heart. She originally thought that there were some secrets hidden in the stories of these dynasties' demise, and that mysterious power was preventing such secrets from being leaked. And it was constantly erasing the records of the dynasties' demise, but now Dorothy had barely pieced together the process of the Santo Dynasty's demise, and there was no earth-shattering secret in it.
'Strange… Could it be that some of these historical materials are fake, and the history I have restored is not real? But where the real historical materials are, I have no way of knowing…'
Dorothy thought gloomily in her heart, and then she continued to let her Corpse Puppet flip through various documents in the library, trying to find more valuable content.
However, just when Dorothy was about to flip through all the documents, but still had no harvest, she suddenly found a pile of manuscripts with various handwritten notes in an exquisitely crafted treasure box.
Dorothy asked the Corpse Puppet to take a closer look and found that it was the historical records compiled by the Santo historians. The entire library was built to compile this information, but due to the incomplete and chaotic historical materials of Buserite, these historical records were compiled quite imperfectly, and almost none of the histories of the dynasties before Santo could be compiled completely.
'Heh… According to the situation of the historical materials here, the only historical record that can be compiled a little more completely is the history of the Santo Dynasty itself…'
Looking at the historians' manuscripts, Dorothy couldn't help but think in her heart, and at this moment, a rather interesting idea suddenly came to her mind.
'That's right, the history of the Santo Dynasty's demise, just like the history of the demise of other ancient dynasties in Buserite, is being gradually eliminated by some kind of power. What if I compile the history of the Santo Dynasty now and also compile the history of its demise? Will the historical records I create be affected by that power?'
This thought appeared in Dorothy's mind. After thinking for a while, she decided to give it a try. Anyway, she couldn't find any other clues in this library now, so she might as well try it casually. What if she could observe the influence of that power?
Dorothy thought this and immediately took action. She had the Corpse Puppet in the library find the paper and pen left by Jemarr here, and had countless Corpse Puppet transform into compiling historians, sitting on the ancient Stone tables and Stone benches, and began to organize and compile the history of Buserite's last dynasty, the Santo Dynasty.
Under Dorothy's control, countless Corpse Puppet were in place, sitting in their positions and writing rapidly, compiling the history of the dynasty that had perished sixty years ago at high speed according to the historical materials Dorothy had collected in this library, recording the stories that had happened in the past.
The birth of the king, the rise of the tribe, fierce wars, desperate situations, the turning point of dawn, irresistible conquest, the establishment of the dynasty… etc., Dorothy recorded the past of the Santo Dynasty in the form of a chronicle, and just as she finished compiling the history of the early and middle periods of the dynasty and began to enter the compilation of the history of the late period of the dynasty, an unexpected voice sounded in her mind.
"Warning… The following actions will cause the disturbance of divine power on the history and destiny of this area…"
Hearing the long-lost system sound in her mind, Dorothy was slightly startled, and then blurted out in her heart.
"What the heck? Is divine power interfering with the history of this area?"
"Correct. After a preliminary investigation of the previous actions, the history of this area has been cursed. No written official history can exist here, and no powerful legal force can exist here."