After Logan left, Lucas Ethan rubbed his throbbing head and slumped into the chair. The normalcy he had displayed just now was all an act, just to keep Logan from worrying. In reality, his head was splitting with pain—a remnant of an ancient consciousness was rampaging through his mind. Although this remnant had lost its autonomy, its memories, experiences, desires, hatreds—everything—were battering Lucas Ethan’s spirit and consciousness.

Fragments of shattered memories stirred his mind and sea of consciousness like shards of broken glass, which he eventually absorbed one by one. By the time it was over, his clothes were soaked with sweat.

“Charles Brooks, the earth god of Jià Mù County, the City God of Dengzhou Prefecture, Edward Grant, the War of Investiture of the Gods, Thomas Brooks, the transmission of Buddhist teachings in Journey to the West—am I crazy, is my brain waterlogged, or am I really dreaming?”

After digesting these incredible pieces of information, Lucas Ethan leaned back in his chair, somewhat dazed.

The memories he had received belonged to someone named Charles Brooks, or rather, to the divine consciousness of Charles Brooks. But this god was the smallest kind in this world—a local earth god.

Jià Mù County’s earth god. Of course, Jià Mù County was an ancient name, so ancient that it only existed eighteen thousand years ago. Eighteen thousand years ago, a world-shaking war took place on this land—the War of Investiture of the Gods.

The strangest thing was that this War of Investiture of the Gods was almost identical to the story in a legendary novel from that bizarre technological world he had dreamed of. The only difference was that in that technological world, the war was just a novel, but here, it had truly happened. Besides the War of Investiture of the Gods, another event—the journey of Tang Monk to the West—had also really occurred, though that was much more recent, only eight hundred years ago.

Eighteen thousand years after the Investiture of the Gods, eight hundred years after Journey to the West.

He took several deep breaths, forcing his heart, which was about to leap out of his chest, back into place.

The secrets contained in Charles Brooks’s memories were simply too many—so many that he felt his previous sixteen years had been lived in vain, like a frog at the bottom of a well, seeing only the patch of sky above. There was a vast, boundless world outside that he could neither know nor comprehend. But today, he had climbed to the rim of the well and felt the infinity of the sky, which also stirred his desire to explore it. Now, this was only the first step.

In his dream memories, the legend of the War of Investiture of the Gods said that in the end, 365 true gods were enshrined. But in reality, besides these 365 true gods, there were countless minor gods and spirit gods, and Charles Brooks was one of them. Before his death, he was a soldier of the Shang dynasty—not an ordinary soldier, but a personal guard of Thomas Brooks, one of the two generals known as the Hum and Ha Generals. It was precisely because of this status that he had the chance to be enshrined as the earth god of Jià Mù. Back then, Jià Mù County was not a mass grave, but a densely populated, prosperous place.

You should know, during the War of Investiture of the Gods, it was said that there were eight hundred feudal lords, and the fighting was so fierce that heaven and earth lost their color, the sun and moon lost their light. Besides the famous generals of the Yin and Shang dynasties and the dead cultivators of the Jie Sect, there were countless soldiers on both sides. Those whose names were written on the Investiture List became true gods, but minor soldiers like Thomas Brooks who died on the battlefield were not so lucky. If unlucky, their souls would be scattered on the spot; if lucky, they might get a minor god position, guarding a small domain. As a personal guard of Thomas Brooks, his soul did not disperse upon death, so he received Thomas Brooks’s care and secured a post as a local earth god. That was already quite fortunate.

“So this is how the gods of this world exist. And there’s the Heavenly Court, too—how interesting!”

Having fully digested Thomas Brooks’s memories, Lucas Ethan finally gained a general understanding of this world. This was a world where immortals and gods flew everywhere. The true rulers were not humans, nor anything else, but the Heavenly Court. The Heavenly Court governed all the heavens and worlds, but precisely because it managed so much, its control was loose—almost as if it managed nothing at all. For a period after the War of Investiture of the Gods, control was strict, but after thousands of years, it had slackened, even to the point of complete disorder.

Here, humans were not the protagonists, just a part of all things under heaven. The immortals and gods above would not treat you differently just because you were human. In fact, in their eyes, humans were no different from pigs or dogs.

Above was the Heavenly Court, below was the Underworld, and only then came the human world.

And the term “human world” was merely a human definition of this realm. To the myriad gods and Buddhas, this was the realm of the living.

The Heavenly Court governed the Underworld, and the Underworld governed the human world.

The Underworld governed only the realm of the living, not just humans.

To all living beings, the Underworld treated everyone equally. In this life you might be human, but in the next, you could become a pig, dog, cow, or sheep—unless you could escape the cycle of reincarnation.

Beings who escaped reincarnation were called immortals. Humans could become immortals, and so could other creatures.

Besides immortals, there was another kind of being that escaped reincarnation: gods.