The university major that Li Ming studied was not history, but with the Honghuang government's advanced information services, he was generally familiar with historical content. Moreover, the administrative mindset of the Honghuang government was already completely open and aboveboard. Whether it was the government's dark history or the dark histories of various sages, as long as it had ever happened, it would all be laid out for everyone to see, for better or worse, so even ordinary people like William Thompson knew many secrets from the past.

However, William Thompson also knew that these were the secrets they were allowed to know. The real secrets would probably never be made public, and perhaps even very few among the upper echelons knew them. The later the era, the more and the more detailed the secrets; but when it came to the early days of human history, things became much more vague. Especially regarding the most supreme beings—such as the Three Sovereigns of humanity, the Human Sovereign Fuxi, the Earth Sovereign Houtu, and the Empress Nuwa—there was very little historical record. Similarly, information about the Three Pure Ones, the Western God, or the two Buddhist saints, was also extremely scarce.

As for information from even earlier times, from the era of myriad races before human history, it was truly pitifully little. The released historical records only mentioned Pangu creating heaven and earth, and Hongjun merging with the Heavenly Dao—other information was just legends. For example, it was said that humans at that time were extremely weak, completely unable to cultivate, and had no special abilities at all, just like humans from any non-magical plane. No, they were even weaker than those from non-magical planes, because at least humans from non-magical planes, given the right opportunity, could still unlock the first-level gene lock, whereas humans before the start of human history had no such thing as a gene lock at all...

William Thompson also didn't know whether those legends were true or false. If they were true, then on what basis did Pangu, the ancestor of humanity, achieve the inner universe and create heaven and earth? And on what basis did Hongjun, the patriarch of humanity, turn the Heavenly Dao Gaia into the Investiture of the Gods, thereby creating the Lord God Space? But if they were false... then on what basis did the myriad races of the Honghuang oppress humanity for countless eons? Could it be that in all those countless years, not a single human hero managed to unlock the fifth-level gene lock and become a sage to fight back?

And now... William Thompson knew that he could finally learn the truth. The Honghuang Chronicle... He opened the pages of this book.

"Since the formation of the Honghuang, myriad races have flourished, and the human race evolved on the Honghuang continent. Humans were weak, born without any internal energy circulation system, unable to absorb or store any free-form energy, possessing no special abilities, mentally fragile, spiritually fragile, physically fragile—a trash intelligent species even weaker than the lowest goblins, gremlins, kobolds, and so on. Even slimes were stronger than humans."

"As for the tragic fate of humanity, and the various ways the myriad races of the Honghuang exploited humans, these are reflected in another book of true history I have recorded, so I will not discuss them here. Under such tragic circumstances, countless billions of humans in the Honghuang lived in dire misery. They were beings even worse off than slaves, more pitiful than wild animals. Even the lowest of the myriad races could dispose of them at will—as food, as tools, as test subjects, as materials..."

"But after all, humans are intelligent beings. With numbers in the billions, heroes were born among them. Most of them died tragically, and only a very few heroes had special encounters. They gained knowledge and understood the truth of this world. Humans are born with original sin, and that sin is weakness. They wanted to change the tragic fate of humanity, and their greatest hope was for a sage to emerge among humans. At that time, sages were not yet called 'sages'—it was only after the start of human history that this rank was called 'sage.' Back then, they were called 'saint rank.' As long as a saint rank emerged among humans, humanity could join the ranks of the myriad races of the Honghuang as the weakest among them. For this, countless human heroes struggled all their lives. But sadly and lamentably, humans were too weak. Even ants have a slim, nonzero chance to kill a dragon—but could a single-celled organism do that?"

"Human heroes tried everything: from the Giant Project to the Mechanical Project, from the Mechanical Project to the Soul Project, from the Soul Project to the Mutation Project, from the Mutation Project to the most humble Slave Recognition Project... all failed. Generation after generation of heroes died tragically. In the end, thirteen survivors, who had inherited the essence of all previous heroes, came up with a new plan, because..."

"One of them met a human—a human with no name, or rather, they believed he had no name..."

"Was it the inevitability within coincidence? A probability born for the possibility of humanity, almost zero, but absolutely not zero?"

"At that time, the thirteen remaining human sages began their final plan. Its name was..."

"Eternal Night!"

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Chapter Two: Transmigration

Henry Clark shook his head, trying to calm the dizziness. After a long while, he finally stood up from the grass and said, "Is this the plane? Is there anything special about this place?"