This trick genuinely startled Lance; he thought it was like those tomb-raider novels, where triggering a trap would cause sand and stone to bury the place.

But in reality, it was just a small amount of sand at first, revealing that cavity after flowing out.

"Sea sand."

Lance grabbed a handful and realized it was ordinary sea sand, then thrust the torch into that cavity.

The torchlight illuminated the space, which wasn’t very large; it seemed forcefully nested within to hide itself. No wonder there was no switch, likely never intended to be opened easily once the brick wall was erected.

The area wasn’t large, barely enough room for one person, let alone anything substantial.

However, fortunately, within the sand that poured out, there was a crude wooden crate, giving Lance a sense of gain.

Carefully taking it out, nothing like the movie trap activation occurred—only a slight stir of stale air.

Lance, impatiently, opened it; the box was nailed shut but could be easily pried open by hand.

That’s when he saw the contents inside...

Despite being sealed behind a brick wall and protected from moisture by sand, after all those centuries, the main wooden planks had already rotted, but the box served its purpose well, preserving the contents in excellent condition.

Inside was an unidentifiable leather package, and upon carefully opening it, he discovered a bundle of manuscripts!

The contents inside the box delighted Lance; indeed, the appearance of text was even more thrilling than finding gold coins.

It brought back the excitement and thrill he felt when discovering an Easter egg in a game years ago.

Flipping through those manuscripts briefly, Lance quickly noticed the pages seemed to have been torn from elsewhere, and what gave him a headache was that it was written in a rare ancient script.

But he was an archaeologist, after all; while he couldn’t understand it completely, the deduction of text followed rules.

No time for a slow translation, but with some guessing, he roughly understood it.

This was a record from a narrator’s perspective, and Lance got a glimpse of what happened back then.

Undoubtedly, aligned with Lance’s previous speculations, the Primordial God coexisted with this world, with few genius figures in the river of history able to make this discovery, but certainly some existed.

Clearly, someone within that civilization also discovered this fact and understood the planet’s essence was a sleeping Primordial God.

And coincidentally, the person who thought they understood it all held a significant position in civilization.

Some things are best left unknown; once known, they become entangled endlessly.

If considering ordinary people, or those not in the ruling class, like Tamara or Margaret.

One was a Romani peddler surviving through thievery and deceit, hunted by everyone and pursued by the organization.

The other was a fallen noble lady, uncertain if she’d survive another day amidst power struggles.

Even if they knew, it wouldn’t matter much to them.

Without Lance’s intervention, they might have vanished at any time, taking the secret with them.

Consider an extreme example—the Wilderness Witch.

She too was crushed by fear; all she could achieve was fungalization, only affecting a region of the wilderness, and was eventually burned down by Lance in a blaze.

Knowing wouldn’t make a significant impact.

But those who understood this were rulers; their brains overthrown by fear would exhaust all efforts "struggling," ultimately dragging everyone into despair.

Like the Ancestor, who squandered the family wealth after understanding everything and then pushed Hamlet into the Abyss.

One could say the impact of corruption at the lower levels isn’t much, but when it’s at the top, that’s a death sentence.

It’s like if a limb fails, it can be amputated, but if the brain fails, it drags the whole body to death.

Just as the events to follow...

The key figures of the civilization began studying the Primordial God, but what awaited them was only despair.

When that person understood humanity’s doomed future, apocalyptic rhetoric emerged; when the ruling class fell into pessimism, they instantly dragged the entire civilization into an abyss.

They vainly sought a path for themselves, even to submit to certain beings, to please a presence they dared not mention in text.

Then the civilization shifted drastically, even though the apocalypse was merely a figment of their imagination, plunging them into madness.

The civilization’s rulers sacrificed their entire civilization, foolishly hoping to survive with the power of the Evil God, only for the civilization to vanish instead.

Of course, not everyone was like that, such as the author who wrote this down. He once had some status, but was stripped of it for opposing their crazy plan and sent here as labor.

The author, unable to change anything, could only seize this opportunity to record what happened back then.

This all came to an abrupt stop in the writings; Lance also didn’t know what happened afterward. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

But undoubtedly, the civilization that once created the Bay disappeared, unfortunately, transforming into Deep Divers—a type of Aberrant Demon, becoming a dependent of an Evil God.

And those high-level members should be Shamans, still controlling the Deep Divers.

The civilization’s entire legacy vanished into history, along with grand buildings, exquisite statues, magical forging techniques...