Horse 12, Year 8693 Of The Grand Wulin Era, Avarius Goldscale

A surprising amount of these soldiers were from poor families, so while the soldiers themselves had been well educated by the Sol Magna Empire, most of their younger siblings and relatives weren't so lucky. I get that they're an Empire and all, and their social programs and stuff are a bit archaic, but it really weirded me out that basic education wasn't freely available to everyone regardless of economic or social status, having grown up in a sect where resources and information were pretty easily shared and for more valuable or rare stuff you'd just have to put in some extra effort beyond your normal duties, which were carefully assigned to allow for either free time, one's own studies and training, or time to earn extra contribution points without exhausting oneself half to death. ( I know you're reading this, you stubborn flame headed pretty-boy, and you still do that kind of thing to this day. Honestly, how does an immortal being exhaust himself into a near-death state constantly? You work too damn hard.)

The task of educating them fell to those of us who'd been in the sect a while to teach them, and I volunteered. Somehow, I got stuck teaching a bunch of kids, from a little younger than Felix to barely younger than myself, with their anxious parents standing by, ostensibly to calm their children if they got upset or remove kids who disturbed the peace, but really, they wanted to learn to. After all, who doesn't want to know more about the world they live in, let alone one where cultivation exists and anyone can potentially become an immortal being or even a god? Imagine someone with barely any education gaining that kind of terrifying power, the power to warp the laws of reality without understanding them and how their alterations would effect things,and you'll understand why I was so shocked by the concept of a country with so many cultivators not having universal basic education, let alone that, yanno, everyone deserves free access to that regardless of the power they might or might not wield.

As I thought about these heavy subjects,that my young self didn't know carried such weight,I calmed myself and asked the assembled class a question.

"Well, I have a list of your names, and I'm going to do a roll call soon, but first I'm going to ask what you'd like to learn about first! Would you like to learn about the basics of cultivation or the story of how our world was born, or would you like to learn the runes we use to read and write? You can learn about the magic ones that create cool effects later, but you need to learn your basics first!"

I stopped and took a breath, only to realize I'd been babbling,and was sure I'd destroyed my cool and collected image(that I didn't really have). The class seemed to have not realized that, and were staring at me attentively, with pondering looks on their faces as they tried to decide what they wanted to learn. I'd later learn that the upper classes of Sol Magna had traditionally asserted that the poor were unintelligent and superstitious, bad at learning, as well unwilling to learn and not worth educating.

I have since learned that those in power often act that way across many worlds, as an uneducated people who don't know their rights or their history or how they're being controlled and abused are significantly easier to control and abuse and deceive. Experience has taught me that the societally disadvantaged are in fact willing and able to learn and change, and in that moment the eyes of these kids and their parents carried a burning curiosity, a pure desire to know tinged with the drive to improve themselves.

The children looked at each other, then gathered together into small groups, exchanging hushed whispers I could easily hear if I wanted, but deliberately chose to not, out of a certain respect for their desire for privacy. I let them discuss for a few minutes, waiting for the whispering to escalate and then die down. The parents were apparently willing to abide by whatever decision the kids came to, as they stayed out of the intense whisper-debate entirely. After a while, they came to a consensus. One kid, a small girl around Felix's age, spoke up.

"Well, we've all heard it before, but we want to hear you tell it. The story of how the Myriad Heavens Cosmos came to be!" Given that a 5 year old was capable of that kind of eloquence, she was probably from a merchant family or noble family, and I'm pretty sure she was. From what I remembered, she was the daughter of that Mage subordinate of Regulus's , Marcia Potitia? Either way, she came from a well off background, and her mother had likely made sure she was educated, so I wondered why she was there. I would soon find out, but for that moment the question bothered me.

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"Well, since you asked nicely, let's get to it. In the beginning, the creators came from many places. From worlds far flung on the grand Wheel Of The Multiverse that orbits the Well Of Origin, they came. They left their homes for many reasons, some exiled, some seeking purpose, some having given up on life, some looking for a fresh start. They came for many reasons, often fleeing mistreatment and oppression and pointless hatreds and injustices. They wished to start a world of their own, as free of these things as they could manage. They found an empty spot on the Wheel, filled with energy and substance, where the laws of reality could be easily shaped into the Dao they sought to establish. Some had even come from worlds where there was no such thing as magic or cultivation and where science was the only way to understand Dao, before having been reborn into other worlds and working their way up to godhood." I paused, taking a breath and looking around.

I'd carefully infused a little mana and some Illusion Dao Insight into my words, creating the images that matched the words in their heads, filling even the oldest of the adults with feelings of absolute, childlike wonder. They saw pieces of many lives, a tapestry of experiences that I'd pieced together from tales of the lives of the group of gods that had created our universe, as well as memories embedded by the gods themselves into copies of those stories.

"They joined together their massive strengths, channeling their nigh-limitless energies and formidable insight into Dao and many other powers into a grand act of creation. Guided by their thoughts, feelings, and pushed and prodded by reality itself, they gathered energy and matter and formed a world that could fulfill their dreams, and that they could watch over and do their best to ensure the things that drove them away from their homelands wouldn't spring up in their pure, new land.The world, our world, the grand and vast Myriad Heavens Cosmos, took its place on the vast Wheel Of The Multiverse. The gods filled it with life, some brought with them from their homes, some created out of memory, some springing from the vibrant energies of the early universe itself, and some entirely from their own imaginations and experimentation. Some of the life they created or introduced even continued to evolve at a rapid rate due to the sheer power present in the new universe, producing even more fantastic life forms!" I paused again, looking around at my spellbound audience.

That blond child, whose name I didn’t yet know, asked a question.

“Mister. Goldscale, what did the gods do after they created the world, and where are they now?”

“That’s a good question, Miss Potitia, and to answer it I have to go into things we don’t know for certain.” I explained, not wanting to give the kids the wrong idea by stating theory and suspicion as fact.

“My name’s Lucia! I really wanna hear what’s next, even if it might not be true, and I think we all do!”

 The other kids nodded and whooped and cheered in support of Lucia,and a smile crept onto my scaly face as I waited for the assembled kids to calm down. A smile?Yeah, despite the scales and all my face was in a pretty human state at the time,so I could talk to these mostly-human kids and their parents more easily. I’d learned quickly that without visual social cues, misinterpretations were hard to avoid.

“Well, nobody knows for sure why, but about 2000 years before the current calendar began , people stopped being able to travel to first the Divine Realms, and the gods stopped leaving the Divine Realms, as if they had all be called back home for some reason. About a thousand years after that, the Immortal Realms closed off. 500 years after that, the myriad Mortal Realms closed off from each other as well. Another 500 years after that, we stopped receiving communications from the gods, and mysterious ruins, tombs, temples, and the like began to appear across the various Mortal and Immortal realms, and nobody has been able to enter them yet. As well, many resources and materials appeared in places they had never before been, and the background mana levels in many worlds increased drastically. These structures all have a timer in some way, shape, or form, that counts down to the same day, the last day of the month of Rat ,in the 8699th year of the Grand Wulin Era.”

I paused, taking a deep breath before I continued.”When the grand Wulin Era began, the seals locking people to their home planes faded, and we could travel again, but the gods were gone without a trace but these strange structures and without the gods' gentle but firm rule and with the greed and evil in the hearts of some people, our world began to change from the gods’ shining vision to what it has become today.Since that day, no one has ascended to god-hood, and the Dao has had to take care of itself.”

 The kids sat there in awe, soaking in what I said, but I saw something in the eyes of the adults and the older kids. It was a grief for the gods they'd long known to be missing, a sadness for a world that had seen better days. They lamented for what had been, and were saddened by what was. I saw something else in the eyes of a few, though. A determination, burning and pure, a desire to rebuild their world into what it had once been. This was the goal of many cultivators, but as of yet nobody knew how exactly that'd be managed. Many hopes rode on those ruins, hoping that these relics of our past would lead us to the future.