Worthless Profession: Dragon Tamer

Chapter 1107, The Past of the Sacred Jiang Family

Translator: Silavin

This battle had spread far and wide throughout the Sacred Lands.

The fundamental reason lay in the fact that, prior to these events, the various Sacred Lands had been exploring the remote reaches of the Western Border, where they had discovered a ruin.

This ruin was extraordinarily terrifying. It was believed to have been constructed by powerful existences from the previous era, built as a bulwark against the changing of the eras.

The Arrays and resources within it were enough to leave people utterly stupefied.

The Sacred Land that initially discovered the ruin considered themselves to have stumbled upon a priceless treasure, for the laws governing the things of the previous era were entirely unlike those of the present one. If they could harness the power within, the effect on their entire Family’s strength would be immeasurable.

What they did not know, however, was that what they had opened was not a treasure, but a catastrophe.

Within this ruin, countless dried corpses had been sealed inside coffins, scattered throughout every corner.

Everyone had assumed these dried corpses were the dead. That they were beings who had not survived the change of eras.

Yet as the exploration of the ruin progressed, every single one of these dried corpses came back to life. They retained the outward form of dried corpses, while also preserving a fragment of their own consciousness.

However, being people of the previous era, it seemed that upon their rebirth through this fateful opportunity, they harboured an innate incompatibility with the people of the present era. Much like the Ancient Gods, who had survived from a prior era to the present day, they turned into natural-born enemies of Humans of the current era.

When these dried corpses encountered the people of the present era, they immediately attacked without a shred of reason or restraint.

Every single one of these dried corpses possessed power on par with that of a Divine Being.

The Sacred Land that had discovered the ruin suffered devastating casualties in an instant, utterly incapable of resisting.

Not only that, the dried corpses, drawing upon what little intellect remained to them, had somehow managed to form a social organisation.

Using the ruin as their base, they began to spread outward, sweeping clean all the Monsters and Humans in their surroundings, determined to eradicate every existence that did not belong to their era.

The ruin’s location was not far from the deep interior of the Western Border, where the various Sacred Lands had set up their encampments.

Once such events unfolded within the ruin, the Sacred Lands were naturally the first to suffer.

In short order, a number of Sacred Lands found themselves under attack from the existences within the ruin.

Though the Sacred Lands, drawing upon their formidable forces, managed to hold their positions and were not overrun by the ruin’s inhabitants, the casualties were still grievous.

Furthermore, after investigation, the true extent of the ruin people’s strength had been revealed. All the Sacred Lands were deeply shaken. These people were not only immensely powerful and numerous, but possessed their own stronghold. Their combined strength had already far surpassed that of any single Sacred Land.

To uproot them by one’s own power alone was all but impossible.

In the interest of self-preservation, the Sacred Lands moved swiftly. They began to contact one another and ultimately, nine Sacred Lands joined forces to form a Sacred Land Alliance Army. They marched forth to suppress the ruin and drive its inhabitants from the Western Border, ensuring the various Sacred Lands would no longer live under that threat.

The Sacred Jiang Family was among them.

Indeed, owing to the exceptional strength of their Family, the Sacred Jiang Family, the mightiest of the nine, served as the Alliance Leader, bearing responsibility for command during battle.

This campaign lasted a full three years.

Over those three years, the Sacred Lands fought in complete concert. One by one they cut down the ruin people, steadily eroding the enemy’s strength, until victory seemed finally within reach.

In the final battle, the nine Sacred Lands, led by the Sacred Jiang Family’s Sacred Master, each committed the full depth of their people, intent on delivering the killing blow and putting an end to the ruin once and for all.

Moreover, before the battle began, all the Sacred Lands had already reached an agreement on how the various resources within the ruin were to be distributed once the ruin people had been eliminated.

Though the Sacred Jiang Family held the position of Alliance Leader, they had not leveraged their contributions or their strength to make any excessive demands.

The resources within the ruin were to be divided more or less equally among the nine Sacred Lands. So everyone was in agreement, and all had consented.

The final battle unfolded exactly as everyone had anticipated.

After three years of unrelenting warfare, the ruin people had been completely eradicated.

They were, after all, not people of the present era, but existences caught somewhere between Humans and Monsters. Naturally, they were no match for the Humans of the current era.

After three days and three nights of bitter fighting, every last ruin person was slain. The entirety of the Sacred Lands forces re-entered the ruin, beginning to take stock of the resources within and preparing to divide the spoils of war.

Yet just as the Sacred Jiang Family believed all was finally over, the people of the other eight Sacred Lands suddenly struck, turning upon the Sacred Jiang Family without warning.

Caught entirely off guard, having just endured a brutal campaign, the Sacred Jiang Family suffered devastating losses in that first moment. They were driven into a cavern within the ruin, trapped and cornered.

The Sacred Jiang Family’s Sacred Master fought back against these traitors while demanding to know why they had chosen to besiege their own allies.

The answer from the other eight Sacred Lands was simple: the Sacred Jiang Family was too powerful. They feared that the Sacred Jiang Family would seize every resource within the ruin for themselves.

Though everyone had agreed upon the distribution of spoils before the campaign began, who could guarantee that the Sacred Jiang Family would actually honour that agreement?

Rather than quibble with the Sacred Jiang Family, was it not far better to strike first?

Without the Sacred Jiang Family, everyone else stood to claim a greater share of the ruin’s resources. Was that not killing two birds with one stone?

Who had first proposed this scheme remained unknown.

But apart from the Sacred Jiang Family, all eight of the other Sacred Lands had agreed to it. They had communicated privately amongst themselves, and had planned this sudden betrayal from the very beginning.

Everything was proceeding according to plan.

The trap had been laid in advance. Even the Teleportation Scrolls of the Sacred Jiang Family members had been rendered unusable. They were forced into the cavern, left with no choice but to fight desperately against impossible odds.

Their complete annihilation was only a matter of time.

In the end, the forces of the eight Sacred Lands chose not to mount a direct assault. Instead, using Engineered Items, they sealed the cavern shut, intending to entomb every last member of the Sacred Jiang Family inside.

Once all of the Sacred Jiang Family’s powerful fighters had been buried alive, the eight Sacred Lands divided the ruin’s resources amongst themselves, then combined their forces to storm the Sacred Jiang Family Residence, plundering all of the Sacred Jiang Family’s accumulated resources.

And thus, the Sacred Jiang Family ceased to exist. Its name was no longer spoken about.

Having heard everything there was to know about the Sacred Jiang Family, Lu Fan was left in something of a daze.

By all accounts, the Sacred Jiang Family ought to have been destroyed a thousand years ago.

And yet, he had personally visited the Sacred Jiang Family, witnessed with his own eyes how flourishing and prosperous it was.

[Could it be that the Sacred Jiang Family had never truly been destroyed? That some of them had survived and rebuilt their Sacred Land, restoring it to its former glory?]

The possibility seemed farfetched.

The Sacred Jiang Family’s whole foundation had been entirely plundered and divided. To rise again from nothing and re-establish themselves as a Sacred Land, how extraordinarily difficult that would be.

The other eight Sacred Lands, fearing retaliation from remnants of the Sacred Jiang Family, would never have given them such an opportunity.