Chapter 171 — The Legend of the Sea of Everlasting Darkness
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
"Yes, my lord. If you are interested in a few unofficial histories and strange tales, I can tell you some of those stories that circulate among the common folk and never make it into respectable company," Pi Yun nodded. "I have indeed heard of the 'Sea of Everlasting Darkness,' but it is not a term coined by humans. In fact it comes from the silver elves—a tale passed down among the elves. That is why it did not come to mind just now."
"A silver elf unofficial history and strange tale?" Gao Yang was taken aback. He had not expected that the "Sea of Everlasting Darkness" mentioned by a Slumberer cultist would turn out to be a term of silver elf origin. "Those long-eared folk who live practically forever still pass around things like that?"
"The silver elves who dwell in the south of the continent built the oldest civilized society on this earth, rising more than ten thousand years before humans rose in the central continent. Though the original elven empire has been lost to history, the new silver empire inherited a great many historical documents from the ancient elven empire. But they are far too old, and the various elemental creatures and strange beasts that were active in the ancient era are easily confused with myth and legend, so those documents are riddled with errors and falsehoods. That they devolved into unofficial histories and strange tales is only natural—elves are, after all, merely a mortal species," Pi Yun said with a laugh. "And as for the Sea of Everlasting Darkness, it is the strangest of all the elven legends."
Then he cleared his throat and continued: "Ahem. In the legend of the Sea of Everlasting Darkness, the elves speak of the origin of their own race. It is said that in the beginning there were no silver elves at all in this world, nor gray elves, dark elves, or any of the other elven subspecies. There was only one kind—the 'primal elves,' born with mighty power and undying life—and they lived on another continent far away.
"On some day in the ancient past, disaster struck that continent, and a group of primal elves fled their ancestral land aboard 'arks' that could hover and race above the surface of the sea. These elves lost their way on the endless ocean shrouded in mist and magic vortices, and half a month into their wandering they suddenly blundered into a stretch of sea forever locked in night, forever wrapped in starlight. And at the center of that sea stood a towering spire, supremely grand and supremely tall, with the bearing of a mountain, its summit reaching straight up into the starry sky.
"Moved by the spire and the stars, the lost primal elves prayed devoutly beneath the starlight, hoping to find a new place to live. And their prayers were carried through the spire to the ears of the gods among the stars, so the starlight poured down its blessing, and the spire opened its gates and let the primal elves step inside.
"All the primal elves went into the tower, and there they saw things of endless wonder: projections of the cosmic sky, and the unfolding processes of every kind of animal, every kind of mineral, every kind of plant in the world. They realized that the tower held inconceivable knowledge, and so greed took hold of them. They were no longer content to shelter from the storm in the tower's outer layers; they tried to press into its inner and upper reaches, to lay hands on that knowledge.
"So the tower brought down punishment. A radiance filled the whole of it, and the primal elves who sought to steal the knowledge were bathed in that light. According to the depth of their trespass, their forms of life were remade in the glow: they became dark elves who fear the sunlight, gray elves of small stature, sea elves who cannot long leave the water, and silver elves, the least flawed of all. For the silver elves' clan feared the tower's power and did not trespass much upon the forbidden ground, so their punishment was the lightest.