"A battlefield?" Ryu's brows shot up.
"Yes." Sarriel's gaze lost focus. "Just because you're ignorant of the outside world, doesn't mean that the outside world is ignorant of you. In the world of cultivation, there's no such thing as pity, there's only benefits and more benefits. If someone finds and infantile world like this one, especially when it can only be ranked barely among the middling levels, they see it as a free opportunity to earn big.
"The idea that the Chaos Plane is full of treasures is true. But, it is more likely that outsiders have partaken more in their spoils than we can ever imagine."
Ryu's gaze narrowed.
"Are you saying that others have found entry into our world through the Chaos Plane? Is that where the Martial Gods came from? And who's fighting these people?"
"Isn't it obvious? The Heavens are fighting against them. It's the only protection you get in this life. But, there's only so much the Heavens of a middling world can do. And, just when it seemed that there would be able to be a resurgence, traitors foolishly allowed the Martial Gods to take root here as though it would help them in the long run."
Ryu's brows only seemed to become more furrowed with passing time. He was finding it difficult to reconcile all of this information at once.
"We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into but it could be said that we lucked out. One of the invaders happened to be a Fey who contacted us before being hunted down by the Heavens and forced into fleeing. This allowed us to establish a connection with the outside world.
"It was pretty clear that this person simply wanted to use us, but the things they brought were unlike anything we had ever experienced before. By that point, it was already clear that the Chaos Plane wouldn't be enough for us to turn the tide of the war and many had resigned to our Fate. But, this became a glimmer of hope…
"Unfortunately, our actions infuriated the Heavens. With how things were, even if we had somehow managed to turn the tide of war, it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. There's little to nothing that can be hidden beneath their gazes and we lost any support we might have originally had, causing us to decline even faster.
"Our so-called savior seemed to have already guessed that such a thing would happen as they returned not long after we had lost any semblance of Favor with more…"
Ryu didn't know how to accept this sort of information. From the way Sarriel was speaking about it, it sounded like these invaders could come and go as they pleased. It probably wasn't as simple as it sounded, but this was the image being conjured into his mind nonetheless. And, it was unfortunately difficult to reconcile.
"… They came to us with a chance. It was quite obvious that what they wanted was fresh blood. Even to far higher level worlds, the decline of bloodline was inevitable. It seemed that Heavens were the only entities capable of birthing and reigniting Bloodlines to what they once were.
"But, as you can probably tell, there was a problem with that. By the time we had most definitely lost the war, our bloodlines had already declined. Not only had Faeries been created and diverged into weaker, diluted forms of us. But, less and less true Fey were beginning to be born.
"With things as they were, how could we possibly reinvigorate the bloodlines of Fey that were already far stronger than we were? This fault was obvious and it was as bold as you could get. But, we thought we were clever.
"They had only ever met with the few that could manage to stave off the corrosion of Chaos Qi, so we thought that their understanding of our race was quite small. We thought that since we had already lost the favor of the Heavens for trading with these people, we could continue to take advantage of them and when it came time to hold up our end of the bargain, we would simply not do so.
"What could they do to us? After all, even being in our world was dangerous for them and they couldn't step foot into the Real Plane anyway. However, we were far too naïve. The means of an expert of such caliber was far beyond our understanding.
"What they needed us for was far more sinister. The creation of every complex race into a new world comes with it a special set of Fundamental Runes. These Fundamental Runes are the blueprint for the creation of a race and can be reactivated under very special circumstances, allowing both its observation and a benefit related to cultivating in its presence.
"We thought they needed us for our blood, when in reality… They wanted to bring our race to the brink of extinction just so that these Fundamental Runes would show themselves…
"When a Race borders on extinction, these Fundamental Runes will become especially sensitive, allowing them to be manipulated..
"It's quite laughable when you think about it. A fundamental rule of cultivation is that petty tricks are meaningless before absolute power. We thought that we could pull the wool over their eyes when the truth of the matter was that what tricks we had in store never mattered to begin with. From the start, we were nothing but pigs they were slowly fattening up for a slaughter.
"And then it happened. We were killed down to almost the last man.
"It was very difficult. There were many of us left to begin with. The only good news was that while our bloodlines had declined, our cultivation methods had improved by leaps and bounds, resulting in our fighting force ironically being stronger than it had ever been.
"But, that wasn't worth much of anything at all. We were still slaughtered. The only thing that knowledge gave us was a chance."
Sarriel's gaze turned cold.
"And that chance was me."