Elder Storm Hawk bowed to the three of them and said, "I'll be leaving now, patriarchs."
Lady Evergreen addressed her without looking at her, "Yes, yes. Fine work, Storm Hawk. You have done your job well, and you will be rewarded for it. Go to the personnel hall to get your reward."
Elder Storm Hawk bowed once more and left. She left in a hurry even though no one told her to leave.
The three patriarchs appeared to be relatable and easily approachable, but she knew that was only because they weren't dissatisfied yet. Once they are dissatisfied or disrespected, hell will be let loose.
In order not to disturb them, she decided to leave a meeting she wasn't asked to attend. She had done her job, which was to bring Arthur here. Since that was over, she decided to leave before she was made to leave.
If she is made to move, they can hijack her body to make her leave or push her away. Both actions won't be malicious. It is just something these powerful beings can do subconsciously in order to get their way.
After Elder Storm Hawk left, the golem produced a sphere, which it dropped to its feet. The sphere stopped in midair and expanded into a circular white platform.
The golem stepped onto the platform and said to Arthur, "Get on."
Arthur got on the platform wordlessly. He was briefly surprised when the other golem and the other two patriarchs got on the platform, but he didn't say anything.
After the four of them got into the white circular platform, the platform began to flash. It produced a white glow on its surface, which made the runes engraved on it light up briefly. Then the whole platform disappeared together with everyone.
To Arthur, the world had gone dark briefly before changing. It was a sudden event that might have scared him if he didn't have an inkling as to what was going on.
He had seen traces of the formation on the platform, and he recognized those traces, so he knew that they were being teleported. So he wasn't surprised when the surroundings had changed after the disappearance of light.
When the silver platform reappeared, they were in front of a large stone temple that appeared to be underground.
There were many lamps attached to the walls around them, so he was able to see the murals drawn on the wall.
The murals were painted with red and black. What was painted told a story that Arthur didn't quite understand.
Fortunately, one of the patriarchs decided to explain the murals to him. It was Lady Evergreen who came to the rescue.
She said, "That depicts why the founders came to this part of Ethera and what they came for."
"The founders were bandits. They usually robbed the people who passed a certain road in order to get the cultivation resources that they needed to cultivate. This would have been what they did until they died if someone hadn't tasked them with a goal."
"The founders weren't asked to come to this part of this world. They were forced and compelled to come. They had to come because they were weak. Each one of them was branded with a curse that ensured that they would do all that they could do in order to fulfill the task they were burdened with."
Arthur became solemn when he heard that. He began to have a terrible feeling about why he had been brought here.
As she was speaking, the platform had moved towards the door of the temple. The door was slowly rising up in order to make way for them. It was rising slowly and making a lot of noise as it did so.
The sound of the door rising was loud on its own, but the underground space was also causing the sound to echo, so it became louder and louder.
The sound was so loud it seemed that the whole place was shaking. But Arthur didn't hear the loud noise because he was too focused on the story and trying to figure out how it might be related to him.
Lady Evergreen continued. "Back then, this part of the world was not called the Five Veins region. It was called the Four Veins region. The quality of the highest secret realm was also rank 3, not rank 4. So this place was more backwards than it is currently."
"It was after many mana tides that the concentration of mana in the secret realms rose to what they are currently. The number of secret realms in this region also increased to five after the upstream root created one more offshoot."
"The founders didn't want to come. This place was barren, and they were weak. They were just people at the second mortal coil, so they were no match for the sects here at that time. But they had to come. They had no choice in the matter."
"They had to come, and they had to do well. Fortunately, they succeeded in founding a sect, so their curse didn't kill them. The sect they founded has continued to work hard in order to create a cultivator that managed to establish a foundation through the fusion of wood and lightning."
As she said that, the massive door finally opened. The silver platform passed through the opening and went into the stone temple.
But they didn't go far before they had to stop again. There was another door just a hundred meters away from the first door, and they had to wait for it to open too.
This door was also loud. It was even louder than the previous door because it now had a bigger space for the noise it was making to echo and be amplified.
But no matter how loud it was, the noise it was making couldn't drown out the mental communication from Lady Evergreen.
Arthur listened attentively as she said, "Over the history of the sect, there have been many opportunities to fulfill the goal that we were saddled with by our founders."