Lin Wu felt a bit overwhelmed having seen all the memories. But he also felt a bit more satisfied as he finally understood all that had happened until now.

Even if there were several gaps in Lin Wu's understanding and doubts that he had, his current state was far better than before.

"Damn… so much happened and all of it started from that one Skull god. And if I take it even further, then it all started with the Taiji celestial himself. If it were not for one of the tombs being here, perhaps the Skull god would have never come here and there wouldn't be all these changes." Lin Wu said to himself.

He had also gotten to learn a bit more about the four guardian beasts by now. He learned that there were truly four of them but the Skull god had destroyed the sect which was supposed to be the backing for the Vermillion bird here.

And once that sect was gone, the rest of the area was still destroyed, eventually becoming a forbidden area that no one entered.

"No, wait… why is the area still like this if the Vermillion bird managed to cleanse everything?" Lin Wu was a bit lost.

He looked through more memories until eventually coming upon the memory that linked to the one before. Just like before, the scene in front of Lin Wu changed until he could see the same devastating scene as before.

~Rumble~

The ground below shook as a crack appeared underneath it and from that crack rose up a temple. The temple was similar to the vermilion bird temples Lin Wu had seen till now, but this one looked well maintained.

But the one thing that was strange about this temple was the fact that a black skull laid on top of it. This was the container that held the soul fragment of the Skull god. That container laid there till eventually, someone picked it up.

This man was a Nascent soul realm cultivator who had evidently wandered in to see what had happened in the area.

"Is this supposed to be the location where the Vermillion sect was located?" The man wondered as he looked at the black skull laying on the temple's roof.

"What's that?" The man said before approaching the skull.

The moment he picked up the skull, though, his eyes went dull, and he moved around like a puppet. It was evident that he was now being controlled. Black smoke started to come out of the skull before entering the man.

About five minutes later, the process was complete and the eyes of the man turned black like coal.

"DAMMIT! DAMN THAT VERMILLION BIRD!" Suddenly, the man cursed in a hoarse voice. "Six hundred years of work all wasted!" He continued.

He then looked at the temple below it and suddenly smiled.

"Don't think I don't know of your other temples. I'll ensure that you are never able to find a foothold in this world. Besides, you are not the only one who made backup plans…. AHAHAHA!" The man suddenly started laughing, and the memory faded away.

Lin Wu was taken aback by this sudden ending and was left wanting for more.

"That's all? This gives me little to no context… ~Sigh~ I guess I'll have to figure the rest out on my own." Lin Wu said to himself.

Still, he was able to make a timeline of events now. He could tell that even at this time, the temple of the three guardians had not been created, which meant that the guardian beasts had not been awakened.

"I also didn't see many signs of an invasion there. So either it didn't happened during this or it happened after it. At least I know that the guardian beasts were awakened when the invasion was at the peak." Lin Wu said to himself.

"And… Mo Hei also talked something about others having beast bloodlines… I don't know if he was referring to the three great clans or not." Lin Wu muttered to himself, but then he shook his head. "No, no, that's not right… the three clans only gained the bloodlines after the three beasts were awakened. This means whoever he was talking about was normal cultivators with beast bloodlines."

Lin Wu watched a few more memories and learned that his conjectures were true. Apparently, the Mo Hei was not the only vessel of the Skull god. There had been many after that. But the latter ones were hidden well and did all their tasks secretly.

They were also the reason why no information about the Vermillion sect could be found in the world now. The skull god though, was weakened greatly due to the attack of the vermilion bird back then.

Due to this, he was unable to keep control of a vessel for longer periods of time and also ended up killing them because of this. And to fix this very problem that he had, he needed the bloodline essence of the vermilion bird.

"Huh… so he's been using the Vermillion bird's bloodline essence to make an antidote for himself? No wonder he's been raiding all these temples." Lin Wu understood.

He also found out that the temples of the Vermillion bird were made by none other than Hong Feng secretly. She had become aware of Mo Hei's intentions a while ago and the only reason she had not done anything to prevent it was that she loved him.

"Ah~ love… makes us do thinks we don't want to and ignore massive flaws of people…" Lin Wu said in an exaggerated tone.

"At least she had the mind to make backup plans… or this world might have fallen a long time ago…" Lin Wu muttered to himself.

These temples contained the rest of the bloodline crystals and essence of the Vermillion bird that Hong Feng had found. Apparently, she had barely managed to assimilate a smidgen of the bloodline herself and even that was only because the vermilion bird assisted her.