Then, he recalled everything in his mind.
Quan was originally a member of the Qingyang Tribe, a human tribe.
The Qingyang Tribe resided atop Great Court Mountain and was one of tens of thousands of human tribes.
The lineage of the Qingyang Tribe's chieftain could be traced back to the first chieftain, Xuan Tian.
The first chieftain, Xuan Tian, was a descendant of the Human King from that era. He had sided with the wrong faction during the struggle for the throne and was subsequently banished to the remote and desolate Great Court Mountain in the south. Disheartened, he settled down and his lineage continued.
Now, fifteen generations had passed, and the power from the bloodline was growing weaker.
The chieftain's lineage was somewhat preserved because of the continuous bloodline inheritance. The chieftains of the direct line still possessed a certain level of strength.
Although their power was thousands, even tens of thousands of times less than that of the first chieftain, it was still sufficient to slay nearby exotic beasts and even weaker fierce beasts.
However, this was only for the direct line of descent, which maintained the purity of the bloodline through generations, thus retaining such power.
For ordinary tribesmen of the Qingyang Tribe like Quan, who were even more distant from the collateral branches, the situation was different.
His bloodline had long degenerated. His lifespan was now less than a hundred years, and his strength was insufficient to fight even the weakest exotic beasts. Merely approaching an exotic beast would cause his body to be constantly scoured by the beast's malevolent aura, leading to severe illness.
He had utterly degenerated into a mortal.
Within the Qingyang Tribe, only the chieftain and the elders, or a very small number of branches, still possessed extraordinary power.
However, more than seventy percent of the tribesmen had lost all extraordinary power, retaining only mortal strength and instincts.
Over seventy percent of the Qingyang Tribe's tribesmen were mere mortals, ordinary people, commoners.
While the chieftain and the elders possessed extraordinary abilities, Quan knew that the fifteenth-generation chieftain, though his bloodline power was far inferior to the first chieftain's, and he couldn't live for ten thousand years like the first chieftain, could likely survive for a thousand years.
This stood in stark contrast to the lifespan of ordinary Qingyang Tribe commoners, which was a hundred years, or even less.
From the time Quan was born and became aware of his surroundings, he wished to change this situation.
But as he grew up and gained a little understanding, he realized that he lacked the ability to change it.
Bloodline power determined everything.
And bloodline power was at its peak from birth; it was unchangeable.
The fifteenth-generation chieftain, at the moment of his birth as an infant, could shatter stones within a radius of several miles with a single finger and traverse a mile with a single step.
No matter how hard ordinary mortals trained, they could never achieve the strength he possessed at birth.
Strength was fixed.
Bloodline power was also fixed.
Those born with noble bloodlines possessed noble bloodlines and thus possessed great strength.
And those born with degenerated bloodlines that had become mortal, no matter how hard they tried, could never surpass those with noble bloodlines.
Why was the fifteenth-generation chieftain so much weaker than the first chieftain?
It wasn't because the first chieftain possessed more wisdom or was more diligent than the fifteenth-generation chieftain.
It was because the first chieftain was a descendant of the Human King from the north, and his bloodline power was far superior to that of the fifteenth-generation chieftain.
The degeneration of bloodlines was irreversible. With each generation, even the direct line of descent would eventually weaken.
The bloodline power within the fifteenth-generation chieftain was already far weaker than that of the first chieftain, which was the fundamental reason why the fifteenth-generation chieftain was inferior to the first.
As for why the first chieftain failed in the struggle for the throne, it was simply because his brothers possessed far stronger bloodline power than him at the time, thus suppressing all the sons of the Human King in the human capital and becoming the new Human King.
And the current Human King, while far more powerful than the first chieftain, was nowhere near as strong as the primordial Human King who could pluck stars and seize the moon.
This was the power of bloodlines.
The strength of bloodline power determined everything and could not be altered by acquired means.
Quan also recognized characters and knew the myths and legends recorded in the Qingyang Tribe.
In the myths and legends, in this primordial world, some innate beings were nurtured by heaven and earth.
Innate beings, also known as innate deities, were born with boundless power.
The primordial Human King, or the Human Emperor, was the most powerful among these innate beings.
The Human Emperor, with his own strength, slew all the innate deities.
The bodies of the innate deities fell, transforming into boundless malevolent aura.
The offspring of the innate deities were the primordial acquired beings, known as the myriad races, also called demon races and demonic beasts.
The Human Emperor did not exterminate all these demonic beasts.
Instead, he also fathered offspring.
This was the beginning of the human race.
The human race originated from innate deities and also from the Human Emperor, an innate deity, and multiplied because of him.
The descendants of the Human Emperor were naturally destined to compete for the position of Human Emperor.
However, their strength was far inferior to the primordial Human Emperor, so after only a few generations, they dared not call themselves Human Emperors but instead called themselves Human Kings.
After Quan learned the myths and legends and the origin of his tribe, he concluded that bloodline power was fixed.
A person's destiny was determined from birth; this was an absolute truth since ancient times, an irreversible truth.
This was not only true for the human race but also for the demonic beasts.
The primordial innate beings, the ancestors of the demonic beasts, possessed terrifying power to move stars and seize the moon.
However, as reproduction began, the first generation of acquired beings, the demonic beasts, were already significantly weaker than those innate deities.
And as time progressed and bloodlines continued, they became even more feeble.
Those who could become great demons, their descendants gradually degenerated into fierce beasts, then from fierce beasts into exotic beasts that could only emit a few strange abilities, and finally into wild beasts that could be killed by mortals and possessed no extraordinary power.
The entire world was like stagnant water, constantly degenerating.
The more ancient the era, the stronger it was.
The current era, compared to the ancient era, saw an immeasurable decline in strength for both the myriad races and the human race.
For a mortal, it was impossible to acquire bloodline power.
But if it were for the next generation, it might not be impossible.
Theoretically, as long as one could marry the offspring of nobles with strong bloodline power.
The next generation born would possess extraordinary bloodline power again and be considered nobles.
Through the combination of the bloodlines of both parents, even if one party was merely a commoner, the bloodline from the noble side would change the bloodline power of the son or daughter.
For example, if a commoner had zero bloodline power, and they married a noble woman with a bloodline power of one hundred, the blood concentration of the offspring would no longer be zero. It would be at least twenty or thirty, and some offspring might even reach sixty or seventy.
However, this method was only theoretically possible; in reality, no noble woman would marry a commoner.
For the direct bloodline inheritance of the Qingyang Tribe chieftain, even internal marriages saw a gradual decline in bloodline. Marrying directly into commoners would clearly lead to a rapid decline in bloodline power.