Chapter 317 — The Mystery of the Gods

Tyr had spoken those words casually, yet they set off great waves in Gao Yang's mind, for within that handful of sentences he had caught an immense amount of information!

The sea-dwellers were an ancient and mysterious civilization—this deep-sea race dwelling beyond the reach of his "satellite surveillance zone" had been a highly developed civilization since tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years ago. Though the influence of the mana tides seemed to have stalled their technological progress at a bottleneck, they had at least endured through those vast ages, and in the course of that endurance left behind a great many records of their observations of the land civilizations.

Compared with Gao Yang's later situation of "waiting a thousand years for a single frame," the sea-dwellers' observations were plainly more continuous, more detailed, and more reliable.

Which meant Tyr's words ought to be trustworthy as well.

That is to say... every time this world's civilization was severed and restarted, every time all things were remade—the mortal races always established similar religions, always worshipped similar gods?

Even when the continuity of civilization had been utterly broken, even when the world itself had been remade—the faith in those gods had nevertheless endured?!

That the gods could ignore the influence of the mana tides was something Gao Yang had realized long ago, but how did their faith keep appearing in the mortal world, time after time? The mortal civilization of "this Season" had gained its knowledge of the gods through the "Eternal Slate"—so did every past Season's mortal civilization also possess the Eternal Slate?

By Gao Song's conjecture, the so-called Eternal Slate was most likely some kind of storage medium left behind by that ancient "god-slaying fleet." Could such a medium have become the vessel through which the gods endlessly revived and endlessly re-disseminated information about themselves? Or... could this all simply be the work of that ancient "god-slaying fleet"—something they had done deliberately?

He felt as though he had caught the scent of a conspiracy in all this...

Seeing the shifts of expression on Gao Heng's face, Tyr could not help her curiosity: "What are you thinking? Don't tell me you're upset just because I rambled about those 'gods'? Aren't you an unbeliever?"

"No, it's not that," Gao Yang quickly waved his hand. "I was just connecting it to some other matters... Right—in your sea-dweller records, every Season of land civilization has the same system of gods, correct? Then those gods are—"

"Wait, you've probably misunderstood," Tyr cut him off directly, flicking the tip of her tail as she explained earnestly. "I said you land-dwellers in every Season worship 'similar' gods, not the same gods. The difference between the two is enormous."

"Enormous?" Gao Yang's brows drew together. "What kind of difference?"

"It's that the objects of faith across several generations of sects may seem to share certain commonalities, but what they actually convey is not the same god," Tyr said, thinking hard to find the most precise words to describe the histories she knew. "Let me give you examples. For instance, several of the land's ancient Seasons all showed a tendency to worship concepts like 'light, shelter, justice,' and in that process gave rise to the faith of Holy Light—but in truth, the 'God of Holy Light' of each Season was different. I recall that in the sea-dwellers' records, the oldest God of Holy Light was a mighty male giant, yet in the Season that followed, the God of Holy Light worshipped was a dragon, a crystal dragon... Hmm, in your last Season or the one before it, the God of Holy Light's image seems to have been female—back then she was called the Goddess of Light..."

Gao Cen listened in a daze, until at last he hastily called out to stop Tyr: "Hey, mind yourself! Once you leave here, whatever you do, don't say these things to anyone—especially not in front of those believers. The content of this topic is far too blasphemous. If anyone overhears you, you'll be easy to string up over a bonfire and roast into a grilled fish..."

"Relax, of course I know," Tyr rolled her eyes. "Besides, sea-dwellers aren't afraid of being roasted. Worst comes to worst, I get cooked into steam, then we wait for a cold front and come back down as rain..."

Gao Yang felt as though he had just heard some remarkable racial talent, but at this moment he cared more about the question of the gods' ever-changing images: "According to what you just said, the images of the gods worshipped by the other sects are also constantly changing?"

"Yes. Your Season's Goddess of Magic was a God of Magic last Season, and the Season before that he was called 'Kamendur, Dragon of All Magic.' Your Season's God of War was a four-headed horn-spiked giant lion last Season, but the Season before that she was actually a big-breasted woman," Tyr said, wagging her head. "And it's not just their images that change—sometimes gods merge or vanish as well. For example, in ancient times the Blood God and the God of War were actually one faith, called the 'God of Slaughter' back then. And your current God of Commerce ought, in a certain Season of civilization, to have been split into a God of Commerce and a God of Contracts..."

Gao Yang was left utterly dumbfounded by the heap of primeval secrets Tyr had just poured out. After furiously puzzling over the formulas in his mind for a good long while, he realized it was impossible for him to sort out all these divine transformations and their correspondences—at least not in any short span of time. So he simply abandoned these details and instead distilled a crude, easily grasped conclusion:

Though Season after Season of mortal civilization each worshipped their own specific divine idols, viewed as a whole, what mortals truly worshipped was not some specific, unchanging god—but rather a kind of unified "conceptual product" that would almost inevitably arise in the course of a civilization's development!

Mortals feared fire, and so the faith of fire arose. Mortals yearned for light and justice, and so the faith of Holy Light arose. Mortals needed trade and fairness, and so the faith of commerce arose. The worship of war and bloodshed gave birth to the faiths of war and blood. Awe of the night gave birth to the faiths of shadow and darkness...

Their faith, in the beginning, was always directed at some concept—and the specific images of the gods were likely products of what came after.

So when Tyr said that no matter how many generations of civilization the land went through, they all worshipped "similar gods"—yet the images of the gods in each Season differed wildly!

Gao Yang could not help but think of the primal god-worship on Earth. In ancient times, the people of Earth had gone through something similar: first an awe toward certain natural phenomena, and only afterward, out of that vague, conceptual awe, were more definite gods born. But unlike Earth, in this world...

The gods—and the power of the gods—truly existed.

Those gods whose images kept changing... if they truly had existed since time immemorial, and all bore the humanized characteristics that the various religions proclaimed—would they permit Season after Season of mortal civilization to shape their images at will?

Plainly that was impossible. After all, within the Radiant Star sect, even mispronouncing a few syllables while reciting a prayer could bring down Holy Light's "divine punishment" unto death—those gods were hardly so tolerant toward mortals.

So there was only one conclusion: within each Season's religious system, the gods had truly changed... at the very least, their images had truly changed.

A most audacious question rose unbidden in Gao Yang's mind: did the gods create man, or did man create the gods?