Chapter 964 — The Echo of the Counter-Tide

This was the "lock" that bound humans and gods together.

The rules of this world were crueler than Gaoyang had imagined.

Now, at last, he understood why Meicen had shown such an agonized reaction, on the verge of losing control, whenever she divulged secrets about the Counter-Tide and the gods. He knew what the true mechanism behind it was—he had once assumed it was simply the punishment the dragon god meted out to every dragon, but now he realized that even the exalted Dragon God was nothing more than a prisoner under these rules.

The gods were both the chain and the prisoner, and even the executioner at once—and this entire "prison" had been forged from the faith of mortals themselves.

Seeing Gaoyang sunk in thought and silent for a long while, the Dragon God asked with a trace of curiosity, "What are you thinking about?"

"I was just thinking about Meicen—she told me some ancient things, and only now do I understand how much risk she was taking at the time."

"Ah, Meicen... she is a child who left a deep impression on me," the Dragon God nodded. "It is rare to see such complex traits in a relatively young dragon—she retains a vigorous curiosity, possesses formidable creativity, is devoted to action and exploration, and though she grew up in the Eternal Cradle, she is as vivid as any being from the 'outside'... The Council is an ancient and closed organization, and yet such a change has appeared in one of its younger members. It is indeed quite... interesting."

A driven young member emerging from within an ancient, closed Council...

But Gaoyang suddenly thought of Meicen's origins, of how she and her "colleagues" had all been born from factories and laboratories—employees custom-made by a corporation.

He reined in his somewhat drifting thoughts and steered the conversation back to the Counter-Tide Empire: "So, since the Counter-Tide Empire, the dragons have never again interfered in the affairs of the outside world... but the aftermath of that affair seems to have continued right up to the present? What exactly is the situation with that giant tower northwest of Talund?"

"You already know a great deal about the mechanisms of how gods are born and how they operate, so you must also realize that in this world, a sufficiently powerful collective current of thought can 'project' onto certain things, thereby giving rise to the phenomenon of 'deification,'" the Dragon God said unhurriedly. "That giant tower northwest of Talund... it was originally a legacy of the Pathfinders, and also the place where, when the dragons were propping up the Counter-Tide Empire, they had its 'First Enlighteners' receive the 'inheritance.'"

"Receive the inheritance?" Gaoyang seized on the phrase at once. "You mean by exploiting the unique properties of the Pathfinders' relics..."

The Dragon God nodded. "Yes. The Pathfinders' relics possess the power to record data, instill knowledge and experience, and influence a living being's capacity for thought—and, with proper guidance, it is possible to broadly select what knowledge and experience they impart. The dragons spent some time accomplishing this, and then brought the finest scholars and thinkers of the Counter-Tide Empire into that tower.

"The experiment was remarkably effective. They created a group of individuals of outstanding intellect—though mortals could only receive a small portion of the knowledge from the Pathfinders' inheritance, that knowledge was already enough to alter the developmental course of a civilization."

Gaoyang had already guessed what came next: "So the Counter-Tide Empire afterward treated that tower as a sanctuary 'granted by the gods'?"

"...The dragons did not anticipate the volatility and shallowness of the short-lived races, nor did they correctly gauge the greed of that season's civilization," the Dragon God said with a sigh. "The individuals who returned from the tower did indeed make the Counter-Tide Empire rapidly powerful with the knowledge they had inherited, but at the same time they used it to make themselves absolute theocratic leaders—and it was from them as the source that that失控 and terrible faith was built."

"Through a series of propagandistic campaigns, the tower in the Arctic region became a holy site where the gods bestowed blessings. Gradually it was even said to be the dwelling place of the gods upon the earth. In the span of a few short centuries—no more than the blink of an eye to the dragons—many generations of the Counter-Tide Empire passed, and they came to worship that tower, building around it an entire mythology and system of veneration—so that when the Counter-Tide Rebellion finally erupted, the fanatic followers of the Counter-Tide Empire even raised the cry of 'Reclaim the Holy Site'—they firmly believed that tower was their holy ground, and that the dragons were heretics who had stolen the gods' blessings...

"Thus, in a sense, that tower was precisely the root cause of the outbreak of the Counter-Tide War—had the fanatics of the Counter-Tide Empire succeeded in corrupting the Pathfinders' legacy into a true 'god,' then this entire world would have had no future to speak of."

Gaoyang sighed. "I'm not surprised—for the short-lived races, a few hundred years is more than enough to thoroughly remake real history and give it a good dressing-down, to say nothing of the demands of theocracy layered on top of it. So the Counter-Tide Empire's deification of that tower actually caused something to be born inside it... some kind of thing?"

"Perhaps we might call it the 'god' of the Counter-Tide," the Dragon God said mildly. "Hundreds of millions of the Counter-Tide Empire's people firmly believed that a deity who bestowed blessings dwelt within that tower, and so a god was born in response to that current of thought, and the tower the Pathfinders left behind was thereby polluted with divinity... I must say, it is a rather ironic affair.

"The one thing we can count as fortunate in the whole business is that the 'god' born within that tower never fully took shape. Before the situation became irreparable, the Counter-Tide Empire was destroyed, and the 'gestation' process within the tower failed at the final step. So although the tower was mutated and polluted, it never produced a true consciousness, nor the capacity for independent action—otherwise... Talund today would be a hundred times worse than what you see."

"So the Pathfinders' relics aren't all that absolute or perfect in their resistance to gods," Gaoyang said, his interest rising. "At least now we know it isn't so effective against pollution from within itself."

"Perhaps... To this day, we still have no way of knowing what exactly happened inside that tower, nor what state the 'Counter-Tide God' born within it is in. We know only that the tower has mutated and become extremely dangerous, and that we are powerless against it."

Gaoyang frowned. "Even you can't purge the divine pollution inside that tower?"

"I cannot approach the Pathfinders' relics," the Dragon God shook his head. "And the dragons cannot contend with a 'god'—not even an external god, not even the Counter-Tide God."

"Is this also a 'lock'?!"

"This is also a 'lock.'"

"Hiss..." Gaoyang suddenly felt a twinge of toothache. Since coming into contact with the truth of Talund, this was hardly the first time he had felt it. "So you've just left that tower sitting at your own doorstep? Just sitting there?"

"There is no choice," the Dragon God said frankly. "At least with it before our eyes we can monitor its condition at all times. If that tower were located anywhere else in the world, it would be a true danger—the faith of the Counter-Tide Empire gave that tower a strong tendency to spread knowledge outward. If it were allowed to come into contact with other mortal civilizations, it would give birth to countless Counter-Tide Empires, countless runaway divine catastrophes that worship the Pathfinders as their object."