The Eternal Dream, which had been shut down for a while, was activated again. The massive mental network gradually stabilized after a series of ripples. The magnificent palaces, temples, towers, and floating islands rooted in the mental illusions were rebuilt. At the same time, countless believers of the Eternal Sleep had also connected their minds to the network. They were not only the users of the network, but also the builders and maintainers of the network. They opened up their brain computing power to the network, allowing the network to use and demand as needed. The difference between them and the "computing power providers" known as the "brain servants", who lay in secret temples like the living dead, was that they did not have to sacrifice their lives and souls in the process.
After all, the Eternal Sleep was the master of the Eternal Dream. Before the servants were all dead, the master would not be willing to sacrifice himself.
And in the deepest part of the Eternal Dream, in the "Dream Hall" beneath the city, the bishops and their pope were ready.
Twenty-two seats were arranged in a circular pattern in the middle of the room. Eleven white-robed bishops and eleven black-robed bishops occupied half of the seats as if they were separated by day and night. In the center of the circular seats was a blurry black shadow. The shadow would occasionally condense into a human form, but more often than not, it appeared as various indescribable blobs with lavender starlight. Be it in the real world or this virtual world, the Pope of the Eternal Sleep never showed his true face. In fact, the believers even believed that their pope had already completed the sublimation of life form and become an existence equal to the power of dreams. The illusory shadow was just a projection of the pope in the real world, an "interface" set up to communicate with the believers who were still mortals.
Today, the pope was going to lead his bishops to crack the memory fragments of Gwen Cecil for the eighteenth time.
"The Eternal Dream has stabilized. The mental network connection is good."
"The lower computing nodes are ready. The 'brain servant' array is ready."
"The monitoring team has arrived. We are ready to deal with any emergencies in the real world."
"We are ready, Your Holiness."
The bishops reported their procedures one by one. When everyone was ready, the indescribable shadow floated slightly as if to express its approval. And its voice echoed in the mind of every bishop. "Let's begin. Let's see what is in the memory of the ancient hero."
The information link to the memory fragment was connected. With the massive computing power provided by the Eternal Dream, the terrible memory that had caused hundreds of casualties finally began to loosen. Although the truth was that Gawain had deliberately left a weak point in the memory fragment, it was obvious that the Eternal Sleeper himself would not notice it.
They were delighted to see that their long efforts had finally borne fruit. A ray of light had appeared in the depths of the vast information fog. As time passed, the memory fragments were disassembled little by little, and the parts that could be understood and recognized by humans entered the minds of every member of the Episcopate.
In the beginning, they saw a scene of starlight.
The deep and lonely universe, the vast and empty space, countless stars dotted the dark and deep curtain. This scene puzzled the bishops for a moment, but they soon thought that this was Gwen Cecil's perspective after death. Would humans really return to the sky after death?
Before the bishops could figure out the meaning of the starlight, the scene before their eyes began to change wildly.
They saw the starlight receding as distorted light and shadow appeared in their vision. They saw the owner of the perspective shuttling through the stars, passing by planet after planet at an unimaginable speed …
They saw the owner of the perspective appear on a burning battlefield. Huge demons wreaked havoc on the battlefield, burning meteors fell from the sky, and soldiers wearing all kinds of unfamiliar equipment and races charged on the battlefield …
They saw the owner of the perspective leading an army to attack a fortress with an incomprehensible architectural style. The fortress seemed to be made of the flesh and blood of some kind of creature, and a chilling swarm of insects swarmed out of the fortress and fought fiercely with the army led by the owner of the perspective …
They saw the owner of the perspective suddenly come to a world of ice and snow, and a steel building with billowing smoke exploded in the wind and snow …
They saw the owner of the perspective shuttling through different worlds. Sometimes he led an army to sweep the battlefield, sometimes he destroyed an entire country alone, sometimes he was guarding something and turning the tide, but sometimes he put an entire planet under the destructive flames. He fought, protected, destroyed, and created, and when he did all these things, he had the calmness of a bystander, as if all this was just to complete a mission, or simply for his own entertainment.
This "feeling" was fused in the depths of the memory, directly transmitted from the owner of the perspective to the brain of every Eternal Sleeper bishop present.
And every time this perspective switched worlds, it was accompanied by the same scene: a scene of a boundless starry sky, followed by an illusion of crossing the starry sky …
The Bishops of the Eternal Sleep shuddered as the memories washed over their minds. They did not dare to think about it anymore, but the memories kept replaying. Until the very end, they saw a sky full of stars appear again, and as the starlight shifted, a glimmering planet in the universe appeared in the background. The owner of the perspective rushed towards the planet. Its land rapidly enlarged in their vision, and some of the details on the land were so familiar that they did not dare to think about it.
And this time, the owner of the perspective seemed to have changed direction in the process of rushing to the land. The Eternal Sleeper bishops saw the starry sky again. In the familiar starry sky, which could be seen by looking up from the Lorien Continent, they saw light spots shuttling among the stars one after another, and a huge structure made of metal hung high in the sky. An incredible invisible effect was gradually covering the structure, making it disappear from the eyes of the world.
The memory fragment ended there.
The illusion faded like the tide, and everyone's eyes refocused. The consciousness of the bishops returned to the hall. They looked at each other in panic and found that their colleagues' clothes were soaked in sweat.
No one took the initiative to speak, because no one could think of what to say at this moment. It was not until half a minute later that the illusory light in the center of the hall broke the silence. "Let the Nightmare Mentors waiting outside temporarily take over the Eternal Dream. The bishops will convene an emergency meeting. What happened today is not to be spread. "
The Eternal Dream quickly completed the shielding and cutting of the information. After the entire hall became a safe and enclosed space, a white-robed bishop could not help but say, "The authenticity of the memory fragment …"
"There is no doubt about its authenticity. I have checked it myself." The voice of the Eternal Sleeper Pope rang out. "It is indeed a real memory, not a fabricated illusion. Everything in the fragment is a real experience."
"Gwen Cecil's resurrection is fake …" Another white-robed bishop's voice was trembling. "The one who woke up is not an ancient hero at all! In that body, there is a foreign, inhuman, indescribable … existence! "
"What's its purpose? What will it do? "
"We can't summarize the pattern … those messy and broken memories, those scenes … there is almost no logic to be found! That 'inhuman thing' seems to be shuttling between worlds, constantly changing its body. Sometimes it seems to be saving the world, sometimes it seems to be destroying it, and sometimes it is just wandering around the world, its behavior has no purpose at all. We can't understand how such an existence thinks! "
"Do those worlds really exist? Those worlds … which are so different from our world, do they really exist, or did they exist? "
"This has nothing to do with us. The biggest problem now is still to figure out the 'inhuman thing' that occupies Gwen Cecil's body, and to figure out what it wants to do in our world. 'This time', does it want to destroy, protect, or is it just passing by? Or … will it do something that has never happened in those memories … something more terrifying or strange? "
"It can't be just passing by!" A black-robed bishop, who was more concerned about the situation in Ansu, suddenly said, "He chose to use the body of a founding duke as the carrier 'this time'. He also built a territory near the Gloom Mountain Range and started to develop like a mortal. There must be a purpose for him to do so. And it even killed a bishop of the Eternal Rest … "
"That bishop's rash action led to the disaster," someone interrupted the black-robed bishop. "Of course, without his rash action, we wouldn't have gotten the information we have now."
"All in all," the pope suddenly spoke, and the scene immediately quieted down. Everyone quietly listened to the pope's voice echoing in their minds. "Perhaps we should use 'he' to refer to that inhuman thing …"
"Your Holiness, what should we do?" A white-robed bishop asked cautiously. "No matter what that inhuman thing wants to do, it is a huge factor of uncertainty. Should we consider …"
"Don't do anything!" The pope shouted in an unprecedentedly stern tone. "The situation is very likely to get out of control!"
"But the body it is using now is just a mortal body. Maybe we can destroy its' carrier 'and banish it to where it came from … or even completely destroy it!"
A black-robed man standing opposite the bishop shook his head and said, "It's too risky. In those memories, we saw that He had traversed countless dangerous worlds, and those battlefields and despairs were more terrible than anything we had ever experienced. In some of those images, we could even see that He had fallen — but He had never died, and instead could return to the battlefield time and time again. This meant that destroying his carrier would not cause him any effective damage, and even if He was banished, He could still return. As for the seal … who can guarantee that the known seal will work on such an inhuman thing? If it fails, the consequences will be unimaginable. And everyone must always remember one thing: the body he uses is just a 'carrier', and he can probably change to a new one at any time. So, any action taken on that carrier … is meaningless, and it will only cause us to lose our only clue. "
"There is a more important point," the black-robed bishop added. "Don't forget what we saw at the end of those memory fragments. There is more than one traveler in the starry sky, and there is a hidden steel palace still hanging among the stars. This means that the inhuman thing is not alone. It has its own kind and a nest. If we act rashly, we will attract more …"
The bishop did not continue, but his meaning was quite clear. Everyone in the hall was aware of this hidden danger, and for a moment, the hall was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.
The bishops suddenly felt that the situation was really weird, so weird that they did not know whether to laugh or cry.
A bunch of heretics who opposed civilized society … were actually struggling with such a thing, struggling with how to deal with an 'inhuman'. If the inhuman was really here to destroy the world, perhaps they would not be so conflicted, but the crux of the problem was that they simply could not understand what the inhuman was here for!
This caused the heretics to fall into a state of great helplessness.
The pope sighed. This was probably the first time he had sighed since he transformed into a life form.
Originally, he thought that he had made great progress in deciphering the memory, and that he would be able to take this opportunity to uncover Gawain Cecil's secret and understand some of the truths of this world. However, who would have thought that the memory fragment would reveal a completely unexpected clue?
Or … was this part of the truth of the world?
The phantom of the pope stirred, vibrating his spiritual power and sending his words into everyone's mind:
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