There was a long silence between Bertilla and Gwen.
Gwen was the first to break the silence.
He was not sure if the half-plant woman in front of him had the same patience as a plant. If she did not speak for the whole day, he did not have the whole day to accompany her.
"Now, I have finished my story. It's time to talk about you," he said in a low voice.
"Us? As you can see, we are now just a group of pathetic losers. "The roots behind Bertilla were wriggling, and her voice seemed to be mixed with a rustling sound." But I see that you have built barracks around Solin Fortress and are gradually reclaiming the land. Presumably, the final winner of this war has been decided. "
"You can 'see' the situation outside?" Gwen raised his eyebrows and was more curious about Bertilla's current state. "This is … interesting."
"I can see, very wide, an unprecedented open field of vision, but I can't move, and I can't see what I look like now," Bertilla said slowly. "I … What do I look like now?"
"… A tree, a huge plant that covers half of Solin Fortress, and it is still slowly growing," Gwen said frankly. "If you are really curious, I can send someone to take a picture of your current appearance from a distance and show it to you."
"… I thank you in advance." Bertilla suddenly moved the roots around her as if she had made up her mind, or as if she had suddenly figured something out. "Extraterrestrial wanderer, I still don't know your nature, but I have become like this, and it doesn't matter whether I choose or not. The path we took has been proven to be wrong. If our failure can give you some experience, then feel free to ask. "
Gwen looked at her, a little surprised, and then thought for a moment. "You should know about the 'Disobedience Plan', right?"
Bertilla's expression suddenly changed. "… How do you know?"
But then she showed a look of realization. "Ah, that's right, extraterrestrial wanderers … You've been observing this world, of course you know. You just said …"
"Don't get it wrong. This has nothing to do with whether I'm an extraterrestrial wanderer or not." Gwen frowned and interrupted him sternly. "Don't immerse yourself in the fantasy of carrying out a mission alone or saving the world. You've become like this. You should at least wake up. While you're stubbornly carrying out those shameful and extreme plans, there are still people in this world who are openly promoting this world."
Bertilla frowned. A moment later, the wriggling vines and roots behind her gradually calmed down. "Arrogance should be our first mistake."
"You have indeed made a lot of mistakes, but I'm not going to discuss this with you now," Gwen said. "Who taught you the Disobedience Plan? How much have you grasped? Was the inheritor still alive? How long have you been carrying out this plan? "
Faced with this long list of questions, Bertilla closed her eyes slightly and said in a low voice. "How long … Not long after the birth of the All End Society, we have been carrying out this plan. For nearly seven hundred years, we have been carrying out the Disobedience Plan!"
Looking at Gwen's slightly surprised expression, she quietly continued. "You know about the ritual at the Ancestral Peak, right?"
"I know." Gwen nodded. "You once wrote me a letter. It mentioned that you were going to the Ancestral Peak to participate in the ritual to communicate with the gods."
Bertilla immediately stared at him. "That letter was written to Gwen Cecil."
Gwen smiled and pointed at his head. "I know, but the memory is here. Bertilla, whether you admit it or not, I have inherited Gwen Cecil's memory. I know most of what he has experienced, and I know the parts about you. Perhaps you still think that I am an extraterrestrial wanderer who stole a body, but in a sense, I am Gwen Cecil now, and in this life, I will live with this identity."
Bertilla stared at Gwen. A large number of vines and roots trembled and wriggled behind her. No one knew what she was thinking at that moment, but Gwen seemed to see a glimmer in her blank eyes. She then continued. "… On the Ancestral Peak, Patriarch Druil, the pope of the Church of Dreams, and the pope of the Church of Storms held a joint ritual and successfully transported the Pope of Dreams, Meghul III, to the divine kingdom …"
Gwen knew this part. He nodded. "After that, all the members of the three dark cults went crazy … What happened at that time?"
Bertila closed her eyes, her body trembling slightly. It seemed that even today, 700 years later, the memory of what had happened then was still a kind of torture to her. Gawain heard her say in a dreamy voice, "Megor the Third entered the realm of the divine kingdom. There, his soul was almost completely torn apart, but compared to what he saw, the tearing of the soul was nothing. He saw the divine kingdom and the palaces of the gods, and around those illusory and beautiful palaces was a vast and chaotic space of nothingness. Countless ruins and corpses of the gods were floating around the divine kingdom, orbiting in dead silence …" Gawain heard her saying, "Megor the Third entered the realm of the divine kingdom. There, his soul was almost completely torn apart, but compared to what he saw, the tearing of the soul was nothing.
"Those broken ruins and the corpses of the gods seemed to have been floating for a long time, and there was a clear difference between them. It seemed that they were not destroyed at the same time, but had gone through rounds of rebirth and death. When Meghul III saw the ruins and the corpses, he was almost half crazy, but what he saw after that was even more terrifying.
"He saw the door of the divine kingdom open, and the figure of the gods flashed through it … In that very short moment, the huge amount of knowledge and the truth destroyed all of Meghul III's mental defenses, and he almost immediately fell into madness.
"The Grand Patriarch of the Druids and the Pope of the Storm, who were holding the ceremony together, discovered the abnormality in time. They tried to pull Metall III back to the real world, but this action connected the minds of the three … They shared senses."
Listening to Bertilla's description of what happened, Gwen remained calm on the surface, but his heart was in turmoil.
In the ceremony on the Ancestor's Peak seven hundred years ago, the three church leaders had indeed seen the ruins of the fallen gods, but the specific situation was even stranger and crazier than he had imagined!
Outside the divine kingdom of the gods, there were countless ruins and corpses, and that was not a situation that could be caused by one round of destruction. Gwen knew about the battle where the Deicide Fleet destroyed the gods in ancient times, but if Bertilla's information was true, then the battle report Gwen heard in the Eternal Slate was probably just a part of the countless cycles of destruction of the gods.
If the ancient God Slaying Fleet had destroyed the gods once, then what was the cause of the countless other annihilations?
Was the repeated cycle of destruction of the gods and their divine kingdoms related to the demonic tide in the present world? Was it related to the repeated destruction of human civilization?
The surviving gods and their divine kingdoms were in the middle of the ruins, surrounded by countless wreckages. Was every new god born from the Graveyard of the Gods? Or … the scene surrounded by the ruins corresponded to the demonic tide and the cycle of civilization in the mortal world, and had a deeper symbolic meaning?
Countless guesses and associations rose and fell in Gwen's mind like a tide, but these questions obviously could not be answered by Bertilla. He could only file these questions away for the time being and began to pay attention to another thing.
The three church leaders were distorted because they came into contact with the knowledge of the gods after sharing their senses, so why did the other ordinary believers go crazy at the same time?
He asked his question. Bertilla sighed slightly and said, "Faith connects all of us."
Gwen's expression suddenly became serious.
"Faith in the gods is a chain, and it took us many years to figure it out. Praying to the same target of worship, following the same commandments, following the scriptures to build the body and mind, seeking the convergence and unification of personal 'spiritual talent' and the 'divinity' of the gods. This is the foundation of all faith and divine arts. Mortals follow these actions to obtain the blessings of divine arts, but at the same time, it is tantamount to locking their minds on the same chain, and this chain is the bridge between the gods and mortals. And the stronger the faith, the stronger the chain, and the more powerful the power it can transmit. "
Bertilla spoke slowly, her tone was unprecedentedly serious.
"It is precisely because of this that when the vast knowledge of the gods poured into the minds of the three church leaders, they, as the first link of the chain, instantly spread this knowledge to the downstream of the chain …
"The shallow believers at the periphery may not be affected because their faith is not firm enough, and there is still a certain gap between their souls and the gods. However, all the priests who can use divine spells are undoubtedly a link in this chain. Whether they were at the Peak of the Ancestors or not at that time, they can't escape the terrible impact of knowledge.
"The final result is that everyone on the chain is affected."
Gawain sucked in a cold breath.
Faith would lead to the establishment of an invisible connection between mortals who held the same faith. This was important information that had never been known before!
Could this connection be related to the Soul Steel Seal?
Bertilla's description was full of metaphors and occult vocabulary, which was determined by her personal knowledge and worldview. But for Gwen, all of this could be summed up in two simple sentences:
The leaders of the three dark sects directly saw the secrets of the gods seven hundred years ago.
All the devout members of the three sects carried out a mass SAN at that moment.
check。
This terrifying mass SAN.
The results of the SAN were obvious: none of them passed.
But perhaps because a large number of clerics shared the pressure of the mental impact, or perhaps because the three church leaders at that time disconnected from the divine kingdom in time, this mass SAN failed.
The failure of the SAN did not lead to the most terrible result. Although the three dark sects were instantly corrupted, there was no terrible incident where a large number of members were directly twisted into monsters. After a short period of madness, they even "woke up" from the madness and reformed themselves into three new sects: the Perish Cult, the Eternal Sleepers, and the Children of Storms. They even conducted a lot of research and tried to carry out the plan of rebellion …
But thinking about it carefully, after the mental impact, did they really "wake up"?
Gwen quietly looked at Bertilla in front of him.
She stood quietly between the roots and vines, there was not a trace of madness in her eyes. She looked rational. But looking at the vines around her, looking at the slowly wriggling roots, thinking about how the roots penetrated the layers of palaces and crypts, thinking about the unimaginably huge giant tree … None of them was normal.
Perhaps this symbolized the essence of the three dark sects: an insider who returned from madness, a heart that thought that it had woken up, imprisoned in a frenzied shell.
When it was revealed, it was a dangerous lunatic.
"After the meeting at the Ancestor's Peak, we experienced a great deal of chaos and loss. A large number of members rushed into the wastelands of Gondor, and many of the remaining members committed suicide, or fell into a state of permanent insanity. Those who could barely maintain their sanity went into hiding. In that chaotic situation, it was easy to hide. After a few years, the madness caused by the spiritual shock gradually weakened, and we secretly regrouped …" "Yes, there were a lot of things that needed to be done.
"We knew that the truth we had was too shocking. Even if we only said half a word, we would be attacked by almost all the orthodox sects. It was even more likely that we would attract the attention of the gods behind them. Therefore, we chose to fall into the darkness and find a way to break out of this situation …"
At that, Bertilla shook her head and showed a hint of self-deprecation. "Now that we have calmed down and thought about it, our initial goal was not that complicated. It was the long time and long-term paranoia that caused everything to deviate from the path. And more importantly, the plan of rebellion …
"The ones who brought the plan of rebellion were two elven druids. They are a pair of sisters, Firna White Frost and Rayna White Frost."
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