Magical Engineering Research Institute, basement two, secret meeting room.
Gwen, wearing a dark blue coat, stepped into the room. In this tightly guarded and closed meeting room, he saw that all the participants of the meeting were already waiting.
Wright and Veronica were talking in a low voice. Pitman was absent-mindedly playing with his beard. Kamel was floating beside the meeting table, the arcane light on his body was calm and blue. Heti saw Gwen and was the first to stand up and bow. "Ancestor."
The others also stopped what they were doing and stood up to salute.
Gwen looked around the room and his eyes paused on an empty seat beside the long table. "There's no need for invisibility now."
Amber's figure immediately appeared. "Used to it, used to it …"
Gwen shook his head and came to the head of the table. As he sat down, he said, "This is an internal meeting. No need to stand on ceremony. Today's main purpose is to exchange some information, and … I need some advice from the professionals present."
Veronica looked up and at the people present. She already understood. "It has to do with the knowledge of the gods?"
"Yes." Gwen nodded and said, "About the recent abnormalities in the mental network of the Eternal Sleepers, Amber should have told you before the meeting, right?"
"Just half an hour ago," Wright replied. "I didn't know that we had infiltrated the Cult of Eternal Sleep to this extent."
"This matter has always been highly confidential, and it has no connection with the church. It's normal that you don't know," Gwen said, his expression becoming serious. "But now things have changed, and some of the information has to be disclosed.
"In short, according to the information I just received, the Eternal Sleepers' secret plan in the mental network is very likely to have accidentally touched the realm of the gods, and … they may have come into contact with the secret of the birth of the gods."
Gwen went straight to the point, and the conference room instantly fell silent. Everyone's breathing seemed to have slowed down by half a beat. Even Kamel, who didn't need to breathe, dimmed for a moment. A few seconds later, the corners of Pitman's mouth twitched, and he broke the silence. "I knew that something big would happen in this kind of urgent and confidential meeting, but this … is a little too exciting."
As he spoke, he lowered his head and looked at the few strands of beard that he had accidentally pulled off. After hesitating for a long time, he rubbed the beard back on his chin and carefully reconnected it with magic.
Gwen, on the other hand, did not care about Pitman's mumbling. After seeing that his big news had successfully raised everyone's spirits, he described his previous experience in the mental network and the exploration in the "Phantom Town" in detail.
Everyone at the scene listened carefully. Even Amber, who would doze off or daydream in every meeting, pricked up her ears and listened attentively.
"… That's the whole story." After nearly 20 minutes of narration, Gwen sighed and concluded. "According to my guess, the worship of the 'Upper Narrator' should be the main reason for the sandbox going out of control. And what exactly this' Upper Narrator Church 'is brewing in the dream, and whether this' thing 'is just a conceptual product in the dream world … will be the key to the problem."
As soon as Hao Ren's voice trailed off, Veronica, sitting in the second seat on the left, broke the silence. "Are you suspecting that … the worship of the so-called 'Upper Narrator' has really created a god in Sandbox No. 1 of the mental network?"
"There's no evidence yet, but that's what I suspect." Gaowen nodded. "The Eternal Sleeper hasn't found a way for the gods to contaminate Sandbox No. 1. There's no evidence or clue as to which god, how, and when did they bypass the heavy defenses of Sandbox No. 1 and enter the sandbox. We all know that the three dark cults are the cults that have the deepest understanding of the gods, but even their top researchers can't find any trace of the gods invading the sandbox system. So, we might as well make a bolder assumption: the contamination didn't come from the outside at all."
…
In the mental network, in the highest confidential central temple, the archbishops sat around a round table with various symbols.
All the archbishops attending the meeting had removed their disguises and used their real appearance in the real world. According to the internal regulations of the church, this meant that the meeting was highly confidential and of high standards.
Archbishop Yuri, dressed in a white robe, stood beside the round table and said in a serious tone, "… According to the speculation of Archbishop Selena and I, the pollution … may have come from inside Sandbox No. 1, and the so-called 'divine erosion' should have originated from the cult worshipping the 'Upper Narrator.'"
On the opposite side of Yuri, a short man in a black robe, whose red hair was standing up, and who had a rather loud voice stood up and said aloud, "This is truly unbelievable. The residents in the dream world suddenly began to doubt the authenticity of their world. Then, they began to worship an 'upper-level narrator' that they fabricated. Did a god really come into being? And this god also caused Sandbox No. 1 to go out of control? Is this really an excuse that they made up when they couldn't find the reason? "
Yuri looked at the red-haired man in front of him helplessly. That was Archbishop Magnum, famous for his hot temper and loud voice. But he also knew that the loud voice of Mr. Magnum meant no harm, and it was not because of his opinion of someone, but because of his character. The thought came to Yuri's mind, and he naturally said it out loud.
It was just that Mr. Magnum's voice was so loud that it was hard to get used to it. And then again … in such a mental space, couldn't he lower his' volume 'a little?
"Archbishop Magnum." Yuri shook his head slightly. "What I said is indeed just speculation, and I also know that this is incredible, but don't forget that we are dealing with a 'god', and a god … is incredible."
A cluster of starlight polymer floated above the gorgeous round table, and its voice rang in the ears of everyone present. "Now, is there any evidence to prove that the 'Upper Narrator' that the sect born in the dream world believes in has some divine characteristics?"
"Your Holiness." Archbishop Yuri immediately lowered his head. "There is no evidence for the time being, and we have too little information. At present, we can only confirm that such a sect has indeed appeared in Sandbox No. 1, and its activities correspond to the time of Sandbox No. 1's loss of control."
The starlight polymer swelled and shrank in the air. "Then, as long as there is evidence to prove that the 'Upper Narrator' in Sandbox No. 1 has really produced a god, or something similar to a god, all the answers will be clear."
Yuri frowned. "But … if that thing is really a god, how should we deal with it?"
"We don't know yet, but isn't this the answer and the secret that we have been looking for all this time?" Pope Meghul III's gentle voice echoed in everyone's mind. "We have been trying to dig out the secrets of the gods and find out the truth of their birth, and now, we may be infinitely close to the truth …"
…
"The secret of the birth of the gods … may be hidden in Sandbox No. 1," Gwen said in a deep voice. "If there is really a shadow of the power of the gods behind the 'Upper Narrator Church', then the concept of gods … will be completely overturned."
"It was not the gods who created humans, but humans who created gods …" Pitman muttered to himself. Suddenly, his hand shook, and a few whiskers were pulled out again.
Veronica, holding the platinum scepter and surrounded by a faint holy light, had been silent since the beginning. She seemed to be in deep thought for a long time. At this time, she suddenly looked up. "This … is actually one of the assumptions of the Disobedience Plan."
"Have you ever guessed this direction?" Gwen looked at Veronica in surprise. "Have you ever guessed that gods were actually born in the process of human faith?"
"We did not guess so deeply and directly, but we have guessed that the faith of human beings, or the common thoughts of a large number of mortals, would affect the activities of gods to a certain extent. But this guess was too shocking, and it could neither be proven nor falsified. Or rather, the difficulty of proving and falsifying was so high that it was almost impossible. So, until the collapse of the Kingdom of Gondor, this guess was still just a guess. "
"But now, I'm afraid the bold attempt of the Eternal Sleeper will prove your conjecture back then …" Wright said with a sigh. "It's really hard to imagine that the god that mortals fear and revere is actually something created by mortals?"
"Don't jump to conclusions, and don't be blindly confident and underestimate 'gods'," Veronica said gently. "The projection of the faith of billions of creatures in a dimension that we can't understand became gods. The changes during this period are beyond our understanding. Perhaps gods are really born from the faith of mortals, but we are not qualified and powerful enough to call them our 'creations' … Perhaps, we should see it as a terrifying, out of control, but inevitable 'natural phenomenon'."
"Natural phenomenon …" Gwen could not help but repeat the word in his mind, deep in thought.
Then he nodded. "Indeed, as Veronica said, perhaps it is a natural phenomenon, and … it is an inevitable natural phenomenon."
Faith and religion could almost be said to be an inevitable stage of social activities.
There would always be a period of weakness in civilization. Mortals, coming out of ignorance, faced with this mysterious and dangerous world, faced with the incomprehensible and unpredictable nature, as a kind of intelligent creature, they would inevitably be in awe of nature and fear or worship those inexplicable natural phenomena.
And in the process of going from the unknown to the known, in the process of trying to understand everything in the world, mortals would certainly try to explain those things that they were in awe and fear.
In the period of insufficient knowledge, weak power, and still in the infancy of civilization, these explanations … would inevitably lead to gods or other similar concepts.
In the closed Sandbox No. 1, in the artificial world that had been operating for thousands of years, the residents in it must have faced such a question: Where did we come from? Who created this world?
Perhaps a 'prophet' accidentally peeked into the data flow behind the world, or perhaps an adventurer accidentally came to the boundary of the sandbox. They were inexplicably horrified by the vast and chaotic sea of the mind outside the world and saw the script and the command records left behind by the operators behind the world.
So, they had an explanation for their world: it was the 'upper narrators' who created all of this.
Then, there really were 'upper narrators'.
"The Eternal Sleepers are a group of outstanding soul engineers and excellent researchers, but unfortunately, they only pay attention to the field of technology and do not understand how society works." Gwen shook his head and sighed. "If they had understood the mechanism of social operation and the various stages of the development of civilization, then even if they could not have predicted that Sandbox No. 1 would go out of control, they would have at least expected that the 'religious activities' in Sandbox No. 1 were inevitable, and made vigilant and contingency plans."
The conference room was quiet for a moment.
Although everybody here knew about the Disobedience Plan, and although everybody here was more or less involved in Gwen's plan to challenge the gods, what was discussed today was still too shocking for them.
Everybody was carefully digesting, and everybody was repeatedly verifying the various links of the hypotheses.
Pitman pressed his hand on his chin and carefully fixed his beard as he said, "Then, if the situation is really so, and a 'god' is created in Sandbox No. 1 … I'm afraid that this matter will not end well. We can finish off the deer created by the All Things Will Eventually with cannons or the army of sirens, but how are we going to deal with a god that operates in a dream? "
"Don't be so pessimistic," Gwen said calmly. "Even if that thing is really a god or a 'demigod', it has just been born and is still trapped in a dream. As long as we can figure out its mechanism, it will not be difficult to deal with. And the Eternal Sleepers will definitely try their best to solve this crisis for their own survival."
Pitman's face was full of worry. He could not help but stroke his beard hard. "Sigh … I shouldn't have listened to Amber. My old age is not peaceful at all …"
As he sighed, the old Druil looked down at the beard in his hand and became even more worried.
"Let's not do it," Leit, who was sitting opposite him, said with concern. "I don't think we can do it."
"… Sigh …"
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