Do you like the Eternal Cradle like this?
Gwen suddenly thought of the baby dragon that had just woken up from the hatchery, and the cheerful cries it gave him. He thought of the "inferior citizens" in the Lower City who were addicted to the enhancers and hallucinogens, and had become the nourishment of the gods. He thought of the chaotic and crazy arena, and the dragons fighting in the arena … It was a dozen cold steel machines fighting, and the machines were bound with brains and ganglia that were immersed in the enhancers' hallucinations.
These dragons were indeed still alive, but Tarlonde was already dead.
"How terrifying," he suddenly said softly. "Life and death are worthless."
Then he paused and asked, "Can the Eternal Cradle be broken?"
"That requires a huge price to pay," the Dragon God said quietly. "But the success rate is very slim. In the end, the Cradle itself is the price of failure, and the laws of nature are never tolerant of failures. No race, even the powerful Giant Dragon, has the right to fail twice."
At this point, he suddenly looked up and his gaze fell on Gwen's face. "So, you want to help Tarlonde break the Eternal Cradle?"
"Me?" Gwen pointed at himself and could not help but laugh. "How can I have that ability?"
"You can even destroy it with a single command." The Dragon God smiled faintly. "Why don't you assume that you have the ability to break the Cradle on this continent?"
It seemed like a joke, but Gwen could not help but think about it seriously. After a few seconds of thinking, he shook his head. "No, at least not now."
"Why?" The Dragon God showed a hint of curiosity. "Don't you feel that the Cradle is terrifying?"
"I'm not the savior of the Dragons. There has never been a savior," Gwen said seriously. "And as you said, breaking the Eternal Cradle requires a huge price to pay. I can imagine what the price is, and I can also imagine who will pay the price. No one had the right to sacrifice other people's things to satisfy their own 'rescue' act, so I had no right to make decisions for the Dragons. I had no right to choose whether to sacrifice themselves or to live.
"That's why, whether it's to sink to death in the Eternal Cradle, or to rise up and find a future for the entire race, it's all up to the Dragons themselves. They should be the ones to make their own decisions. They should choose whether or not to pay the price.
"Cecil does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries — this is my rule."
After Gwen finished his thought, the god in front of him looked at him strangely for a few seconds. Then he said with a smile, "It's really incredible to hear these words from the mouth of a recognized 'hero' in the human world. I thought you had already positioned yourself as the 'savior' of the human world, but now it seems that is not the case. "
Gwen spread his hands. "I didn't save anyone. We are all saving ourselves."
"… You seem to have completely regarded yourself as a member of the human race, a member of this world, extraterrestrial wanderer." The Dragon God looked at Gwen with some curiosity. "I'm suddenly curious. In your hometown, do people also face the same problems as this world? For example … when you encounter a huge social change, when your social group also encounters a huge ideological shift, when your faith is tested, when you have to abandon your traditions and dogma, when you face a huge change in the environment … How do you deal with all this?
"Ah, or should I first confirm — do you also have race, society, faith, and country?"
"Of course we also have the concept of society, country, and so on." Gwen laughed, but soon there was some more complex emotions in his smile. "We also of course face those … 'challenges' that you mentioned. To be honest, when the people of my hometown face the change of tradition, reality, belief, and ideology, they will also feel turbulent and uneasy. The whole process of change is often painful and dangerous, but it is different from this world. Those traditions are just traditions, and people's ideas are just ideas. They do have great restraints, but … they will not become any 'entity' with actual deterrence, nor will they produce 'power' that transcends reality. "
At this point, Gwen suddenly realized that these things that were natural to the people on Earth may be incredible in this world, and even a god like Enya would find it difficult to understand. He had to choose his words carefully as he explained, "Let me give a simple example — when a race that has lived in the mountains for generations and regards the mountains as gods decides to move out of the mountains, they only need to face the opposition of the elders in the race, and they do not have to worry about being punished by the mountain gods."
The Dragon God listened with some surprise, and finally he finally understood what kind of world rules Gwen was describing. The god's face showed a somewhat dazed expression, and it was not until a few seconds later that he whispered, "It's so beautiful."
"It's actually not easy." Gwen could not help but want to explain more. "Even if the ideas will not form a real force, and the resistance against tradition will not bring about direct divine punishment, it is still difficult for people in my hometown to change a traditional idea. The resistance created by the old forces is sometimes not as strong as …"
Halfway through his sentence, he hesitated and stopped.
The Dragon God sat opposite him, with countless black chains wrapped around his body. At the other end of the chain, the Dragon of Chaos floated above Tarlonde, like a ticking time bomb that could destroy the entire Giant Dragon civilization at any time. The entire country was locked in this deadly balance, and had been cautiously surviving for millions of years.
"Yes, it's so beautiful." He sighed. "Compared to here."
Then he suddenly remembered something, and his eyes fell on the Dragon God. "By the way, you just said that there are three stories, but you only said two. What about the last one?"
The Dragon God looked at Gwen, and suddenly showed a — Gwen did not know if he had seen wrongly — a sly smile. "The third story has not happened yet."
Gwen: "?"
"It would be boring if I told all the stories. Let's leave the third story in suspense," the 'god' said slowly. "I'm also curious about how the third story will turn out. I'll tell it to you again if there's a chance in the future."
The faint roar and whistling outside the temple became weaker, as if a violent but short storm was gradually subsiding. Gwen glanced at the direction of the distant terrace, but only saw the starlight and the night sky not much different from before.
"Is there anything else you want to ask?" The Dragon God's voice came from the opposite side. "It's still early, we can talk more."
Gwen thought for a moment, sorting out the few questions he had thought of before coming to Tarlonde, and asked, "About the 'Rebellion of the Tide' in ancient times, and the tower northwest of Tarlonde, can you tell me more?"
"That depends on what you want to hear." The Dragon God nodded. "I will try my best to answer."
"As far as I know, the Tide Empire went astray because they mistakenly came into contact with the knowledge left behind by the Voyager. According to the clues we have found, the main problem at that time was the 'attribution of knowledge as a miracle.' Did the Tide Empire deify the Voyager's legacy? Was the war between the Dragons and the Tide Empire also because of this? "
"Generally, yes." The Dragon God nodded. "The Voyager's legacy … it was too advanced for the races still trapped in the earth, especially millions of years ago, when a large number of 'legacies' still had great power. That mortal civilization suddenly obtained knowledge and power far beyond their understanding, and their rulers could not explain the principles behind those things to their people. Their scholars could not reproduce the logic behind those legacies, so it was inevitable that they deified it.
"People will attribute things far beyond their understanding to miracles. This is a trap that many mortal civilizations easily fall into.
"The war between the Dragons and the Tide Empire … was because of their 'deification', creating new and uncontrollable ideological products, and the war itself … was actually dishonorable for both sides."
"Dishonorable for both sides?" Gwen instantly smelled the scent of gossip, and subconsciously leaned forward a little. "What do you mean?"
The Dragon God glanced at Gwen and said slowly, "It's very simple, because the one who first cultivated the Tide Empire and guided them to the Voyager's legacy … was the Dragons themselves."
Gwen: "… The Dragons themselves?!"
"That was an unsuccessful attempt, a reckless and bold 'plan to break the stalemate,'" the Dragon God said faintly. "It happened many, many years ago. At that time, the 'Eternal Cradle' had not been completely stabilized, and Tarlonde had not been chained for long. Many Dragons still maintained a strong free will and expectations for the future, and driven by this impulse, the Dragons began to look for a way to break the stalemate from the outside."
Gwen frowned. "Foster a mortal force independent of Tarlonde, let them absorb the power left behind by the Voyager, grow stronger quickly, and then break the 'Cradle' of Tarlonde?"
Gwen had a strange look in his eyes when he said this because he and the Dragon God knew very well what 'breaking the Cradle' meant. However, the Dragon God's expression was more indifferent than Gwen's, so the strange topic continued.
"Now it seems that this was not a mature plan, but they still carried it out with hope," the Dragon God said, shaking his head. "At that time, the Tide Empire was still very weak, so weak that any adult Giant Dragon could easily guide its development, so the Dragons lost their caution … They thought that everything could be controlled, at least for a long time, everything could be controlled by the Dragons.
"As for what happened after that, it should be easy for you to imagine. Arrogance is the greatest sin of all. The dragons believed that 'everything was under their control', and from the very start, the Tidetide Empire was unwilling to become another race's tool. The dragons' interference and guidance only intensified their resistance and rebellious spirit, causing the situation to worsen far faster than expected. The Tide Empire was out of control, and they were secretly developing many technologies and sects. They cracked the secret arsenal left behind by the Voyager and became stronger by leaps and bounds.
"Before Tarlonde could react, the Tide Empire had completed its transformation. They quickly became an extremely xenophobic, hostile to the Dragons, and powerful empire. Most importantly, they were a 'theocratic empire'.
"The over-reliance on the Voyager's legacy and deification directly led to the uncontrollable theocracy of the entire Tide Empire. Even if a few of them were aware of the danger, they could not stop the process. The Tide Empire considered themselves as believers of the Voyager and saw Tarlonde's Dragons as' heretics' who betrayed and stole the Voyager's legacy. And all of this … was the opposite of Tarlonde's original plan.
"So, the Tide War broke out."
Gwen opened his mouth, and it took him a few seconds to organize his words. "… You allowed all of this?"
"You can say that."
"Why?" Gwen could not help but ask. "Didn't you notice the risk?"
The Dragon God's voice was low. "The Dragons of Tarlonde did not notice it, so I did not notice it. And even if I did notice the risk, as long as the Dragons did not violate the 'traditional ideology' of Tarlonde and did not 'cross the boundary', I could not stop it."
Gwen thought of the 'two stories' that the Dragon God had just told him. At this moment, he had a deeper understanding of the rules behind the two stories.
"That war destroyed the entire Tide Empire, ended a civilization before the arrival of the Great Mana Tide, and dealt a serious blow to Tarlonde," the Dragon God continued. "The loss of the war itself was not terrible. What was terrible was the blow to confidence and faith. The entire Tarlonde society was greatly shaken, and this shock was almost immediately reflected in the 'collective ideology' of the Dragons …"
Gwen quickly reacted and his eyes widened. "This also formed a new 'lock'?!"
"In a normal civilization, this temporary and lack of accumulation of collective emotions is actually nothing. But the gods of the Giant Dragon had become one, and the mutual influence between the gods and humans was unprecedentedly strong, so much so that any strong and collective mental wave would quickly create a large-scale echo in the collective ideology, and then, the echo became a new lock.
"For more than a million years after that, the Giant Dragon had never interfered with the world outside Tarlonde, and even strictly limited the number of Dragons that left Tarlonde every year.
"They could not reveal too much information about the Tide War to other civilizations, and they could not simply divulge the secrets of the Voyager. When other civilizations came into contact with the Voyager's legacy, they had to immediately find a way to retrieve those 'dangerous objects' … These are the 'reflection echoes' produced by the Dragons after the Tide War, and these echoes have become a mandatory 'lock', and all Dragons must unconditionally abide by them, even if ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, or even a million years have passed … even if the Voyager's legacy has all been obliterated by time, even if no one remembers what the Tide Empire is, the Dragons must always abide by them."
Gawain listened in shock. Suddenly, he couldn't help but say, "But when Melita mentioned to me that certain dangerous items should be recalled or certain information should be blocked, she only said that it was an order from her superiors. It was a 'company rule' …"
"That, at least, sounds better."
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