Chapter 316 — Tyr's Impressions of the Gods

He had assumed that a creature like Tyr—idling her days away waiting for death, and capable of swimming the wrong way from the Endless Sea all the way to a human nation just trying to get home—could not possibly be anyone formidable. Even tossed in among those deep-sea harmonized gods, she would have to be the lonely shut-in type. Never had he expected that a single sentence from her would reveal such an impressive identity. Though he was not clear on exactly where a sea-dweller battle priestess stood within their entire military system, there was no doubt that Tyr occupied the upper-middle tier among her people!

Hmm... now he was a little curious about the social promotion mechanisms of those sea-dwellers... They probably selected their commanders based on appetite and gait.

"I get the feeling something unseemly is turning over in your head," Tyr stared into Gao Yang's eyes for a long while. "Let me tell you—don't think I'm always lazing about, but that's only because nothing's happened. If real danger came and there was a body of water nearby, most of you would run... couldn't even beat me!"

Gao Yang had the feeling she had just let slip some peculiar choice of words, but he judged that pointing it out directly might make the sea-dweller miss end the conversation on the spot, so he simply changed the subject: "You mentioned you're a battle priestess. Is the word 'priestess' also a religious term in your language? Do you sea-dwellers have your own religion and system of faith?"

He recalled that Tyr had mentioned before that the sea-dwellers did not believe in gods.

"If by religion and faith you mean worshipping some specific deity the way you humans do, then we sea-dwellers don't believe in gods—but we do have our own object of worship," Tyr explained. "What we worship is the 'spirit' of all sea-dwellers, the 'pan-consciousness' of our race and of the entire ocean. We call it 'Eva.' I don't know whether you can understand this kind of symbolic 'idol of worship.' To us sea-dwellers, Eva is not a god, but in our society she holds a status akin to that of your human gods."

Gao Yang rubbed his chin: "Worshipping the spirit of a race, and worshipping certain symbols of the natural environment... Never mind, I can understand it. In fact, this kind of faith exists on land as well. In the west of the continent, the August Thunder Tribal States hold a 'pan-faith' toward all things and phenomena of nature. Some worship their own ancestors; some worship the lightning, wind, rock, and plants of the natural world; some even worship the 'Wheel of Fate' of birth, aging, sickness, and death. This has to do with the multiracial coexistence within their nation. Moreover, today's druids also tend toward pan-faith—they worship 'Nature' and 'Life' rather than any definite deity."

"That I do know—that very chewy big white deer is dead, isn't he?" Tyr nodded. "But speaking of which, I find the faith and religion of you land-dwellers really strange... Your churches have changed again and again, and even whole civilizations have changed again and again. Every time the magic tide comes, the civilization of the land-dwellers is severed once, yet no matter how thoroughly it's severed, as soon as civilization reappears, you're still worshipping those gods... They're clearly just a bunch of powerful creatures that are very chewy—how do they hold such attraction for you land-dwellers?"

Tyr spoke without intent, but when Gao Yang heard her last few sentences, his heart suddenly skipped a beat.

After every surge of the arcane tide reshuffled the world, did the newly born mortal civilizations all end up establishing more or less the same systems of faith and religion?