Chapter 809 — The God Is Dead

"A pity these mundane things should mean little to a god," Gao Yang said. Then his gaze was caught by an ornate, exquisite one-handed sword set apart from the rest—unlike ordinary offerings, it was not placed in a wall niche but upon a platform at the far end of the room, protected by sigils, and there seemed to be writing on the platform as well, making it stand out all the more.

Gao Yang came before the platform and saw a line of text recorded upon it:

Offered by the most holy and great King Balmora to my Lord, on a summer's day in the Year of the Chamomile.

"It seems to be a king's offering to the Upper Narrator..." Gao Yang said casually, looking at the line of text.

"King Balmora..." Selina had seen the line as well, and a trace of thought showed in her expression. "I seem to have some impression of it."

"Oh?" Gao Yang's brows lifted. He had taken it for an insignificant name, but something in Selina's expression struck him as odd. "What did this King Balmora do?"

"According to the data output by the log system, he was a virtual personality automatically generated by the sandbox," Selina said as she walked. "He was born a slave in the city-state of Nim'Zhor, and afterward, following the system's settings, won his freedom through gladiatorial combat as a slave, became one of the city-state's guards, and gradually rose to captain of the guard..."

"A guard of slave birth?" Gao Yang could not help being startled. "Then how did he become a king?"

"Let me think... by the reckoning of time inside the sandbox, that would be roughly two hundred years before the loss of control. The city-state of Nim'Zhuol was shrouded in a plague of insects—the water sources were tainted, the harvests failed completely, locusts and black beetles devoured most of the stored grain. The city's nobles fled, and the king took his trusted retainers and his treasures and ran off to a neighboring kingdom to seek refuge. With the situation desperate, those still living in the city-state decided to elevate a new king—whoever could find a way to fight the insect plague, find a source of grain and a new water supply, would be the new king.

"Just as you imagine, this 'sandbox resident' named Balmora did all of those things—he traced the plague of insects to its root cause, led the people of the city-state to a new water source, then took soldiers and ran down some of the fleeing nobles, recovering part of the grain they had carried off... all remarkable feats, going even beyond the 'script' we had preset. Never before had any 'virtual resident' been able to accomplish great deeds that drove the course of history; matters of that sort were usually carried out by importing a script from outside... so it left an impression on me."

"And what became of this great king in the end?" Gao Heng asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

Selina seemed to hesitate a moment before saying softly: "...Deleted."

"Deleted?"

"The deviation from the script was too great. The sandbox judged that the system was at risk of imbalance, so it performed an automatic correction. Balmora's sudden death in the prime of his life was in fact a deletion—though of course, he left behind a name for himself in the history of Sandbox One, and at least that portion of his name was not reset away."

Gao Cen Shiche said nothing, only gazing quietly at the sword resting on the platform, as though watching a virtual personality born in a world of dream, manufactured by the system—watching him rise from slave to soldier, from soldier to general, from general to king, to a mighty sovereign, and at last... be deleted.

Suddenly, he felt something strange toward all those myriad beings sinking and surfacing in the sandbox world.

His attention soon returned to this temple belonging to the "Upper Narrator."

"Then, following the clues here, this King Balmora dedicated his sword to the god," he said to Selina beside him. "Which means that in the era when Balmora was active, the faith of the Upper Narrator had already been born—had even become the core faith of this city-state of Nim Sangzhuol."

Selina had evidently arrived at the same thought; her expression turned pensive. "It seems... that is so."

"The sandbox system had not yet lost control at that time—and yet you external monitors knew nothing of the appearance and existence of this temple."

"That is indeed so."

Gao Yang lifted his eyelids. "Why do you think that is?"

Selina pondered, then said slowly: "Either... the Upper Narrator twisted time and history after the sandbox lost control, weaving into the sandbox world a course of events that never truly existed; or else the sandbox system lost control far earlier than we imagined, and even the monitoring system has been deceiving us all along."

Gao Che fell silent.

Whichever possibility it was, neither was good news.

If it was the first, that meant the Upper Narrator's erosion and control of the sandbox system was even more severe than anticipated—He even possessed the ability to manipulate time and history within the sandbox world, which already exceeded simple mental contamination;

if it was the second, that meant His contamination had leaked far earlier than anyone had expected, meant it was highly likely that He had already left hidden dangers in the real world, undetected and liable to erupt at any moment...

Frankly speaking, Gao Yang would rather have faced the first situation.