Chapter 1076 — A History Never Recorded

And the second thing that came to mind was that Amon's decision to feign death for three thousand years had been absolutely correct—the elves' long lifespans had indeed bred in them a "fixation" unlike that of humans. Tens of centuries had passed, and their "remembrance" of the God of Nature still had not died out; that was truly an astonishing thing. Had Amon not chosen to feign death, He might well have been forcibly reconnected by those "loyal believers"...

Beyond that, the intelligence Berentia brought corroborated many findings of the Defiance Plan, and no small number of Gao Yang's conjectures about the mechanism of the gods were now confirmed. All of this was an immeasurably vast gain!

"It seems you still have many things you wish to ask me," the Silver Empress said with a smile. "Though this has gone beyond our exchange of questions, I am still glad to continue answering."

Gao Yang asked at once: "After dealing with those secret cults so many times over, does the elven royal court still define them simply as 'heretical sects'?"

"Of course—they are heretics beyond any doubt," the Silver Empress answered, her tone perfectly even. "Please do not forget, I am the supreme high priestess of the orthodox druidic faith. So in my eyes, any secret cult that attempts to establish a 'new faith of the God of Nature' is necessarily heretical..."

Gao Yang looked into her eyes. "And at the same time you are the Silver Empress, the ruler of an empire. So those cults are not only necessarily heretical—they must be heretical."

The Silver Empress paused for a moment, then gave a faint sigh. "Uncle Gao Yang, after all these years, you still do not mince words."

"I've spent over seven hundred years asleep, so to me not that much time has passed—and even after seven hundred years, the rules by which this world runs haven't changed much," Gao Yang said, shaking his head. "What those cults were doing was undoubtedly a tremendous threat—a threat to the other druidic factions, and a threat to imperial order. I have felt that keenly enough. And for the **** Silver Empire, such a threat is even more lethal. The God of Nature has fallen; a royal house deprived of divine support naturally could not sit by while a pack of uncontrolled druids truly built a new god..."

The Silver Empress frowned slightly. "So what they made really was a 'deity'..."

"If the theoretical model I know is correct, it would have been some kind of prototype, or an earlier psychological phantom produced by collective thoughtforms, in the midst of transforming into the physical world. But because there were too few believers and too little time, that process was greatly prolonged—which is precisely what gave you the chance to interrupt it," Gao Yang said, then added with some puzzlement, "Did you never realize those things really were 'deities'? Did you never conduct any formal research?"

"We had our guesses, but no one dared draw a conclusion," the Silver Empress said candidly. "After our first contact with a secret cult, the elven royal court dimly recognized the danger and sensitivity of the matter, so for thousands of years only members of the royal family knew the full intelligence concerning those cults, and the relevant research was conducted in strict secrecy. Outsiders knew only that the royal court had several times sent troops to wipe out heretical sects in the forest, but no one knew that we had destroyed something else at the same time. Even so, we treated those mysterious entities merely as something like evil gods or 'entities from beyond the boundary,' and our research proceeded on that basis. And since those 'spirits' always dissipated so quickly, our internal research made almost no progress—in recent centuries, practically none at all."

Gao Yang was somewhat dazed, and could not help feeling a pang of regret, for the Silver Empire had come so close to the truth—they had even come into contact with the terrible truth behind the gods earlier than the Gondor Empire. Yet in the end they lingered at the threshold of that truth and never crossed the critical line of "defiance." If they had been a little bolder, if they had not hidden these secrets so deeply and for so long, if they had joined humanity's Defiance Plan back in the Gondor era... would the world's present situation be different?

But soon he dismissed these meaningless suppositions, because none of it was possible—even turning back time could not bring it about.

The Silver Empire was a **** nation. Even if its traditional state faith existed in name only, the peculiar identity of its rulers and its intricate, intractable political structure determined that it could never go far down that road. And even setting that aside... under normal circumstances, who could have imagined out of thin air that the gods were actually born from "thoughtforms," had they not had the chance to obtain so much intelligence straight from a god's own mouth?

The elves could only regard the "spirits" the secret cults conjured as evil gods or "entities from beyond the boundary" of indeterminate nature.

Yet just then a new question surfaced in Gao Yang's mind. "I find myself curious. After all these years, and so many dealings with those secret cults, even if the research advanced slowly—did you yourselves never consider... making a god the way they did, or trying to commune with the God of Nature? The Silver Empress and the Silver Emperor are the supreme priests of the orthodox druidic faith, so in a sense divine authority affects your legitimacy as well. If a true god stood behind you..."

"We did not do so, and the reason is simple," the Silver Empress said, shaking her head with a smile before Gao Yang could finish. "After the god departed, we suddenly discovered—that we could be orthodox even with no god standing behind us."

"...I understand," Gao Yang said after a brief pause, his voice grave.

Then he could not help laughing. "Who would have thought—the supreme high priestess of the druids, the Silver Empress, is in fact the one who least wishes for the God of Nature's return."

"You are mistaken," the Silver Empress said, shaking her head. "The ones who least wish for the God of Nature's return are not me, but those secret-cult leaders who truly summoned a 'deity' and then discovered that the 'deity' was not the God of Nature. At all times they presented themselves as fanatical and devout, and they called the 'deity' they had summoned the new incarnation of Amon, God of Nature. Yet when we brought them into Amon's temple to carry out the judgment, in the end they were all filled with tension and dread—that pitiful distortion, once seen, is never forgotten for the rest of one's life."

Gao Yang chewed over her words, sinking into thought amid the silence, while the Silver Empress across from him smiled and gently nudged the black tea before him a little closer.

"Uncle Gao Yang, your tea has gone cold."