Chapter 1139 — Like Fireflies Rising and Falling

Gao Yang blinked, feeling that he had finally glimpsed a little-known side of this dragon god's character — a more genuine side. But the awkward atmosphere still made him clear his throat twice and touch the tip of his nose. "If you want to become less serious, the first thing is not to make your tone so dead earnest when discussing this sort of topic."

"Am I very dead earnest? My apologies — I had not noticed," Enya said at once, listening intently. "Understood. I will try to adjust from now on — good. Now I have a direction to work toward."

Have you not had rather a lot of directions to work toward lately?

Gao Yang could not help but mutter inwardly, but this time he did not dare say everything on his mind aloud — he had more or less figured out this dragon god's character by now, and at this moment he was afraid that any careless word of his would make her take it seriously and then find yet another "direction to work toward" for his future life... There were already quite enough of those directions.

"Ahem," he coughed drily twice, having finally decided not to let the present topic drift any further in such a strange direction. "We have chatted enough. Actually, I came today because I have a real matter to discuss with you."

"A real matter?" Enya's tone held curiosity. "What do you mean?"

Gao Yang steadied himself, swiftly arranging his words in his mind while doing his best to bring his emotions back to a serious, earnest state. Only then did he break the silence with a solemn expression: "There is something you should already know. We have a long-term 'monitoring' project. Its purpose is to track a mysterious signal of unknown origin..."

"I know," Enya said at once — and whether it was an illusion or not, her tone carried a certain emotion, as though she had been waiting a long time for this topic. "I knew well before the great war in Talrond broke out — Metzen was the first to bring the news back to Talrond."

"Metzen?" Gao Cen was startled, but quickly recalled. "Ah, yes — after we first confirmed the signal's existence, I sought confirmation of its source from various parties, Talrond among them... But at the time the dragons gave no response at all."

"They wanted to respond to you," Enya said mildly. "But I stopped them."

"You stopped them?" Gao Yang's expression turned serious at once, his gaze fixed on Enya's eggshell. "Why?"

"Because the dragons at that time were still in a dangerous state of lockdown, and were about to face the critical moment of their fate. I had to prevent them from paying too much attention to the stars, and prevent them from passing knowledge of the stars to outsiders — otherwise, under the circumstances of that time, I very likely would have lost control ahead of schedule."

"Knowledge of the stars..." Gao Yang blinked, and a strange yet somehow expected feeling welled up from deep within him. He drew a slow breath. "So that signal really does come from the stars? Who exactly sent it? How far is it from our planet? How much do you know about its sender?"

"You are asking too many questions at once," Enya said calmly, and her gentle, placid voice quickly soothed Gao Yang's somewhat agitated mood. "I may know a little more about the stars than you do, but I am far from omniscient. So you had best lower your expectations first, and then we can continue.

"First, as to your first question — the source of that signal... Yes, just as you have already surmised, the signal comes from the stars, from a planet immeasurably distant to mortals as they are now, yet not so distant on the scale of the cosmos.

"But as for the specific information concerning that planet and the one who sent the signal — I do not know more than you do."

"You do not know?" Gao Yang frowned instinctively. "As the most powerful deity on this planet, can you not see it either?"

"Precisely because I am the deity of this planet, it is my fate that my gaze cannot travel far beyond it," Enya said, a smile in her voice. "This is the greatest of the limitations that bind the gods, and one you must come to understand. I believe your studies have in fact already carried you this far, but you always overlook it without thinking — a god is mighty, yes, but mighty only within its own domain. The more concrete and the more fervent the mortals' imagining of a god, the more concrete and the more confining that god's domain becomes.

"Until the day of my fall, the dragon race had never once set foot off this planet, and so my gaze could only ever rest upon it. Even though I could know everything upon this planet down to the last grain of dust, I could never peer at anything beyond it... In this respect I am much like that colossal Sorin Giant Tree: our vision is shackled within a particular domain.

"And it is for this very reason that the mortals' 'one step off the planet' strikes the gods so violently. You must understand from first principles why this is so."

"A god can be mighty only within its own domain..." Gao Yang said thoughtfully. "That is a very important piece of information. I have noted it. Then let us return to that signal — you know nothing of its source, nor of who sent it... What else do you know? What else can you tell us?"

"Though I cannot see the circumstances of other planets, I have at least witnessed the expedition of the Voyagers, and lived through the age when 'the sky threw open its gates,'" Enya said. "As for you, wanderer from beyond the domain, you came from the stars yourself, so we both know one thing clearly: this universe is not dead and silent, and the living beings of this planet are by no means the only ones in the starry sky. That intelligent voices other than our own should arise in the universe is a perfectly ordinary thing.

"And such an ordinary thing, of course, would not happen only once.

"Before the signal you have received appeared, this planet had captured no fewer than a hundred 'voices' from the cosmos in my memory alone. These signals, shuttling to and fro through the darkness, are like fishing lamps flaring suddenly in a boundless murky night. They show that this stretch of starry sky is far from as cold and desolate as it looks on the surface: beneath the shelter of those many stars are many intelligent beings who, like you, think, observe, and gaze up at the night sky — and a considerable portion of them have developed to an exceedingly high level. At the very least... they have learned how to send their 'greetings' off the ground beneath their feet and across such immense distances of starry space."

"No fewer than... a hundred?!" Gao Yang's eyes finally widened in astonishment. "This planet has received that many alien signals?"

"Not received deliberately — most of these signals were released as purposeless diffusion, rising and falling through the universe like ripples, and some merely 'passed by' here. And my memory spans a million years; over such a vast stretch of time, it is no wonder that one hears a few greetings."

Gao Yang could not help drawing a soft breath, and asked hesitantly: "Then... what became of those signals afterward?"

"The great majority went dark, flickering like fireflies."