Chapter 1142 — The Trembling Truth

"Thank you for the compliment," Enya said placidly. Her tone, always calm and mild, had at this moment a considerable effect of settling the heart and soothing the nerves. "But do not take what I have described as reliable research material. In the end it is only my conjecture — even a god cannot reach those exiled minds."

Gao Yang fell silent for a moment, then suddenly spoke. "About the Great Demon Tide reshaping all things in the world — the Sea Demons were the first to tell me of it. I believe they did not deceive me on this matter, so the only explanation is that they truly 'saw' the world being reshaped — which means they were 'observers' under the influence of the Demon Tide... But why were they unaffected? They seem merely to have witnessed certain phenomena, yet they have survived the Demon Tide safe and sound time and again."

"The Sea Demons..." Enya chuckled softly, as though with a sense of helplessness. "They may be the only race in this world that even I find impossible to understand. Though I witnessed with my own eyes their fall from space onto this planet, and once observed from afar the kingdom they built in the distant seas, I have always avoided letting the Dragon race establish contact with those star-born visitors. Do you know why?"

"Because the Sea Demons come from the cosmos, and their interstellar knowledge and ships could very likely turn the Dragon race's attention toward the universe, thereby accelerating your loss of control?" Gao Yang hazarded, but he had already realized this question was probably not so simple — otherwise Enya would have had no need to deliberately ask it now.

"What you say is indeed part of the answer, but more importantly... the Sea Demons as a race are, to me, a kind of 'toxic observer.'

"The way they perceive this world is utterly different from any race in the world. It is as though they come not only from beyond this planet, but from beyond this universe. They carry a distinct... anomaly, an 'estrangement' that does not fit our world at all. It is this estrangement that keeps the Demon Tide from fully affecting them. When the Demon Tide comes, they do see certain displaced phenomena, but in a very short time their own cognition corrects this 'error' of its own accord — and that correction fills me with... fear. Because I have found that they not only 'correct' themselves, but influence other intelligent beings as well, slowly altering the cognition of other races, and even spreading that influence through the current of thought to the gods behind those races.

"Do you remember the 'closed system' we discussed in our last topic, when speaking of gods losing control? In the eyes of the gods, these Sea Demons are like a band of 'corrosive poison' capable of actively breaking a closed system — mobile, aggressive foreign information. Can you understand what I mean?"

Gao Yang blinked, and at once he thought of a line he had once muttered in jest:

The gods and the Sea Demons came face to face, exchanged a sanity check — and then the gods went mad.

That inadvertent joke... was true.

The existence of the Sea Demons could contaminate the gods! If their cognition and self-correction had a "priority," then that "priority" even overrode the Demon Tide?!

At this thought his expression suddenly changed, and his tone turned exceptionally grave. "Then the ever-broadening exchanges we are now establishing with the Sea Demons — would that not mean..."

"I believe that by the time of my 'fall,' the Sea Demons — this race of 'toxic observers' — had likely already lost their toxicity," Enya said, knowing at once what Gao Yang was suddenly worrying about, her tone unhurried and gentle. "The estrangement between them and this world has come close to vanishing entirely, and the contamination that came with it will vanish too — for the gods who come after, from the beginning of this age of civilization onward, the Sea Demons will no longer be dangerous."

Gao Yang was taken aback. "Why?"

"I do not know. There are far too many mysteries about this race," Enya said. The golden runes on the surface of her shell halted for an instant, then slowly began to flow again. "Of one thing only can I be certain: before my fall, I finally succeeded in observing, in the depths of this world, the ripples produced by the Sea Demons when they think... which means that after such a vast span of years, this race so out of place in the world has finally merged into our world."

"Merged..." Gao Yang frowned, pondering every word Enya had spoken. He tried to grasp what peculiar state those "visitors from beyond the sky" who had crashed onto this planet were in — a state that had made the oldest deity of this world wary for more than a million years, and even now that wariness had only just been lifted. At the same time he wondered how the Sea Demons' "merging" had come about, and several plausible conjectures had already surfaced in his mind.

Only at this stage, at least, none of those conjectures could be verified — perhaps even the Sea Demons themselves could make no sense of these processes.

What could be settled now was only the final conclusion: the Sea Demons were like a lump of insoluble foreign matter that had fallen into this world one million eight hundred seventy thousand years ago, and only now was it at last beginning to dissolve its outer shell, no longer a bug capable of freezing the system dead. Perhaps this was a good thing for the races that had established exchanges with them — but for the Sea Demons themselves... was it a good thing?

He could not help asking, "Now that they have merged into this world, does that mean from now on the Demon Tide will affect them as well?"

"Perhaps it will, perhaps it will not. I know such an answer is somewhat irresponsible, but there are simply too many mysteries about them; solve one and countless more wait ahead," Enya said, somewhat helplessly. "The greatest problem is that their essence of life is still that of an elemental creature... an elemental creature that can survive stably in the main material world, and elemental creatures are themselves capable of reshaping and regenerating after a Demon Tide. This perhaps means that even if they are destroyed by the Demon Tide in the future just like any other mortal, they will be reborn as a whole race once the Demon Tide has passed.

"Of course, the opposite may also be true. Who can say? These are things that have never happened; even a god cannot predict them."

"Perhaps I should have a talk with them about this one day," Gao Yang said, frowning. Then something suddenly occurred to him. "Wait — just now we said the Great Demon Tide does not affect the physical substance of the 'real universe.' What about the Minor Demon Tide?"

"What I mean is, back then the Gondo Empire was swallowed by a Minor Demon Tide after the great explosion at the Deep Blue Well, and the pioneers saw with their own eyes how the chaotic magical energy affected the environment. What's more, we later mined an entirely new kind of ore in the Black Mountain region, and that ore has been recognized as a product of the Demon Tide... Is this the result of some kind of 'reshaping' phenomenon?"

"That too is a misconception," Enya said faintly. "There has never been any such thing as 'the reshaping of all things in the world,' whether by the Great Demon Tide or the so-called Minor Demon Tide — the great explosion that occurred in the Gondo Empire confused your judgment of the Demon Tide. In fact, what you faced then was merely the shockwave from the Deep Blue Well; those new ores and the mutated environment were nothing but natural reactions caused by the erosion of high-concentration magical power. If you do not believe me, you are perfectly free to reproduce that result in a laboratory."