Chapter 119 — The Shifting Faith of the Druids
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Hearing Gao Song's words, Pi Yun's eyebrows couldn't help but twitch: "Very few people know that much about the history of druids."
"I wouldn't call it knowing much. It's no secret that druidic arts were born out of natural divine arts; it's just that the people of this era have too narrow a breadth of knowledge," Gao Yang said lightly. "Back in the days of the Gondor Empire, the many druidic schools all had their plaques hanging in the Empire's Hall of Sacred Knowledge."
"Heh heh, I forgot again—there's no judging you by common sense, you ancient relic from seven hundred years ago," the little old man chuckled, beginning to tidy up the tools for compounding potions. "You're right, of course. All druidic arts derive from the natural divine arts of primeval times. In fact, druidism was originally a pure religion, no different from today's Church of the Holy Light or the War God's sect. But as time passed, many religions declined and vanished, and those that managed to barely carry on... either became cults, or transformed their form like the Order of the Forest Dusk."
"The druids are split into countless factions—Heart of the Woods, Spirits of Nature, the Wild Sect, the Grotto School, the Elementalists... I can name five or six off the top of my head, and those are just the big ones. The small ones must number several dozen," Gao Yang said fluently. "They say the split among druids first began with the 'Fall of the White Star' three thousand years ago. The original Forest Dusk religion underwent a massive internal upheaval after that event, and in a short span of time fractured into a great many schools, large and small. You all once worshipped a single 'God of Nature' with no definite form, but after the White Star fell, that faith changed along with it..."
Though Pi Yun looked like an unreliable druid, his arts were proof enough that he had received a complete druidic inheritance, so answering in matters of professional common knowledge put no strain on him at all: "The God of Nature split into many forms, and every school claimed its own interpretation was the correct one. Some worshipped the spirits of the forest, some the spirits of nature, some even worshipped beast spirits or elemental spirits elevated to divinity... That's hardly a secret. But unlike other religions after they split, though the druids' concepts grew somewhat fragmented once they divided into many sects, we never actually came to blows. Every faction has coexisted in peace—even before the 'Sacred Covenant' was laid down, the druidic factions were at peace."
Gao Yang wore an expression of interest: "I really don't know the specific reason for that. Would you tell me?"
"Every faction upholds one rule: the druids share one source though their paths diverge, and whatever road they walk in the future, druids are forever brothers and sisters," Pi Yun said, stroking his beard. "This isn't some mere organizational regulation—it's the Druidic Code. Before receiving the inheritance, one must swear a deadly oath upon one's own soul."
Gao Yang rubbed his chin and quietly filed this piece of knowledge away, then steered the conversation back to arts and divine arts: "The transformation of the Forest Dusk religion's original natural divine arts into the druidic arts of later ages—that happened in this same process, didn't it?"
Pi Yun nodded: "That's right. It was completed slowly over the long ages after the White Star fell and the factions split."
Gao Yang: "That final step just now, when you blessed the potion you'd brewed—that's actually a vestige left behind by the original druidic divine arts?"
Pi Yun nodded with a half-smile, but said nothing.