Chapter 243 — The Returner
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 3
"I was only talking," Tyr said, thinking it over carefully before waving her hand with regret. "Our technology is stuck at a rather delicate... bottleneck. Deepwater Technicians probably couldn't analyze something so completely different from our own technological path either."
"Is that so... That really is a pity."
Tyr fell silent for a moment, then suddenly asked in a low voice, "By the way... this thing is what you people call a 'god,' isn't it?"
"Yes. You should have heard just now that this is the God of Nature."
After spending no short and no long a stretch of days in human society, Tyr was no longer as utterly bewildered by humanity's religious systems and worldview as she had been at the start. She had more or less come to understand what the many gods worshipped by humans meant, and having recently seen the divine flesh and blood in Gao Yang's collection, she had finally realized just what the "giant squid" she and her sisters routinely dug up in the deep sea actually was. Yet to a siren who did not believe in gods, the supernatural idols worshipped by humans could hardly strike any chord in Tyr. Hearing Gao Yang's affirmative reply, she very much wanted to display some astonishment, but in the end she could only sigh and remark, "Oh. It really is quite chewy."
"I don't know how many believers would be scared half to death by that sentence of yours," Gao Yang said with a helpless smile. "But then again... there probably aren't many people still worshipping the God of Nature now, are there."
Ever since the White Star's Fall, the demise of the God of Nature had become a fact that people did not speak of but knew full well. Three thousand years had thoroughly destroyed the original druidic faith. After the sole "sacrificial" druids—the School of the Holy Spirit—had also fallen and become the Order of the End of All Things, there were no longer any open worshippers of the God of Nature in this world.
Yet Gao Yang was still certain that if the secrets of this alien space were made public, they would still be enough to set the whole world shaking.
And then the Cecil Territory would be thrust onto the crest of the wave.
So he absolutely could not let these tidings leak out—at least not now, while the territory's wings were still unfledged.
Still, Gao Yang hoped to dig out as much as possible from this "mountain of treasure" and bring it back with him this time. So he turned to Camille. "Camille, are the tools you used back then to cut samples from the divine corpse and the wreckage around it still usable?"
Camille's voice came from within the armor plates: "Definitely not. And even if they were, I would strongly advise you not to touch anything here."
Gao Yang frowned. "Why?"
"The Giant Deer Amoen is not as 'calm' as it appears to you," Camille warned gravely. "The god is dead, but the flesh does not perish. He possesses a mode of life that humans cannot comprehend. The corpse before you has never ceased regenerating over the past three thousand years; some force of unknown origin has been repairing it all along. But the steel wreckage entangled with the divine corpse suppresses this regenerative process, and only a certain delicate balance between the two has sustained it to this day. When we collected samples here—whether from the divine corpse or from the wreckage—every single attempt cost us tremendous sacrifice and came with tremendous danger. And now... I fear we cannot afford that risk."
"Regeneration..."
Gao Yang murmured to himself and could not help glancing at Tyr beside him, who was smacking her lips.