Chapter 929 — Warning
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Kamael's words left Gao Yang wearing a thoughtful expression.
He had heard from Tier before about certain aspects of siren culture and tradition, so the concept of "Eve" was not unfamiliar to him.
Unlike most races on land, the sirens had since ancient times possessed no concept of a "deity" domain whatsoever. They worshipped no gods, nor did they believe any absolutely transcendent individual to be some kind of creator, savior, or guide. In their cultural system, the only thing resembling the "gods" of the land races was "Eve"—and yet they never regarded Eve as a deity. Tier had once spent a long time explaining to Gao Yang what Eve actually was, for to a land race it was a most difficult concept to grasp. And after hearing Tier's account, Gao Yang had distilled one crucial point:
Eve is the collective of all sirens. They regard their entire race as a single whole, just as a vast number of cells gather together—and those cells have given their enormous, complex aggregate a name: human.
This peculiar worldview likely had something to do with their culture of "belonging to the deep sea"—that all things arise from the deep, all things return to the deep, and all things become one within the deep.
Thus the sirens had no concept of god-worship, and never would—for the greatest and most transcendent being in their minds was simply one oversized siren.
In Gao Yang's view, the sirens were a wondrous race that retained individual will yet perceived the world as a swarm did.
He furrowed his brow slightly and looked at Kamael. "You mean the Deepsea Song and the Deepsea Runes produce a mental protection effect because they are in essence channeling the power of 'Eve'—that it is Eve helping us resist divine corruption?"
"Very likely," Kamael nodded.
Gao Yang was still frowning. "But why is it that the sirens' Eve can resist divine corruption?"
"On that point… as I mentioned earlier, to our 'gods,' Eve's essential nature may well amount to that of an 'alien god,'" Kamael said slowly, weighing his words. "You should recall that Miss Tier herself said she and her people are not the original inhabitants of this planet of ours—they come from a place whose environment is utterly different from our world's."
"I remember," Gao Yang nodded. "And from her description of the vessel the sirens used to come to this world, it sounded very much like some kind of 'spaceship' capable of crossing the vast distances between stars—like the 'star-barks' envisioned by the astromancers and scholars of the ancient Gondor era. But clearly that thing was countless times larger than the star-faring vessels the human scholars of seven hundred years ago had imagined."
Kamael nodded slowly. "Yes, some manner of craft for crossing the starry void. It sounds as though the sirens came from another planet. But recently I have spoken with Miss Tier several times, heard her describe her homeland and the troubles the sirens faced when they first survived in this world… and I have formed a bolder conjecture."
Gao Yang's eyebrows lifted. "A bolder conjecture?"
"The sirens endured an exceedingly long 'adaptation period' on our planet—they even lost their bodily form for a time, passing untold years in 'reaggregation' at the bottom of the sea in their most primal elemental state before regaining the capacity to act… This goes beyond the notion of 'two planets having different natural environments.' And considering that elemental beings are innately immune to the effects of the Magic Tide, the problems they encountered were probably not some 'post-Magic-Tide aftereffect' either. So… I suspect they may come from somewhere even more 'distant' than we imagine—so distant that even the fundamental laws of the world are different."
Gao Yang's expression turned grave at once. "Go on."