Chapter 1142: Chapter 1141: The Shivering Truth

The Hatching Room fell into silence once again. Enya had to break the silence proactively, "I know, this answer contradicts common sense."

"Wait a moment, I need to sort this out..." Gawain instinctively gestured to stop the conversation. After finally sorting out his thoughts and confirming the information described by Enya, he slowly raised his head, "So, when the ’Great Magic Tide’ arrived, the world was actually not affected at all. It was just that all individuals who could act as ’Observers’ experienced cognitive shifts, turning the originally normal world into something indescribable and incomprehensible in their eyes. The so-called ’end of the world’ was actually a ’hallucination’ they produced?"

"It’s not as simple as a hallucination. A hallucination can simply be ignored by closing your eyes and blocking your senses, but the ’exile shift’ brought by the magic tide can break the boundaries between substance and reality—if you mistake ice for fire, then the ’fire’ can indeed burn you, if the sun in your eyes becomes extinguished black embers, then the whole world will dim and cool down beside you. This sounds very contrary to understanding, but the truth of the world is just like this.

"Observers construct the world they reside in through their own cognition, a world that precisely overlaps with the real world. However, when the magic tide arrives, this ’overlap’ becomes dislocated, and observers are consumed by the chaotic visions within their sight. In the pinnacle of madness and terror, they tried their best to leave behind records of the world twisted and broken, the magic tide destroying everything, yet these records for those who come after...are but the ravings of madmen and illusions that can never be proven by any theory."

Gawain sat in a wide, high-backed chair, the ventilation system sending a cool and clean breeze, the low humming sound entering his ears, at this moment it seemed incredibly ethereal and distant. He fell into long contemplation, and after an unknown period, he awoke from his thoughts: "This indeed contradicts normal cognition; the observer’s observation shapes an ’Observer’s Universe’ overlapping with the real world? Moreover, this displacement of the observer world would lead to the observer’s self-destruction..."

"But you don’t look as surprised as I expected," Enya said in a calm tone, "I thought you would at least lose your composure a little."

"That’s because I’m not unfamiliar with many of the concepts you’ve mentioned—I just can’t believe all this can happen in the macro world," Gawain said with a complicated expression, bringing with a tinge of inquiry as if talking to himself in a tone of lament, "But if what you say is true... where then is the boundary between the real universe and the ’cognitive universe’ in our world? If observers can be burned to death by the ’illusionary flames’ in their cognition, then what meaning does the operation of the real world hold?"

The voice in the golden giant egg paused before responding: "...It seems in your homeland, the material world and the spiritual world are distinctly separated."

"At least in the macro world, it is so," Gawain said in a deep voice, "In our place, reality is reality, illusion is illusion, the Observer Effect only applies in the microscopic domain."

"Is it... unfortunately in this universe, the boundaries of everything seem to be in a state of flux," Enya said, the movement speed of the faint golden magic symbols on her eggshell gradually slowing down, seemingly helping Gawain to calm and think, "This stable and harmonious world seen by mortals can turn into an indescribable twisted purgatory with just a single magic tide. When there is a deviation between cognition and reality, crossing between reason and madness becomes easy, so from a certain perspective, the pursuit of the ’real universe’ itself is meaningless, even... does the real universe truly exist?"

Listening to the question Enya posed at the end, sufficient to drive a scholar with insufficient determination to madness, Gawain’s heart inexplicably calmed down. Suddenly, he thought of this world’s strange ’layered’ structure, the shadow realm beneath the material world, the shadow realm under that, and the ’Deep Realm’ beneath even the shadow realm, and the ’deep-sea’ which for the gods merely exists in concept...

In his mind, an endless ocean seemed to emerge from the void, depicting the real shape of this universe, layers upon layers of ’domains’ overlapping in a manner beyond human comprehension, engaging in complex mappings with one another. In that deep sea, where sunlight cannot reach, the deepest ’truth’ lies buried in untouched darkness—the ocean undulates, while mortals merely float and wander like minuscule mayflies in the shallowest layer of water, with the true form of the entire ocean dwelling far beyond the cognitive boundaries of the mayflies.

He took a gentle breath, pulling his rationality out from the imaginary ’ocean’, and with a slight tone as if wandering outside of things, he softly said, "I suddenly find myself curious... when the magic tide arrives, how the world looks through the eyes of those ’exiled’..."

In the memories of Gawain Cecil, he saw the catastrophe from seven hundred years ago, the scorched and curled earth, terrifying celestial phenomena, chaotic magic sweeping the land, numerous monsters pouring in from all directions—that was almost the most terrifying ’doomsday’ imaginable by mortals, even Gawain himself once believed that was what the end looked like, but now he suddenly realized his imagination fell short before the real form of this world.

"Even if you are a Wanderer from Outer Realm who can rival the gods, the impression left on a mortal’s mind by the arriving magic tide would be something you are unwilling to face," Enya’s voice came from the golden giant egg, "Frankly, I can’t accurately answer your question because no one can normally communicate with those who have already gone mad, lost their sense in the ’real universe’, or deduce their observed scenes from their chaotic, delirious words or noises—I can only speculate, from the mad traces left by those civilizations that did not withstand the magic tide, speculate—

"In their sight, the sun extinguished, or swelled into a massive fleshball, or transformed into falling black lumps from the sky, the earth melted, sprouting endless teeth and huge eyes, the sea boiled, creating whirlpools straight down to the core, stars fell into the earth, yet also turned into cold flowing fire splattering out from rocks and clouds, they may see themselves flung towards the starry sky, the universe opening a giant mouth full of indescribable luminescence and giant objects, or see all things in the universe peeling away into maddening shadows and continuous noise—and in the final moment of destruction, they themselves also become sacrifices of this chaos and madness, becoming one among them.

"This is what the world looks like in the eyes of the maddened observers—lost within the complex mappings of the cosmos, they lose their focal point of self, and thus lose everything, under such circumstances what they see could be anything."

Gawain didn’t speak for a long time, unable to hold back a complicated expression with a shake of his head after over a minute, "Your description is indeed vivid, the scene could easily send shivers down the spine of any sane person."

"Thank you for the compliment," Enya said calmly, her always serene and gentle tone effectively easing nerves and soothing the mood at this time, "But don’t consider these things I narrated as reliable research data; in the end, they are just my conjectures, after all, not even gods can reach those exiled minds."

Gawain was silent for a moment and suddenly said, "The initial notion that the Great Magic Tide reshaped everything was told to me by the sea demons. I believe they did not deceive me about this matter, so the only explanation is—they indeed ’saw’ the scene of world reshaping in their eyes during the magic tide, which indicates that they were ’observers’ under the influence of the magic tide... but why were they unharmed? It seems they just saw some phenomena, yet survived through the magic tide again and again."

"Sea demons..." Enya chuckled lightly, as if with a sense of helplessness, "They might be the only race in this world that I feel I cannot comprehend. Despite witnessing them falling from space onto this star with my own eyes and having observed them establishing their kingdoms in the distant seas, I have consistently avoided encouraging any interaction between the Dragonkin and those visitors from outer space, do you know why?"

"Because the sea demons come from the universe, their interstellar knowledge and ships could likely cause the Dragonkin to focus on the cosmos, thereby accelerating your loss of control?" Gawain speculated as he spoke, but he had already realized that this issue was probably not so simple—otherwise, Enya wouldn’t need to deliberately ask him at this moment.

"What you said is indeed part of the answer, but more importantly... the sea demon race is, for me, a kind of ’toxic observer.’

"Their way of perceiving the world is completely different from any species on this planet. It’s as if they are not only not from this planet, but not even from this universe. They possess a distinct... anomaly, which is a ’chasm’ that is incompatible with our world. This chasm means that the chaotic wave cannot fully affect them. They will see some phenomena that have shifted during the chaotic wave, but it only takes a short time for their self-cognition to correct this ’error’ on its own. This correction even makes me feel... fear, because I find that they not only ’correct’ themselves, they even influence other intelligent creatures, slowly altering the cognition of other groups, and even spreading this influence to the gods behind other races through cognitive tides.

"Do you remember the ’closed system’ we discussed in the previous topic of divine madness? In the eyes of the gods, those sea demons are like an ’erosive poison’ that can actively destroy closed systems. They are mobile, aggressive foreign information. Do you understand what I mean?"

Gawain blinked, immediately recalling a phrase he had once jokingly muttered:

The Goddess of the Night and the sea demons met face-to-face, exchanging sanity checks—and the gods went mad.

This unintended joke... turned out to be true.

The existence of sea demons can contaminate the gods! If their cognition and self-correction have a "priority," then this "priority" even overrides the chaotic wave?!

Thinking of this, his expression suddenly changed, and he said in an unusually serious tone: "Then isn’t our increasingly widespread communication with the sea demons now..."

"I think that by the time of my ’fall,’ the sea demon race of ’toxic observers’ should have lost their toxicity," Enya, knowing what Gawain was suddenly concerned about, said in a gentle tone, "The chasm between them and this world has nearly completely disappeared, and with it, the pollution will also disappear—for the gods in the future, from this season of civilization onwards, sea demons are no longer dangerous."

Gawain was taken aback: "Why?"

"I don’t know. There are too many mysteries on this race," Enya said as the golden magic symbols on the surface of her eggshell paused for a moment, then slowly flowed again, "I can only be sure of one thing, that is, before my fall, I finally succeeded in observing the ripples produced by the sea demons when they think in this world’s deep layers... This means that after such a long era, this race incompatible with the world has finally integrated into our world."

"Integration..." Gawain frowned, pondering each word Enya mentioned. He tried to understand what kind of peculiar state those "visitors from outer space," who crashed on this planet, were in, such that even the oldest gods on this planet feared for over a million years, and only now is this fear just being lifted. He also speculated how the ’integration’ of the sea demons occurred, and a few potentially reliable guesses had already surfaced in his mind.

Just at least at present, these hypotheses are difficult to verify—even the sea demons themselves probably can’t figure out these processes.

The only conclusion that can be confirmed now: sea demons are like an insoluble foreign substance, having fallen on this world for one million eight hundred seventy thousand years, finally slowly dissolving their shell, and no longer a bug capable of crashing the system. For those races that establish exchanges with them, this may be a good thing, but for the sea demons themselves... is this a good thing?

He couldn’t help but ask: "They’ve integrated into this world, does that mean from now on the chaotic wave will also affect them?"

"It might or might not, I know answering like this is somewhat irresponsible, but there are too many mysteries on them. Even if one is solved, countless more are waiting ahead," Enya said with some helplessness, "The biggest issue is, their life essence is still a type of elemental creatures... a type that can stably survive in the prime material world, and elemental creatures themselves are capable of restructuring and regenerating after the chaotic wave, which perhaps indicates that even if they might be destroyed like other mortals by the chaotic wave in the future, they will be able to be reborn as a clan after the wave ends.

"Of course, the opposite scenario might occur too, who can say for sure? These are events that have never occurred before, not even gods can predict."

"Perhaps I should find an opportunity to talk to them about this issue," Gawain said, frowning. Immediately he remembered something, "Wait, we just talked about how the Great Magic Tide doesn’t affect entities of the ’real universe,’ but does the small magic tide affect them?

"I mean, back in the Gondor Empire when the Well of Deep Blue exploded and was engulfed by a small magic tide, the pioneers saw firsthand how the chaotic magic affected the environment, and later we even mined a new type of ore in the Dark Mountain Range area, which has been identified as a product of the magic tide... Is this a result of some kind of ’restructuring’ phenomenon?"

"This is also a misconception," Enya said calmly, "There is no such thing as ’the restructuring of everything in the world,’ neither from the Great Magic Tide nor the so-called small magic tide—the explosion that occurred in the Gondor Empire confused your understanding of the magic tide. In fact, what you were facing at the time was merely the shockwave from the Well of Deep Blue. Those new ores and mutated environments were merely natural reactions caused by high concentrations of Magic Power erosion. If you don’t believe it, you can easily replicate these results in a laboratory."

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