Chapter 288 What a Transcendence

“…How transcendent this is.”

Aiwass murmured softly.

There are many ways to resurrect in this world.

In the past, the Supreme Heaven could also create a cauldron to resurrect mortals, and the Shadow of Avalon was essentially a large-scale resurrection ceremony. Moreover, the Celestial Masters and Pillar Gods transforming mortal souls into apostles capable of descending into the material world could also be considered a form of resurrection.

Apart from this power involving the levels of the Heavenly Officials and Pillar Gods...according to Aiwas's understanding, the master "Insect Amber" of the Dusk Path has mastered the art of lossless resurrection, the path characteristic "Silent Dead" can also give people a second life, and the path of dedication can also exchange life for life.

Even Aiwass's "sister", who did not exist in his memory, had her achievements recorded in the Temple of Silver and Tin in Avalon - the invention of an unstable resurrection potion.

However, any resurrection comes at a price.

The birth, aging, sickness and death of all things are the laws of the world and the basis for the world to achieve perpetual motion.

People are born with souls, and as they grow, their souls gradually develop and grow. After death, the fruit falls to the ground, and the soul returns to the world again... Then the seeds sprout, and new life is born again.

During this process, the total number of souls will increase. The total population of mortals will also increase, creating a mutually reinforcing positive cycle. From this perspective, the world is like a bank, continuously providing loans. The slow growth of souls in the material world is the interest they earn.

But if in this process, a large number of people no longer participate in this cycle... for example, they become apostles, or become undead, or are resurrected, the world will eventually become unable to make ends meet.

If one day everyone achieves immortality and the world's soul reserves are completely depleted, then children will no longer be able to be born. Even newborns who are forcibly born will no longer possess souls.

This is not an unfounded worry.

But it is the "soullessness" that does exist.

In the ancient Parthian Empire, because a large number of rituals involving souls were performed simultaneously in various places, sometimes a pregnant woman who became pregnant or gave birth in the wrong place might give birth to a child without a soul.

They are like congenital vegetative states, but the situation is different. Their brains are normal, but they cannot be activated... just like a computer with normal hardware but no operating system installed.

Scholars of the Rest have also studied this phenomenon.

Some people have tried various means to activate the soulless baby brain, but have never been able to awaken its human intellect - the upper limit is to transform humans into animals.

Without a soul, one cannot remember their own name...or, in other words, cannot separate themselves from the world. Therefore, they cannot develop a distinct personality...Even through rigorous domestication, even if soulless individuals can be made to move and speak independently, they still lack a personality. The most promising approach currently involves using a pseudo-soul drive, using the soulless patient's body as a golem.

Jacob's research can fundamentally solve this problem.

In this village, frozen by the power of dusk, newborns originally did not exist. It was essentially a naturally existing "soulless environment," unable to give birth to newborns.

While in his twenties, Jacob developed the technology to create "Swamp People".

To copy the soul through some means - theoretically, this is actually a one-time resurrection technology that requires special geographical conditions to achieve, which is actually not too outrageous.

However, Jacob had somehow managed to create a bug, or perhaps there was simply a bug in the ritual he designed.

——He allowed the "original soul" that should have been destroyed when the new soul was born to be preserved for unknown reasons.

In this way, he transformed the skill of "resurrecting souls" into "copying souls".

In other words, he split one person into two.

Jacob must have known that this skill was taboo and would cause huge controversy.

Therefore, he did not release the "original" souls, but stored them. He placed them in a place only he knew...

If nothing unexpected happens, it should be inside the fairy cave.

Aiwass guessed that this must be a coincidence.

Because if Jacob had done it on purpose, then he wouldn't have hidden the souls in the Goblin Cave... Instead, he should have preserved them through some means or conducted a secondary experiment. These souls were undoubtedly extremely valuable "one-of-a-kind" specimens, precious special cases that had gone awry.

It was just like when he was doing an experiment and made a wrong reading, he felt guilty and secretly adjusted the reading to the correct position - he hid the original souls that were not destroyed by the ritual in the fairy kingdom, so that no one would know that they were not actually destroyed correctly.

From this perspective, it is even possible that those mud turtles were brought here by Jacob to be raised—

After all, mud turtles are not pure undead, but wild creatures.

They wouldn't be born naturally; they must have migrated from somewhere. It's entirely possible that after realizing his mistake, Jacob stopped the Swamp Man ritual and brought in a batch of Mud Turtles to seal the hole.

The purpose is to prevent people from uncovering the Goblin Cave and entering the Goblin Kingdom to see the original souls of those "Swamp People" who, in principle, should not be here!

Thinking of this, Aiwass suddenly opened his eyes wide.

"Speaking of which, Haena's father..."

Aiwass suddenly remembered that the Magnetic Hammer was the Eagle Point Village where he came about ten or twenty years ago.

What happened then?

That was because Haina was born for some reason, breaking the common sense of Eagle Cape Village.

At that time, Haina's biological father suddenly ran away from his pregnant wife for some reason and left Eagle Cape Village. He never came back.

By then, Jacob had been back in Eagle Point Village for quite some time, and had not yet died of typhoid fever.

If the swamp rituals had ceased to operate by then, why did Haena's mother go to the swamp?

How could she find the magnetic hammer if she didn't go to the swamp, which was a restricted area?

But if we regard this as Jacob's experiment... and these nameless indigenous people as Jacob's assistants, everything can be explained!

According to the chronological order, the clues were quickly pieced together in Aiwass's mind -

At first, Jacob probably accidentally entered Eagle Point Village when he was in his twenties.

By chance, he discovered this village, filled with the power of dusk and hidden in the cracks of the fairy power, as well as the fairy cave filled with pure earth elemental power. Then, through his genius, he developed an incomplete resurrection ritual...

But his research failed.

The resurrection ritual did not work properly because the original soul was not destroyed by the ritual, so Jacob stopped or suspended the ritual and left Eagle Point Village.

More than forty years later, Jacob, who already had two sons and the Scaleless Hand was about to exit the stage of history, returned to Eagle Point Village.

He didn't plan to leave this time.

And he, who has even more advanced skills... through some means, has allowed Eagle Cape Village, a village sealed by the power of dusk, to give birth to newborns.

Therefore, he became the "benefactor" of Eagle Cape Village in the eyes of the elders.

Haina is one of the samples he cultivated.

Not only did she behave like an ordinary person, but she also possessed the ability to adapt to paths beyond dusk. Aside from a lack of time perception, she possessed no trace of Eagle Point Village. She was even able to leave Eagle Point without issue—while the natives could leave, the "swamp people" were unable to do so.

Then Haina's father suddenly fled Eagle Cape Village for some reason.

Then, the Swamp Man ritual started again.

He certainly wasn't after the resurrection technology at that time. He would have been able to develop a better resurrection technology long ago.

At this time, he started the Swamp Man Ritual only for its original by-product - the copied artificial soul.

And then...his death.

Aiwass suddenly felt a chill down his spine.

Jacob, who invented resurrection technology and even artificial souls in his twenties, his own grandfather...

Is he really dead?

Also, why did he catch the "cold" at the same time as me?

Is that really a wind chill?

besides……

"who I am?"

Aiwass murmured softly.

(End of this chapter)