What is God?

Mi circled the pile of stones. Perhaps Joe, like Venus, was a man in body but a woman at heart, or perhaps she was a drag queen. Mi circled and circled, unsure of her own feelings. She had always believed the Elder acknowledged this was the Witch's Forest, since the male witches hadn't been able to leave. Did becoming a witch mean appearing in female form, like the beautiful Joe before her? Or could witches freely decide their gender, like El who could change her appearance at will?

“Your fellow countrywoman is very interesting,” El laughed. “She can’t move forward unless she gets over her own hurdle, just like her back on Earth.”

"She—she rejects men?" Joe asked, slightly apprehensive.

"No, she was just thinking, trying to figure out what kind of person you are."

"Isn't it just a piece of consciousness, or a soul? Oh, where I'm from, even ghosts are divided into male and female ghosts. She thinks I should be a male ghost. She still doesn't understand what a witch is."

“The secular education system for men and women is very distinct in your area,” Al sighed. “It’s so deeply ingrained that, not to mention her, you haven’t broken free from it either.”

"I didn't," Qiao stubbornly turned her head away.

"I'm glad you like it, Joe, I'm glad you like it." Al sighed softly.

Mi vaguely saw that the leaves outside the valley had turned red, like butterflies swirling and dancing in the valley.

“I want to go there,” Mi thought. “I want to leave here. What’s the difference between male and female witches? They say it’s the same channel, the same wavelength. Does the channel even have gender distinctions? I’m being ridiculous. What am I agonizing over? Years ago, I knew that virtues are universal, regardless of men or women, and emotions are universal, regardless of gender. I never say how men should behave, and I never comment on how women should behave. What’s wrong with me today?”

Mi squatted before the valley, unsure whether she was saddened by her identity as a woman or unable to understand why a man would choose to appear in a female form. Here—in the Witch's Forest—women were clearly in a superior position, even the only one. Why? If there were only one kind of people in the world, whether men or women, there would be no gender oppression, right? Before becoming a man or a woman, I want to be a human being first. I just want to be a human being, why is that so difficult?

Mi was unaware that the gray cloud that made her up was churning like clouds above a forest. She was like a cloud about to explode, with even flashes of lightning inside. The grass around her withered when it came into contact with these lightning bolts.

"Forget it, I don't want to think about it anymore. What does she or he have to do with me? They're just fellow villagers from over a hundred years ago," Mi thought to herself. "Maybe they're just a ploy by that observer outside to mislead me." Mi stopped her wild thoughts. She couldn't let Al and Joe influence her; everything she was doing now was to leave this place. Mi returned to the center of the forest. Al was still sitting upright, and Joe was searching for something on the grass nearby.

“According to you, witches are the conduits of the human brain,” Mi tried to make herself clearer and also tried to get more information out of El: “So witches are part of a person? Or rather, the human brain?”

“Witchcraft isn’t what you think. Witchcraft existed before humans. We observe everything in this world and record it.” El himself was a little confused. “Before the world, as you know, there were no humans. Witchcraft were just segments of waves that existed. The only unique thing about these waves is that they can coexist with humans in the human brain.”

“Symbiosis? What you’re describing sounds more like parasitism.” Mi lowered her head and pondered for a moment.

“Parasitism?” El thought for a moment. “When human brainwaves first started to fluctuate, the witch discovered that this waveband operated in the same way as the witch, and the two wavebands could easily coexist. Moreover, because they are wavebands of the same frequency, they bring faster information processing and more diverse thinking and decision-making results to the human brain. I think humans and witches benefited at the same time, and they did not destroy each other.”

"Huh?" Mi didn't know how to understand this passage. "What does 'faster information processing and more diverse thinking and decision-making outcomes' mean?"

“You can think of this kind of resonance behavior as a way of generating high intelligence,” Al tried to explain more clearly. “Resonance makes the human brain more active, allowing it to process more information, extract more elements, and discover more unknown existences in the same amount of time.”

"Isn't intelligence innate?" Mi exclaimed in astonishment once again.

“High intelligence is just a faster way of processing,” Al asserted. “Human brainwaves, like human fingerprints, don’t all have exactly the same frequency. And the witch is the one who finds the most suitable frequency, and when she finds it, a genius is born.”

"So, is this genius human or a sorcerer?"

“Of course it’s people. To put it bluntly, the witch just provides the passage.” El waved his hand. “The wider the road, the more vehicles and pedestrians pass through. If the human brain is an information processor, the witch just provides a wider passage, thus generating faster processing efficiency. As for how it is actually processed, it still depends on how people do it. You know, apples have fallen on countless heads, but there was only one Newton.”

"Does witchcraft merely help humanity to recognize the true nature of the world more quickly?"

“You’re not wrong in thinking this way. When a witch parasitizes someone as you say, it inevitably changes the way and speed at which that person’s brain works. I’d rather not say whether this helps humanity understand the true nature of the world. After all, many witches who return to the Witch Forest don’t help the humans they parasitize become geniuses, like you, like me.” Elton paused and continued, “What I know of more witches is that because of their sensitivity, the humans they parasitize are actually more sensitive, and more capable of empathy.”

"Sensitive? Empathetic?" Mi sneered. "You might as well say that the witch's parasitism breeds more madmen and causes more suffering!" Mi thought to herself, "Go ahead and try to fool me. Tell me, what exactly is a witch?" She looked up at the tightly closed dormant flower. What would those so-called elders think if they knew there was a frequency, a segment of radio waves that made them different from others? Do people prefer conscious suffering or blissful ignorance?

“Human suffering is not caused by witches,” El looked at Mi with pity. “It cannot even be said that witches cause human suffering; witches merely observe it all.”

"I want to know what exactly the purpose of witchcraft is?" Mi asked bluntly, standing opposite El. Mi recalled a saying that had once circulated on Earth—the line between genius and madness is thin. Was witchcraft the cause of that thin line?

"What is the use of witchcraft?" El repeated Mi's question. "To be honest, I don't know either. When my guide talked about the origin of witchcraft, he said that 'witchcraft is the link between divinity and humanity.' We are a kind of substance between gods and humans. We watch the birth and development of gods, we observe the insignificance and greatness of humanity, we see the destruction of gods and humans, and we are witnesses between these cycles of reincarnation."

Witnesses? Mi didn't understand what that meant. Humans write history and record it, but humanity falls into the same cycle again and again. There's nothing new in this world, only conquest and being conquered, only exploitation and being exploited. What are these witnesses doing? Mi looked up. Are these witnesses experimental recorders? Are humans just some kind of rare white mice, observation samples for some rule? And what are Gods? Are they also observation samples, or just like those observers?

"God—does God really exist?" Mi was beginning to feel that her conversation with El was going in an absurd direction. Was this El's true understanding or a concept that some being on the dome was trying to instill in Mi?

"God, or rather divinity, has always existed, only in different ways."

What is divinity?

“God’s requirement is survival, and divinity is heredity, reproduction, and genes,” Al said after thinking for a moment. “God strives to preserve himself for eternity and pass on his genes for thousands of years.”

"Is God actually a giant reproductive cancer patient?" Mi looked up at the dome above and asked, "Isn't God immortal?"

"No, everything has a process of creation and destruction, and so does God."

“But in my hometown, the gods are immortal, just like nature.” Mi told El that the gods are legendary immortals who are without joy or sorrow, high above, and with boundless power.

“I mentioned that there is a species outside called the Long-lived Species,” El said, changing the subject. “They have infinitely long lifespans, and they are very gentle, quite different from humans. The gods you mentioned are closer to the Long-lived Species.”

"Long-lived species, what a straightforward name. Was it given to them by humans?"

El nodded: "When life is infinitely long, perhaps desires won't be so strong."

"What do they eat?" Mi didn't know if the longevity species were real or not, but what was eternal life?

"I don't know, but it's said that every long-lived species has its own unique guardian spirit."

"Gods again? They're already long-lived beings with infinite life, so what's a guardian deity?" Mi felt that El's words had reached the point of being utterly ridiculous.

“I don’t know, I haven’t met any long-lived species yet.” El clutched his head. “They are a very peculiar race. Unless you have a trait that can attract long-lived species, you will never see them.”

"If you haven't seen it, where did you hear about this long-lived species?"

“There are long-lived species outside the Misty Forest, in the Flower Kingdom, and in the Sea Kingdom as well,” El said. “I have never seen a long-lived species, but I have seen many people who have seen them.”

"Are long-lived species invisible?" Mi didn't believe it. El had seen people who had seen long-lived species before, and she seemed so eager to know what long-lived species looked like.

"Let's not talk about the long-lived species, after all, I can't tell you about a species that no witch has ever seen."

"No shaman has ever seen a long-lived species?" Mi asked again. "Then what is the purpose of the shaman's testimony?"

"Why do you have so many questions?" Joe asked her from the side.

This was an old relic from the late Qing Dynasty. Mi thought for a moment and said, "Learning without thinking is futile." Qiao was speechless, turning her head away. Mi glanced at the charming and awkward Qiao, then looked at her again and asked, "Are you really a man?"

Jo suddenly stood up, and El had to pull her back, patting her back to comfort her, before saying to Mi, "I can only teach you what I know; the witch is not omniscient."

"Okay, what kind of God are you talking about? And what is divinity?"

After pondering for a while, El said, "God is the original gene carrier. He developed into all things. He is the beginning of all things."