Chapter 412 Loading into the Virtual Realm
I went to the spot where Shenzhao had just stood and looked in the direction he had been looking. There were several huge, blank tombstones there, emanating an air of invitation, as if beckoning anyone who saw them to enter the tomb.
The tombstones of the deceased, whose owners have them, are covered with inscriptions recording their life experiences and great achievements, while the tombstones of the deceased, whose owners have them, are bare.
The death worship culture of Luoshan is reminiscent of ancient Egyptian civilization. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh was also regarded as a god on earth, and his death was seen as a point in his journey to become a god in the afterlife. Just as legends of great floods or fire-stealers have appeared in various parts of the world, different regional cultures sometimes exhibit this phenomenon of convergence.
However, myths are myths after all. Not all Great Impermanence are of the Two Forms of Mountain; generally speaking, once a Great Impermanence dies, it is truly dead.
The more advanced and sophisticated a machine is, the harder it is to repair once it is damaged. Similarly, if those at the Great Accomplishment level have an extremely slim chance of being resurrected by others after death, then those at the Great Impermanence level, once they truly face death, have absolutely no chance of being resurrected by external forces.
Therefore, this dark forest, which is considered sacred and sublime by the Witcher community, can only be described as filled with an ominous and damp atmosphere in the eyes of a great impermanent person like myself, and the Divine Illumination probably shares the same view.
However, on the eve of the next Virtual Realm Conference, Shenzhao not only attended a funeral ceremony he wouldn't normally participate in, but also went to this inauspicious place to gaze at the blank tombstone of the Great Impermanence. It seems that his state of mind can be glimpsed from this behavior.
Perhaps he felt he was going to die.
No, it's more reasonable to assume he was mentally prepared to die. In front of me and Yuchi, he appeared confident in his deductions about the Lord of the Divine Seal and the chances of success in the assassination. But since he had risen from a mere demon hunter to the Great Impermanence, he would understand that the word "absolute" does not exist in the strange world.
The Lord of the Divine Seal may not be a true mortal, and even if he is, we don't know how many transformations he can manifest with the Divine Seal. Every plan that seems to have a 100% chance of success inevitably carries the unpredictable possibility of failure. It's possible that the Divine Illumination has already detected suspicious points that even Yu Chi and I missed, and glimpsed its own potential failure from them.
He wasn't someone who only walked on smooth roads; he could also traverse precarious narrow bridges, and with great strides at that. Only such a person could seize great victories more quickly than anyone else. Even if he might accidentally fall into the water, he would stick to his principles until the very last moment, willingly swallowing the bitter pill, and if there were a next time, he would do it again without hesitation.
However, I was merely speculating about Shenzhao's personality based on my own assumptions. Perhaps he wasn't the kind of person I thought he was; perhaps he had other motives for attending the funeral ceremony and entering the Great Impermanence Cemetery today. Now, if I wanted to, I could peek into other people's minds, but I could never truly read Shenzhao's soul.
I focused my attention again on those huge, blank tombstones. Perhaps one day, my name will appear on them. If that happens, I hope my end is death. I can accept dying in an adventure, but I cannot accept loss.
After watching for a while, I turned around and walked out of the Dawuchang Tomb area, leaving the cemetery and returning to the Luoshan headquarters area.
I took a brief look at the witchers and agents coming and going at headquarters. Now that I can directly observe fate, I can naturally observe the attraction between other people and strange things.
How best to describe the feeling of observing fate? I don't know if this analogy will resonate with other people experiencing the vicissitudes of life, but to me, observing other people's fates is like watching a heavily formulaic movie. When you see a certain scene, even though you haven't actually seen what happens next, the image of what will follow has already appeared in your mind. Of course, this premonition isn't 100% accurate, just as fate isn't absolutely unchanging.
Those witchers and agents gave me the feeling that they were all characters recklessly running into a haunted house at the beginning of a horror movie—I mean, they had that kind of "aura." Even if the characters appearing at the beginning of a horror movie haven't done anything stupid, the audience knows they're going to be in trouble anyway.
Normally, the highest level of attraction to strange creatures belongs to Witchers at the Master level; that's the limit. The difference in attraction between a Great Master level Witcher like Yuchi and a Master level one is negligible, suggesting that Great Master level Witchers are generally longer-lived than Master level ones.
Asaho, however, struck me the most strongly, placing her in a completely different league from the others. She was like the protagonist of a horror movie; not only was she herself prone to danger, but anyone who came into contact with her would also be drawn into a life-or-death situation.
However, on the other hand, if a protagonist with such overwhelming power is constantly by their side, it's easy for them to overshadow the main character. A clear-headed screenwriter would probably focus on eliminating this supporting character first, so that the script can get back on track. The events attracted by my jinx-like nature always seem to hit me first; perhaps there's a similar logic to that.
As for the Great Impermanence, from my observation, there is no attraction between it and strange things; instead, there is only a strange repulsive force. It's as incongruous as a powerful character from a fantasy story appearing on the stage of a horror movie.
I'm not sure if I should continue using the playwright analogy here. If fate, existing in the shadows, is a playwright, then a character like the Great Impermanence, who disrupts the world's order, would certainly be strongly rejected. Even if it were accidentally written into the "script," every effort would be made to make it disappear, or at least to completely hide it, ideally without it appearing in a single shot.
Many people explain the repulsive effect between the Great Impermanence (a concept in Chinese mythology) and strange entities as a case of "things reaching their extreme will reverse." They assume that the stronger a person is, the greater their attraction to strange entities. In this case, the Great Impermanence is too strong, causing the attraction to reverse into a repulsive force. I used to believe this too, but now I find it very strange.
This "repulsive force" seems to have nothing to do with "attraction with strange things." It doesn't seem to be the reverse of the latter at all, but rather a separate, bizarre phenomenon that inexplicably appeared out of nowhere on the Great Impermanence. At least that's how I personally feel.
I recently inquired with a fortune teller about the origin of this strange phenomenon, but even the fortune teller couldn't give a definite answer. The reason why the Great Impermanence's transformation into nothingness cannot be stopped is probably because the details of this strange phenomenon have never been deciphered.
After returning to the manor, I stayed with Asahi. Unfortunately, there were many rooms in the manor, and Asahi and I slept in different rooms. However, we would try to be in the same room whenever we had the chance. Neither of us was good at chatting, so we just did our own things together. Recently, Asahi has been mainly studying the data she plundered from the Humanitarian Division's headquarters, while I have been researching ways to continue becoming stronger.
Thinking about the Lost Great Impermanence, I also had a question I wanted to ask Asaho, so I asked, "Asaho, the Great Demons of the Apocalypse should all be the Great Impermanence of today... right?"
“That should be true,” Mazao replied seriously. “To be precise, in the apocalyptic era, there is no such thing as ‘Great Impermanence,’ but there are ‘human gods.’”
"'Human God' is the ancient name for the Great Impermanence."
As I answered, I remembered that once, Xiaowan referred to Xuanming and Shenzhao as "human gods".
"So... how exactly do those great demons anchor themselves?" I asked.
Assuming that the Great Demons are all depraved and irrational beings, they certainly haven't formed any bonds or continued to anchor their consciousness. Logically, they shouldn't be able to continue operating in a form that can be perceived by people.
In reality, they were all great demons wreaking havoc in the post-apocalyptic era.
Is it because they've fallen into the realm of the bizarre that they no longer need to find ways to anchor themselves in this bizarre world? I find this reasoning unconvincing. To put it bluntly, the Great Impermanence is more like a bizarre being than a human. I myself am a prime example.
"I can't answer that question." Asaho shook her head. "In the post-apocalyptic era, there was no such thing as 'anchoring.' The existence of a way to completely stay away from strange things... This is the first time I've heard of such a thing since I came to this era."
Not only is the way of referring to the Great Impermanence different, but they don't even have the concept of "anchoring." The apocalyptic era that Asahi lived in was like a completely different world.
Thinking about this, I suddenly realized a deeper problem.
Wait a minute, if we assume that we can access strange things in the apocalypse without anchoring, then that means... wouldn't all those unknowable lost and unpredictable beings be able to return in the apocalypse?
The apocalyptic era... is it really an era where you don't need to worry about anchoring or feeling lost?
Like a stone thrown into a still pond, this possibility stirred up ripples in my mind. The concept of the apocalypse seemed to blossom with new light and color in my heart.
I kept thinking about this until I fell asleep.
And on this very night, even though I was asleep, I had an incredible, almost imagined sensation in my hazy state—in the darkness, gray mist emerged from the fragments of the divine seal within my consciousness, and in turn enveloped my consciousness.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in an incredibly vast space, with a hazy, gray mist permeating all around.
I entered the virtual realm once again.
(End of this chapter)
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