Chapter 962, The Destruction of the Eldar
Gu Hang's words made the person who was using the old woman's body to talk to him silent for a while.
But he didn't think there was anything wrong with what he said.
From what this 'Thousand-Faced God' said, as well as what happened when Gu Hang tried to devour Como's residual soul, Gu Hang was basically certain that this 'Thousand-Faced God' was the god of the elves.
The Eldar, once a dominant race across the universe, naturally had their own racial deity during their heyday. Human research into history, revelations from Eldar 'allies, and the interrogation of Dark Eldar captives on the Comorian battlefield have yielded some clues.
"Ten Thousand Gods" may be an imaginary number, but the gods they believe in are indeed many, covering almost every aspect of the Eldar's religious life.
But in reality, there is only one God. Those aspects are, in fact, just one of the 'thousand faces' of the one God.
The Thousand-Faced God, with countless faces, forms countless forms. There are withered countenances wielding crescent-shaped sickles to harvest souls, magnificent crowns weaving star maps with countless threads, and chaotic silhouettes screaming and twisting amidst seas of blood and joy... He uses these different faces to respond to the varying directions of the Eldar's faith.
Even modern elves may not know this.
However, the condition of the Thousand-Faced God was obviously not very good.
As Gu Hang said, they, or rather he, are complete losers.
He is a racial god, but the race he protects is on the verge of extinction.
This does not refer to the human attack on Comoros.
Even if this weren't the case, the Eldar's status in this universe was nothing more than a struggle to survive. Their entire energy was focused on surviving, with no future or development to speak of.
Perhaps they still possess some powerful, ancient technology. Perhaps their individual strength is still quite high, and they still maintain a highly developed civilization.
But they no longer have any hope.
The entire race has reached this point, so what good is the Thousand-Faced God as a 'racial god'?
Slaanesh, born from the corpse of the Eldar Empire, had already destroyed Him until nothing was left.
Now, of the so-called thousand faces, only two remain.
Windsor is the face of the Ark Eldar's faith and the so-called 'God of Hope'.
Mensha is one side of the Dark Eldar faith, the so-called 'God of Tyranny'.
As for Como? That was once a side of him, the so-called 'God of Despair', but it had long been incomplete, leaving only a remnant of his soul, which was forged into the Como Sword.
Of course, strictly speaking, the Thousand-Faced God is not finished. In fact, he has become stronger and stronger - if you are willing to recognize Slaanesh as the former God of Pleasure, one of the faces of the Thousand-Faced God.
The 'youngest of the Four Gods' who devoured most of the souls of the elves and the godhead of the Thousand-Faced God is, in a sense, more representative of the Thousand-Faced God than this guy who only has two faces left.
How ironic.
In this sense, Gu Hang was being polite when he said that he was a loser.
In response to Gu Hang's sarcasm, the god who had borrowed the old woman's body remained silent for a long time without replying.
Until Gu Hang felt impatient.
He looked at his watch and said, "Silence also counts. I still have a lot of things to do. If you don't want to say anything, please leave."
The 'Thousand-Faced God' let out a wry laugh through the old woman's body.
"You are so merciless."
"Then please allow me to show you something."
The old woman raised her hand slightly, and a ray of light enveloped Gu Hang.
An endless torrent of illusions was poured into Gu Hang.
With Gu Hang's ability, he could certainly easily reject these illusions.
However, after hesitating for a moment, he decided - since he was already here, he might as well take a look.
He saw the battlefield of billions of years ago, where magnificent Eldar warships were swallowed by the purple-red vortex in their escape; highly developed Eldar cities were dragged into the storm of the warp in an instant, forming the most basic component of a new god's kingdom.
In the kingdom of the Thousand-Faced God, the sky was torn apart, and one after another, great demons of Slaanesh emerged from the Pantheon. They came from the past, the future, and more importantly, they were in the present.
The Thousand-Faced God was driven out of the temple, and his body had already been divided into countless parts.
Without the greatest part - that which belongs to Slaanesh - they could never come together again, and were powerless to resist, so they could only flee separately.
The sharp claws of the Great Daemon of Slaanesh smashed the arrogant gods of the Eldar one after another.
The remains of the god fell screaming into the eternal abyss.
He saw how the surviving fragments of divinity drifted desperately in the eternal storm of the warp, colliding and biting each other like cosmic dust, fighting for the remaining faith and conceptual power.
Finally, on the verge of complete dissipation, a common fear of death that was so huge that it distorted reality and originated from the depths of the souls of all the Eldar served as the final bond, forcibly gluing the largest fragments together.
This is not a rebirth, but a more desperate death imprisonment - a terrifying aggregate composed of thousands of humble consciousnesses with unrecognizable names is formed.
This is what Windsor & Mensa is today.
They once bore the titles of "God of Hope" and "God of Tyranny", but in reality they were nothing more than a disgusting patchwork of monsters.
They lingered on, escaping from the pursuit of the enemy, and at the same time led two parts of the elves to survive in different ways.
"We are not complete spirits... nor do we have free will... Every fall of my people of the Eldar race... Every tremor of the soul stone entering the net... tears at our false shells..."
Countless fine, gleaming "threads" emerged in Gu Hang's expanded spiritual vision, extending from the shattered core of the Thousand-Faced God, which was flowing with divine pus and blood.
Each one was as thin as a spider's silk, so fragile that it seemed as if it could be broken by a single breath, but they penetrated the veil of space and cast a faint, desperate shadow on the physical universe.
Gu Hang followed one of the "threads" and was immediately drawn into a distant, flame-encased battlefield beneath the stars. A vast ark world, its lines elegant as a work of art, yet riddled with wounds and scars, was being frantically besieged by bloated, filthy, and pus-oozing green warships.
Nurgle's plague missiles slammed into the pale shields of the Ark, exploding clouds of decaying psychic energy. Near a crumbling spire of bones at the edge of the deck, a howling banshee charged, her battle cry piercing the void as she pointed her shuriken at the Plague Marines, who outnumbered her many times.
But Gu Hang saw something deeper.
The moment her intention to charge reached its peak, the pure and resolute spiritual energy glow emanating from the depths of her chest was not only the energy needed to activate the Star Dart Gun, but also a stream of light as thin as a blood thread was being invisibly drawn away, rapidly flowing back along the thread connecting to the Thousand-Faced God in Gu Hang's field of vision!
That little bit of light was injected into the core of the Thousand-Faced God. The light in that area would light up for a very brief moment, and then be swallowed up by the deeper darkness, just like a starving and dying person trying in vain to absorb a drop of rainwater.
At the same time, thousands of similar threads rose from every corner of the battlefield, from souls unaffected by the war deep in the Craft World, and even from the undiscovered fragments of Eldar colonies on the edge of the galaxy. Billions of tiny streams converged towards the divine core that was on the verge of collapse.
Gu Hang frowned amidst the millions of illusions. Receiving so much information at such a high speed was a bit stressful for him.
But he still realized what all this meant: every extraordinary individual of the Eldar, every time they squeezed their potential and released power, it was as if they instinctively used the purest flash of their soul to briefly "ignite" the dying embers of divinity in exchange for the "divine grace" of increased power, but they were also unconsciously tearing themselves apart, turning into fuel to keep this "divine body" alive.
It seems like a perfect cycle.
The Thousand-Faced God provides strength and protection to the Eldar, preventing their dead souls from sinking into the Warp and being captured by Slaanesh, and instead returning them to the sanctuary provided for them by the Thousand-Faced God.
For the Ark Eldar, it is the 'Soul Stone', located in the spiritual world of the Arkworld; for the Dark Eldar, it is the Soul Box, the opportunity to be resurrected once again in a new body created by the Haemonchi.
At the same time, every time they had a fierce outburst, and even their final death, they fed back their own experiences and soul power to the Thousand-Faced God, allowing it to continue to survive.
However, if this entire mechanism was really so perfect, they would not have been getting worse day by day for hundreds of thousands of years.
The biggest problem with this mechanism lies in Slaanesh.
This external enemy, a true terror hanging over the entire race, makes all cycles unsustainable.
"Deeper corruption... is flowing back along this blood vessel..." Gu Hang heard a low, hoarse voice, as if millions of voices were superimposed on each other.
He saw that the tiny stream of light that was being drawn away was mixed with a more sinister and sticky filth.
On the battlefield, the howling banshee's psychic attacks seemed to be even more powerful, but the abnormal blush on her skin and the strange, inappropriate sweet whispers that should have been shrieking now blended into her battle cries...
When the Eldar unleash their might, no matter how many protective measures they take, they inevitably connect with the Warp. That is the source of all supernatural power, regardless of race.
What is special about the Eldar is that every time they come into contact with the Warp, they always attract the attention of Slaanesh.
Even if they are infected with just a little bit, it may not have any impact on their entire life.
However, when they die and return, the Soul Stone or Soul Box receives the purest souls. Where does the extra contamination go?
"The Dark Prince... the gaze of Slaanesh... is like a cancer... corroding every soul channel connecting my Eldar people to me..."
"Every painful struggle and wail of the soul accelerates His pervasive penetration... The interior of our 'divine core'... is already filled with the 'joy' He has cast upon us... Every painful twitch pleases Him, every burst of power nourishes His penetrating tentacles... If we don't sever them... If we don't eradicate them... The outcome is already determined... This divine zombie of ours will completely become a giant abscess He projects into the real universe! And all the Eldar souls connected to it will..."
"Cut off... this self-destructive cycle..." A relatively clear voice with a sharp and decisive texture like a blade briefly drowned out the billions of wails of the Thousand-Faced God.
Gu Hang's gaze was strongly attracted to the source of the voice - a large fragment located deep in the divine core. It was sharp and deadly pale, like the purest essence of tyranny, emitting a chill that rejected everything.
That was Mensha's part. It was he who maintained the Thousand-Faced God, preventing him from completely dissolving and rotting under Slaanesh's plague of pleasure. It was also he who guided the Dark Eldar to survive in Commorragh, allowing them to learn to use pain to resist Slaanesh's soul-draining.
However, at this moment, Gu Hang keenly observed that a disgusting, malicious rainbow was slowly climbing on the edge of the Mensha fragments - the poison of Slaanesh was greedily licking this last bastion.
At the same time, Gu Hang's spiritual vision also saw something similar to what the Thousand-Faced God had seen: the golden network of will representing the Human Empire was like a vast web spanning the galaxy, its countless nodes dimming or flickering under the erosion of chaos. And above the golden network, a blue network grew, entangled with the golden network and entangling one-third of the human world.
That golden light must represent the Emperor of Humanity. Or rather, the shared faith of countless trillions of humans, the dominant race in the real universe.
The blue network, however, must be Gu Hang, or rather his alliance. Built upon the foundation of the human empire, it symbolizes a higher level of shared ideals, order, and spiritual resonance of sacrifice. It is a behemoth spanning the galaxy, built on an indestructible system and shared imagination.
(End of this chapter)
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